Cuisinart CBK-200 Convection Bread Maker

Calculating ROI on something like this isn't really a direct comparison to supermarket bread because your output is a fresh homemade loaf of bread without preservatives.

But as a simple example, a 2lb loaf of bread generally uses about 4 cups of flour. You can buy a 5lb bag (20 cups) of bread flour for $4. For a basic white bread the only other things you are likely adding is a small amount of sugar, salt, butter/oil, milk, and yeast. The cost for those other ingredients is going to be a few pennies at most since you use so little of them. So at 80 cents of flour and a few pennies of everything else you are looking at about $1 per loaf. And that's assuming you aren't buying any ingredients in bulk, which you should because it could cut costs by more than half.

So if you go through a loaf of bread per week at $3/loaf at the supermarket that is $156/year on bread. Making it at home with a machine, not accounting for buying ingredients on sale or in bulk and assuming $1/loaf you are at $52/year. So a savings year over year of $104 if you buy this machine, giving you a 1 year ROI.

Again though this is overly simplistic, because a homemade loaf like this doesn't really cost $3. It is more akin to a loaf you'd buy at a local bakery. Those usually run $5-10 depending on what they are and where you are. So in that case your ROI is quite a bit faster.

Sorry for the long post I'm about to respond with ...

It's definitely not free to keep adding things onto your weekly trip. Your bags keep getting larger and heavier and the trips keep taking longer.

It's one thing to buy half a year's supply of flour every six months (or have it delivered). It's quite another to buy fresh bread every single week.

I understand the people who live in a nice European town and they find it a pleasure to drop by the market every day for fresh ingredients to prepare that same day. If they enjoy that lifestyle, that sounds wonderful and I would love to live in such a society (of course, when your movement is restricted by state regulations that throws a bit of a wrench in that lifestyle, but I digress).

Unfortunately I live in an American car-dependent hell-scape where the market centers are vivisected by polluted, dangerous "stroads" (multiple-lane roads that serve both as high-traffic commuter traffic arterials and road-side commercial shopping property), that you can only travel on safely in a steel roll-cage-protected metal box called a car. Visiting the supermarket involves driving on a congested highway, and then waiting for tens of minutes in a checkout line surrounded by other deeply stressed-out and angry, distrustful people (quick aside: in Europe they introduced walk-in-walk-out and scan with phone years ago, but abandoned that tech in US because of "shrinkage", i.e. shoplifters).

The fewer trips I have to make to the market, the better. And the fewer things I have to buy when I'm there, the more pleasant the experience is, and the more likely I can do that shopping at some other smaller, more pleasant market.

At this point, by buying staples and learning to cook my own quickly and efficiently instead of buying it prepared, I've eliminated having to take weekly trips to the grocery. I buy a few fresh ingredients once in a while only from the smaller markets I enjoy visiting, and make the rest from staples in my pantry that I only have to occasionally replenish, and which I can usually get delivered cheaply.

I'm not saying everyone needs to live exactly like me, but if you are finding that you don't have enough time in the week and you're stressed out and not living the life you'd like to, I would highly recommend seeing if you can reclaim time that you use visiting the grocery every week. Visits to a supermarket can be some of the most tedious, time-wasting, cortisol-increasing hours of your life, and they can be almost entirely eliminated by eliminating prepared foods like baked bread from your shopping.

Hamilton Beach is probably about $25 new at most retailers and comes with warranty. This is brand is better quality and also much better looking.