Bake Or Buy? Please Help!!

Question

Trying to be enviromentally friendly, is it better to, for example, buy biscuits from the supermarket, or bake your own?

Answer 1

both take the same amount of energy to bake. now it comes to what ones taste better. youre going to have to either throw away the packaging after buying them, or wash the baking tools after they are baked. buying them sure is alot easier. i loke to cook.

Answer 2

At a guess I would say bought biscuits because the ovens are much larger than our domestic ovens and so for the same amount of time they would bake hundreds of biscuits to our dozen or so. Their ovens would be more efficient that home ones as well.

Packaging wise though there is no packaging with home made there is the packaging for the ingredients (flour etc) so I tend to feel that it evens itself out.

Answer 3

Consider where all the ingredients come from. If you get the tube of biscuits from Pilsbury, the wheat comes from Kansas, butter from California, fake flavoring from New Jersey... the list goes on. Buy yourself some local food products and you'll be doing the earth a favor. You'll be doing yourself a favor too; preservatives from pre-made food are nasty, nasty things.

Answer 4

There is more to the environmental impact than just the packaging and energy used to bake. In general the chemicals used in prepared foods at the store can be bad for you. I would bake them myself, so I know what is in them. To conserve energy you can make a double batch and freeze what won't be used immediately.

Answer 5

Bake them yourself since it is not only about packaging but about the transport that bring them to your shop and to your table.You more likely have all the ingredients in your pantry and can take the opportunity of the hot oven to bake something else as well.

Answer 6

Environmentally probably 6:1 1/2 dozen the other. Buying packaged prepared food means there's factory level energy usage and meg-shipping involved from place to place along the process, plus who knows about the additives.  But baking your own is lots of ingredients packaged and shipped to you + the accumulation of household energy - if every one did it it adds up.

That said, my personal preference is to bake my own so I can control the ingredients.

Answer 7

If you are only baking small quantities at a time (ie a tray or two of biscuits) with supermarket purchased ingredients, a packet of supermarket biscuits wins out.

However, you could easily turn the tables by using bulk purchased ingredients, and baking in larger batches.

Bartering your home baked biscuits for other 'goodies' with your neighbours could be a really environmentally friendly and a fun thing to do.

Answer 8

No thanks. I would just skip biscuits, and most baked goods.

Answer 9

buy

Answer 10

If your oven is on and not being fully utilised then yep defo bake, several reasons:-  1.  You know exactly what goes into them (i usually reduce the sugar content!),  2.  They taste so much nicer   3.  Arent full of preservatives but still last as long if stored properly.   4.   NO PACKAGING   5.   That means home baked biscuits and cakes in our house have no waste - not even egg shells which the dog eats lol

One last point if you are baking invest in some silican bun cases and magic sheeting - means no greaseproof paper to throw away - possibly a bit more washing up tho.

Answer 11

Well, I doubt you'll do this, but here's what I do on our farm.  We purchase everything in bulk, and have food storage (about a two year supply of food).

I buy the wheat in 50 pound sacks.  I mill the wheat as needed into flour, when I need to bake.  The yeast I purchase in one pound packages.  They last us about a year.

A loaf of very high quality, and heavenly tasting bread costs me about $.10 cents a loaf to bake.  To buy a loaf of the same quality that I can bake at home, you'll now be spending at least $6 for it at the store.

Tens cents, or six dollars....hmmm, the math is not difficult.

There is zero packaging for the baked goods we eat at home.  There is zero transportation of the baked goods to stores to sell for us.  

The quality of the food we are eating is vastly better than just about any bread you can buy.  Nobody has to stick anything back in, or "fortify" it, because nothing was bleached out to begin with.

Buy in bulk, and bake at home.  Much healthier, and MUCH cheaper!

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 12

They both take the same amount of time to bake, so the only difference is the packaging.

And the fact that mine taste better than store bought.

Mine are probably healthier too, at least I know what goes into them.

Answer 13

bake your own

Answer 14

they will both proberally  take the same aount of time to cook, so take theses different factors into the following,

- packaging, you wont have to trougj out any pakaging if you make ur own, it's also not about the wrapping, what about the boxes they come in

-transport, think about how far they have travelled from the factory and also how far you travelled to get to the supermarkt.

-advertisment, are they advistised on tv, thought his sounds silly, this will have used energy.

-plus baking can be fun and they taste so much better, especially hot out of the oven, you also have no presevatives and you no what goes in them.

- if you don't have time to make some, buy some localally made produce...

Answer 15

Baking.

You can bake them to your preference and there isn't any packaging to throw out.