The Home Baking Mistake That's Costing You Too Much Money

Baking at home is a great way to spend an afternoon while taking control over what's going into your family's stomachs, but baking from scratch is also supposed to be a way to reduce your grocery budget. Instead of relying on processed foods with high price tags, baking at home is a no-brainer. Even still, there's one mistake you might be making when it comes to what flour you keep on hand. To find out more, we spoke to Beth Baumgartner, cookbook author and founder of The First Year.

"Flours like pastry flour, self-rising flour, and other niche options are often unnecessary and not worth the cost for most people," said Baumgartner. In many cases, less is more. "I wouldn't say it's a mistake to have multiple types of flour on hand, but it can lead to unused product and possible confusion if you grab the wrong bag," she said. Specialty flours are the result of food manufacturers looking for ways to expand what products they offer to consumers, but that doesn't mean you should purchase every single one of them. Although more advanced bakers may find good use for these products, it's good advice for beginner bakers to simply steer clear of all but the necessities.

"If home cooks are baking on a budget, all-purpose flour is the main necessity," Baumgartner explained, "while bread flour and cake flour can be beneficial if used regularly." The difference between something like bread flour and all-purpose flour mainly comes down to the protein content, which changes how the ingredient behaves in the oven. But these aren't the only types of flour you'll see on grocery store shelves.

Specialty flours are a rapidly growing market as food manufacturers are noticing a consumer trend toward healthier food alternatives. Gone are the days when all you had to know was the difference between bleached and unbleached flour. When shopping for flour now, you'll be confronted with dozens of options. Some of the more popular specialty flours include almond, buckwheat, chickpea, oat, and coconut flour. Ancient grains are also enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the form of einkorn and spelt. That's hardly the end of it, though, as companies have debuted flour products made from peas, sorghum, and even insects. 

The list could go on for quite some time, but just because these flours are trending doesn't mean you need to hop on the bandwagon. If you were to go ahead and impulse buy the entire flour catalog, you'd soon have a very full pantry and a very empty bank account. That isn't to say specialty flours are automatically and always not worth buying, but it's a good idea to be deliberate with what flour you buy since they can get expensive — and there's simply no need to own all of them.

"Specialty flours are more of a contemporary phenomenon, as most home bakers in the past primarily used all-purpose flour and occasionally bread flour," said Beth Baumgartner. "The rise of social media, specialty diets, and artisan baking has made them much more common today." While these specialty flours can be a fun, healthy way to innovate on old baking recipes, it's better to view them as optional luxuries, especially if you're baking on a budget.