Boxed Bread Machine Mixes Too Expensive?

I work anywhere from 35 hours to 70 hours a week outside the home and my husband is out of state 10 days out of every 15. We have 4 sons at home and still manage to homeschool our 14 & 12 year olds (the other 2 are adult). My time is at a premium and cash is just about as dear. However, I don’t want to sacrifice homemade goodness but time-saving mixes are oh-so-expensive.

Here is one of my solutions:
My Homemade Automatic Bread Machine (ABM) Mixes

I make 10 at a time so all one of the boys has to do is heat the kefir (or buttermilk) and butter, dump it in the bread pan along with the baggie of mix and press start. Wallah! Homemade bread.

Directions
Prepare 10 quart zipper bags by labeling them (I use freezer type for durability since I reuse them over and over). I use a Sharpy pen & I write “add 1 1/2 c. warmed kefir and 2 Tbls. butter” — use the measurements for the wet ingredients for your favorite ABM recipe.

Now, open all the zipper bags (I cuff the top to hold them open) and line them up for your assembly line. Measure in all the dry ingredients starting with the smaller measurements, adding flour last. Don’t worry about the salt touching the yeast, in the 10 years I have been doing this, it has never made a difference.

Once all the dry ingredients have been measured into the bags, press out as much air as reasonable and seal the bags. Store. I flatten mine and stack in a large Tupperware and store in the pantry.

To use the bread kits
Add the warmed wet ingredients to your bread pan (if your ABM suggest wet first), dump in contents of zipper baggie and start your machine. Fold up and seal your baggie and return to your storage container so you can reuse it for your next set of bread kits.

Enjoy your own favorite recipe of hot bread with about 3 minutes hands-on time!