Alyce - I understand where you are coming from! Before I got back into sewing I was doing a lot of specialty baking as a hobby. Things like danish pastry and fancy cakes and creative deserts. And even though I'd take a lot to share at work, it was causing the weight to creep up.
So I had to stop that hobby and that is when I got back into sewing and then decided to get into quilting. I tell people I have quilting as a hobby because I'm not tempted to eat my mistakes!
I still love doing creative baking, but I really limit it now. I limit by bread intake to about a half slice 5 days a week. DH has always been a super bread lover, and will eat bread as a snack. Lucky for him it doesn't make him put on a lot of extra weight.
We are able to purchase Dakota Maid bread flour from Sam's Club in 25lb bags. We keep it in the freezer and fill up a smaller container that stays in the kitchen as needed. DH orders yeast from Amazon and keeps that in the freezer and refills a small container that stays in the kitchen.
I use to buy wheat berries and grind my own. That does not keep very long once ground as it's got all the oils and stuff still there. Though the berries keep a very long time in the freezer.
There is a neat Blueprint class on the science behind break making. It covers a lot of the "why" behind what is happening and the roles the different ingredients play - like sugar and salt, as they do way more than affect the flavor.
DH has gotten quite good over the years to know if he needs to modify the recipe due to the weather. That is the one big drawback with bread machines, you can't easily gauge if you should add a bit more or less flour as the dough is being worked. So even if you use the same recipe, you may occasionally end up with not so nice loaves.