Everyone who loves to cook and cooks often has brands that they prefer over others and believe to be the best! Here is a list of mine and feel free to share your own!
Flour - I prefer King Arthur brand Bread, Wheat, and All-purpose for everything! King Arthur's flour is never bleached, enriched, and it's affordable!! (not expensive lol). It is really one of the best brands you can buy and very similar to European brands.
Yeast - Fleischmann's Active Dry. I have enough pets to care for as it is without having to worry about a colony of yeast as well, though I do wonder how Florida yeast would taste. I haven't really seen much yeast variety anywhere but Fleischmann's is a really good brand and works wonderfully.
Pre-made Beef/Chicken Stock - Kitchen Basics is the way to go for stock. When I decided to buy a stock to use in a soup recipe I had, I spent nearly half an hour in my local super market (never Wal-mart) looking at all the ingredients in every available brand of stock. Nearly all of them had MSG (Mono-sodium Glutamate) which is scientifically proven to retard brain development! Even the name brands like Campbell's, Progresso, and even freaking Emerill's brand had it! The other stocks like Swanson had preservatives and artificial/unhealthy ingredients like High Fructose Corn Syrup. Kitchen Basics had only natural ingredients you can grow in your own garden, it lists basic whole ingredients such as carrots, onions, and celery.
Cheese - Sargento I just plain love this cheese!
Cottage Cheese - I have yet to find a brand better than Brookstone.
- Things I buy Generic -
Salt - There is no such thing as gourmet salt, sea salt is just a gimmick that tastes exactly the same when dissolved, and Kosher salt is just coarse regular salt. I do make sure to always buy Iodized salt (Salt with iodine added to it) for my thyroid health. Iodized salt should be the same or similar price to regular salt so if your store only seems to carry expensive iodized salt, find a new store.
Butter - I sometimes buy Land-O-Lakes as I do live in FL but as long as the only listed ingredient is sweet cream with or without salt, I usually buy generic store brand butter.
Sugar(not raw) - Just like salt, sugar is sugar, there's really no such thing as "gourmet". I generally just grab a bag of generic store brand unless I'm buying brown sugar, I live pretty close to a cane field so I usually buy from them to support my local economy.
Baking Soda - Same category as Salt and Sugar. Buying expensive name brands is just stupidity.
Things I don't buy in a store? Fruits, vegetables, meat, milk, and honey. For these I like to go to Farmer's Markets when my finances allow it. When my budget is tight, I look for whatever is on sale and grown and processed in the USA.