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I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not avai

I'm curious if anyone has numbers on how much a homemade sourdough loaf costs on average. My experience is that flour is quite expensive (and currently not available in UK shops). I've also noticed a spike in electricity costs since we've started baking regularly. (Difficult to calculate exactly) My guess is that baking your own is a bit cheaper than going to some artisanal baker, but a lot more expensive than a standard load.

ghaff 6y ago
I'm pretty sure you would be correct. The cost (assuming you have at least a minimal amount of equipment--including an oven obviously) is basically the flour (which, as you say, can be hard to find right now). A 5 pound bag of flour is normally around $4-$5 in the US, and a large boule (5 cups of flour) takes about 600 grams (~1.5 pounds) of flour, so maybe $1.50. The other ingredients in a basic loaf are negligible and the electricity is about 30 cents at a typical US price (ballpark of 10 cents per KWh). Call it about $2 all together. So, yes, less than an artisanal loaf but maybe a bit more than cheap supermarket bread (though that's a larger loaf as well.)
- rebuilder 6y ago
  Is this some kind of specialist flour? 1 USD per pound seems high.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    King Arthur flour (one of the big national brands) at Walmart in 5 pound bags. They probably have their own brand which is cheaper.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Great Value flour here lists for ~$0.22 a pound in a 5 pound bag. Website says they are out of stock though. (Great Value is the Walmart store brand)
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      King Arthur is absurdly expensive. I'd say Gold Medal is a much better benchmark and it's usually about half the price.
- masonic 6y ago
  Grocery Outlet's store brand of bread has been $1.59 a loaf for a long time. White or whole wheat.
rebuilder 6y ago
Approximately 0.35 EUR per loaf containing 250g flour, assuming you bake 3 loaves at once in an electric oven, and aren't considering the effects of the heat produced on your heating/cooling costs.
ohiovr 6y ago
For ultimate economy it is possible to filter whole grains you can find at a feed company and carefully grind it into flour with automatic means. You just gotta be careful not to ruin the grain mill. I've made bread using a waffle iron. Actually english muffins can be made with a grill. Quite good fresh!
maxerickson 6y ago
Home ovens use something similar to 2KW to run for an hour. (it's gonna vary between models and temperatures and so on, I think 2KW is good enough for the sake of discussion) So from there, 5KW or so is probably a good upper limit for a bread cooking cycle (it's probably less than that). Here that's ~$0.50, and then small retail packages of flour are ~$0.50 a pound. $0.25 for yeast, and trivial amounts of salt/sugar. So (here) 2 large loaves of bread is less than $2 of ingredients and energy. Flour is out of stock on the online store I just checked here also.
dehrmann 6y ago
> My experience is that flour is quite expensive My mom loves making baked goods. At some point, she switched to buying 5+ lbs. bags of flour. It turns out that flour bags from 1-25 lbs. are priced way closer than you'd expect.

ghaff 6y ago

I'm pretty sure you would be correct. The cost (assuming you have at least a minimal amount of equipment--including an oven obviously) is basically the flour (which, as you say, can be hard to find right now). A 5 pound bag of flour is normally around $4-$5 in the US, and a large boule (5 cups of flour) takes about 600 grams (~1.5 pounds) of flour, so maybe $1.50. The other ingredients in a basic loaf are negligible and the electricity is about 30 cents at a typical US price (ballpark of 10 cents per KWh). Call it about $2 all together. So, yes, less than an artisanal loaf but maybe a bit more than cheap supermarket bread (though that's a larger loaf as well.)

rebuilder 6y ago
Is this some kind of specialist flour? 1 USD per pound seems high.
- ghaff 6y ago
  King Arthur flour (one of the big national brands) at Walmart in 5 pound bags. They probably have their own brand which is cheaper.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Great Value flour here lists for ~$0.22 a pound in a 5 pound bag. Website says they are out of stock though. (Great Value is the Walmart store brand)
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    King Arthur is absurdly expensive. I'd say Gold Medal is a much better benchmark and it's usually about half the price.
masonic 6y ago
Grocery Outlet's store brand of bread has been $1.59 a loaf for a long time. White or whole wheat.

rebuilder 6y ago

Approximately 0.35 EUR per loaf containing 250g flour, assuming you bake 3 loaves at once in an electric oven, and aren't considering the effects of the heat produced on your heating/cooling costs.

ohiovr 6y ago

For ultimate economy it is possible to filter whole grains you can find at a feed company and carefully grind it into flour with automatic means. You just gotta be careful not to ruin the grain mill. I've made bread using a waffle iron. Actually english muffins can be made with a grill. Quite good fresh!

maxerickson 6y ago

Home ovens use something similar to 2KW to run for an hour. (it's gonna vary between models and temperatures and so on, I think 2KW is good enough for the sake of discussion) So from there, 5KW or so is probably a good upper limit for a bread cooking cycle (it's probably less than that). Here that's ~$0.50, and then small retail packages of flour are ~$0.50 a pound. $0.25 for yeast, and trivial amounts of salt/sugar. So (here) 2 large loaves of bread is less than $2 of ingredients and energy. Flour is out of stock on the online store I just checked here also.

dehrmann 6y ago

> My experience is that flour is quite expensive My mom loves making baked goods. At some point, she switched to buying 5+ lbs. bags of flour. It turns out that flour bags from 1-25 lbs. are priced way closer than you'd expect.