cost of homemade bread

After years of making homemade bread I cannot believe I have never broke down the cost of it.

If you are budgeting and want to save some money of food you may want to consider making homemade bread. Food costs seem to be one of the largest expenses in most people's budget and since it is not a fixed cost, it is something you may be able to cut down on. For some, homemade might be more expensive, but for us it is cheaper because we like the bakery breads, not the packaged.

I always make the same bread. I may vary it slightly but 98% of the time I use my Homemade Bread in the Dutch Oven. It has never failed me.



If you are worried about the time it takes to make bread, my recipe only takes 3 hours and 1.5 of those hours is letting the bread rise - so no babysitting, and ~45 minutes is the bread baking - so you can do other things during that time as well.

So when figuring out the cost of my homemade bread I used my recipe.

I compared cost to my local grocery store, which is Shoprite and Amazon. The flour and salt were less expensive from Amazon, but the yeast and sugar were cheaper at my store. Your costs may be slightly different depending on the store you go to and the ingredients you choose, but I cannot imagine it would be that much more expensive.

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Cost of homemade bread 

Breakdown of costs

Flour 
$3.68 for 5 lbs
5 lbs = ~17 cups = ~5 servings (for my recipe)
$3.68/5 = .73 cents per loaf

Yeast 
$5.99 per jar
1 jar ~ 16 1-tablespoon servings
$5.99/16 = .37 cents per loaf

Sea Salt
$2.49 for 32 oz
32 oz = ~64 Tablespoons
$2.49/64 = .03 cents per loaf

Sugar (optional)
$1.79 for 32 oz
32 oz = ~64 Tablespoons
$1.79/64 = .02 cents per loaf

So let's add it all together.
.73 + .37 + .03 + .02 = $1.15

Cost of homemade bread ~ $1.15 per loaf!

Now for some of you, that might not be a savings? If you are buying a basic packaged loaf of bread at the market it could be cheaper. And then if you thrown in a coupon it is even less than homemade.

For us, we almost always buy a loaf from the bakery and it is usually 3.99, sometimes 4.99. If you are trying to save money and this is the bread you like as well, you could save yourself over a $1.00 per week by trying homemade.

And there is no comparison between store-bought and homemade bread. The freshness and warmth of homemade bread right out of the oven cannot be beat.

Homemade Bread in the Dutch Oven

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