Batch Costing

The price of the ingredients in a loaf of bread is relatively inexpensive. Certainly, the ingredient cost in a loaf of lean dough, for example a baguette or ciabatta, is astonishingly modest. Of course this changes quickly when we add cheese, olives, or other costly ingredients. Whether a baker is making breads that cost a dime per pound of dough or a dollar, it is equally important that he or she knows how to compute the batch cost for a given quantity of dough.

An Example

For example, we make a batch of dough using the following weights:

Determine Ingredient Weight (in pounds)

Ingredient	Weight		Cost		Total
flour	100
water	66
salt	2
yeast	1.5
TOTAL	169.5

Simple addition tells us that we are making 169.5 pounds of dough. We now consider the cost per pound of our ingredients:

Determine Ingredient Cost (per pound)

Ingredient	Weight		Cost		Total
flour	100		$0.18
water	66		0
salt	2		$0.09
yeast	1.5		$0.56
TOTAL	169.5

Note that although we are considering the water to be free, it is still included in the dough weight. Now we calculate the entire batch cost:

Batch Cost = Weight Times Cost

Ingredient	Weight		Cost		Total
flour	100	x	$0.18	=	$18.00
water	66	x	0	=	$0.00
salt	2	x	$0.09	=	$0.18
yeast	1.5	x	$0.56	=	$0.84
TOTAL	169.5				$19.02

We now know that it has cost us $19.02 in ingredients to make 169.5 pounds of dough. To determine the cost of one pound of dough, we divide the batch cost by the dough weight:

Batch Cost Per Pound of Dough

Ingredient	Cost		Weight		Total
TOTAL	$19.02	÷	169.5	=	$0.112

In this example, our batch cost is 11.2¢ per pound of dough.