Mary Grace Quigley started baking bread during the lockdowns in 2020 and hasn’t stopped.
She enjoys the process and the reward at the end. But it’s also saved her money.
“I would always buy sourdough bread from small bakeries. That would be $8 per loaf, and I eat quite a lot of bread, so that was a relatively large expense,” she says
“Making my own sourdough has been amazing. I think I’ve saved so much money.”
But when you factor in the labour involved, baking at home might not be as financially attractive as it seems.
How much it costs to bake a loaf of bread
To make a basic loaf of bread you need flour, water, salt and something to make the bread rise. (You can use yeast or a starter if you’re baking sourdough.)
Mary Grace estimates the ingredients for a loaf will cost somewhere between $1 and $1.50.
She typically bakes sourdough bread with a mixture of baker’s flour and rye flour, which costs her $1.15 per loaf, including a bag.
|
Ingredients |
Cost |
|---|---|
|
Flour (400g) |
$1.06 |
|
Salt |
$0.02 |
|
Paper bag |
$0.07 |
|
Cost per loaf |
$1.15 |
You can bake bread with regular plain flour from the supermarket, Mary Grace says, providing it’s got enough protein. (She recommends looking for flour with at least nine grams of protein per 100 grams.)
But if you opt for a special bread flour, it may cost you more.
But what about the time involved?
Mary Grace also looked at how long it would take her to bake a batch of 12 loaves of sourdough.
She estimated it would take about eight hours of …….
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/is-baking-bread-at-home-cheaper/101118798