I wish to calculate how economic a breadmaker is compared to store bought bread. Does anyone know how many kilos of bread can be made from one kilogram of flour?
To make it simple, let's say generic white bread and basic simple white bread.
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3I don't think this is answerable... the final weight of the bread will likely vary vastly dependent on what other ingredients are included and how it's prepared.– CatijaJan 20, 2016 at 21:52
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3@Catija I think the range is well defined. You can't get much below 50% hydration, nor much above 100%. And you can't enrich infinitely either. Also, an answer concering only lean breads will already be interesting. I would answer it if I had any idea how much moisture is lost in baking.– rumtscho ♦Jan 20, 2016 at 21:58
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4This is the wrong comparison. You can produce bread without breadmaker. The economic value of the breadmaker is determined by the time it saves you in comparison of baking without breadmaker.– John HammondJan 21, 2016 at 11:56
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4@LarsFriedrich if the OP already knows that they will never care to make bread by hand, and is only interested in the two scenarios "buy bread" and "use breadmaker", then there is nothing wrong with the comparison.– rumtscho ♦Jan 21, 2016 at 12:37
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2@LarsFriedrich: if you're comparing time saved in using a breadmaker vs. the time it takes to go to the store and buy a loaf, the breadmaker will surely lose. Remember, in this scenario, "knead and bake by hand" is not an option.– MartiJan 22, 2016 at 20:17
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6 Answers
In my experience, it doesn't really save money, but it's still worth it because it's fresh and better than store-bought at the same price.
For me, 1kg of all purpose flour yields 1.6kg of bread (as two loaves). Each 13x4x4" (Pullman) loaf weighs about 800 grams after cooling and yields between 24-30 slices depending on thickness. The cost per loaf is under $1.00, and includes all ingredients, tax, and electric for mixing/baking/slicing.
I've made a few hundred loaves based on variations of this formula:
% grams cost cals fat protein sugar sodium
all purpose flour 100 500 0.417 1833 0 50 17 0
instant yeast 0.8 4 0.067 16 0 0 0 3
nonfat dry milk 4 20 0.203 70 0 7 10 109
canola oil 10 50 0.072 429 50 0 0 0
sugar 4 20 0.019 75 0 0 20 0
salt 2 10 0.006 0 0 0 0 3933
water 56 280 0.000 0 0 0 0 0
dough total 176.8 884 $0.783 2422 50 57 47 4045
To be clear, I no longer use a bread machine. My answer focused more on how much bread can be made with 1kg flour. The Pullman loaf pan was $25, and the electric knife was $20. So for 300 loaves, that adds 15 cents per loaf. The mixer and oven are used for other things besides bread, so I don't really consider them in the overall cost per loaf.
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2Out of curiosity, did you account for the cost of buying the machine in your cost per loaf @Spiff? If you figure 300 loaves out of your machine what would that do to the cost per loaf? In any case I agree with you that you do it because of the flavor, not any cost savings.– GdDJan 21, 2016 at 9:56
It would depend greatly on the recipe used. However, for example, this recipe from Jamie Oliver for "Basic Bread" yields 1 loaf of bread and utilizes 1kg of flour. Additionally if you are comparing for economic reasons, you'd also need to take into account the cost for yeast, salt and any enrichments (egg, sugar, etc as specified by recipe).
The average loaf of store bought bread weighs either 16oz or 24oz here in the US which would be 453.6g or 680.4g respectively. I know that until 2008 bread in the UK was required by law to be sold in specified units so they were commonly sold in 400g and 800g sizes. Most of my bread books specify that on average bread dough loses 10-20% of weight during baking/cooling.
So some "back of napkin" math gives us
1kg flour = 1000g
625ml H20 = 625g
21-30g yeast = 25g (average)
2 tbsp sugar = 30g
1 tbsp salt = 15g
Total dough weight = 1695g
1695 - 169.5 = 1525.5g (10% loss during cooking)
1695 -339 = 1356g (20% loss during cooking)
(1525.5 + 1356)/2 = 1440.75g average cooked weight.
So we can estimate that the average weight of a cooked loaf of bread from this recipe would be 1.44kg.
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3Where do you get the 10 and 20% loss numbers? Is there a reason it wouldn't be 50%? I feel my high-hydration ciabatta is significantly lighter after baking than before... but that may just be in my head.– CatijaJan 20, 2016 at 23:14
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1@Catija : the majority of the weight loss would be from the liquids evaporating. 50% would get into the flour being used. But 20% loss cited above would be roughly 50% of the water.– JoeJan 21, 2016 at 0:17
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5In the bakery I used to work at that was the expected range of yield loss. I've read some other books that also state that range. Often, higher hydration loaves (like ciabatta) actually experience higher yield loss because evaporation can be a large part of the loss. Here's another interesting article that discusses how the cultivar of wheat used can change the percentage as well aaccnet.org/publications/cc/backissues/1992/documents/… Jan 21, 2016 at 0:19
Basic bread requires flour, water, salt and yeast (nothing more).
The salt and yeast contribution to the weight is negligible.
Water, in my experience, shall be - before cooking - about 70% in weight with respect to flour; the actual quantity depends mainly on the kind of flour, but 70% is a reasonable average estimate.
Loss of total weight during cooking is due to water evaporation and can be estimated between 10% and 20%; the bread will anyway continue to loose water even after it reaches room temperature, but this is slow.
In conclusion I would say, for example:
1 kg of flour + 0.7 kg of water (I use kg, I am Italian) => 1.7 kg dough
1.7 - 1.7*15% kg => 1.445 kg
In Italy flour can be found for sale at less than 0.50 €/kg,
yeast (for 1 kg of flour) 0.15 €, water, salt, electric power: negligible cost;
Total 0.65 €/1.445 kg = 0.45 €/kg = 0.45 €/kg;
In comparison 1 kg of bought basic bread is around 2.5 to 4 €/kg.
If you do not take into account oven, etc and the work needed, in Italy it is very convenient to make it by yourself!
flour/water : 100:50 - 100:65 as you like the dough -> 1kg flour : 1,5kg -1,65kg dough.
You have 10% loss of weight by backing.
Thats all.
Here in the UK, I can use 1/3rd of a 1.5kg bag of strong white bread flour (95p/3=32p) and 1 sachet of dried yeast at 11p to make a loaf for 43p, and that gives me a loaf equivalent to this 800g supermarket sandwich loaf at £1.00. Tastes better, too.
So that's better than double, in my experience.
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In case the link rots -- the bags are 1.5kg, so 500g flour => 800g loaf.– JoeJan 25, 2016 at 12:39
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@Joe good point. Updated answer to include the pertinent details. Jan 25, 2016 at 12:40
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Wow you have cheap ingredients. Our bread flour (northeastern USA) costs at least £1.83 for a 2.25-kilo bag, and yeast minimum 30p per sachet. We still save money though. :-) Feb 2, 2016 at 16:12
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Our fancy Canadian bread flour is more expensive at £1.10 / kg (sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/bread-flour--mixes---yeast/…) but that's an American import, so maybe bagged US flour is higher quality by default? Feb 2, 2016 at 17:34
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Here, a 1KG bag of 405 flour (which is in itself very soft flour) would be available for around 30 euro cents; a 250g bag of vital wheat gluten is around 160 cents, and you're unlikely to need much of it to catch up a few percent of protein content.. 42g cube of fresh yeast (might be the cheapest option here since it should suffice for 1kg!) is 9 cent usually. Apr 20, 2017 at 8:27
For me,1 kilo will yield 2 kilograms of bread,,,ex.for 1 kilo I put 700 grams of water,plus the ingredients, here is my example;
Marikina bread 1 kg salt 75 g sugar 155 g shortening 85 g yeast 80g improver 25g eggs 2 fl ounce skimmed milk 15 g water 700 g
