Cost of making a loaf of white bread!

For fun, I computed what it actually costs to make a loaf of bread in a bread maker from West Bend. I used a traditional recipe (see insert), containing bread flower, sugar, salt, 2% milk and bread machine yeast. Here is the result:

Ingredient	Amt in grams	Unit cost
Yeast	10	$0.40
Flour	549	$0.33
Butter	28	$0.26
Milk	312	$0.32
Electricity	.5 kWh	$0.05
Total		$1.36

When compared to the cost of a regular loaf of commercial bread this seems quite sane. Also, there are no preservatives in the bread, which will shorten the shelf life, but that’s OK with me!

Here was the end result!