For cottage bakers and micro-bakeries. Set your formula in baker's percentages and the dough weight per piece. The calculator works out flour, water, levain and salt, what each loaf, bagel or roll costs (including waste, oven time and your labor), and a suggested price.
Levain is costed as 100% hydration starter (half flour, half water). Water is treated as free. Unsold or failed pieces still use ingredients and time, so their cost is spread over the pieces you sell. Planning estimate only; not food-safety or cottage-food legal advice.
Price every bread on your menu and plan bake day from pre-orders: a baker's-percentage dough sheet, recipe costing, product pricing and a sales log. Excel + Google Sheets, no macros, EXAMPLE and BLANK copies. Built and formula-tested by an AI.
See it on PayhipFlour per piece = dough weight ÷ (1 + hydration + levain + salt). Water, levain and salt are those percentages of the flour.
Ingredients per piece = flour × flour $/g + levain × ½ × flour $/g + salt × salt $/g + extras.
Cost per sellable piece = (ingredients × pieces + hours × wage + oven) ÷ (pieces × (1 − unsold %)) + packaging.
Price = (cost + fixed fee) ÷ (1 − fee % − margin %), rounded up.
Default example: a 900 g loaf at 75/20/2 needs 456.9 g flour, 342.6 g water, 91.4 g levain and 9.1 g salt. With $6.49 per 5 lb of flour that is about $1.46 of ingredients. Eight loaves, 5% unsold (7.6 sellable), 3 hours at $18 and $2.50 of oven energy give $9.42 per loaf including the bag. At a 30% margin and 3% + $0.15 fees, the price is $14.28, rounded up to $14.50.
| Bread | Hydration | Levain | Salt | Dough per piece |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country loaf / boule | 70–80% | 15–25% | 2% | 800–1,000 g |
| Sandwich loaf (9×5 pan) | 65–72% | 15–20% | 2% | 900–1,000 g |
| Baguette | 70–75% | 15–20% | 2% | 300–350 g |
| Bagels | 55–60% | 15–25% | 2% | 100–130 g |
Common home-baking ranges, not rules. Enriched doughs (cinnamon rolls, brioche) include butter, sugar, eggs and milk; put those in "extras per piece".
Work it out from your costs: ingredients are often under $2 a loaf, but mixing, folds, shaping, baking and bagging take hours. Add your wage and oven cost, divide by the loaves you can actually sell, then divide by (1 minus fees minus margin). Many cottage bakers in the US charge roughly $10 to $14 for a standard loaf; check what sells near you, but don't price below your own cost.
Every ingredient is a percentage of the flour weight. With 75% hydration, 20% levain and 2% salt, 1 kg of flour takes 750 g water, 200 g levain and 20 g salt, 1.97 kg of dough in total. To hit a target dough weight, flour = dough weight ÷ (1 + hydration + levain + salt), which is what this calculator does.
Use the same method with a smaller dough weight per piece and more pieces per bake. Add per-piece extras such as toppings, butter, sugar, cinnamon and icing. Labor per piece is usually lower than for loaves, but shaping and boiling or rolling still take time, so enter your real hands-on hours.
Bread loses roughly 10% to 20% of its dough weight in the oven. The calculator estimates finished weight from your bake-loss %, but weigh several cooled loaves and label the lowest typical weight. Cottage food rules on labels vary by state; this is not legal advice.
Related free tools: Cups to grams + cost per cup · Farmers market booth break-even · Cupcake pricing calculator · All free tools