How to Price Sourdough Bread to Sell
Sourdough is popular at farmers markets and with cottage bakers, and it's easy to underprice. Flour, water and salt look cheap, so many bakers charge a little over what the ingredients cost and forget the hours of feeding, mixing, folding, shaping and baking. Here's a straightforward method to find a price that pays you.
Step 1: Cost the recipe by weight
Write your recipe in grams for one batch. For each ingredient, find the price you paid and the package size, then work out the cost per gram: price ÷ grams in the package. Multiply by the grams your recipe uses. Do this for flour (bread flour, whole wheat, rye), salt, any seeds, cheese, jalapeños, olives or other inclusions, and the flour you use to feed your starter. Starter feeding is a real cost if you bake often.
Divide the batch cost by the number of loaves to get ingredient cost per loaf.
Step 2: Add packaging
Bread bags, labels, twist ties, stickers and any boxes. Count everything that leaves with the loaf. Most cottage food rules require a label listing ingredients and allergens, so budget for printed labels.
Step 3: Add your time
This is where sourdough is different. The total time from feeding to cooling might be more than a day, but most of that is waiting. Count the hands-on minutes per batch: feeding, mixing, folds, shaping, scoring, loading and unloading the oven, cooling, bagging and labeling. Divide by the number of loaves, then multiply by the hourly rate you want to pay yourself.
If you sell at a market, the hours you spend at the stall are part of the cost too. Spread them across the loaves you typically sell.
Step 4: Add overhead
Overhead includes oven energy, a share of equipment (bannetons, Dutch ovens, a scale), market booth fees, permits or registration fees, and payment processing fees. One simple approach is to estimate a month of overhead and divide by the loaves you sell in a month.
Step 5: Add profit and check the market
Total cost = ingredients + packaging + labor + overhead. Add a profit margin on top, since a business needs profit beyond your wage to grow and to cover bad weeks. Then compare with what other local bakers charge for similar loaves. If your number is well above the market, look at your hands-on time and batch size before cutting your price; baking more loaves per batch is usually the best lever.
A worked example (illustrative numbers)
These numbers are made up to show the math. Use your own receipts. Suppose a batch of 4 loaves costs $A in ingredients, $B in packaging, takes 80 hands-on minutes, and you want $W per hour. Labor per loaf = (80 ÷ 60) × W ÷ 4. Add a monthly overhead share of $O per loaf. Your cost per loaf is (A + B) ÷ 4 + labor + O, and your price is that cost plus your margin.
Price inclusions separately
Cheese, jalapeño, olive or seeded loaves cost more and often take longer to make. Price them as their own recipes instead of adding a small flat upcharge to a plain loaf.
Check the rules
In the US, selling bread from a home kitchen is usually covered by state cottage food laws, which may require registration, labeling, and limits on where you sell. In California, for example, cottage food operations register or get a permit through the county environmental health department. Check your own state and county rules before you sell.
Do it once in a spreadsheet
Try the free bakery calculator for a quick check. To keep every recipe costed from your real ingredient prices, the Recipe & Batch Costing Sheet ($15, Excel or Google Sheets) costs each recipe from your own ingredient prices (with waste %, packaging, labor minutes and overhead per batch), shows cost per unit and a suggested price, and includes a sample sourdough recipe tab to start from (sample prices are illustrative).