How to price a loaf of sourdough (the honest way)
Most home bakers price by looking at the loaf next to theirs at the farmers' market, or by what feels "fair." That's how you end up busy and broke. A price that works is built from your own numbers: what the loaf actually costs you to make, plus a margin you choose on purpose. There are three costs, and one of them is the one almost everyone forgets.
1. Ingredients — usually the smallest cost
For a plain sourdough this is mostly flour, plus salt, water, and the flour you feed your starter. It's often surprisingly low — well under a dollar a loaf for a basic country loaf, more for enriched doughs, inclusions, or organic and specialty flours. Add up what a whole batch costs and divide by the loaves it makes. (Our baker's percentage calculator gives you the exact flour, water, salt, and starter weights for any batch size, which makes costing a batch easy.)
2. Labor — the cost that makes or breaks the business
This is the big one home bakers leave out: your own time. Mixing, shaping, scoring, baking, cooling, packing, and the trip to market all take hours, and your time has a value. If you don't put a real hourly rate on it, your "profit" is just unpaid wages — and a business that can't pay its founder can never hire help or grow. Estimate the hands-on hours a batch takes, multiply by an honest hourly rate, and divide across the loaves in the batch. This is also why batch size matters so much: the same four hours spread over 24 loaves costs half as much per loaf as over 12.
3. Overhead — everything else, per loaf
Packaging (bags, labels, stickers), market or booth fees, delivery, a fair slice of your utilities and equipment wear. Estimate a per-loaf figure; you can sharpen it once you've tracked a month of real expenses.
Cost, then margin (and why margin is on the price)
Add the three and you have your cost per loaf. Now choose a profit margin and price up from cost. The one bit of math that trips people up: margin is a percentage of the selling price, not of the cost. So you don't multiply cost by 1.35 — you divide:
Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin)
Profit per loaf = price − cost
A 30–50% gross margin is healthy for a small food business. Around 20% is tight — one rainy market day or a flour price jump and you're underwater. Specialty and premium loaves can carry 50% or more.
A worked example
Say you bake 12 loaves a batch. Ingredients run $9 for the batch ($0.75/loaf). The batch takes you 4 hours and you value your time at $22/hour ($88 ÷ 12 = $7.33/loaf — yes, labor really is the biggest cost). Overhead is $1.25 a loaf. That's a cost of $9.33 per loaf. At a 35% margin:
Price = $9.33 ÷ (1 − 0.35) = $14.36 per loaf
Profit = $14.36 − $9.33 = $5.03 per loaf
If that price feels high for your market, the lever isn't to work for free — it's to bake bigger batches so your fixed time spreads over more loaves. Drop the same 4 hours over 24 loaves and labor falls to $3.67/loaf, cost to $5.67, and a 35% price to about $8.72. That's the whole reason production planning matters: efficient bake days are what make a micro bakery profitable, not just well-loved.
Keep going: Baker's Percentage Calculator · Levain Calculator · Dough Temperature Calculator · Try the free DoughPlan planner
This tool gives general business estimates, not financial or tax advice. Your real costs and the right price depend on your market, ingredients, and local rules.