Bakery ingredient cost

List the recipe's ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast or sourdough) with their quantities, multiply by the purchase price per kilo, then divide by the number of items produced. A traditional baguette usually runs around 0,30 to 0,40 € in ingredients. In the app, the “Traditional baguette” recipe shows 0,34 € per item, recalculated with every invoice you scan.

Cost price = ingredient cost + labour (kneading, shaping, baking × all-in hourly rate) + a share of the fixed costs: oven, energy, rent, packaging. Ingredients are only part of the cost — it's energy and labour that make the difference between a profitable baguette and one sold at a loss.

Ingredient cost commonly accounts for 20 to 30% of the selling price in bakery and pastry. The rest has to cover heavy labour, the bakehouse's energy and the unsold stock. Track the margin per product: an elaborate pastry can be less profitable than a plain loaf despite a higher selling price.

Same principle as bread, with one subtlety: intermediate preparations. A pastry cream has its own ingredient cost, reused in every éclair or millefeuille that contains it. The app handles these preparations in a cascade: change the price of butter and the cost of the chocolate éclair updates on its own.

Scan the invoice: the app updates the ingredient's price, recalculates the cost of every affected recipe and flags the ones whose margin slips. You then decide with full knowledge: adjust the selling price, review the weights — but never take the hit without knowing it.