BBC News carried an article today called 'Can you bake your own white loaf for 47p?'. This is in response to David Cameron's statement that he doesn't know how much a loaf of bread costs because they use a breadmaker. The BBC calculated that it is possible to make a loaf of bread in a breadmaker for 42.4p. But they only included the cost of the ingredients, not the electricity to run the breadmaker. So how much difference does that make?
As it happens, I touched this in the very first post on this blog 'Baking bread at home uses more energy'. According to Which a breadmaker standard cycle typically uses 0.34 kWh. On my last electricity bill I paid 13.4 p/kWh so the breadmaker cycle costs 4.6p. Adding 42.4p for the ingredients makes a total of 47p for the loaf - exactly the same as the Tesco price.
However, they also forgot the cost of the breadmaker itself. David Cameron's machine
apparently cost £100. If that lasts 3 years and is used every day then
it costs 9p/day.
And - they also forgot the cost of the time taken for someone to load up the machine and wash it afterwards. The minimum wage is now £6.31/hour. Even if it only takes 5 minutes that is another 52p.
That brings the total cost of the breadmaker loaf to 108p, more than twice the Tesco price. I am not going to argue about the taste as I have a gluten free diet so I can't compare them.
I don't think costing the time in makes any sense, unless you have to come home early from work to get the breadmaker loaded. You're not costing in the time taken to go to the shops to buy the loaf in the alternative case either. How you decide to allocate your time on various tasks is an independent matter.
ReplyDeleteMy breadmaker has lasted more than 10 years now, although it's not used anything like every day. Probably once every 2 weeks on average, which comes out at around 25p/loaf.
I have a Panasonic bread maker purchased on 11 March 2001. Since purchasing the machine I have not bought any bread and make about 3 loaves a week - a lot of bread. So far 3 failures. One day my electricity was switched off for several hours during operation. Once I forgot to include yeast and the third I forgot the paddle. The machine is still going strong. "I know what is in my bread".
ReplyDeleteThose Panasonic bread makers are awesome. Just keep on going (and make nice bread) (if you remember the yeast and paddle 😄)
DeleteSome thoughts on that. Bread is the only thing I regularly have to go to my nearest town, twelve miles away, for. If I still had a car, that would cost about an hour and a half of time, plus about £10 in vehicle depreciation, insurance, servicing, fuel and tyres. As I don't, it takes me typically three hours by bicycle, or longer than that by public transport (plus costs of the bicycle, which are small but real). Just because you can afford to ignore such costs doesn't mean everyone can.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, the cheapest loaf in Tesco may not be bread you find palatable. With a bread machine, you can adjust the recipe to one which is worth – to you – whatever small premium it actually costs.