Energy Cost of a bread machine

julianj1

Hi all,

I've been monitoring the cost of my bread machine's electricity
(Panasonic SD253).

Overall it costs about 1 p an hour to run: slightly less for just the dough programme and slightly more when it's baking. So 1 p an hour is a good approximation.

Ingredients for a 400g wholemeal loaf were 32p, so with 6 p for electricity, round up to 40p.

I would expect other breadmakers to be in the same ballpark.

Which conclusively proves that using a breadmaker is cheaper than any but the most cheapo and nasty bread.

mikeywills

julianj1 wrote:

Hi all,

I've been monitoring the cost of my bread machine's electricity
(Panasonic SD253).

Overall it costs about 1 p an hour to run: slightly less for just the dough programme and slightly more when it's baking. So 1 p an hour is a good approximation.

Ingredients for a 400g wholemeal loaf were 32p, so with 6 p for electricity, round up to 40p.

I would expect other breadmakers to be in the same ballpark.

Which conclusively proves that using a breadmaker is cheaper than any but the most cheapo and nasty bread.

I have a panasonic, but there is a programme on there for white bread which only takes 4 hours, surely this would be a saving of 2p?

I personally tend to blow the expense and put it on a delayed function overnight, so that it is ready for my brekkie at 6.30am, which probably costs me about 9p.

My ingredients tend to be more than this I think, I also use wholemeal flour, butter, sugar, salt, water, and dried skimmed milk, I am sure the flour alone worked out at about 36p ish.

I don't mind about the cost really, its the control over the contents thats more important to me, as local as I can make it. Now if only there was a mill in my area, I would be landed.

Anyone know how to find local flour mills online?

julianj1

Sorry Mikey,

Perhaps I didn't explain myself well. I'm averaging out the cost (excluding ingredients). So a shorter programme will cost less, so if it was a 3 hour white programme it would be around 3p. So yes it would cost 2p less.

When it is on the timer I would expect that it would cost virtually zip - it's not actually drawing a lot of juice compared to baking. So I think you can disregard that cost: IMO your white loaf on the timer would cost 3p not 9p in electricity , but as you have proposed a new test, I shall do that next time I use the timer to find out for sure. I'll post the result here.

cheers

Julian

mikeywills

julianj1 wrote:

Sorry Mikey,

Perhaps I didn't explain myself well. I'm averaging out the cost (excluding ingredients). So a shorter programme will cost less, so if it was a 3 hour white programme it would be around 3p. So yes it would cost 2p less.

When it is on the timer I would expect that it would cost virtually zip - it's not actually drawing a lot of juice compared to baking. So I think you can disregard that cost: IMO your white loaf on the timer would cost 3p not 9p in electricity , but as you have proposed a new test, I shall do that next time I use the timer to find out for sure. I'll post the result here.

cheers

Julian

I just wondered if it would be like a tv on standby, 'still sucking the juice' sort of speak.

Happy to be proven wrong if you have the time, have just spend 1/2 hour trying to find a flour miller in my area, closest is over 100miles away. Shame.

squeaky

mikeywills wrote:

Anyone know how to find local flour mills online?

Easy peasy

google for:- "flour mill"+countyname exactly as written with the quotes and you'll get local ones to you

mikeywills

squeaky wrote:

Easy peasy

google for:- "flour mill"+countyname exactly as written with the quotes and you'll get local ones to you

This is exactly what I did squeaky, it bought the history of every flour mill within my location, but the nearest working mill was an awful long way away.

I have since, emailed them hoping that they do mail order.

julianj1

It is as I thought: the timer uses a negligible amount of electricity.

I had the BM on the timer for a few hours yesterday, and the lecky cost came out to 5.6 p (i.e. virtually the same as my first post above).

HappyIdiotTalk

julianj1 wrote:

Hi all,

I've been monitoring the cost of my bread machine's electricity
(Panasonic SD253).

Overall it costs about 1 p an hour to run: slightly less for just the dough programme and slightly more when it's baking. So 1 p an hour is a good approximation.

Ingredients for a 400g wholemeal loaf were 32p, so with 6 p for electricity, round up to 40p.

I would expect other breadmakers to be in the same ballpark.

Which conclusively proves that using a breadmaker is cheaper than any but the most cheapo and nasty bread.

Just out of interest how did you calculate the energy costs? Have you got some kind of adapter that sits between the socket and plug which monitors what goes on?

julianj1

Yes, ObviouslyNotAnIdiotTalk you are correct.

This is what I have:Energy Monitor


cheers

Julian

Spendi

I've seen a million and one posts about breadmakers, but what i really want to know is, how much does it cost on average to make a normal wholemeal, white loaf in one ?

Me and my little one dont eat much bread, we buy a loaf and end up throwing half of it away, so i was thinking if it was cheap enough it might be easier for me to make a little loaf every few days ?

newlywed

Spendi wrote:

I've seen a million and one posts about breadmakers, but what i really want to know is, how much does it cost on average to make a normal wholemeal, white loaf in one ?

Me and my little one dont eat much bread, we buy a loaf and end up throwing half of it away, so i was thinking if it was cheap enough it might be easier for me to make a little loaf every few days ?

I'd like to know the answer to this too. We get through a fair amount of bread and I wonder if making our own would cut costs (definitely would cut the cost of the extras I get when I go in the shop "just for bread" :rotfl: )

The kids are only here weekends and they are the only ones that eat white bread so I usually freeze the loaf and just take slices out, as and when I need them. They separate up fairly easily when frozen and you can toast direct from frozen with our toaster. The loaf will keep fine for over a month that way and there's no waste.

Edit: and how come in the supermarket a half size loaf of bread costs more than a normal loaf????