What is Shrinkage Bakery?

When you mix a batch of dough, say for 100 croissants, you start with a certain weight of ingredients. Let's imagine a basic croissant dough recipe that yields 2000g of dough. This 2000g might contain flour at $2.50/kg, butter at $6.00/kg, and sugar at $1.50/kg. If you use 1000g of flour, 500g of butter, and 50g of sugar, your initial dough cost is ($2.50 + $3.00 + $0.075) = $5.575 for 1550g of dough. This gives you a base ingredient cost of about $3.60/kg before shrinkage. However, as that dough proofs and bakes, water evaporates. A typical dough might lose between 10% and 20% of its weight by the time it's fully baked. For our 2000g batch, if we assume a 15% shrinkage, we'll end up with 1700g of baked croissants. The initial ingredient cost of $5.575 is now spread across fewer grams. This means the cost per kilogram of finished product has increased. If your 1550g dough batch shrank by 15% to become 1317.5g of finished product, that initial ingredient cost of $5.575 is now applied to a smaller yield. The cost per gram of baked product is $5.575 / 1317.5g = $0.00423 per gram. If you were pricing based on the initial dough weight, you would be significantly undercharging for every croissant you sell. This weight loss isn't just theoretical; it directly eats into your profit margin if not accounted for. For every batch, you're producing less sellable product than your raw ingredient weight suggests. Accurately tracking this shrinkage allows you to adjust your batch sizes or increase your selling prices to maintain your desired profit margins on items like bread loaves, rolls, or pastries.