Free template
Standard recipe template for bakers
A standard recipe template is one sheet that fixes how a product is made and what it costs: the yield, the portion size, every ingredient with its exact quantity and purchase price, the packaging, your time, and the method. Fill it once and every batch comes out the same, and you know the cost per piece before you set a price. Download the sheet below as a CSV, open it in Excel or Google Sheets, and replace the example rows with your own recipe.
| Type | Item | Quantity | Unit | Purchase size | Purchase price | Cost in recipe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ingredient | All-purpose flour | 280 | g | 2.27 kg (5 lb) | $4.50 | $0.56 |
| Ingredient | Butter | 227 | g | 454 g (1 lb) | $5.00 | $2.50 |
| Ingredient | Brown sugar | 200 | g | 907 g (2 lb) | $3.20 | $0.71 |
| Ingredient | Granulated sugar | 100 | g | 1.81 kg (4 lb) | $3.60 | $0.20 |
| Ingredient | Eggs | 2 | each | 12 each | $3.60 | $0.60 |
| Ingredient | Butterscotch chips | 340 | g | 340 g | $4.00 | $4.00 |
| Ingredient | Vanilla extract | 5 | ml | 118 ml | $9.00 | $0.38 |
| Ingredient | Baking soda | 5 | g | 454 g | $1.20 | $0.01 |
| Ingredient | Salt | 3 | g | 737 g | $1.50 | $0.01 |
| Packaging | Cookie bag | 24 | each | 100 each | $8.00 | $1.92 |
| Labour | Hands-on time | 60 | minutes | 60 minutes | $18.00 | $18.00 |
What a standard recipe is
A standard recipe is the version of a recipe you have tested and decided to sell. Quantities are weighed, not scooped, the yield is fixed (24 cookies, not "about two trays"), and the method is written so a helper could follow it. Professional kitchens use it for consistency; a home bakery needs it even more, because it is the only way to know what a batch really costs.
The difference from a recipe card is the cost column. Each ingredient carries the price you paid and the size of the pack, so the sheet turns grams into dollars line by line and adds them up to a batch cost and a cost per piece.
What the standard recipe template includes
The downloadable sheet has one row per line of cost. Each row records:
- Type: ingredient, packaging or labour, so you can see each group's share of the cost
- Item: the ingredient or material, named the way it appears on your receipt
- Quantity used in one batch, weighed in grams or millilitres where you can
- Unit: g, ml, each, or minutes for labour
- Purchase size: the pack you buy, such as a 5 lb bag or a dozen eggs
- Purchase price: what you paid for that pack
- Cost in recipe: purchase price divided by purchase size, times the quantity used
The general data block
Before the ingredient rows, write down the facts that define the product. Without a fixed yield and portion, the cost per piece means nothing.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Product | Butterscotch chip cookies |
| Yield | 24 cookies |
| Portion | 1 cookie, about 45 g of dough |
| Oven | 350°F, 11 to 12 minutes |
| Hands-on time | 60 minutes per batch |
| Shelf life | 5 days in a sealed bag |
How to fill in the template
Work from your receipts and a kitchen scale. It takes about twenty minutes the first time.
- Make the recipe once and weigh every ingredient as it goes in
- Count what the batch actually yields after baking, not what the original recipe promised
- Enter the pack size and price from your latest receipt for each ingredient
- Add packaging per piece: bags, boxes, labels, ribbon
- Add your hands-on time and the hourly rate you want to pay yourself
- Add up the cost column and divide by the yield to get the cost per piece
Worked example: cost per cookie
In the example sheet, the ingredients for 24 butterscotch chip cookies add up to $8.97. Butterscotch chips are the biggest line at $4.00, then butter at $2.50; flour, at $0.56, barely matters. That is typical, and it is why weighing the expensive ingredients matters more than the cheap ones.
Add $1.92 of cookie bags and the batch costs $10.89 in materials. Add one hour of your time at $18 and the batch costs $28.89, or $1.20 per cookie. Leave out the labour line and you would think each cookie cost $0.45, and price it far too low.
To price it, divide the cost by one minus the margin you want. For a 50% margin, $1.20 divided by 0.5 is $2.40 per cookie. These numbers are an example; use your own prices, and remember the sheet leaves out oven energy and other overhead, which belong in the cost too.
Write the method next to the numbers
A standard recipe is also a procedure. Under the cost rows, number the steps, with temperatures, mixing times and how you know each stage is done. Note the critical points too: chill the dough 30 minutes, pull the tray when the edges are set.
When the spreadsheet stops being enough
The sheet works for a handful of products. It gets harder when the price of butter changes and you have to fix it in every file, or when a frosting goes into five cakes and you want its cost to follow.
Farinu does the same costing with ingredients you enter once: sub-recipes, packaging, labour, machines and overhead, the cost per piece, a suggested price from the markup you set over cost (the 50% margin in the example is a 100% markup: $1.20 times 2 is $2.40), and an alert when an ingredient price rise eats into a margin. The free plan covers costing for up to 10 recipes; on Team, the AI assistant can also read this spreadsheet or a photo of a recipe and propose it for you to approve.
Questions
- What goes in a standard recipe?
- The product name, the yield and portion size, every ingredient with a weighed quantity, the method with temperatures and times, and for costing, the purchase price and pack size of each ingredient plus packaging and labour.
- Should I include my own time in the cost?
- Yes. If labour is left out, the price only covers ingredients and you work for free. In the example, labour is more than half of the cost per cookie.
- Can I import this template into Farinu?
- Yes, on Team. The AI assistant in Farinu reads a recipe from a spreadsheet, a PDF or a photo and proposes the ingredients and the recipe; nothing is saved until you approve it. On the free plan you enter the recipe by hand.
Related pages
Let the numbers update themselves
Create a free account, enter this recipe once, and see the cost per piece, the suggested price and the margin. Change an ingredient price once and every recipe that uses it follows. On Team, the AI assistant can import the sheet or a photo for you.