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Ingredient prices

Flour price per pound

All-purpose white flour, US city average. Cheap per pound, and the base of the highest-margin items on most menus.

Also known as all-purpose flour or wheat flour.

September 2026 · US city average

$0.54

per lb

1 month
−0.2%
3 months
0.0%
12 months
−2.5%

2024-01 to 2026-07

0.570.52Jan '24Jul '26

What the last 12 months did to a plate

Representative portions and volumes — substitute your own. The point isn't the exact figure, it's that a −2.5% move on one ingredient turns into a specific annual number on a specific dish, and that number is usually larger than it feels.

DishUsesCost todayChange per platePer year at 268/wk
Pizza dough (12in base)8.8 oz$0.30−$0.01−$107.31
Bread roll2 oz$0.07−$0.00−$58.68
Fresh pasta portion3.5 oz$0.12−$0.00−$28.83
Batter / dredge per portion1.4 oz$0.05−$0.00−$10.88

Volumes differ per row — each is a plausible weekly count for that dish. Computed from the BLS series above; your supplier price will differ by region, volume and grade.

What moves this price

  • Wheat harvests and global supply. Weather in major exporting regions moves wheat, and wheat moves flour with a lag.
  • Energy and freight. Milling and moving a low-value, heavy commodity makes fuel a real share of delivered cost.
  • Protein content. Bread flour and all-purpose track differently; a pizzeria's cost curve isn't the same as a general kitchen's.

Buying notes

  • Flour is why pizzerias and bakeries run food cost percentages in the low twenties — the ingredient is pennies and the finished item carries a full menu price. It's also why those formats are unusually sensitive to labour, since the value is added by hands.
  • Even a large percentage move on flour is a small absolute move per plate. A 20% rise on a 12-inch pizza base is about eleven cents. Don't reprice a pizza because flour moved; do reprice it because cheese did.
  • Buy on protein specification, not on brand. A dough recipe developed on 12.5% protein flour behaves differently at 11%, and the resulting waste costs more than the price difference.

This is the national average. Yours is the one that matters.

Marji reads your actual supplier invoices, so you see what you paid — and which of your dishes crossed their margin target because of it. The national number is only useful for telling a market move apart from a vendor move.

Track my real costs free →See it in the index

Related terms