The increasing cost of wheat prices may soon take its toll on your social life. Restaurant prices have steadily risen over the years to the point where it almost doesn't seem worth it to go out for dinner and pay $15 for a tiny order of pasta that leaves you still hungry in the end. Unfortunately that situation doesn't seem as though it will improve anytime soon.

One New York pizzeria owner was paying $16 per bag of flour just a month ago; now he's paying $37 per bag. One source of the flour supplier confirmed that the price would likely jump to $40 in the next week. In case you're not so adept at the math, that's over double the price of what flour cost four short weeks ago. Restaurant owners can only absorb the cost for so long before transitioning it to the customers by raising prices of baked products.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that an annual rate of over nine per cent last month alone and the Chicago Board of Trade confirms a bushel of wheat is priced two-and-a-half more times than what it was last year at this time. The production of ethanol is largely to blame for the rapid rise in cost, as farmers rush to grow more corn crops for fuel instead of growing wheat. Droughts in Australia and France and poor growing conditions last year have only intensified the problem, and wheat prices are still seen as relatively low for other countries thanks to the U.S. dollar hitting all-time lows.

"Ethanol was competing against wheat for acres in 2007," said Joe Victor, grain analyst with Allendale Inc. "Fifty-nine-percent of everything we raised in 2007 is leaving the U.S.," said Victor. "That's 9-10% greater than normal." As a result, Victor said, U.S. wheat supplies are at their lowest level since the end of World War II, another factor pushing prices skyward.

Wheat prices may level out later this year when a crop of winter wheat planted by concerned farmers materializes, but in the meantime consumers may just want to think twice before picking up the phone on Friday night and ordering a large pepperoni and mushroom pie.

» CNN Money