Planning a Bakery Production Day

A bakery's day is built backward. The doors open at 7:00 a.m., so the croissants must be out of the oven by 6:40. That means they went in at 6:15, which means they came out of the cooler before 4:30, and so on, all the way back to yesterday afternoon. A baker who can plan this is ready for a lead role.

You can already make the products. Now you'll work out how much to make, in what order, and when to start, given only one oven, one mixer and a few people.

What You Will Be Able to Do

• Turn orders and sales history into a production list.
• Schedule a product backward from the time it's needed.
• Work out oven and mixer capacity, and plan around them.
• Use retarding, par-baking and freezing to spread out the work.
• Run allergens, fillings and labels safely within the plan.
• Use sales and waste numbers to change tomorrow's plan.

Start with What Must Be Made

Your production list has three sources:

• Standing orders: Wholesale customers, such as cafes and restaurants, who get the same order on set days.
• Special orders: Cakes, catering and holiday orders.
• Retail forecast: What you expect to sell over the counter.

For retail, look at the same day over the last few weeks. Then adjust for holidays, weather and local events.

Worked example. Over the last four Saturdays, you sold 58, 64, 55 and 63 croissants. The average is 60. A local market is running this week, so your manager adds 10 percent, for a total of 66. You also have a standing order of 24. Plan for 90 croissants.

Scheduling Backward

For each product, start with when it has to be ready, and subtract each step. Include every step, even the ones that take no work.

Worked example. You need 90 croissants finished by 6:45 a.m.

Read from the bottom up, and you have your schedule. Now do this for every product, then lay them all out on one sheet. That's when you'll see the conflicts, usually around the oven.

Remember to include slack. A plan with no spare time falls apart if the first dough runs ten minutes late. Leave a little room before anything that absolutely must leave on time, like a wholesale van.

Oven Capacity

The oven is usually the bottleneck. Work out how much it can really bake.

Worked example. You have a deck oven with 3 decks. Each deck holds 2 sheet pans or 16 baguettes. Baguettes bake for 25 minutes, plus 5 minutes to load and unload.

• One deck: 16 baguettes every 30 minutes
• Three decks: 48 baguettes every 30 minutes
• 120 baguettes: 120 divided by 48 is 2.5, so you need 3 loads
• Oven time: 3 x 30 = 90 minutes

If baguettes must be out by 6:30, the first load goes in by 5:00, and that dough must be proofed and ready by then.

Ordering the Bake

Plan the bake around how the oven's temperature changes:

1. Bake the hottest products first. It's usually easier to let an oven fall in temperature than to make it climb. Lean breads go early, and lower-temperature items follow.
2. Group products by temperature. Don't keep moving between settings. Every change costs time, and you might bake at the wrong heat.
3. Keep steam products together. Some ovens need time to recover their steam.
4. Leave delicate items for when the oven is steady. Cakes and custards hate swings in temperature.
5. Allow for recovery. After a full load, the oven drops, so give it a few minutes before the next one.

A convection oven and a deck oven don't behave the same way, and each deck may have its own setting. Learn what yours does.

Mixer Capacity

Every mixer has a limit, and overloading it can burn out the motor or damage the gears. Check the manufacturer's capacity chart. Limits are lower for stiff doughs than for soft ones, so a mixer that handles a wet dough easily can strain on a stiff bagel dough. The chart may list limits by flour weight, dough weight or absorption, which means how much water the dough has.

Worked example. Your chart says the mixer can take 25 kg of a dough at your hydration. You need 42.9 kg of baguette dough. 42.9 divided by 25 is about 1.7, so you need 2 mixes of about 21.5 kg each.

Stagger the mixes so that the second batch comes ready as the first one finishes. If two mixes are done at once, one of them sits and over-ferments while you shape the other.

Don't run the mixer at a higher speed than the chart allows. Stop it completely before scraping the bowl or reaching in, and keep the guards in place.

Spreading Out the Work

Baking everything at 3 a.m. isn't the only way. Good planners move work to other parts of the day.

Test any new method on a small batch. Yeast loses strength in the freezer, and retarded dough needs its own timing. Date everything.

Use the slower parts of the day for tomorrow's work. Mix the cookie dough and shape the croissants in the afternoon, for example.

Building the Daily Sheet

A good production sheet tells each person what to do without having to ask.

1. List each product, the amount and the time it's due.
2. Include the formula's batch size, so nobody has to do math at 3 a.m.
3. Show the start time for each step.
4. Assign a person to each task.
5. Leave space for actual dough temperature, actual counts and notes.

Good notes are short and specific: "Oven 2 running 15 degrees hot" is useful. "Bad day" isn't.

Allergens in the Plan

A plan is one of your strongest tools for controlling allergens, because the order of production controls cross-contact. Cross-contact means an allergen getting into a food by accident, usually through tools, hands, air or surfaces. Flour dust travels, so this is an everyday risk.

• Make products with fewer allergens first. A nut-free item comes before an almond one.
• Keep separate tools, or wash, rinse and sanitize them between products.
• Clean the bench and mixer before an allergen-sensitive batch.
• Store nuts, seeds and other allergens in sealed, labeled containers on a low shelf.
• Keep recipes current. If a supplier changes an ingredient, check the label again.

Food packaged in your bakery needs a label as your local law requires. Under the FDA Food Code, that label lists the ingredients and names the source of each major food allergen. There are nine major allergens, including wheat, milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, soy and sesame. Some unpackaged bakery items are exempt from labeling, but state and local rules differ. Check before you assume.

Don't tell a customer that something is "allergen-free" unless your bakery can prove it. If you share equipment, say so.

Warning: A wrong label can cause a severe allergic reaction. Check the label against the product every time you package or change a recipe. If a product goes out with the wrong label, tell your manager right away, so that it can be pulled from sale.

Fillings and Other Time-Sensitive Items

Custards, pastry cream, cream cheese fillings and cut cream pies are TCS foods, which means they need time and temperature control for safety. Plan their production as carefully as you plan your bread.

Cooling. Under the Food Code, cooked TCS food must cool from 135°F to 70°F within 2 hours, and to 41°F within a total of 6 hours. Your local code may differ.

Worked example. A 20-quart batch of pastry cream drops to 135°F at 2:00 p.m. It must reach 70°F by 4:00 p.m. and 41°F by 8:00 p.m. A deep pot won't cool in time, so spread it thin on sheet pans, cover the surface with plastic as your recipe says, and move it to the cooler. Check the temperature and log it. Make sure there's cooler space before you start. If you close at 5:00 p.m., plan for who will take the 41°F reading, or make the batch earlier.

Holding. Keep it at 41°F or below. Filled items shouldn't sit on the bench waiting for you. Fill in small batches, and return them to the cooler. Display cases for these items must be refrigerated, unless your bakery has written procedures for using time as the control, and your local rules allow it.

Dating. Ready-to-eat TCS foods made on site and held for more than 24 hours must be marked. The Food Code limit is 7 days at 41°F or below, with the day of preparation counted as Day 1. Many products will lose quality long before that.

Reading Sales and Waste

The plan only improves if you compare it with what happened.

Worked example. You baked 80 croissants, and 66 sold at full price. 14 were left at close.

• Sell-through: 66 divided by 80 = 82.5 percent
• Waste: 14 divided by 80 = 17.5 percent

Now check when you sold out, if you did. Selling out at noon tells you something very different from having 14 left at closing. If the last croissant sells at 11:00 a.m., you've missed afternoon sales, and may need more.

Your manager sets a target. Many bakeries accept a little waste, so the cases don't look empty. Track these numbers for each day of the week, then adjust.

Day-old items can have a second life, if your manager allows it: bread pudding, croutons, bread crumbs, or a day-old rack at a lower price. Plain bread works well. Never reuse items with cream or custard fillings, and never reuse anything held out of temperature.

Keeping People Safe

Bakery work starts early and runs hot, and tired people get hurt. Build in breaks, and know your state's rules on them. Plan who lifts what, since flour and sugar often come in 50-pound bags, and use a cart when you can. Keep flour dust down, because breathing it over time can cause baker's asthma. Don't leave one person alone with a mixer or oven problem at 3 a.m. without a way to get help.

Common Mistakes

Check Your Understanding

1. Your oven holds 24 muffins at a time, and they bake for 22 minutes, plus 3 minutes to load and unload. You need 96 muffins by 7:00 a.m. When must the first load go in?

96 divided by 24 is 4 loads. 4 x 25 minutes is 100 minutes. 7:00 a.m. minus 100 minutes is 5:20 a.m. Allow extra time if they also need to cool.

2. You need to bake sourdough at 475°F, baguettes at 450°F, muffins at 350°F and cookies at 325°F, all in one oven. What order makes sense?

Hottest to coolest: sourdough, baguettes, muffins, then cookies. The oven only has to fall in temperature, and it never has to climb back up.

3. A dough's total is 54 kg, and the mixer chart limits you to 30 kg for that dough. How do you plan it?

Two mixes of about 27 kg each. Stagger them, so that the second is ready as you finish working on the first.

4. You make almond croissants and plain croissants. Which comes first on the plan, and why?

Plain croissants first, then almond. Running the product without tree nuts first lowers the risk of cross-contact. Clean and sanitize between them.

5. On Wednesdays you bake 50 scones, and you've had 4 left over on each of the last four weeks. On Saturdays you sold out of 50 by 9:30 a.m. What do you change?

Lower Wednesday's count a little, such as to 46, and raise Saturday's. Being sold out early means that you've lost sales, so check how many more you could have sold.

Key Takeaways

• Build each product's schedule backward from when it must be ready, and count all the waiting time.
• The oven and mixer set your real limits, so work out their capacity.
• Bake from hottest to coolest, and group products by temperature.
• Move work to other times with retarding, par-baking and freezing.
• Plan allergens by running the products with fewer allergens first.
• Plan cooling for fillings, and use sales and waste records to set tomorrow's numbers.