I'm opening a bakery and am trying to figure out what salary to pay my baker. At the start, I will be doing pastry but need someone to do the bread. This person will be responsible for 50-100 loaves a night, 6 nights a week. If production climbs above that, assistant bakers will be hired. I'm looking for someone, preferably with a culinary degree, and 2-5 years of experience. I need to start low but am very willing to increase the salary as we become profitable.

Thoughts?

I have baked more or less daily for the last year and started to have consistent results at this level.

I am now considering to push this to the next level and start an artisan bakery. 

I am fully aware that jumping from a few loaves a day to a few hundred loaves a day or more is not a walk in the park, but I am trying to figure out as much as I can from what is actually involved.

I am planning on volunteering to an artisan bakery in a town nearby to get first hand experience.

I know that there were other similar threads (for instance this one), but most of them seem to have run out of steam, so I thought of opening a new one, trying to accumulate the information I need and maybe help others that are having similar thoughts go through the process quicker.

I want to start small, by building a separate kitchen in my basement. (I am aware that I need to check with my local Health Department if I can do that)

I am thinking of starting with some specialty breads (whole wheat, rye and sour dough) and maybe some baguettes first and use the local Farmer's Market, that runs a couple days a week, to "get a feel of the market".

I am thinking of a 100-200 loaves/day capacity for starters.

Given the description of the problem above, I have a few questions that I would appreciate your input on at this time (I'll continue to post them as I am going through the process).

1. What would be the minimum size of the mixer I would need?

2. What would be the minimum size of the oven I would need?

3. Do I need a proofer or can I do without one in the beginning?

4. What would you say the minimum space requirements are for the kitchen? (I need to figure out if my basement is big enough)

5. How do you store your flour? Do you keep it in bags?

6. What is better? An electrical or a gas convection oven? (the local restaurant supplier suggested a Blodgett - any suggestions/feedback here are welcome).

7. How would I calculate the power consumption and/or gas consumption of the oven? (need it for the business plan)

8. Is there any reliable formula to calculate the actual cost of one loaf?

9. Is there any reliable formula to calculate the potential loaves/hour output of one's process?

10. What do you do for water? Where do you get it from?

Thanks,

Cristi

Anyone have expertise in production baking? I am a chef with little natural leavening baking experience. I can make a mean loaf with commercial yeast, but alas, cannot seem to get the the "old fashioned" thing down. I am determined to do what ever it takes to make the absolute most natural and best loaf in las vegas and in my restaurant. My main complaint is that the loafs are too heavy. If I try proofing them for longer they are lighter but become "over-proofed". i.e. extra heavy crust that is extremely hard and crunchy. Please let me know if any of you can lend me a hand in troubleshooting my production.

Thank you,

Giovanni.

Hi there,

I'm about to start university in a week and I'm very excited about that. Still, I can't forget the option of becoming a professional baker and I would like to know which options of good training are out there in europe. In case I don't like university or get tired of my future job . . .

Are there any great bread baking schools in Europe, for instance in France or Germany?

Salome

Hello Everyone!

I've been a member of this site for a few months now, but this is my first time posting.  I'm 25 years old, and have been baking bread in my home for the past year or so.  In the past few months, my baking has become much more serious.  I'm currently working a "normal", 8-5 office job that keeps me busy --- but I am not totally satisfied with what I'm doing.  Recently I've been spending a lot of time thinking about taking the plunge and becoming a professional bread baker. 

Anyway, the real reason for this post is to ask for advice.  I have been given a great opportunity to use the kitchen of a local restaurant to experiment making breads on a larger scale. They do not have a baker working for them, however it is their intention to begin making bread in the future.  This is both exciting and a little scary.  I have been making all of my breads by hand for the past year, so this is totally different.  I want to be as prepared as possible when I go in there to begin.  Here's what I know:

-They have a 40 quart mixer

-They do not have a commercial proofer yet, so I'm not sure what they've been doing

-Not sure about the oven, but I think it's a convection deck

-King Arthur European style flour

I'm going to visit the kitchen this Wednesday to check out the facilities, but I need to start planning now.  I plan on starting out with basic baguettes, nothing involving my sourdough.  Here are a few of my basic questions, and I welcome and advice/tips anyone may have.  There is no pressure on me to produce perfect bread on the first try, but I really want to do well!

1.  What's the min/max weight of dough that can go in a 40qt mixer? Any advice on basic mixer operation/times when using a larger machine?

2.  Should I be OK scaling up my dough?  I've never made anything in such a large quantitiy before

3.  I've never used the KA European flour.  Are there any adjustments needed when working with this?

4.  Any advice about using a deck oven -- temps, steaming methods, anything I need to know!

Thanks for the advice!

-Brendan

I've recently sold a business and have decided to start a bread company in new hampshire. Where could I fine an individual that could help me jump start my 

new company. I would be willing to give an equity position to the selected individual.

Thanks

I've been looking into expanding my very small bakery business.  Right now I'm just selling to co-workers and friends, but have been looking into California regulations for operating a commercial kitchen.  Basically there is no way to convert any home operation to something that would pass the California Retail Food Code.  Has anyone out there been selling at farmer's markets without going through the Dept. of Environmental Health?  I saw some mention of bread being a non-hazardous food product but can't find any exceptions in the CA Retail Food Code. 

Another question:  by using an online service like Etsy, I would assume you are still required to be selling a legal product, which may mean operating from a licensed commercial kitchen.  But since you are potentially selling out of state, under which jurisdiction do you operate? 

I'd love to be able to sell more bread but it seems the regulatory hurdles are just too immense, even if I want to sell a little bread at the local farmer's market.

Thanks for any advice!

-Peter

Hey all!

So, my business is growing fairly quickly and I'm needing to do more than I am doing now.  I'm trying to find some good workflow solutions for the task of weighing out my ingredients.  Specifically, what kind of bulk storage containers to use and scales.  This is how I'd like to do things:

Have overhead bins for ingredients, like those you'd see at health food stores (gravity fed bulk bins) only a little larger.  What I envision is having a roller platform with the scale on it, and the bowl sitting on top of the scale.  I'd like to have the bins all in a row so I could just open the gate, have the ingredients pour out from the respective bins into the mixer bowl that's sitting on the scale, and tare the scale after each, move to the next, dump.  Tare, move, dump.  And then just fit the bowl to the mixer. 

Now, one concern would be the size of the mixer.  Trying to figure out if I want to use an enormous mixer, as in a 220q or so, or do multiple rounds with an 80q (because Univex doesn't make anything bigger... grrrr I love my Univex). 

Is this unreasonable to do, and, where would one buy the kinds of things I'm going after?

Thanks for the help!

Chris
Barkwheats

i have 50lbs of instant yeast and need some ideas on how to store it. i keep a bucket in the cooler for current use but there is no room for the rest. thought i might place in gal. bags and shrink-wrap. i should be able to keep these on a 'cool dry' shelf almost indefinitly?

b

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum, but it didn't seem to fit anywhere else.

I have been baking fairly seriously at home for about 6 months, and my wife really wants to start selling at the local farmers markets. I am a little skeptical of the idea but wanted to at least do some background on the matter.

The big challenge, as I see it, is that I haven't really baked in quantity before and we don't have commercial grade equipment. Average sized home oven (with quite good temp control at least), kitchen aid pro 600 mixer, which I'm pretty sure is not up to many baking in quantity tasks. That said, I think we can get around the mixing issues by at least starting with no knead (but for a few stretch and fold) recipies which wouldn't overtax the mixer. Since it only involves about 2 minutes of mixing per batch, I kind of figure the two of us could assembly line it. I've got a great sourdough and good baguette/boule recipe. If we were to turn a profit, I'd probably sink money back into either an Electrolux DLX or maybe a used 5qt hobart.  The bigger concern is the oven. It will do about 2 boules per rack, but I have not yet tried baking on both racks at once (I think it would be OK for this) but will need to try it later this week.If we could do 4 boules at a time, I can see baking about 50 loaves in around 6 hours which wouldn't be awful.

SO, a series of questions

1. WHat is the best way to store loaves, and what is a reasonable hold time. I see baking a bunch friday evening and selling saturday morning.

2. It seems desireable to get flour prices down. I use king arthur at home, which right now is 4 bucks for 5 lbs at the local grocery, or about a buck a loaf. Other material costs are negligable (water is more or less free, I got a ton of yeast at sams, my starter is going like a champ). Unfortunately, our Sam's does not sell any bread flour at all. Not sure if there are other ways to get bread flour in quantity easily.

3. I am figuring, supply wise, I need several more large rising containers, plastic bags, and twist ties for selling the bread, maybe some kind of homemade logo to establish a bit of a "brand". Am I missing anything here

4. Would baking stones be an advantage here? I currently have been baking on an old air bake cookie sheet and getting great results, but I'm wondering if more mass in the oven would be desireable.

5. What kind of quantity would be a sensible amount to sell? I'm thinking 20-30 loaves for starts to see where that goes, but I don't have any idea. We have a series of farmer's markets around here, and they are pretty well attended, but I don't know what the market looks like. I'm also not sure what fees are involved with getting space (I've got calls out). Seems like this and ingredients would be the main costs.

6. What about pricing? As it stands now, a loaf has about a buck of ingredients in it. The packaging (based on sources I've seen) works out to negligable per loaf, other main cost would be the cost of the space and a little bump on the electricity. I'm thinking I would probably need to sell pound loaves at around 4 bucks a pop for this to make any sense, but am not sure what the market would bear. I know a pound loaf of quasi artisan bread at Target and the local grocery goes for about 4 bucks, so that doesn't seem unreasonable. Don't need to get rich, but don't want to work for free either.

7. What else am I missing here?

Thanks in advance

justin