top of page
Search

Bake More Loaves, Find More Customers, and Save Time | Episode 36

  • Nov 12, 2024
  • 7 min read

Updated: 2 days ago


Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


There is a point in every home microbakery where the oven becomes the whole business plan. You could sell more bread, you have people asking, and you physically cannot get more loaves through one oven in a morning.


Right behind that sit the other two questions I get most: how do I find more customers, and how do I save time when I do not have money to throw at equipment?


Your capacity, your customer base, and your hours are the three levers that decide how big your bakery can get, so let's take them one at a time.


How many loaves actually fit in a home oven

Let me walk you through my own oven path, because it happened in stages and yours probably will too.


When I first started I was using Dutch ovens and could fit three in my home oven. As soon as I started selling I knew I did not want to do the Dutch oven shuffle for long, so I bought a baking steel. I have an electric oven, so I could open bake and get four loaves at a time. I ran my business that way from September until February.


In February I bought a used double oven off Facebook Marketplace for about $250, plus what it cost to have the extra outlet put in. People renovate their kitchens, pull a double oven out, and list it cheap, and often one of the two ovens has barely been used. That took me from four loaves at a time to eight, one steel per oven.


That oven eventually started acting up, so I invested in the double oven I have now, a new Frigidaire electric 30 inch. It circulates heat better, so I can run two baking steels per oven, four steels total, four loaves of about 900 grams on each. That is 16 rustic batards in a single bake.


Loaf pans change the math again. My sandwich bread goes six per rack, 12 per oven, 24 sandwich loaves at a time.


Other ways bakers get more loaves in at once

Bakers have gotten really creative here. I have not personally used all of these, so treat them as options to research for your own oven.

  • Enamel roasting pans. They work like a Dutch oven, lid on for the first part of the bake and off to brown, but they are cheap and much lighter to shuffle. Most people fit about six in an oven, which takes you from two or three loaves to six.

  • The two rack rotation. Dutch ovens go on the bottom rack for the covered part of the bake, then those loaves move up to the top rack to finish while the next round goes into the Dutch ovens. It is a lot of shuffling and you lose some oven heat, but it is a real option if you are on gas and cannot open bake.

  • A baking steel. A thick sheet of steel that holds heat and lets you open bake, which is what I went with. You add the steam yourself, usually a pan of lava rocks or rolled up towels that you pour boiling water over. It works better in electric than gas, and gets you to about four loaves, or eight if your oven runs efficiently enough for two steels.

  • The two loaf pan method. You bake in a loaf pan with a second loaf pan inverted on top to trap the steam, then pull the cover off to brown. Maria at @leafandloaf has done the most to spread this one. Plenty of ovens hold as many as 12 loaf pans, so your capacity jumps fast. The trade is that you are limited to a loaf pan shape.

That last trade is worth asking your customers about before you rule it out. Some of them prefer a rectangular loaf because it toasts better and slices easier for sandwiches.


Let your oven set your order cap

Here is the part that turns all of that into a system instead of a science project. Once you know what one clean bake holds, that number becomes your order cap. I always open my sandwich bread at 24, because I can bake 24 in one round and I own 24 loaf pans. It means I never sell something I then have to stay up until 2am producing.


If you are a year or two in and still guessing at your numbers every week, sit down and count. How many of each product fits in one full bake, how many bakes will you really do that day, and what does that make your true limit for pre-orders? Cap your menu there and let demand pile up against the cap. That waiting list is the clearest evidence you will ever get that an equipment investment will pay for itself.


Growing your local customer base

The two things that build a customer base are time and consistency, and there is no shortcut around either one. Consistency does not mean posting every single day. It means that when somebody lands on your page, the most recent post is from the last week or two, so they do not assume you closed.


Local Facebook groups have been my single biggest source of local customers. Most groups have rules about when and how you can post, so learn them, then show up at least monthly and usually more like weekly. I introduce myself the same way every time: I am Caroline Bower, I own The Bluebird Bread Co, and I am your local sourdough baker. Anyone searching that group for sourdough finds me first, because I am the one who keeps showing up. I also post every market week to say where I will be and what is on the menu.


Sourdough is having a real resurgence and new bakers appear in those groups constantly, which I love. Most of them post once or twice, do not see instant traction, and never come back. Showing up past that point is most of the whole game! People need to see a business somewhere between seven and 21 times before they buy, so the posts that feel like they are landing on nobody are still doing the work.


A few more ways to build the list:

  • Local markets and holiday vendor events. Look for the ones inside a 10 to 20 minute radius, because those shoppers can become weekly customers. Then have a dead simple way for anyone at your table to get notified when you open orders. That is the whole point of the day.

  • Word of mouth. When somebody tells you they found you through a friend, thank that friend. Tuck an extra cookie in their bag or give them a small discount and tell them why.

  • Collaborations. A cafe, coffee shop, boutique, or bookstore your ideal customer already visits will often let you set up a small table. It might become a monthly pop-up or a one off, and either way you meet people who would never have found you.


Saving time when you cannot buy your way out

You can get a long way on process before you spend anything.


Start with bulk preparation. If your recipe makes two loaves and you are mixing bowl after bowl, get one bigger container. Early on I bought larger bins so I could mix six to 12 loaves of dough by hand at once, folding inclusions right in there, instead of covering my counter in bowls.


Then prep ahead wherever you can. Print your labels early in the week. Mix a double or quadruple batch of cookies, because it takes about the same time as a single, then scoop and freeze the dough balls for the next few weeks of orders. Chop your inclusions when you have a free half hour and freeze those too. Pre-weigh your flour into bins so dough day is just dumping and mixing.


My favorite habit is counting touches. I look at a process and literally count how many times I put my hands on it, then find one touch to eliminate. I did this recently with my English muffin and dinner roll shaping and found time I did not know was there.


When it is time to spend the money

You will keep hitting bottlenecks as you grow. Sometimes the right answer is to sit at one, because that level of production is what fits your family and your rhythms, and that is a real decision, not a failure.


When you have optimized everything you can think of and still cannot grow without losing sleep or giving something up, that is when an investment earns its place. A commercial mixer, more oven space, or a few hours of help.


Run the numbers before you buy. If a mixer lets you mix 24 loaves in one batch, how many weeks of those extra loaves pay off the mixer? Hand mixing capped me around 30 to 40 loaves. A mixer let me do more than that in the same time, which raised what I could sell, which paid the mixer off quickly. Writing a big check still stings. It stings a lot less when you have already done the math.


Final thoughts

Your oven, your customer list, and your hours all grow the same way, one deliberate change at a time. Count what fits in a bake, cap your orders there, show up in the same local group every week, and take one touch out of one process this month. That is a completely different bakery a year from now.


If you have a time-saving trick I did not mention, send it to me on Instagram. I would love to reshare it so we can all get a little faster!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this one was useful, these three go deeper on capacity, prep, and what the numbers look like on the other side.


Links to things you might like!

 
 
 
bottom of page