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How to Grow a Microbakery With Young Kids at Home | Episode 62

  • Feb 20, 2025
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


Melissa of Crowe's Dough went from 10 to 15 loaves a week to about 60 in a single year. She has three girls, the youngest was seven months old when we talked, and her setup had not caught up with her order list.


That is the shape of the problem for a lot of you. The demand shows up faster than the equipment, the schedule and the help do, and the gap between them gets paid for out of your sleep and your patience.


We sat down for a coaching session and worked through it piece by piece. Almost none of the fixes cost money, and the ones that do are worth planning for on purpose.


Sleep is a business decision

Melissa told me she felt like she should be mixing dough while the kids sleep, because that is what she sees other bakers doing. She is seven months into having a baby who is only just sleeping through the night.


Getting up at 3 in the morning to mix is not the right choice in that season, and it is not the right choice in a lot of seasons. I have hard boundaries around this in my own business, and my kids are six and eight. My schedule is built so that I sleep eight hours at least five nights a week, because I am a far better baker and a far better mom rested than I am efficient at 3 a.m.


Comparison is what makes this hard. You see somebody else's bake schedule on Instagram and assume it is the standard. That is their season. Yours has a seven month old in it. Build the schedule your actual life can carry, and let the business grow into it.


Find the flexible tasks and move them off bake day

Some jobs have to happen at an exact moment. Plenty do not, and those are the ones you move.

  • Pre-measure your flour and dry ingredients the day before, during a nap or a calm half hour. You can start it, walk away when somebody needs you, and pick it back up. Melissa used to do this and had drifted away from it, which is the most common thing in the world.

  • Batch your inclusions. Roast a big tray of garlic at once, portion it, freeze it, and pull it out on dough day. Same for anything else that takes oven time or chopping time.

  • Close your pre-orders earlier. Melissa was closing hers Tuesday at 5 p.m. and mixing Wednesday morning, which left no room to prep. Moving the close to Tuesday morning gives her the whole afternoon to measure and plan. I made this same change in my own bakery recently and it was one of the highest impact tweaks I have made.


Move the dough to fit the day

The other lever is timing. Melissa's shaping used to land right in her two year old's nap in the summer, and as the weather cooled it drifted to the end of nap or past it, which put her hands in dough at the hardest hour of the day.


Warmer water and a bit more starter both pull that timeline earlier, and they are worth playing with in your slower months so you are not experimenting in the middle of market season. Melissa was also testing a warming mat. If you want to go deep on the fermentation side of this, that is not my lane, and I would send you to the Sourdough Journey or The Perfect Loaf Cookbook by Maurizio Leo. My job is making sure the schedule serves your life.


Put your kids on the schedule too

This one changed things for our family. Make a simple visual schedule with pictures of the blocks of the day, and put your dough time on it right next to play with mommy time.


Kids love knowing what is coming next, and they take real ownership of it. A five year old and a two year old can both look at that chart and see that this is mommy's dough hour, and that the special sensory bin or the toy they only get during that hour is coming.


Two things make it work. The special activity has to be genuinely special and reserved for that window, and there has to be a play with mommy block on the chart too, so the one on one time is scheduled and not squeezed into whatever is left.


Two hours of help is a business expense

If you are trying to mix dough with three kids around, hiring a mother's helper for a couple of hours on dough morning may be the best money you spend all month.


A homeschooled high schooler, a college student who needs flexible hours, a grandma in the neighborhood who wants to hold a baby. They do not need to touch the bread. They need to be with your kids so that when somebody bumps their head you are not washing dough off your hands first.


Put it in your books as a business expense, because that is what it is. And notice what it does to the guilt. Your kids are cared for, you are working, and when you are done you are fully theirs again.


Buy equipment on a timeline, not in a panic

This is the piece for anyone whose orders have jumped ahead of their kitchen.


Melissa had her home oven running 12 hours a day before she bought a bread oven. That solved one problem and moved the pressure somewhere else, which is exactly how growth works. Her bottleneck is now fridge space and mixing time.


Here is the process I would use:

  • Name your current bottleneck out loud. Oven, fridge, mixer, hands. Only one of them is actually holding you back this month.

  • Put a date on it. Melissa wants her mixer and her fridge in place before the farmers market season starts in spring. That is a real deadline to work backward from.

  • Divide the price by the weeks you have and set that amount aside out of your income every week. A big purchase becomes a small habit.

  • Do not assume you have to buy new. I run an upright 21 cubic foot freezer that I bought used for about $250, with an Inkbird temperature controller turning it into a fridge. It holds around 80 loaves and bannetons, and it is efficient. Watch appliance sales and marketplace listings while you are saving.

  • Use your slow months to fix workflow, so the new equipment lands in a process that already works instead of a mess that runs faster.

If the equipment you need to keep up is significant, that is also your signal to look hard at your prices before the next season starts.


Trim the menu before you trim yourself

Melissa keeps her offerings simple, one plain sourdough plus an inclusion, cookies she can freeze and bake off. Then a pumpkin focaccia hung around on the menu for a month and a half, and some weeks only two people ordered it.


An item that takes a full production step for two orders takes more from you than it brings in. Check your menu every few weeks and be willing to take something off it.


I do this every November and December on purpose. I could bring in more income in those two months than any other time of year, and I choose a shorter menu instead so I can be present with my family. Then I hit the gas again in spring. You are allowed to grow at the speed of your life.


Final thoughts

Melissa's list coming out of that call was short. Pre-measure again. Close pre-orders Tuesday morning. Roast the garlic ahead. Price out a fridge and a mixer with a date attached.


None of those are dramatic, and together they take a frazzled week and make it calm. That is usually how this works.


And this part I meant with my whole heart: the baby season is short. Free yourself up to enjoy it, even when that means saying no to an order or an event. You will still have a business in three years. You will not still have a seven month old.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you are in the middle of a growth spurt, these three will help.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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