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How to Plan and Bake for a Farmers Market Without Burning Out | Episode 106

  • Oct 23, 2025
  • 8 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


The two questions I get more than any others about markets are what should I bring and how much of it. Both of them get people stuck for months. I have watched bakers analyze this so long that they never actually sign up for a market.


There is no formula that spits out the right number. What there is, is an educated first guess and careful tracking, and after a handful of markets you will know your numbers better than any rule of thumb could tell you. This is part two of my market series, after choosing the right market. Here is how I decide what to bake, how much to make, and how I lay out the week so I am sleeping the night before market day.


Build your menu in three categories

Sort everything you could sell into three groups, and make sure each market table has some of all three.

  • Staples. The things people replenish every single week. Original sourdough, sandwich loaves, and for me pizza crust, because a lot of my customers have a Thursday pizza night.

  • Seasonal and specialty. The rotating items and the higher price point ones. Cinnamon swirl, blueberry lemon in the spring, cranberry pecan in the winter, a seeded loaf, a heritage grain bread.

  • Add-ons. Scones, cookies, granola, crackers, cinnamon rolls. Small, lower price, grabbed on impulse at checkout, and they lift your average order value. When somebody adds a pack of cookies to a loaf, that order goes from $10 to $16 without any extra selling.

You do not need ten items in each category. Less is more, particularly while you are still learning your capacity. I never bring more than four flavored loaves at a time and often it is two, even though I could make twelve. Rotating keeps people coming back to see what is on the table this week, and it keeps me from being spread thin. Customers who love a flavor will buy two and freeze one, because they know it will be a while before it comes back around.


How much to bring

Start smaller than you think. Selling out builds demand and momentum. Bringing product home does not.


There is a common rule of thumb that says bring about 10% of the market's foot traffic, so 50 items for a market that sees 500 people. Use it as a starting point and hold it loosely, because weather, a big sporting event or a town festival will move that number around.


My real recommendation is to start with your capacity instead. If you are baking in Dutch ovens and twelve loaves is what you can manage, bring twelve. You will probably sell out fast, and then your job that day is to get those people onto your text or pre-order list so they know where to find you next time, thank everyone publicly for selling you out, and go home and figure out how to scale a little.


For a brand new market or a one-off event with no history, bring less. Church events, community sales and women's nights are usually more of a marketing opportunity than a big sales day. Go in planning to tell people who you are, how to order from you and where you are every week.


I started at my first market with one table, no signage, three flavors and chocolate chip cookies. About 30 loaves total, baked in Dutch ovens. I did not start out bringing 130 loaves to a market. Nobody does.


The number that matters most is this one: how much can you bake and still sleep? If your market is Saturday morning, everything should be baked and cooled Friday with hours left for rest. Baking less and sleeping well beats baking more on an all-nighter every single time.


Let every market give you data

Markets are living feedback loops. Show up at the same one regularly and patterns appear fast.


You will learn which hours spike and what lingers. My staples, the sandwich bread and the original loaves, hang around a little longer, which is exactly what staples should do. My English muffins go first. Anything I teased on Instagram during the week, like the brioche buns with apple and custard topping, sells out early because people came specifically for it.


Seasons shift too. In summer I sell far more sandwich bread and the rustic batards slow down. In winter it flips, because people want hearty loaves for soups and roasts.


After enough repetitions I know that 40 original loaves is right for my market and 60 means I bring some home. That number is mine. Yours will be different, and you will find it the same way I did.


Pre-orders, pricing and packaging

I did not offer pre-orders for market pickup until well into my second year. They are optional. If they feel like one more thing to manage right now, skip them.


When you do add them, put only your staples on the pre-order menu. My sandwich bread, original bread, focaccia and dozen cookies are orderable ahead. The specialty items stay first come, first serve, because I do not have the capacity to stock both the pre-order list and the table well.


Make the policy plain: orders are picked up at the market, before the market ends. Expect to educate people for a few weeks if you have moved pickup from your porch, because I still had a couple of customers show up at my house. I will make a rare exception for someone with a genuine conflict who has never asked before, and I hold the line with anyone who asks repeatedly.


On pricing, I keep mine identical across every channel. Pre-order and market table are the same. If your market has steep fees or a long drive, it is fine to set your prices a little higher to cover that, as long as you are consistent about it everywhere.


On packaging, keep it clean, consistent and stackable. I use small charcuterie boxes with solid lids for fragile items because they stack and travel well, and Costco tray boxes and the big black and yellow bins for hauling. Label everything clearly, which most states require anyway, and google your state's cottage law if you are not sure what your labels need to carry.


Do not over invest in branded bags, ribbons or extra stickers. Nobody buys bread because it has a ribbon on it. A clean kraft bag with a window and one professional sticker does the job.


Reverse engineer your week

I plan backward from the moment the market opens.


My market starts at 9am, so I arrive at 8 to set up without rushing, which means the car is loaded by 7:30, which means I need time before that for coffee, breakfast and a shower. So everything, with a couple of exceptions, is baked, cooled and packaged Friday night.


The exceptions are the things that are genuinely better fresh. I get up at 5:30 or 6 on market day and bake cookies, and if I have a specialty treat like the brioche buns, those go in right after. Everything I sell is baked within 24 hours of the market, and none of it costs me a night of sleep.


Working back from Friday night: I want everything packaged by 8pm, and my largest loaves take about four hours to cool, so they need to be out of the oven by 4pm. That puts my bake start at 9:30 or 10 on Friday morning.


Rustic loaves go in first and I rotate a load every 35 minutes, about four rounds. While those cycle, I am reshaping sandwich dough into tins, portioning focaccia into pans and turning out pizza dough. Inclusion loaves go in after the originals. By the time the sandwich loaves are in, my first originals are cool enough to bag, which frees up cooling space. It is organized chaos, and the whole trick is staying ahead on packaging instead of leaving it all for the end.


Two things make that possible. I cool on a six foot bun rack that holds 20 sheet pans, using 12 pans with cooling trays, which is about 72 loaves in a very small footprint. And I set a timer for everything, even a two minute check, because late in the day I will absolutely forget and come back to something crispy.


One thing I learned the hard way: I do not stack my loaves two layers deep in the bins overnight, because the weight of the top layer squishes the bottom one. The second layer sits out on a table and goes into the bin Saturday morning.


The rest of the week

Dough prep is Wednesday and Thursday. I could do it all on Thursday, and that makes for a twelve hour day and an enormous pile of dishes. Two five or six hour days feels far more manageable.


I split it by what holds well. Original sourdough, pizza dough and muffin batter get mixed Wednesday because they do well with a longer cold rest. Sandwich bread, English muffins and inclusion loaves are Thursday. My fridge is held around 34 degrees with a temperature controller, because at 37 or 38 my doughs keep going and I lose the rise I want.


Monday is a very light kitchen day. I build my starter back up, sometimes brown butter, and print labels. Tuesday is crackers and granola, because those hold beautifully in airtight containers all week.


Labels are the sleeper task. I print them Monday or Tuesday in one sitting, then stick them on bags Wednesday, or I pay my kids a couple of dollars to do it, which they love. By bake day all I do is put cooled product into an already labeled bag.


Pack your car the same way every time and keep your market gear in one tote that lives packed. Signage, price tags, scissors, bungee cords, cash box, all of it together. The week I forgot the external battery for my point of sale was the week I skipped my own checklist.


For the baker a few years in

If your markets already run and the problem is that they cost you the whole week, sit down with paper and do this properly once.


List every task that has to happen between now and market day. Building your starter, measuring ingredients, mixing, shaping, printing labels, sticking labels, baking, cooling, packaging, loading. Estimate how long each one takes, then add 25 to 30% because it always takes longer. Then drop those blocks into your actual calendar.


Put sleep in first, and family dinner, and whatever else is not up for negotiation in your house. Everything else fits around them. That is the whole difference between a market that energizes you and one that flattens you for three days.


Final thoughts

Your first few markets will be the most chaotic ones you ever do. That is not a sign you are bad at this, it is just the part where you have no data yet. There are as many ways to prep as there are bakers, so take what works here and leave what does not.


I am wiped out by the end of a market day. I go home, eat a sandwich and take a nap every single week. Then I feel energized, because of the conversations and the connections and the fact that this is a genuinely cool job. The systems are what protect that. Build the ones that keep the joy in it!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If markets are how you sell, these three will fill in the rest of the picture.


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