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Should You Start a Sourdough Microbakery? | Episode 24

  • Nov 12, 2024
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


You have been watching other bakers on Instagram for a while now. The pretty porch pickup, the farmers market table, the caption that says they sold out in an hour. And somewhere in there you started wondering whether you could do that too.


Running a sourdough microbakery is a business, with hours and numbers and seasons attached to it, and it fits some lives beautifully and other lives not at all. So here are the questions I would ask you if we were sitting at my kitchen table.


None of them are meant to scare you off. They are the flip side of the glamorous version we all see on social media, and you deserve both sides before you decide.


Start with why you want this

Get clear on what is actually driving you. A love for sourdough itself? Feeding people something nourishing? Creating with your hands, connecting in your community, bringing in income for your family? For most bakers it is some combination, and there is no wrong answer.


Then ask the harder version. Does the idea of spending hours perfecting a loaf excite you, or does it sound like a chore?


I have friends who have taken my sourdough workshop and genuinely love baking a loaf or two for their families. Then they watch my videos of me folding a huge batch of bulk dough and they say, nope, that is not for me. Loving to bake and wanting to bake at volume are two different appetites.


Here is the question to sit with the longest. If you start selling your bread and treating baking as a business, will it still bring you joy? Monetizing something you love can drain the love out of it, and that is the outcome I least want for you.


I protect mine on purpose. Monday is the day of my week that is not dedicated to bakery work, so it is the day I recipe test, try something new, or throw a couple of little loaves together with no recipe at all just because I want my hands in the dough.


If what is really pulling you is the easiest path to a full-time income, I will be straight with you: sourdough is not it. It takes time, patience, and a strategy that keeps changing as the seasons and your household rhythms change. It is doable and it can be beautiful. Easy is not the word for it.


Does the schedule actually fit your life?

A microbakery is not a nine to five. It runs on early mornings, sometimes late nights, sometimes both, and a rhythm that ebbs and flows with your dough. If you want to earn a full-time income from it, expect to put in full-time hours.


Ask yourself these:

  • Are you comfortable with the hours baking demands? Does starting your day at 4:00 AM sometimes make sense with the rest of your life?

  • Do you have the space in your home, both physical and mental, for this? Baking takes up room. You can start in your home kitchen, but as you grow it will take over the kitchen table on bake days. I have taken over most of our front dining room.

  • Are you prepared to balance this against family responsibilities, hobbies, and other commitments? To the best of your ability, make your dough work around your schedule and not the other way around. There will still be stretches where you have to be home and hands-on.

  • Are you ready to commit the hours it takes to reach the income you want?

That last one matters no matter what size you are building. Maybe you do not want a full-time income, and you are covering your kids' extracurriculars or paying down debt. There is no right size for your business. The right size is the one that serves your life. Just be honest about whether you are ready to give it the time it will take to get there.


If you only have a few fixed hours each week, look hard at the actual clock. Mixing, fermenting, shaping, and baking all have to fit inside the windows you have, or you have to rearrange the windows.


Get real about the numbers

This is a beautiful blend of creativity and commerce, and it is still a business.


How much do you need to earn for this to be worth your time and effort? Maybe two hundred dollars a week is genuinely worth it to you. That is wonderful. Just make sure that is what you actually take home after you calculate the cost of your ingredients and supplies.


Are you comfortable with the investment? You truly do not need much to get started. As you grow you will want more baking pans, more bannetons, a mixer, a bigger oven, cooling racks. Do you have a plan for setting aside a percentage of your revenue to reinvest?


Can you handle the ups and downs? This is a seasonal business. It picks up around the holidays and slows down in January and again over the summer when everyone is out of town and nobody wants to turn on an oven. If your goals depend on predictable money every month, you will need to build the bakery deliberately to operate at that level, and still plan for the slow stretches.


Are you willing to wear all the hats?

When you own a sourdough microbakery, you are doing the work of about five people. You are baking, yes. You are also making the social media content, keeping the books, developing recipes, answering customers, and washing an astonishing number of dishes.


So, are you willing to learn skills that have nothing to do with bread? Marketing, accounting, customer service. The work is hard and it is rewarding, and you will go to bed worn out, sleep like a rock, and get up too early to do it again. You have to be scrappy enough to teach yourself what you need to know.


Can you take feedback, the good and the critical, and use it? If negative feedback tends to knock you sideways, that is a muscle you will need to build. Let it roll past you, or let it push you to get better.


Are you comfortable pivoting? Markets change, customer preferences change, your own life changes. If you are married to one fixed menu forever, this will be a hard business.


Can you solve problems on your feet?

Some version of this will happen to you: the dough does not rise because the temperature dropped overnight, the ingredient you need is suddenly unavailable, or your kid stays home sick and your whole bake day disappears.


How do you handle setbacks? Do you enjoy solving problems, or does an unplanned day leave you frozen? If you like thinking on your feet and building better processes as you go, you are going to do well here, because as a solo owner you are making up the rules the whole way.


If you are already a year or two in

Pull these questions out again at your current size, because the answers change as the business grows.


Ask whether the size you are running right now is still serving your life, or whether you drifted into it because the orders kept coming. Mark the busy and slow stretches of your last twelve months, then decide what you will offer differently next time summer goes quiet. Check that you are setting aside a real percentage for equipment instead of buying reactively. And look at your menu to see whether you keep something because customers want it or because you always have.


Final thoughts

I have loved running and growing my microbakery, and it has gone in directions I never planned. If you had told me a year ago, when I was a few weeks in, that I would sell 130 loaves in a single day, I would have laughed at you. I could not have imagined 30 at that point. A willingness to adapt and lean into the opportunities in front of me is what got me here.


If everything above got you excited, go get started. I am so excited for you!


And if this landed as a reality check and you have decided the Instagram reels are lovely but this is not the life you want, that is a good answer too. Maybe a different season will be the right one. The last thing I want is for you to start selling before you are committed and lose your love of baking in the process. Protect that first.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

Here are three more conversations that will help you decide what kind of bakery you are building.


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