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What to Do When a Bake Fails and You Have Orders Due | Episode 97

Aug 21, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Jul 30

Listen on Apple Podcasts


A few months ago I threw about 20 loaves of focaccia straight into the trash. I had forgotten the salt, and there was no saving it.


That is real money on the floor, and some of it was already sold. Those are the days that make you want to put your hands up and wonder whether you are cut out for this at all.


A bad bake day does not mean you are a bad baker. It means you had a hard day in the middle of a much longer stretch of good ones. What separates the bakers who keep growing from the ones who burn out is having a plan for these days before they happen.


So here is mine, from the first ten minutes of disappointment all the way through to the system that keeps it from happening twice.


First, feel it, then stop feeding it

Give yourself permission to be frustrated, disappointed, even heartbroken. That is a normal response to losing product you worked hard on.


Just do not move in and live there. One failed bake does not erase your talent, your growth, or the hundreds of bakes that went right before it. Professional bakers burn loaves, drop trays and watch recipes flop in test kitchens. We are in good company.


If you catch yourself sliding into "I am not cut out for this," swap it for something truer:

  • That did not turn out, and I know how to troubleshoot it.

  • This is frustrating, and it is one data point.

  • Every great baker has had a loaf flop.


Sort the flop before you fix it

The next question is the one that changes everything: was this in my control or out of it?


Things in your control usually come down to technique, planning, or being stretched too thin.

  • Technique. Over-proofed or under-proofed dough, a starter that was sluggish, a change in your flour or your water. My last two bakes felt strange in my hands, and it took me a minute to realize the only thing that had changed was our newly repaired water softener. Tomorrow I will back off my hydration a little. That kind of read comes from reps, and if you are not there yet, keep learning. I read The Perfect Loaf by Maurizio Leo in the school pickup line like a novel and baked his beginner recipe over and over before I changed a thing.

  • Planning. I waited too long to reorder whole wheat flour for my sandwich loaves, and my delivery is landing on dough day. That is my fault, and now I am mixing late and adding extra starter to speed up fermentation. That is not a baking failure, it is a purchasing failure.

  • Being distracted or exhausted. When you have a lot of balls in the air while you bake, things get missed. That is how the salt got missed.

Things out of your control are a different category entirely.

  • Equipment failure. Every time we lose power, my temperature controller jumps from the 34 or 35 degrees I set it at to 77 degrees. That has cost me a whole fridge of cold product before. Now I know to reset it the moment the power comes back.

  • Weather and humidity that swing your timing with no warning.

  • Life. A sick kid, an outage, a customer showing up early, a family member who needs you right now.

Here is the line I hold: if it was in your control, you can learn and improve. If it was out of your control, you adapt, and you do not take on blame that was never yours.


The questions I walk through afterward

When the flop was on my side of the line, I sit down and answer these:

  1. What exactly went wrong?

  2. Why did it go wrong?

  3. Was it technique, timing, planning, or an outside factor?

  4. Did I change anything from my usual process?

  5. What am I doing so this does not happen again?

Watch how that plays out with my focaccia. What went wrong: no salt in the dough. Why: I ran out and did not get it reordered in time. So when I pre-measured my dry ingredients, the salt was simply missing, and I did not leave myself a note about it. The next morning I mixed everything up and never thought twice.


That was not a technique problem at all. It was a planning problem with a process gap sitting right behind it.


Build the system that protects you from your own memory

The fix was not to try harder to remember. I have too much going on to trust my memory, and so do you.


Now I keep a roll of bright yellow masking tape in a drawer. Any time something is out of the ordinary, that tape goes right on the bin with the note written on it: needs salt, and how much. On dough day I cannot possibly miss it!


That is the whole idea. When something goes wrong once, do not just resolve to be more careful. Build a small, visible, physical system that catches it for you the next time, when you are tired and moving fast and thinking about six other things.


When the order is already sold

Some of that focaccia was pre-sold, so I had the salt by then and pulled together another batch quickly to fill those orders. That is the best outcome when the timing allows it.


When it does not, handle it like the business owner you are:

  • Apologize gracefully and plainly. I made a mistake, I am so sorry.

  • Offer a credit or a refund.

  • If the miss is fully on you, offering to deliver their replacement is a nice way to make it right.

These conversations feel awful in the moment, and they are also where customers find out what kind of business you run. Handling a mistake well earns you more loyalty than a perfect bake ever will.


Salvage what you can

Not everything is a total loss. Sometimes the product just cannot do the job you baked it for.

  • Over-proofed bread becomes croutons or breadcrumbs.

  • Dough that will not behave becomes pizza crust.

  • Something that tastes great but looks imperfect can be sold at a discount.

The focaccia was genuinely unsalvageable. Plenty of flops are not.


Write it down, then reset

Keep notes. A journal is lovely, and a note on your phone is completely fine. Something as simple as "loaves came out flat, starter sluggish, humid day, missed a stretch and fold" is enough.


Over time those notes are how you build real intuition. You start connecting what changed to what happened, faster and faster, until troubleshooting takes minutes instead of a whole week of wondering.


Then reset quickly and on purpose. Clean up your space, feed your starter, and make a plan to try again. Do not let one bad bake take your whole week down with it.


For the baker with real volume

Once you are baking meaningful quantities every week, a flop stops being just an emotional event and starts being a line item. So treat it like one.


Write down what the loss actually cost you in ingredients, packaging, hours and refunds. Then look at your last few months of notes and find the pattern. If most of your losses trace back to planning rather than technique, the answer is not more practice, it is a standing reorder day and a written prep list.


Do this for a quarter and you will know exactly which failure is costing you the most money, which is the one worth building a system around first.


I will also say this plainly: I have baked somewhere between five and ten thousand loaves, and I still have days like this. Volume does not eliminate the flops. It just gets you faster at spotting the cause.


Final thoughts

One failed bake out of fifty is 2 percent of your baking life. When I interviewed James Bridges earlier this year, he said he shoots for 80 percent success, and hearing that from someone at his level was so freeing!


Maybe we stop calling them bad bake days. They are experiences, and the most experienced people I know will tell you they learned far more from what went wrong than from what went right.


So the next time you are staring at a flat loaf or an oven that quit mid-bake, take a breath. Figure out what was in your control, release what was not, write down the lesson, and go again. That resilience is one of the most valuable things you own as a microbakery owner.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

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