🍞 Bakery and Baking Business

What this course covers

12 modules · 72 written lessons · about 53,887 words · 360 quiz questions · 12 capstone projects.

Every lesson has learning objectives, worked numbers, a "do this today" task and a knowledge check. Videos are free material made by other people; the written lessons are the course.

The Business of Baking

Bread is a business before it is a craft. This module covers why a bakery lives or dies on daily cash, who actually buys from a small bakery and what they will pay, how to choose a product range that matches your storage and distribution reality, how to read your competition without guessing, the four records that make every later calculation possible, and how to decide the scale and starting capital you can genuinely finance.

1. Why Bread Is a Daily-Cash Business
2. Who Your Customers Are and What They Pay
3. Choosing Your Product Range
4. Reading Your Local Competition
5. The Four Records You Must Keep
6. Deciding Your Scale and Starting Capital

Open module 1 →

Flour and Ingredient Science

Flour is the biggest line in your cost sheet and the biggest cause of your unexplained bad days. This module covers what protein content really tells you and what it does not, how the Falling Number test exposes sprout-damaged grain before it ruins a week of production, how water absorption is measured and why it moves your dough weights, what salt, sugar and fat each actually do, how eggs and milk powder enrich a dough, and how to buy flour on a written specification instead of on trust.

1. Protein, Gluten and What Each Flour Suits
2. Falling Number and Sprout-Damaged Grain
3. Water Absorption and Flour Testing
4. Salt, Sugar and Fat: What Each Does
5. Eggs, Milk Powder and Enrichment
6. Buying Flour Well

Open module 2 →

Yeast, Fermentation and Dough Development

Yeast is the only living thing in your bakery and it is the one you understand least. This module covers what fermentation actually produces and why, the three commercial forms of yeast and the honest truth about converting between them, how temperature governs speed, what bulk fermentation and knock-back really do, how to judge a proof without a clock, and how preferments and sourdough buy you flavour, shelf life and protection against rope in a hot climate.

1. What Yeast Actually Does
2. Types of Yeast and Converting Between Them
3. Temperature, Time and Dough Development
4. Bulk Fermentation and Knock-Back
5. Proofing and Judging Readiness
6. Preferments, Sourdough and Flavour

Open module 3 →

Mixing, Baker's Percentage and Formulation

Baker's percentage is the language every professional formula is written in, and it is the reason a bakery can scale a recipe to any batch size, cost it accurately and hand it to a new employee without disaster. This module teaches the arithmetic from first principles with every step shown, then applies it to hydration, mixing, improver dosing, dough temperature control and the conversion of a home recipe into a production formula you can sell from.

1. Baker's Percentage From First Principles
2. Writing and Scaling a Formula Card
3. Hydration and What It Changes
4. Mixing Methods and Gluten Development
5. Dough Temperature Control
6. Converting a Home Recipe Into a Production Formula

Open module 4 →

Bread Production

The hands-on production sequence that turns a mixed dough into saleable bread: dividing and rounding to a scaling weight that survives the oven, tin loaves against free-standing loaves, the small-goods lines that pay a bakery's daily bills, composite and local flours where national policy is still moving, loading an oven so every loaf gets its oven spring, and judging the finished loaf like an inspector rather than a hopeful owner.

1. Dividing, Rounding and Shaping
2. Tin Bread and Free-Standing Loaves
3. Rolls, Buns and Small Goods
4. Composite and Local Flours
5. Oven Loading and Oven Spring
6. Judging a Finished Loaf

Open module 5 →

Cakes, Biscuits and Pastry

The non-bread half of a bakery, where the flour is weaker, the fat is higher and the margins are usually better. Covers cake mixing methods and the classical balanced ratio, biscuit and cookie formulation from a published formula, short and laminated pastry by fat-to-flour ratio, fillings and icings including the food-safety line that filled products cross, celebration cakes as a deliberate margin product, and how to plan a day that runs bread, biscuits and cakes through one oven without ruining any of them.

1. Cake Mixing Methods
2. Biscuit and Cookie Production
3. Short and Laminated Pastry
4. Fillings, Icings and Finishing
5. Celebration Cakes as a Margin Product
6. Batch Planning Across Product Types

Open module 6 →

Ovens, Baking and Heat Transfer

The oven is where your money is either made or burnt. This module explains what actually happens inside a loaf as it heats, how the different oven tiers a small African bakery can realistically buy behave and what each one suits, how crust and colour are formed, how to judge doneness with a probe instead of a guess, how to calculate the fuel cost of every single bake, and how to diagnose baking faults by elimination rather than by superstition.

1. What Happens Inside the Loaf
2. Oven Types and What Each One Suits
3. Steam, Crust and Colour
4. Loading, Baking Times and Judging Doneness
5. Fuel, Energy and Cost Per Bake
6. Common Baking Faults and Their Causes

Open module 7 →

Food Safety, Hygiene and Regulation

A bakery can be closed down, sued or simply abandoned by its customers over a hazard the owner never knew existed. This module names the hazards that are real in a bakery rather than the ones that sound frightening, teaches the hygiene and storage controls that actually prevent them, explains allergen declaration and why honesty here is both a legal and a commercial matter, and shows you how to find out what your own country requires instead of copying a foreign rule. Everything here is built on the Codex Alimentarius model code, and Codex is a model, not law, until your country adopts it.

1. The Real Hazards in a Bakery
2. Personal Hygiene and Premises
3. Allergens and Honest Declaration
4. Pest Control and Ingredient Storage
5. Water, Cleaning and Records
6. Licensing and Dealing With the Regulator

Open module 8 →

Shelf Life, Staling and Preservation

Why bread goes hard, why it goes mouldy, and why those are two different problems. Covers starch retrogradation, water activity as the real driver of spoilage, rope disease as a hot-climate risk that ruins whole batches, cooling and wrapping discipline, the honest legal position on preservatives, and how to run your own shelf-life trial so the date on your bag is a number you can defend.

1. Why Bread Goes Stale
2. Water Activity and Mould
3. Rope Disease and How to Stop It
4. Packaging and Storage
5. Preservatives and the Law
6. Setting an Honest Shelf Life

Open module 9 →

Costing, Pricing and Profit

This module turns your bakery into arithmetic you can trust. It shows you how to cost a loaf line by line from your own formula, how to recover overheads and the real cost of an hour of production, how to set a price that survives a flour price rise, how to price waste and returns honestly, how to find the exact volume at which you stop losing money, and how to read six numbers every week so problems show up while they are still small. Every price in this module is an illustrative number for you to replace with your own figures.

1. Costing a Loaf Line by Line
2. Overheads and the Real Cost of an Hour
3. Setting a Price That Holds
4. Waste, Returns and Shrinkage
5. Break-Even and Volume
6. Reading Your Own Numbers Every Week

Open module 10 →

Production Planning, Equipment and Premises

This module is about the physical bakery: the clock, the machines, the room and the people. It teaches you to build a bake timetable backwards from the hour your customer needs bread, to buy equipment in the order that earns money soonest, to lay out a small room so work flows one way and cleaning is possible, to write a flour purchase specification your miller can actually answer, to staff and train a small team, and to grow output without wrecking the quality you built your name on.

1. Planning a Day's Bake
2. Equipment: What to Buy First
3. Layout and Workflow
4. Buying Flour and Managing Stock
5. Staffing a Small Bakery
6. Scaling Up Without Breaking

Open module 11 →

Selling, Growing and Running the Bakery

This module is about turning good baking into a business that pays you. It teaches you to find out who actually buys from you and why, to choose between selling over a counter, selling to shops and signing a supply contract, to package and brand a product without spending money you do not have, to move bread to customers without wrecking it or breeding rope, to get paid on time and keep cash in the till, and to grow from a home kitchen to a real bakery in a planned order rather than by accident. Every price in this module is an indicative range from one source in one country and must be replaced by your own local figures.

1. Knowing Your Customer
2. Retail, Wholesale and Contract Supply
3. Packaging and Branding on a Budget
4. Delivery and Distribution
5. Credit, Cash and Getting Paid
6. A Twelve-Month Growth Plan

Open module 12 →