Run it like a community garden. People need to buy in for 1, 2. or more loaves per week for a whole season. Get other like minded home bakers to join in co-op with you. Purely democratic in nature, and equal partners. One time per week you all brainstorm via zoom meeting, and vote on what to do. Keep it reasonably local because there is just no way you can mitigate the carbon footprint.
OMG. Did you read my mind 😂. This is exactly what I have been thinking what could be the outcome of this project. A decentralized bakery run by everyone on this channel.
@@the_bread_code I think the community project idea is the most eco friendly. Probably most of us that follow you only bake 2/3 times a week, and then only a single loaf. Scaling that would be simple and advertising via local Social media channels with friends/family is a good way to start. @LilysLoaf is a good example of local delivery as she does it all on a bike, so carbon footprint is drastically reduced. Interested to see how this develops
Great project! I am working on a similar type of project (also par baked), let me share my good learnings so far: I ran a survey under potential customers to learn about pricing and what they are looking for. It turned out that high quality, local produced products is the winner. This effect the price point and people are willing to spend more on that than expected. To keep packaging costs reasonable we work with bread boxes: you have to order multiple breads per shipment or pay for the shipment costs yourself. People seem to be fine with it. Certainly our pre-selected combi boxes bought with 1 click are the money makers. Concerning the packaging itself we use carton boxes as well. Looked at other alternatives but these are expensive. We also looked into bags with bee wax in them, you can even throw them in the garden and they will dissolve. People loved that but it was too expensive in combination with carton. Stick with the carton boxes for now is my advice. For protecting the bread we, also from food safety regulations, we used plastic bags where we vacuum the bread in. We don't see any different solution for it now. We recently started to experiment with a 'local delivery' format to try. In NL we now have 5 hobby bakers that produce our orders. Local runners (students that want a side job) distribute them on a bike (takes them 1-2h, so we only focus for now on dense cities like Amsterdam). There we use the bee wax packaging because we control the environment and there is no shipment damage. To reduce the costs further we allow advertisers to add a card or small advertisement along with the bread (e.g. for a news paper or amusement park or museum). Our vision is to improve local production with local sourced ingredients further and optimise for local delivery. Alongside with pastries (earn you more then bread), also made on a sourdough basis. Our customers are spreading the word and people don't see us as a normal bakery competitor / supermarket competitor. It is perceived as a different categorie. For a first step mixer I can recommend you to look into the Famag Grilletta IM series, we have one here up to 8 KG of dough and with 3 bowls you can produce a lot of bread and place it in a Rofco oven. Feel free to connect with me to learn more!
I wonder if using a vacuum sealer bag would be better? Would also look more "professional". I don't know of any eco friendly packaging that's air tight though.
@@the_bread_code you should be able to stop it before it crushes and then push the seal button? Might take some experimenting. It might not crush it but if it does I think that is doable.
@@the_bread_code what if you don't make Bread the centerpiece, but the packaging of it? That way you could potentially get some coo bread container as merch and a bread on top. Not more climate friendly than a plastic bag, but I would see it more as a creative extension of your merch business. You can still sell your bread the way you intended to (par-baked) but it should become more profitable and premium, meaning you don't need to bake thousands of breads to match your salary. Grüße aus Hamburg!
- your biggest problem is the shipping cost. You need to determine how long your bread can sit on a shelf in a logistics warehouse because if it can last a few weeks in a warehouse you can use all sorts of cheap shipping options from logistics companies. - forget the mixer. There are dough mixers in all shapes and sizes. Your real problem is the oven. It limits the amount of bread you can bake at the same time regardless of the amount of dough you have prepared. The only solution that I see is to get a tunnel oven. -experiment with freezing the parbaked dough. Check if it has to be shipped frozen (cold chain) or it can be frozen in batches and sent through regular post unfrozen after being stored frozen at your place. - you could structure your sales as a subscription box service to make production and shipping more predictable. - you can buy carbon credits to reduce the co2 footprint. - since you're selling just semi prepared bread you can probably classify yourself as a factory not a bakery. Maybe you can sell bread making kits. You'll still need some licensing but not an apprenticeship.
Hi, its my first comment on RUclips. I think you have a great idea to start with. However, from a pricing and a CO2 perspective, there should be an alternative. Lets start with Costs: shipping one or two bread is a nice idea for a customer who really enjoys bread your work in general (needs to be a bread neard). To make it work you would charge at least 10€ per bread i guess. This can work out with selected "special" customers. But... getting rid of the 5€ packaging would make your idea more promising and is (maybe) relevant if you want to scale up i think. So an now to my idea. You and your Community team up with local coffee shops. Coffee shops would get quality bread to serve (they just need to heat up) and/or can sell it to the customer. But most importantly they offer storage capacity. The "bread code" would be a platform that connects breat Enthusiasts with local coffee shops. A customer can buy a bread on the platform and either get it delivered (your idea if i got it right - and maybe the more expansive option) or buy it from the local coffee shop. You and the other bread maker would only need to deliver to local stores, coffee shops and so on.. the coffee shop would get a share for each bread and the platform which enabled the purchase. In the end it would be less expensive compared to the 5€ shipping and as a result the bread could be cheaper and your idea could grow along with the "bread code community". And at the same time you would reduce the co2 footprint of the bread as shipping distances get shorter. What do you think of that?
I know you love baking bread. I do too. I think that keeping it as a hobby, will keep it fun. Make as many as you’re comfortable making for now. Growing into a production bakery would add heaps of stress. Not to mention government restrictions, rules and requirements -always expensive. The day it stops being a love, rethink it. If it just gets more fun, the busier you are, make it a money-making career.
I am also a software engineer who works in finance. I, and several colleagues make sausages, we brine, cure, ferment, grow stuff, bake and cook. It must be a counter reaction to our virtual and sedentary profession.
@@the_bread_code take it a step at a time. I started a small business that took off and it was hard to keep things under control. I did well but it was exhausting and if I had it to do over again, I would have decided how much to say yes to and how I wanted it to fit in my life instead of running my life for 25 years!!
2 quickies 1. I doubt you will make a decent return unless you charge around €10 per loaf. So premium price for premium product. Look into (local) bio flour. Remember that unit price falls if can buy more - a local miller sells 25kg bags. 2. Looking for equipment, There are specialists selling wonderful kit - but can be very expensive. Try the second hand market for mixers and oven. 3. The first step to building a customer base might be a local ‘farmer’s market’ - instant customer feedback. Veil Glück from 🇨🇭
Delicious as the bread may be, I can’t see many people paying that much even for a premium loaf. We have a couple of Artisan vegetarian shops that sell home made loaves and they are around £3-3.50.
Maybe you shouldn't ship at all. Here in California, Farmers Markets are quite common. Of course , that may bring up other problems: Baking multiple loaves for a single day event and hoping you sell them all. I know, in the past, I have paid as much as $8 for a loaf of bread a such places. It's probably more now. I wish you the best of luck!
Good luck in your new venture!!!! Love your branding on the bread. Get yourself a rubber stamp made of your logo and some nice sealable brown bakery bags. Stamp each by hand. It'll look awesome. Also maybe stamp the brown box. The box looks great! Good luck!!!!!!
Thanks for the update, I've been thinking about your business. I have a goal of starting a home bakery as well, except I want to advertise in my local area and make deliveries myself. I live in the US and get my flour in bulk from a restaurant supply store, also intend to get a commercial mixer from there as well. You may consider getting a small steam injected bread oven so you can bake at least several breads at a time:)
Wow I love this!! I really REALLY appreciate that you’re thinking about the carbon footprint. I’d love to do something like this locally or just for my friends that aren’t super close to where I live, I’m super excited for updates!!
I think this is really awesome and sincerely hope you are able to do this! I live in the United States and there is some rather significant regulations regarding food here to. I also happen to work for a bakery cafe chain that specializes in sourdough bread that is baked fresh in cafe, I work the IT side not the production side but I have a few tips from the times I've toured the dough facilities. 1. While plastic isn't great it probably is your best option. Our facilities mix the bread and then stored them on a pressed fiber/paper tray and the recipe has to account for the moisture absorption. I suspect the same for your par baked but less so. My best suggestion would be something like a wax coated baking paper that you seal on 4 sides and the wax will prevent water absorption. 2. In terms of and your time efficiency shipping is probably not your best option. Here in the USA we have a number of community supported agriculture (CSA) programs where individuals pay a monthly subscription fee and receive a box of veggies once or twice a month. Usually the CSA will establish centralized drop point and time at either a subscribers house(who usually gets a discount) or a public parking lot. You drive up in a half hour to hour window get your food and go. The advantage to having a subscriber as the drop point is they can often oversee the delivery so you drop the stuff and they'll handle the personal interaction of handing out the food. Another advantage to this model is you can reuse packaging and can deliver loaves of bread in a hard plastic or metal case. Usually the subscribers will pay a deposit that is refunded when they return the packaging or they can just exchange it for a new package with bread in it. Ie we pay a 1 USD deposit on a half gallon mason jar for a local dairy where we get fresh milk weekly. 3. Look into the different types of vendor licenses you can get. Ie here in the USA it's usually easier to get a food truck style vendors license than as a restaurant or food product producer. 4. Look into restaurant supply outlets, sometimes you can get much better pricing buying wholesale in 50 or 100 lb bags than grocery store pricing. 5. Where the majority of food businesses fail is economy of scale. If you use a weekly bake model you can reduce cost by scaling your starter to a very low amount and doubling once or twice a day. Ie you've mentioned you use 10% starter so if you have a weekly bake quota of 50kg, 100 loaves here, then you take 5kg and divide by 2^10 for 5 days of morning and evening feedings. Your starter will be crazy active, my companies commercial facility feeds the starter 4 times per day. 6. You mentioned potentially having storage problems. I would suggest looking into getting a few chest freezers, potentially used, and use an inkbird temperature regulator. Essentially it's an extension cord with a thermo probe that turns on when it reaches a pre defined temp and turns off then it reaches another temp. You can use this to turn a chest freezer into a high efficiency refrigerator and take a chest freezer and put a space heater hooked up to one to make a large proofer. 7. Try to set up your sales as a subscription with a lead time. Ie I pay for next week's bread this week so you have money in hand before you buy ingredients. Also if someone drops out you have a buffer window to replace their sale. 8. Here in the USA there are beginning to pop up companies where you can rent a commercial kitchen facility. This is mainly due to the move towards UberEATS and Postmates food delivery services. 9 Final thing remember that you are a super premium brand. For what you are doing I would probably be willing to pay 10-15 usd or 9 to 14 euro once or twice a month. Your product is going to cater to the upper 30% of society or you won't be making a profit. Also make sure your product is what people want, it may be easier to market a parbaked pizza crust/focaccia base than a loaf of bread, but that's going to be a question of your market. I suspect at scale your costs you have are probably closer to 8 euro once you factor in electricity, equipment wear etc. Please don't see me as trying to dissuade you because you absolutely can do this! Start out as a side hustle to earn some money on the side of your regular job and see if you can scale it to you being able to take part time or temp work next year or the year after!
Thank you for good ideas David. I'm in the US and want to do a small subscription service in my town, plus bake sales weekly at the pickleball courts to build the regular desire for great bread and baked goods. Starting small and plan to stay small, I'm semi-retired. Because baking is a spiritual practice for me, I plan to do every other week and have my baking days be a retreat. It shows in the end result... i rent so can't do fancy steam ovens, but if it does well I could look at renting space off hours in a commercial kitchen. I already picked a name: Lizzie Loves Baking!!
In Washington State USA, government regulations won't allow food products made for sale to be produced in the same kitchen you make yourself food. I knew someone that turned their garage into a commercial bakery. They made enough money to survive, but not what an engineer makes.
I'm in Washington state and want to start a small subscription service for friends. I'm calling it a donation though, which it is because I'm using it to fund for charities. Hope I can do that for a while off the radar.... I rent so can't repurpose a garage... Also there is this!! WHAT IS A COTTAGE FOOD PERMIT? A Cottage Food Permit allows a resident of Washington State to make food that is not potentially hazardous such as baked goods, candies, jams, jellies, preserves, fruit butters, dry spice blends, or dry tea blends in their primary residential kitchen.
I would say a fair price would be cost of everything beside shipping x 3 + shipping When I buy a baguette in France, it's approx 1e when it cost 3 times less approx to make it at home (200g of flour and electricity basically). However it would certainly not be worth it for you, especially since you can't really work on big scales with a home oven, and you pay full price for the ingredients So maybe slap on that a big novelty tax, which would still be fair I think Another thing to look at, is to only sell multiple loaves at once, to dimunish shipping cost/bread After all, it's half baked, there is no need to sell only one, as the other(s) can be kept in the freezer
Hello from Taiwan 👋 really appreciate your channel I think you could consider selling to/at premium restaurants. As for carbon footprint, you could plant hydroponic vegetables instead of trees - one less trip for you to drive to the market, and you could enjoy and benefit from the good greens 🥦
Hey there, I’m a baker at a retail bread bakery in the US and I run a small creative marketing agency. Would love to talk shop about scaling your operational efficiency to try to increase viability, as well as premium packaging/user experience.
My mother used to do pottery and would use air-popped popcorn for packing her wares for shipping. It's cheap, easy to make on demand so it doesn't take up tons of space in storage, and is fully compostable. Or if you packed it in more plastic bags, edible at the other end.
Ankarsrum! I have a Kitchenaid, but I recently purchased the Ankarsrum following another chef I follow on RUclips, and it has changed my life. It’s the jewel of my kitchen! KA has migrated to the basement. It can handle large loads of flour but still may have limited commercial use. Research it. Luv your work, as always, Cheers! 🎊🥂🇨🇦🎊
You talk about an eco friendly alternative for the plastic but you have no problem shipping bread worldwide by airplane. That plastic is peanuts compared to the foot print of shipping a very simple product that should be sold locally. (OK, now I got to point 5 and you did think of the carbon foot print of the shipping.)
I would try to leverage an existing bakery in a collaboration. They have all of the necessary equipment (commercial mixers and ovens), commercial supply chain ( cheaper ingredients) and an existing customer base. You bring to them the knowledge, concept and the promise of an expanded (online) customer base and increased revenue from their existing customer base. Retail customers help reduce the carbon footprint (no delivery) and potentially reduced packaging, help get the concept off the ground quickly and help promote the concept by word of mouth. Online customers could collect in person or require delivery. Both could order other bakery items in addition to sourdough (from a limited, shelf stable selection for delivery customers).
he could ask a local bakery about renting their space in their down time... If it is like the bakery around here, they usually bake early morning before the sun rises... Maybe they would then rent the oven and equipment for the afternoon or evening... Would be nice to bake all night and the oven is warmed up ready to go when the baker arrives to get to work at 3 am
Like your idea! Had thought about a simular thing with pizza. Bake it not completly to the end and then put in the freezer. Everyone can bake it perfect in the home oven. Did also calculate and came to the ending, that the price per Pizza is too high and your win margin/ money for your working time is way to low. Will follow your way and will me interested! I have an Famag IM 5 (5KG). Like it really much, but would buy one with speed settings (the normal one has only one) and also with an tiltable head so it is easier to clean. There are also 10kg versions. Waldi has them in his shop.
Great channel and concept. I’m working on a similar idea. One of the best mixers for bread is the Electrolux Assistant it can hold up to 11lbs of dough , Ankarsrum is the name now they changed it. Also I too deal with 80% hydration but it’s very sticky and after the overnight fermentation it sticks heavily to the bannaton. Is it that I’m not folding the dough enough? I’m currently mixing dough by hand resting 30 minutes and repeating the process 4 times before final shaping. Great channel and good luck From Florida
i applaud you for going after your dream, i have been dreaming of opening a small pizza place / bakery at some point in the future. from all your questions, i honestly think you should consult and maybe even try to pick up a few shifts in local bakery if you are serious about turning some kind of profit. as you saw just by thinking on this for a short while you can come up with shortages you have in equipment, time and methodology. cooking for yourself or as a guide on youtube is not the same as cooking for customers. i wish you good luck and really hope to see this go somewhere, give me a little bit more hope for my venture years from now :) (im a software developer so not so far away from you)
If you get repeat customers, maybe you can reuse packaging? Get some really nice reusable bags. After they get the loaf they can flatten the bag and return it in an envelope? It means more packaging, more packages to send. But the mailman or courier will be out there driving around with or without your boxes and envelopes. Besides we got to keep the people at the paper box factory in work or they wont have pay. OR... just score their address in to the loaf, put a stamp on it and toss it in teh mail box.
This is so cool. I'm thinking make it by order first while you build clientele. Use recycled shredded paper instead of straw. Brown butcher paper and pretty string for wrapping...brings out the hand made quality. How about a cool paper sticker with your logo. $15 USD is not unreasonable...I think. Good luck and best wishes!!
This corn packaging material is super. In the past, this was always made of plastic in Germany, so many do not recognize it today. Currently, they are actually always made of corn, they dissolve in water. I think you also have to offer an organic bread, in germany you probably attract more people with organic. Maybe you can promote the bread in your area, for example at our Wednesday and Saturday markets. I would combine online and offline, not just one of each.
@@the_bread_code Amazing how many Dutch people are on your channel :) I am Dutch, but I live in Germany. Not to disparage you, but there are so many organic bakers and chain bakers who offer (organic) sourdough bread. With prices around €3,75 for these kind of breads (rye, spelt etc.) it will be difficult to compete. The only breads I would suggest, would be Einkorn, Emmer and Old-Spelt breads that are not (yet) found in the shops.
1. Minimum order of 2-3 loaves, so shipping costs per unit is reduced. 2. I would start with Instagram adds targeting local (Germany) audience. 3. Stiff. Let's start with less tangy flavor. It will be liked by non-sour people :) You could have it as an option of your oder: sour level [low|medium|high]. 4. I don't know of any plastic-workaround that preserves better. Just try to get cheaper plastic bags. There are some "plastic" bags that are bio-degradable. 5. You can't run away from that if you do deliveries. The point is to make those deliveries more efficient (sending batches and have someone that distribute them). 6. You need 20 more hands :D If this gets big, besides bigger equipment, you'll need someone to help you. Just buy some robots :D 7. Just mention that you sell some dummy small object (e.g. a pencil) and the bread is just a gift that comes along. You don't need a title to sell pencils :D
Great stuff! Curious to see where this is headed! On nr. 8 (quality) I'd propose a test bread, or multiple at different temperatures, to see how long it takes before mold starts to form. Also; I was wondering at what temperature would you propose the final bake? 230 degrees, no steam and preheated oven? I will try to replicate and share any learnings.
reconsider your shipping model, you will be spending all your time packing your boxes. the carbon footprint is too high as well. scaling up... is there a way you can rent time in an underused restaurant or commercial kitchen? make big batches, freeze, and sell to your local grocery? not sure how to get around the plastic packaging...
Maybe you could work out a deal with a local grocery store chain and have drop off points. We have stores in the States that highlight local businesses. Or you could do local drop off points announced on social media, we had some local guys do this and it was fairly successful...can turn out to be a social event. Or you could do farmer markets... Being a horse owner I like the idea of hay but ya know bugs... a moot point if you are doing the above mentioned. Could barter at a farmers market, give me some of your honey or butter in return for selling my product.
Waxed Paper or Parchment Paper to wrap the bread. Good quality loaves like that sell for ~ $8 USD in my area but thats probably way too low in Germany.
Err Why contaminate the environment with shipping. Set up a stand up at a local farmer market and with your social media presence go to other nearby local cities and distribute your product straight to the consumer. Keep it simple, make one type of bread with one type of starter that is the best value and once you get more customers you can provide more options later between starters and their quality.
I think your par-baked bread business is a great idea, and will probably become wildly successful over time. But if you want to make this venture replace your Engineer salary, you'll have to scale up to a quite large amount of bread making per day. You may end up needing to hire at least one person, which means you have to bake even more bread to also cover their salary. With all the bread you'd be making, you'll need a lot of larger equipment than you have now, such as mixers and ovens. You'll also need a quite large amount of storage, including a lot of refrigerated space. I think that unless you'll be happy to quickly scale up to a huge amount of bread baking daily and the up-front costs of doing so, you may want to consider keeping your Engineer job for a while, so you could afford to scale up your bread business more gradually. Of course, the higher your price is, the less bread you have to make to cover your salary. But higher prices also make it harder to sell your bread, so there must be a balance. You need enough buyers to sell the bread to.
@@the_bread_code But not all breads are equal. Consider price elasticity. For a simple bread the price has a much larger elasticity, so you don't want to go there. I have a decent job and a decent salary. If an artisan bread costs £4 or £5 is not a deal breaker, it's up to the quality and experience. So, IMHO that's exactly the niche you'd be interested in.
So many other sourdough bakers mention that you should not add the starter together with the salt, but wait between both steps. You add them together. Did i not understand this right. Thanks for your comment.
Here are my ideas! I Live in New Jersey and would love to try both of your breads! I was wondering can you par bake, then freeze the bread, then ship? of freeze it before baking, then ship??? But I think that you should just open up your on gourmet bakery!!! The bread would make a great to send as gifts also!!!
A couple comments 1. Have you considered some kind of bike transportation to lower the carbon footprint? This would limit your range to the local city/region but maybe you could work something out with grubhub or doordash bicycle deliveries for nearby customers. You also wouldn't need to worry about as much packaging this way since you could probably skip the box entirely. 2. Regarding the use of plastic bags, maybe you should do some tests to see how long you can leave loaves uncovered to see how the results change. If the delivery happens same day as baking, it may be possible to just use paper bags since it's a short window of time. Also, another possible test - maybe the customers can spray the loaf with some water before baking? Or do something on their end to "rehydrate" the loaf. This way you can use more breathable packaging like paper
Great channel ! Been watching your channel a lot during the pandemic .. And also been baking it for my own cafe in Bali! - keeping it eco friendly use a tight paper bag .. Don't think it will change a lot if it is a one day delivery service. - use an Instagram account to be your shop front, no need for an online program. - start with local deliveries - target cafes and restaurants in your area who would like to finish it of in their own oven so they fill their cafe with your lovely fresh baked bread smell.. Maybe for them also offer customized stencils with their own logo. - Find out what's your local delivery service app .. Like lieferando or ubereats if it's available in your area.. So you don't pay for shipping 📦 Hope this helps 😉
Great questions! I am struggling with some of the same questions. At the moment I’m making 1kg batches of dough and dividing it in to three loaves. I’m doing the mixing and kneading by hand. But I have to find some place else to bake besides my friends space if I want to sell it. My home is rented and doesn’t conform to code. I’d really like to be able to bake 9 loaves at a time believing scale of production maybe the key to profit. Currently I’m selling 9 loaves and ten croissants at a farmers market. I am making a little profit. Freshly milled whole grain loaves for 13 dollars and individual croissants from freshly milled and bolted flour for 5 dollars. I’m trying to use mostly ancient and heirloom grains for the nutritional benefits. So the prices seem low but at least I’m selling and people come back for more! The Germans and English make some wonderful bread making equipment. I’d like both a ankursrum mixer and a large capacity mixer. But that is a lot of home made bread away from now. Please keep us posted on your progress for it is also very educational.
People have demonstrated that they will pay a premium price for an exceptional product. For example, mass market beer costs less than 1dollar US while crafter brewers charge $5 each and customers are happy to pay it. Same is true for coffee in the US. People will not only pay twice the price for a cup of Starbucks coffee, but they will wait in line to get it. Your project is not a mass market item, rather this is going to appeal to bread foodies who are thought leaders. They want to show it off to their friends and families. Don't set the price based on cost plus, set the price based on the value of being able to receive an artisan loaf and finish baking it at home. How much is the value of the aroma when the loaf is baking in the customers home? Also, if you only have one bread for sale, the consumer's choice is "do I buy or not?" in which you lose a sale 50% of the time. Make a few offerings so that the choice becomes " which one do I want ?" which will increase the number of customers that you will win. Also keep in mind the customer who wants to give this as a gift. And brand it big time. If your idea works, mass marketers will jump in quickly. Set the value proposition on this level of quality can only come from "Guten Tag by Breadcode" or however you decide to brand it. Good luck bug guy. ( PS - I am bringing a par baked loaf to a friend today thanks to your great concept.)
Agreed. The loaf price should be the same as buying a cooked artisan loaf from a bakery or farmer's market. The shipping cost is the price you pay for freshly cooked bread smell and bread so fresh that it's still warm as you're buttering the first slices. There's loads of value there!
Tja der Meisterzwang ist ein Thema für sich. Die Handwerkskammern sind bei Bönhasen recht krüsch. Selbst wenn Dein Brot besser ist als das Beste eines Bäckermeisters werden sie Dir ans Bein pinkeln wollen. Und die Versand- Verpackungskosten sind natürlich kein kleiner Faktor…
Good luck on your venture…I have never wanted to take my food endeavors commercially because I am afraid it would take the fun….and my opportunity cost is too high. Regulatory issues are very important…and don’t forget an accountant and tax person…I am guessing tax rules are also complicated…but probably not an issue at the beginning
1) Pricing - 10E to 12E for a custom baked loaf seems reasonable 69,420 - You need to earn more!! < agreed 2) Point of Sale - this is not super hard. You should get a lot of word of mouth. There are many online POS systems that are cheap or nearly free which could track all your income and expenses easily. 3) Can you mill your own flour? Would that help bring down your costs and allow for higher quality grain? And I'm a fan of options! The more the merrier! 4) Packaging: I like the idea of environmentally friendly. If you are looking for custom packaging your expenses are going to certainly go up!!! 5) Carbon Footprint? I suspect unless you are baking 1000's of loaves and sending 1000's out each day your impact will be zero in comparison with the rest of the world and the transport will be happening with or without your lightweight loaf. 6) If you find a good solution here, please share. Which actually leads me to an idea.... What if you partnered with other bakers (you would need to verify them) in other parts of the world and you work together to fill orders that are closest to each of you? So for example, if you are in Koeln, and you had people in Berlin, Leipzig, Muenchen und Hannover, loaves could be shipped from the closest point. This would also help with scaling as it would diversify the work load. I could help in SoCal if you felt my bread was good enough!! < ( I shipped my first loaf last Saturday. It was both a success and failure. My par bake was a little short and there was raw dough in the middle... boooo!!!) I suspect starting small and buying tools as you make some profit is the wisest financial way to scale. Also, when it's time if there's a used market, that could be a great place to start. 7) REGULATION - yuck - bake first ask questions later? Once you start down this road you are headed toward the world of law and lawyers are VERY expensive, unless they'll work for sourdough loaves...? 8) Quality - while I have never had one of "your" loaves, I have been using your recipe as my base for sourdough and I, along with many of my friends and family love it!! The Quality is there!! Good luck with this!! RustyHB (on insta)
It doesn't look economically viable to me. You might consider opening a series of franchise bakeries in large cities people can pick up the bread themselves. Packaging and shipping is the killer here. You need to get a packaging engineer to help out.
Hi Hendrik, great concept that I will think about, would be great to implement in a country with no bread tradition like here in Thailand. Question will be with the much higher temperature and humidity if it's really feasible. What is your estimated maximum shelf life now without refrigeration? Agree with other posters at 4.39 euro your shipping costs is an issue but I am pretty sure that can be overcome.
Good point. I don't think the humidity would be a problem as it's close to 100% in the plastic bag. But higher temperatures would accelarate the molding process. Thanks 🙏🏻
What happens, when you have to send many parcels, certain companies give you good discount. The more you send, the less the price per batch. In the beginning shipping will be higher, later on good for profit. There are thousand of companies that make profit and all of them ship. :) Also , people can order pack of 2 breads. Certainly 1 parcel’s always cheaper than 2.
I have learned something valuable from your par-baking. The usual mixture I make is for two loaves, but I can’t eat them fast enough before the second gets moldy. So, I could bake the first loaf and parbake the second. I could hold it in the zip bag until I finish the first loaf and then bake it! It’s a clever way to extend the life. Just give us baking instructions for the final stage of the parbaked bread. Many thanks for this lesson!!
I don’t think you can make enough money to cover your expenses plus something for your work unless you have a big volume of sales, which would require such a large output you’d need commercial (expensive) equipment and a grueling baking schedule. Have you considered selling fewer, custom breads that are personalized, such as bread with the recipient’s monogram, or with themes like Christmas and Valentine’s Day? In general, I would start small and aim to cover your expenses, and not quit your day job yet.
the electricity will cost more IMO, we are in Germany with currently 35ish Euro-Cent per kWh ;) at least my oven uses up to 3kw per hour (or is rated/capable of) so my guess is with pre-heating for this not finished bread about an hour. At least 45 Euro Cent but more likely 60+. It is to expensive and time consuming IMO, a nice idea but you would need to be more efficient/effective with it... shipping... maybe a local thing? in combination with those unverpackt shops...
I know you posted this a long time ago, but I thought I'd answer in case it would help anyone else. We did something very similar as a business at the end of 2020, which lasted about 1 year (we had to shutter business because of family needs). Key points to think of: master batching is a critical skill for you to master; remember that there are skilled people who specialize in the regulations, taxes, and such that you are dealing with who are happy to work with and for you (including bookkeepers...seriously worth it!!); find someone there in Germany who does something similar with business to ask if they will mentor you. These are just 3 steps of many possible, but really will help.
The shipping, alone, will make this venture impossible. I don't know what a loaf would cost at a local bakery, but surely a shipped loaf would not be competitive; even if you made no profit. I like the idea, but it would only be a viable business if the shipping cost could be halved.
Cost would be fine 8,99 I think.. Which would be bad I guess, you wouldn't make money out of it. Shipping and baking would have to be mass-produced.. Or at least 10 breads at once. The bread parcels would have to be gotten from your door by the postal service to save time.. You can pre-print those shipping stickers/labels..and get a discount from your postal service if you ship alot. Selling price must stay under 9 euro for sure... Ordering multiple loaves can reduce shipping price.. A good sell-point.. You can bake it any time. You can do one bread with 9 euro. And one deluxe bread with better flour, more time to develop, or something special.... But a basic bread must stay under 10 euro, shipping included..
Perhaps similar to Barry's idea, you could have a limited number of slots per day/week/month. If your fridge can hold 5 loaves and you were able to upgrade your mixer(s) and all else to accommodate actually making 5 per day, then you could let people buy slots (each slot being for 1 loaf of bread) for what day they want their bread delivered. If you finish one day's loaves in the afternoon and mail them out, the evening can be used to prep next days and so on. It'd have to be a tight operation to fill every day with 5 loaves guaranteed, so, for example, just promising that bread would be delivered within the week would give more margin for error (like unforseen temperature shifts that ruin the loaf) and may make shipping easier to manage as farther delivery locations can be prioritized for sending out earlier in the week. This is sort of assuming you plan on selling just one "signature" loaf, and, if the bread really is worth all the effort, it could be considered a premium, "artisanal" product that is only in limited supply, and you rely on the demand always being high enough to sell however many slots needed to cover costs. Idk if that is the type of business you want to run. If people wanted specifics maybe you could have video call and discuss what they're looking for and how you can accommodate making and mailing it for a particular delivery day. I liked Barry's idea of joining with other bakers to make at least a "standard" recipe to help get around shipping roadblocks.
A great video today and I have some points to make. I also use 400gFl {12.7% King Arthur bread fl} and 300gWtr with 97gStarter and Salt. I have developed a hybrid Starter that solves the problem of stiff vs liquid. This same hybrid uses dry Yeast and wild Yeast in my Starter. It is made by adding 35gm of mature wild 100% Starter to 45gm of Water, 15gm Flour, plus 2 gm of dry Instart yeast. (About 97 gm total mixed starter) This combo rises 3x to 4x in 2 hours. It is then added to the 400gF and 300gW and mixed. 1hr later the salt is added. From there it is the usual s&f and coils hourly. At 4 hours it is shaped and refrig. in banneton. Anywhere from 16hrs to 20hrs later, it is baked from the refrig as usual. I developed the combo Starter because I like the taste of dry yeast and wet wild yeast together. Also the added dry yeast makes rising and proofing times more predictable. It also guarantees a high oven spring(4.5"), a tasty cross between sourdough and yeast breads, etc. I ran several experiments and determined that 1 gm of dry yeast = 25 gm of wild mature s/d yeast. In my recipie, 2 gm of Dry yeast = 50gm of Sourdough starter. When added to the basic 35gm of S/d starter, you have the equivalent rising power of 75gm of wild yeast. My 80 yr old Italian Bakery where I shop, makes all kinds of sourdough and other breads. Their speciality is an extra sour dough loaf than weighs about 1.5# when baked. They sell it for $4.95 each (abt .8 ¢ per gram) In terms of a suggested price for your loafs, I would suggest 1¢ per gram of baked weight, which is a little more than my Bakery charges, but it should be profitable to you as a starting point. For shipping costs, I would make a deal with the shipper and get a quantity rate which you then pass on to the buyer as part of the total cost of the shipped loaf. Ok this is my suggestion that you asked for. Holler if you have any questions. benalu
Good on you for this ambitious project. I wouldn't have the confidence that it would succeed in Canada (where I live). Shipping costs alone, I believe, would be cost prohibitive. Local delivery could be an option. However, bakeries are few and far between in my city (Ottawa) which leads me to believe that the demand for fresh-baked goods is very low. People seem content with supermarket baked-good offerings here, where sourdough selections are admittedly poor. I'll follow your progress with great interest and I genuinely hope it succeeds! Cheers!
In my opinion, the idea of first going to local markets is the best - get your feedback directly from your buyers, get their opinion on pricing, offer some tasting and so on... Get broad feedback on your idea. This might also result in thoughts about pricing. As for pricing - I do my own bread for about a year now, and in an "emergency" we resorted to quite expensive "bio" bakery bread, which was a huge disappointment. So this really needs to be well elaborated and researched, where again the local market can help. In my opinion, about €5,- for a 800g bread is by far not the upper boundary :-) There's a comment below about getting sourdough bread at the super market for 1,50 - I disagree with that. Rye sourdough is much easier, I've never seen good Wheat sourdough bread anywhere. And the flour alone for a good bread will cost more than this 1,50... And I greatly agree to the comments by Walter de Brujin and Charles Bruggmann 👍
I have a KitchenAid 5qt Plus; which is great. I use it for mixing (pre-autolyse), and a little light kneading while mixing in salt. I only do 2 loafs at a time, but it can likely handle 4 loafs without any trouble. Might want to go with the 6qt or 7qt if you want to do more than 4 loafs at once. Definitely go with something that has metal internal parts.
I have the kitchenaid 7qt professional DC motor and it can handle 3 loaves, more than that the engine struggles and the dough gets all over the top of the hook and its a mess.
Think I missed something and I'm not sure where to look, but why the need for different flours for stiff vs liquid starter :)? Love the par-baked idea! May consider doing this for my own 2nd+ loaves since I make at least 2 at a time to save dough time during the week!
I think you will figure this out some how. As many others say here, you need to reduce costs as much as possible without loosing your vision. In the spirit of open source and community, maybe you can make som local partnerships? Collaborate with other local food artists for use of equipment, production space, joint raw ingredients purchasing or shipping? If you find someone close to you with the same vision but another type of food product you can perhaps do food boxes with more than one product. Bread and jam for instance. Try to find those kind of people in your community, so you can build each other up. I think your key to success lies in the open source philosophy. I look forward to following your journey. Good luck.
There's fungal mycelium packaging avaliable, the mycelium is grown on straw or other cellulose-type base in desired-shape moulds, then is killed in a hot oven. The packaging is a bit like Styrofoam. You will need large stand mixers and ovens.
What a great idea, I'd love to receive bread in my mail. Maybe make it a "subscription thing"? I mean, I would love to have a new loaf delivered every Friday and bake it on Saturday mornings. If you have a very good, high quality product it's the only way to make it work, I'm assuming your bread is really good (send loaves to confirm, how much shipping can cost to Argentina? haha) and you'll be surprised how much people are willing to pay for quality products. Probably you will have to stick to plastic, at least for a while. I can't think of an alternative that doesn't increase your product to astronomical prices. maybe vacuum seal instead of zip lock? Instead of shipping maybe you can "associate" with a small shop (coffe store for example) and deliver weekly certain amount of bread so people can purchase it there, no shipping cost.
The easiest way to scale and spread your business is by cooperation preferably with a working wind or water mill milling organic ancient grains , a master bakery preferably with wood-fired oven, and a logistics and delivery network like Picnic. You can offer par baked or premeasured mixes with Bread Pitt in wet form like Seitenbacher or freeze dried to awaken by the customer. Your personal contribution would then be the Bread Pitt culture and the Gluten Tag branding and, of course, the selection of manufacturing and distribution partners.
As a fan,i would spend even 8 euros for a loaf to support YOU, but, really, a regular customer would spend 8 euro for a loaf of bread that have to be baked at home? Keeping in mind that in my local bakery I can buy for less than 1.50€ a freshly baked sourdough loaf, probably, a regular customer will just not buy it. The real issue here is the shipping price. In the real world you can just sell bread made with solid and liquid starter, but, if only a few fan would buy it to support you, i don't think you can made a buisness out of it.
I'm really intrigued . New Baker here and have been following both you and fullproofbaking. The method of incorporating the starter is so different. Put them all in at once while fpb mixes the flour with water ahead of time before adding the levain. I'm really intrigued to find out why is there a difference
About the zip lock issue, have in mind that it is a problem only if people throw it directly. If it is used many times(and it really can), then, the ecological cost is reduced. So, add a sticker "please use me again" on the bag, or ask regular customers to send them back by 10 or so.
There may be health regulations about selling something in reused packaging, I know here, I would not be able to sell wine or jelly in reused bottles, only new.
@@bunhelsingslegacy3549 Surprising as it is exactly what Coca-Cola does with its bottles (nowadays only for the professionals). However, you implicitly point the fact it would be necessary to wash + microwave it, what may be boring and/or reduce its life time.
@@fr33z00 I wasn't even sure if Big Beer was still allowed to reuse bottles, and I have not seen a non-new glass Coke bottle in years, not since they stopped selling the 750 ml glass bottles when I was a kid. I know in the wine/mead industry here in Canada and most of the States, you are required to use new bottles for packaging for consumers, and I just looked up the provincial regulations for packaging honey and it states "Consumer containers of honey shall not have been previously used and shall be securely closed. O. Reg. 119/11, s. 17 (3)." So you can reuse your bulk containers so long as they're clean, but the containers you sell product in must be unused. Perhaps big companies are able to get exceptions, but I think for the small fish, the only way to get around this is selling product directly to the consumer where they bring their own container, I have in the past purchased honey in bulk in my own containers and the local bulk food chain was encouraging customers to bring their own containers, although I think that's all gone to hiell since the plague...
I think there is no need to start with two starter options. I think most customers wouldn‘t really know what to chose anyway. Maybe make a choice now, and later, you could add more options.
I live in munich and bake my own sourdough bread as well. More than Happy to give you any Kind of Feedback you seek for in one of your next loafs. Also Happy to do so via a Call and discuss solutions for the Problems you mentioned.
My local Costco sells sourdough bread that is par baked. It comes in a vacuum sealed bag. It lasts for months. I would like to send bread to friends in the US. It may take 3 days shipping. The cost is a lot higher to ship than it would be buying in the store.
Wowww woww wowwww Your idea Finally coming to life ♥️ My thoughts on Packaging . Keep it simple with bread wrapped in a good quality butter paper , zip locked in a brown box and maybe a stamp with your YT channel name There has to be a note mentioning what steps to do with the bread once recvd and how to serve it There could be a QR code to put in their feedback and maybe a discount coupon for the next order (wink) It's a WIP and sooo excited to see this develop this far.... Cheers
Here in Australian at a bakery we would pay around $9 a loaf now if it’s going to be organic it could be even more, make your own bread bag so customers keep it in there to keep it fresh, it can have your logo on it
I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to sell it on a big scale, part of the beauty of baking sourdough for friends or family is that you did it by hand. But if you would like to do it anyway. The package and carbon footprint would be solved, If it was delivered by bike courier locally. I am a great fan of good bread and I wouldn't buy it if it was sold in the way you are thinking of. I think you brought a good bread to a lot of homes anyway just sharing your knowledge and passion :)
Run it like a community garden. People need to buy in for 1, 2. or more loaves per week for a whole season. Get other like minded home bakers to join in co-op with you. Purely democratic in nature, and equal partners. One time per week you all brainstorm via zoom meeting, and vote on what to do. Keep it reasonably local because there is just no way you can mitigate the carbon footprint.
OMG. Did you read my mind 😂. This is exactly what I have been thinking what could be the outcome of this project. A decentralized bakery run by everyone on this channel.
@@the_bread_code I think the community project idea is the most eco friendly. Probably most of us that follow you only bake 2/3 times a week, and then only a single loaf. Scaling that would be simple and advertising via local Social media channels with friends/family is a good way to start. @LilysLoaf is a good example of local delivery as she does it all on a bike, so carbon footprint is drastically reduced. Interested to see how this develops
Is there a software that we could use to build something like that?
Great project! I am working on a similar type of project (also par baked), let me share my good learnings so far:
I ran a survey under potential customers to learn about pricing and what they are looking for. It turned out that high quality, local produced products is the winner. This effect the price point and people are willing to spend more on that than expected. To keep packaging costs reasonable we work with bread boxes: you have to order multiple breads per shipment or pay for the shipment costs yourself. People seem to be fine with it. Certainly our pre-selected combi boxes bought with 1 click are the money makers.
Concerning the packaging itself we use carton boxes as well. Looked at other alternatives but these are expensive. We also looked into bags with bee wax in them, you can even throw them in the garden and they will dissolve. People loved that but it was too expensive in combination with carton. Stick with the carton boxes for now is my advice. For protecting the bread we, also from food safety regulations, we used plastic bags where we vacuum the bread in. We don't see any different solution for it now.
We recently started to experiment with a 'local delivery' format to try. In NL we now have 5 hobby bakers that produce our orders. Local runners (students that want a side job) distribute them on a bike (takes them 1-2h, so we only focus for now on dense cities like Amsterdam). There we use the bee wax packaging because we control the environment and there is no shipment damage. To reduce the costs further we allow advertisers to add a card or small advertisement along with the bread (e.g. for a news paper or amusement park or museum).
Our vision is to improve local production with local sourced ingredients further and optimise for local delivery. Alongside with pastries (earn you more then bread), also made on a sourdough basis. Our customers are spreading the word and people don't see us as a normal bakery competitor / supermarket competitor. It is perceived as a different categorie.
For a first step mixer I can recommend you to look into the Famag Grilletta IM series, we have one here up to 8 KG of dough and with 3 bowls you can produce a lot of bread and place it in a Rofco oven. Feel free to connect with me to learn more!
Hi! I am interested to find more about your experience. How can I get in touch with you?
Brilliant, you are on your way. You aren't like a regular bakery so shouldn't be viewed that way. Love the idea of students delivering bread.
I wonder if using a vacuum sealer bag would be better? Would also look more "professional". I don't know of any eco friendly packaging that's air tight though.
Great idea 👍. I am just a little worried it might crush the bread a bit?
@@the_bread_code you should be able to stop it before it crushes and then push the seal button? Might take some experimenting. It might not crush it but if it does I think that is doable.
@@the_bread_code what if you don't make Bread the centerpiece, but the packaging of it? That way you could potentially get some coo bread container as merch and a bread on top. Not more climate friendly than a plastic bag, but I would see it more as a creative extension of your merch business. You can still sell your bread the way you intended to (par-baked) but it should become more profitable and premium, meaning you don't need to bake thousands of breads to match your salary. Grüße aus Hamburg!
- your biggest problem is the shipping cost. You need to determine how long your bread can sit on a shelf in a logistics warehouse because if it can last a few weeks in a warehouse you can use all sorts of cheap shipping options from logistics companies.
- forget the mixer. There are dough mixers in all shapes and sizes. Your real problem is the oven. It limits the amount of bread you can bake at the same time regardless of the amount of dough you have prepared. The only solution that I see is to get a tunnel oven.
-experiment with freezing the parbaked dough. Check if it has to be shipped frozen (cold chain) or it can be frozen in batches and sent through regular post unfrozen after being stored frozen at your place.
- you could structure your sales as a subscription box service to make production and shipping more predictable.
- you can buy carbon credits to reduce the co2 footprint.
- since you're selling just semi prepared bread you can probably classify yourself as a factory not a bakery. Maybe you can sell bread making kits. You'll still need some licensing but not an apprenticeship.
Great points 🙏🏻👍
Great points 🙏🏻👍
Great points. Thank you 🙏🏻
Who can explain the straw joke?
and how to cook
Ich wünsche dir Stärke beim Kampf mit unsereren bescheuerten Gesetzen.
😂 danke
open a bakery already, that is the solution to your questions :)
not that easy in germany, you need a master craftsman's diploma to open your own store… 2-3 years apprenticeship first
Going to Germany just to get you're bread!
Hi, its my first comment on RUclips. I think you have a great idea to start with. However, from a pricing and a CO2 perspective, there should be an alternative. Lets start with Costs: shipping one or two bread is a nice idea for a customer who really enjoys bread your work in general (needs to be a bread neard). To make it work you would charge at least 10€ per bread i guess. This can work out with selected "special" customers.
But... getting rid of the 5€ packaging would make your idea more promising and is (maybe) relevant if you want to scale up i think.
So an now to my idea. You and your Community team up with local coffee shops. Coffee shops would get quality bread to serve (they just need to heat up) and/or can sell it to the customer. But most importantly they offer storage capacity. The "bread code" would be a platform that connects breat Enthusiasts with local coffee shops. A customer can buy a bread on the platform and either get it delivered (your idea if i got it right - and maybe the more expansive option) or buy it from the local coffee shop. You and the other bread maker would only need to deliver to local stores, coffee shops and so on.. the coffee shop would get a share for each bread and the platform which enabled the purchase. In the end it would be less expensive compared to the 5€ shipping and as a result the bread could be cheaper and your idea could grow along with the "bread code community". And at the same time you would reduce the co2 footprint of the bread as shipping distances get shorter.
What do you think of that?
I know you love baking bread. I do too. I think that keeping it as a hobby, will keep it fun. Make as many as you’re comfortable making for now. Growing into a production bakery would add heaps of stress. Not to mention government restrictions, rules and requirements -always expensive.
The day it stops being a love, rethink it. If it just gets more fun, the busier you are, make it a money-making career.
Very wise. That's what I am scared off.
I am also a software engineer who works in finance. I, and several colleagues make sausages, we brine, cure, ferment, grow stuff, bake and cook. It must be a counter reaction to our virtual and sedentary profession.
@@the_bread_code take it a step at a time. I started a small business that took off and it was hard to keep things under control. I did well but it was exhausting and if I had it to do over again, I would have decided how much to say yes to and how I wanted it to fit in my life instead of running my life for 25 years!!
2 quickies
1. I doubt you will make a decent return unless you charge around €10 per loaf. So premium price for premium product. Look into (local) bio flour. Remember that unit price falls if can buy more - a local miller sells 25kg bags.
2. Looking for equipment, There are specialists selling wonderful kit - but can be very expensive. Try the second hand market for mixers and oven.
3. The first step to building a customer base might be a local ‘farmer’s market’ - instant customer feedback.
Veil Glück from 🇨🇭
Delicious as the bread may be, I can’t see many people paying that much even for a premium loaf. We have a couple of Artisan vegetarian shops that sell home made loaves and they are around £3-3.50.
Maybe you shouldn't ship at all. Here in California, Farmers Markets are quite common. Of course , that may bring up other problems: Baking multiple loaves for a single day event and hoping you sell them all. I know, in the past, I have paid as much as $8 for a loaf of bread a such places. It's probably more now. I wish you the best of luck!
I would happily be your first international customer to Australia. Let me know I would happily cover the cost ☺️
Good luck in your new venture!!!! Love your branding on the bread. Get yourself a rubber stamp made of your logo and some nice sealable brown bakery bags. Stamp each by hand. It'll look awesome. Also maybe stamp the brown box. The box looks great! Good luck!!!!!!
Thanks for the update, I've been thinking about your business. I have a goal of starting a home bakery as well, except I want to advertise in my local area and make deliveries myself. I live in the US and get my flour in bulk from a restaurant supply store, also intend to get a commercial mixer from there as well. You may consider getting a small steam injected bread oven so you can bake at least several breads at a time:)
Wow I love this!! I really REALLY appreciate that you’re thinking about the carbon footprint. I’d love to do something like this locally or just for my friends that aren’t super close to where I live, I’m super excited for updates!!
Thanks 🙏🏻
I think this is really awesome and sincerely hope you are able to do this! I live in the United States and there is some rather significant regulations regarding food here to. I also happen to work for a bakery cafe chain that specializes in sourdough bread that is baked fresh in cafe, I work the IT side not the production side but I have a few tips from the times I've toured the dough facilities.
1. While plastic isn't great it probably is your best option. Our facilities mix the bread and then stored them on a pressed fiber/paper tray and the recipe has to account for the moisture absorption. I suspect the same for your par baked but less so. My best suggestion would be something like a wax coated baking paper that you seal on 4 sides and the wax will prevent water absorption.
2. In terms of and your time efficiency shipping is probably not your best option. Here in the USA we have a number of community supported agriculture (CSA) programs where individuals pay a monthly subscription fee and receive a box of veggies once or twice a month. Usually the CSA will establish centralized drop point and time at either a subscribers house(who usually gets a discount) or a public parking lot. You drive up in a half hour to hour window get your food and go. The advantage to having a subscriber as the drop point is they can often oversee the delivery so you drop the stuff and they'll handle the personal interaction of handing out the food. Another advantage to this model is you can reuse packaging and can deliver loaves of bread in a hard plastic or metal case. Usually the subscribers will pay a deposit that is refunded when they return the packaging or they can just exchange it for a new package with bread in it. Ie we pay a 1 USD deposit on a half gallon mason jar for a local dairy where we get fresh milk weekly.
3. Look into the different types of vendor licenses you can get. Ie here in the USA it's usually easier to get a food truck style vendors license than as a restaurant or food product producer.
4. Look into restaurant supply outlets, sometimes you can get much better pricing buying wholesale in 50 or 100 lb bags than grocery store pricing.
5. Where the majority of food businesses fail is economy of scale. If you use a weekly bake model you can reduce cost by scaling your starter to a very low amount and doubling once or twice a day. Ie you've mentioned you use 10% starter so if you have a weekly bake quota of 50kg, 100 loaves here, then you take 5kg and divide by 2^10 for 5 days of morning and evening feedings. Your starter will be crazy active, my companies commercial facility feeds the starter 4 times per day.
6. You mentioned potentially having storage problems. I would suggest looking into getting a few chest freezers, potentially used, and use an inkbird temperature regulator. Essentially it's an extension cord with a thermo probe that turns on when it reaches a pre defined temp and turns off then it reaches another temp. You can use this to turn a chest freezer into a high efficiency refrigerator and take a chest freezer and put a space heater hooked up to one to make a large proofer.
7. Try to set up your sales as a subscription with a lead time. Ie I pay for next week's bread this week so you have money in hand before you buy ingredients. Also if someone drops out you have a buffer window to replace their sale.
8. Here in the USA there are beginning to pop up companies where you can rent a commercial kitchen facility. This is mainly due to the move towards UberEATS and Postmates food delivery services.
9 Final thing remember that you are a super premium brand. For what you are doing I would probably be willing to pay 10-15 usd or 9 to 14 euro once or twice a month. Your product is going to cater to the upper 30% of society or you won't be making a profit. Also make sure your product is what people want, it may be easier to market a parbaked pizza crust/focaccia base than a loaf of bread, but that's going to be a question of your market. I suspect at scale your costs you have are probably closer to 8 euro once you factor in electricity, equipment wear etc.
Please don't see me as trying to dissuade you because you absolutely can do this! Start out as a side hustle to earn some money on the side of your regular job and see if you can scale it to you being able to take part time or temp work next year or the year after!
Thank you for good ideas David. I'm in the US and want to do a small subscription service in my town, plus bake sales weekly at the pickleball courts to build the regular desire for great bread and baked goods. Starting small and plan to stay small, I'm semi-retired. Because baking is a spiritual practice for me, I plan to do every other week and have my baking days be a retreat. It shows in the end result...
i rent so can't do fancy steam ovens, but if it does well I could look at renting space off hours in a commercial kitchen.
I already picked a name: Lizzie Loves Baking!!
In Washington State USA, government regulations won't allow food products made for sale to be produced in the same kitchen you make yourself food. I knew someone that turned their garage into a commercial bakery. They made enough money to survive, but not what an engineer makes.
I'm in Washington state and want to start a small subscription service for friends. I'm calling it a donation though, which it is because I'm using it to fund for charities. Hope I can do that for a while off the radar.... I rent so can't repurpose a garage... Also there is this!!
WHAT IS A COTTAGE FOOD PERMIT?
A Cottage Food Permit allows a resident of Washington State to make food that is not potentially hazardous such as baked goods, candies, jams, jellies, preserves, fruit butters, dry spice blends, or dry tea blends in their primary residential kitchen.
@@elizabethheyenga9277 the cottage food permit sounds interesting! It sounds perfect for the scale you are planning
I would say a fair price would be cost of everything beside shipping x 3 + shipping
When I buy a baguette in France, it's approx 1e when it cost 3 times less approx to make it at home (200g of flour and electricity basically).
However it would certainly not be worth it for you, especially since you can't really work on big scales with a home oven, and you pay full price for the ingredients
So maybe slap on that a big novelty tax, which would still be fair I think
Another thing to look at, is to only sell multiple loaves at once, to dimunish shipping cost/bread
After all, it's half baked, there is no need to sell only one, as the other(s) can be kept in the freezer
I wish I lived closer to you, I don't doubt at all that every loaf you make is filled with love 💕
Thanks Alexis 🤗
Hello from Taiwan 👋 really appreciate your channel
I think you could consider selling to/at premium restaurants. As for carbon footprint, you could plant hydroponic vegetables instead of trees - one less trip for you to drive to the market, and you could enjoy and benefit from the good greens 🥦
Great idea 🙏🏻👍
Hey there, I’m a baker at a retail bread bakery in the US and I run a small creative marketing agency. Would love to talk shop about scaling your operational efficiency to try to increase viability, as well as premium packaging/user experience.
My mother used to do pottery and would use air-popped popcorn for packing her wares for shipping. It's cheap, easy to make on demand so it doesn't take up tons of space in storage, and is fully compostable. Or if you packed it in more plastic bags, edible at the other end.
Ankarsrum! I have a Kitchenaid, but I recently purchased the Ankarsrum following another chef I follow on RUclips, and it has changed my life. It’s the jewel of my kitchen! KA has migrated to the basement. It can handle large loads of flour but still may have limited commercial use. Research it. Luv your work, as always, Cheers! 🎊🥂🇨🇦🎊
You talk about an eco friendly alternative for the plastic but you have no problem shipping bread worldwide by airplane. That plastic is peanuts compared to the foot print of shipping a very simple product that should be sold locally.
(OK, now I got to point 5 and you did think of the carbon foot print of the shipping.)
Yep. Agreed. It would need to be compensated. But that would drive the price.
I would try to leverage an existing bakery in a collaboration.
They have all of the necessary equipment (commercial mixers and ovens), commercial supply chain ( cheaper ingredients) and an existing customer base.
You bring to them the knowledge, concept and the promise of an expanded (online) customer base and increased revenue from their existing customer base.
Retail customers help reduce the carbon footprint (no delivery) and potentially reduced packaging, help get the concept off the ground quickly and help promote the concept by word of mouth.
Online customers could collect in person or require delivery. Both could order other bakery items in addition to sourdough (from a limited, shelf stable selection for delivery customers).
he could ask a local bakery about renting their space in their down time... If it is like the bakery around here, they usually bake early morning before the sun rises... Maybe they would then rent the oven and equipment for the afternoon or evening... Would be nice to bake all night and the oven is warmed up ready to go when the baker arrives to get to work at 3 am
Great idea yep 🙏🏻. I'll see if I can find somebody 🤗
What are your baking instructions for clients?
Like your idea! Had thought about a simular thing with pizza. Bake it not completly to the end and then put in the freezer. Everyone can bake it perfect in the home oven. Did also calculate and came to the ending, that the price per Pizza is too high and your win margin/ money for your working time is way to low. Will follow your way and will me interested! I have an Famag IM 5 (5KG). Like it really much, but would buy one with speed settings (the normal one has only one) and also with an tiltable head so it is easier to clean. There are also 10kg versions. Waldi has them in his shop.
Great channel and concept. I’m working on a similar idea. One of the best mixers for bread is the Electrolux Assistant it can hold up to 11lbs of dough , Ankarsrum is the name now they changed it. Also I too deal with 80% hydration but it’s very sticky and after the overnight fermentation it sticks heavily to the bannaton. Is it that I’m not folding the dough enough? I’m currently mixing dough by hand resting 30 minutes and repeating the process 4 times before final shaping. Great channel and good luck From Florida
Very likely you overfermented. I'd try to look into using a stiff starter 👍
i applaud you for going after your dream, i have been dreaming of opening a small pizza place / bakery at some point in the future.
from all your questions, i honestly think you should consult and maybe even try to pick up a few shifts in local bakery if you are serious about turning some kind of profit. as you saw just by thinking on this for a short while you can come up with shortages you have in equipment, time and methodology. cooking for yourself or as a guide on youtube is not the same as cooking for customers.
i wish you good luck and really hope to see this go somewhere, give me a little bit more hope for my venture years from now :) (im a software developer so not so far away from you)
If you get repeat customers, maybe you can reuse packaging? Get some really nice reusable bags. After they get the loaf they can flatten the bag and return it in an envelope? It means more packaging, more packages to send. But the mailman or courier will be out there driving around with or without your boxes and envelopes. Besides we got to keep the people at the paper box factory in work or they wont have pay.
OR... just score their address in to the loaf, put a stamp on it and toss it in teh mail box.
😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
This is so cool. I'm thinking make it by order first while you build clientele. Use recycled shredded paper instead of straw. Brown butcher paper and pretty string for wrapping...brings out the hand made quality. How about a cool paper sticker with your logo. $15 USD is not unreasonable...I think. Good luck and best wishes!!
This corn packaging material is super. In the past, this was always made of plastic in Germany, so many do not recognize it today. Currently, they are actually always made of corn, they dissolve in water.
I think you also have to offer an organic bread, in germany you probably attract more people with organic.
Maybe you can promote the bread in your area, for example at our Wednesday and Saturday markets. I would combine online and offline, not just one of each.
Awesome. That sounds exactly like what I need.
@@the_bread_code Amazing how many Dutch people are on your channel :) I am Dutch, but I live in Germany. Not to disparage you, but there are so many organic bakers and chain bakers who offer (organic) sourdough bread. With prices around €3,75 for these kind of breads (rye, spelt etc.) it will be difficult to compete. The only breads I would suggest, would be Einkorn, Emmer and Old-Spelt breads that are not (yet) found in the shops.
1. Minimum order of 2-3 loaves, so shipping costs per unit is reduced.
2. I would start with Instagram adds targeting local (Germany) audience.
3. Stiff. Let's start with less tangy flavor. It will be liked by non-sour people :) You could have it as an option of your oder: sour level [low|medium|high].
4. I don't know of any plastic-workaround that preserves better. Just try to get cheaper plastic bags. There are some "plastic" bags that are bio-degradable.
5. You can't run away from that if you do deliveries. The point is to make those deliveries more efficient (sending batches and have someone that distribute them).
6. You need 20 more hands :D If this gets big, besides bigger equipment, you'll need someone to help you. Just buy some robots :D
7. Just mention that you sell some dummy small object (e.g. a pencil) and the bread is just a gift that comes along. You don't need a title to sell pencils :D
Great stuff! Curious to see where this is headed! On nr. 8 (quality) I'd propose a test bread, or multiple at different temperatures, to see how long it takes before mold starts to form. Also; I was wondering at what temperature would you propose the final bake? 230 degrees, no steam and preheated oven? I will try to replicate and share any learnings.
Great idea. Thanks 🙏🏻
reconsider your shipping model, you will be spending all your time packing your boxes. the carbon footprint is too high as well. scaling up... is there a way you can rent time in an underused restaurant or commercial kitchen? make big batches, freeze, and sell to your local grocery? not sure how to get around the plastic packaging...
Maybe you could work out a deal with a local grocery store chain and have drop off points. We have stores in the States that highlight local businesses. Or you could do local drop off points announced on social media, we had some local guys do this and it was fairly successful...can turn out to be a social event. Or you could do farmer markets... Being a horse owner I like the idea of hay but ya know bugs... a moot point if you are doing the above mentioned. Could barter at a farmers market, give me some of your honey or butter in return for selling my product.
Waxed Paper or Parchment Paper to wrap the bread.
Good quality loaves like that sell for ~ $8 USD in my area but thats probably way too low in Germany.
Where I live in Canada, even locally it would be $22 plus tax to ship a box...That price is Fantastic!!!
Err Why contaminate the environment with shipping. Set up a stand up at a local farmer market and with your social media presence go to other nearby local cities and distribute your product straight to the consumer. Keep it simple, make one type of bread with one type of starter that is the best value and once you get more customers you can provide more options later between starters and their quality.
I personally don't see how this could be worth it. In Germany bread is CHEAP. Even in Canada a sourdough loaf is less than ten bucks.
I think your par-baked bread business is a great idea, and will probably become wildly successful over time. But if you want to make this venture replace your Engineer salary, you'll have to scale up to a quite large amount of bread making per day. You may end up needing to hire at least one person, which means you have to bake even more bread to also cover their salary. With all the bread you'd be making, you'll need a lot of larger equipment than you have now, such as mixers and ovens. You'll also need a quite large amount of storage, including a lot of refrigerated space. I think that unless you'll be happy to quickly scale up to a huge amount of bread baking daily and the up-front costs of doing so, you may want to consider keeping your Engineer job for a while, so you could afford to scale up your bread business more gradually. Of course, the higher your price is, the less bread you have to make to cover your salary. But higher prices also make it harder to sell your bread, so there must be a balance. You need enough buyers to sell the bread to.
100% great comment. Yep. That's mostly what I am afraid of.
@@the_bread_code But not all breads are equal. Consider price elasticity. For a simple bread the price has a much larger elasticity, so you don't want to go there. I have a decent job and a decent salary. If an artisan bread costs £4 or £5 is not a deal breaker, it's up to the quality and experience. So, IMHO that's exactly the niche you'd be interested in.
So many other sourdough bakers mention that you should not add the starter together with the salt, but wait between both steps. You add them together. Did i not understand this right. Thanks for your comment.
Here are my ideas! I Live in New Jersey and would love to try both of your breads! I was wondering can you par bake, then freeze the bread, then ship? of freeze it before baking, then ship??? But I think that you should just open up your on gourmet bakery!!! The bread would make a great to send as gifts also!!!
Your 15s are good now
😂😂😂 I really loafed your joke there 😂😂😂 great video and English 👍🏽👍🏽
A couple comments
1. Have you considered some kind of bike transportation to lower the carbon footprint? This would limit your range to the local city/region but maybe you could work something out with grubhub or doordash bicycle deliveries for nearby customers. You also wouldn't need to worry about as much packaging this way since you could probably skip the box entirely.
2. Regarding the use of plastic bags, maybe you should do some tests to see how long you can leave loaves uncovered to see how the results change. If the delivery happens same day as baking, it may be possible to just use paper bags since it's a short window of time. Also, another possible test - maybe the customers can spray the loaf with some water before baking? Or do something on their end to "rehydrate" the loaf. This way you can use more breathable packaging like paper
Great channel !
Been watching your channel a lot during the pandemic .. And also been baking it for my own cafe in Bali!
- keeping it eco friendly use a tight paper bag .. Don't think it will change a lot if it is a one day delivery service.
- use an Instagram account to be your shop front, no need for an online program.
- start with local deliveries
- target cafes and restaurants in your area who would like to finish it of in their own oven so they fill their cafe with your lovely fresh baked bread smell.. Maybe for them also offer customized stencils with their own logo.
- Find out what's your local delivery service app .. Like lieferando or ubereats if it's available in your area.. So you don't pay for shipping 📦
Hope this helps 😉
Great points. Thank you very much 🙏🏻
Great questions! I am struggling with some of the same questions. At the moment I’m making 1kg batches of dough and dividing it in to three loaves. I’m doing the mixing and kneading by hand.
But I have to find some place else to bake besides my friends space if I want to sell it. My home is rented and doesn’t conform to code. I’d really like to be able to bake 9 loaves at a time believing scale of production maybe the key to profit. Currently I’m selling 9 loaves and ten croissants at a farmers market. I am making a little profit. Freshly milled whole grain loaves for 13 dollars and individual croissants from freshly milled and bolted flour for 5 dollars.
I’m trying to use mostly ancient and heirloom grains for the nutritional benefits. So the prices seem low but at least I’m selling and people come back for more!
The Germans and English make some wonderful bread making equipment. I’d like both a ankursrum mixer and a large capacity mixer. But that is a lot of home made bread away from now.
Please keep us posted on your progress for it is also very educational.
Oh, this video is two years old. What is state of the project?
Get a famag or something equvialt, not a kitchen aid for commercial theyvare tooooooo weak
What an interesting and novel idea. Good luck and I hope you will keep viewers posted as to your progress. Viel Glück!
People have demonstrated that they will pay a premium price for an exceptional product. For example, mass market beer costs less than 1dollar US while crafter brewers charge $5 each and customers are happy to pay it. Same is true for coffee in the US. People will not only pay twice the price for a cup of Starbucks coffee, but they will wait in line to get it. Your project is not a mass market item, rather this is going to appeal to bread foodies who are thought leaders. They want to show it off to their friends and families. Don't set the price based on cost plus, set the price based on the value of being able to receive an artisan loaf and finish baking it at home. How much is the value of the aroma when the loaf is baking in the customers home? Also, if you only have one bread for sale, the consumer's choice is "do I buy or not?" in which you lose a sale 50% of the time. Make a few offerings so that the choice becomes " which one do I want ?" which will increase the number of customers that you will win. Also keep in mind the customer who wants to give this as a gift. And brand it big time. If your idea works, mass marketers will jump in quickly. Set the value proposition on this level of quality can only come from "Guten Tag by Breadcode" or however you decide to brand it. Good luck bug guy. ( PS - I am bringing a par baked loaf to a friend today thanks to your great concept.)
Agreed.
The loaf price should be the same as buying a cooked artisan loaf from a bakery or farmer's market.
The shipping cost is the price you pay for freshly cooked bread smell and bread so fresh that it's still warm as you're buttering the first slices.
There's loads of value there!
Parbaked? Best idea!!!
Love how you did the logo on the side…Very clever! Best of luck with your new bakery!
Thanks
Tja der Meisterzwang ist ein Thema für sich. Die Handwerkskammern sind bei Bönhasen recht krüsch. Selbst wenn Dein Brot besser ist als das Beste eines Bäckermeisters werden sie Dir ans Bein pinkeln wollen. Und die Versand- Verpackungskosten sind natürlich kein kleiner Faktor…
Sending bread by dhl, please read again but slowly this time
how would you finish baking a frozen par baked loaf?
Good luck on your venture…I have never wanted to take my food endeavors commercially because I am afraid it would take the fun….and my opportunity cost is too high. Regulatory issues are very important…and don’t forget an accountant and tax person…I am guessing tax rules are also complicated…but probably not an issue at the beginning
😂 yep. Both are really bad in Germany.
No experience but also engineer and happy that you are sharing this project as open source!
To have straw laying around is okay, but do not forget to have the mask as well.
And please keep the straw far away from electrical components 😎
😂 😂 😂 😂 😂
1) Pricing - 10E to 12E for a custom baked loaf seems reasonable 69,420 - You need to earn more!! < agreed
2) Point of Sale - this is not super hard. You should get a lot of word of mouth. There are many online POS systems that are cheap or nearly free which could track all your income and expenses easily.
3) Can you mill your own flour? Would that help bring down your costs and allow for higher quality grain? And I'm a fan of options! The more the merrier!
4) Packaging: I like the idea of environmentally friendly. If you are looking for custom packaging your expenses are going to certainly go up!!!
5) Carbon Footprint? I suspect unless you are baking 1000's of loaves and sending 1000's out each day your impact will be zero in comparison with the rest of the world and the transport will be happening with or without your lightweight loaf.
6) If you find a good solution here, please share. Which actually leads me to an idea.... What if you partnered with other bakers (you would need to verify them) in other parts of the world and you work together to fill orders that are closest to each of you? So for example, if you are in Koeln, and you had people in Berlin, Leipzig, Muenchen und Hannover, loaves could be shipped from the closest point. This would also help with scaling as it would diversify the work load. I could help in SoCal if you felt my bread was good enough!! < ( I shipped my first loaf last Saturday. It was both a success and failure. My par bake was a little short and there was raw dough in the middle... boooo!!!) I suspect starting small and buying tools as you make some profit is the wisest financial way to scale. Also, when it's time if there's a used market, that could be a great place to start.
7) REGULATION - yuck - bake first ask questions later? Once you start down this road you are headed toward the world of law and lawyers are VERY expensive, unless they'll work for sourdough loaves...?
8) Quality - while I have never had one of "your" loaves, I have been using your recipe as my base for sourdough and I, along with many of my friends and family love it!! The Quality is there!!
Good luck with this!! RustyHB (on insta)
It doesn't look economically viable to me. You might consider opening a series of franchise bakeries in large cities people can pick up the bread themselves. Packaging and shipping is the killer here. You need to get a packaging engineer to help out.
Good points. Packaging engineer? That sounds like exactly the kind of person I need.
I would LOVE to try your parbaked loaf, but shipment to Southern California, would probably crazy expensive.
Yep. It would. I think that wouldn't work yet 😅. But I wanted to give away a test loaf and send it to the US just for testing 🤓
Hi Hendrik, great concept that I will think about, would be great to implement in a country with no bread tradition like here in Thailand. Question will be with the much higher temperature and humidity if it's really feasible. What is your estimated maximum shelf life now without refrigeration? Agree with other posters at 4.39 euro your shipping costs is an issue but I am pretty sure that can be overcome.
Good point. I don't think the humidity would be a problem as it's close to 100% in the plastic bag. But higher temperatures would accelarate the molding process. Thanks 🙏🏻
Ziploc lock makes airtight bags that suck the air out
The shipping cost is higher than the bread cost.
That's a problem indeed
What happens, when you have to send many parcels, certain companies give you good discount. The more you send, the less the price per batch. In the beginning shipping will be higher, later on good for profit. There are thousand of companies that make profit and all of them ship. :) Also , people can order pack of 2 breads. Certainly 1 parcel’s always cheaper than 2.
I have read that the Ankarsrum dough machine is excellent... it can make a few loaves at a time without being a big bulky machine in your kitchen
Thx
I have learned something valuable from your par-baking. The usual mixture I make is for two loaves, but I can’t eat them fast enough before the second gets moldy. So, I could bake the first loaf and parbake the second. I could hold it in the zip bag until I finish the first loaf and then bake it! It’s a clever way to extend the life. Just give us baking instructions for the final stage of the parbaked bread. Many thanks for this lesson!!
Great idea. I want to make brow and serve rolls.
Drone delivery?
😂
I want know Wich flour for butter
I don’t think you can make enough money to cover your expenses plus something for your work unless you have a big volume of sales, which would require such a large output you’d need commercial (expensive) equipment and a grueling baking schedule. Have you considered selling fewer, custom breads that are personalized, such as bread with the recipient’s monogram, or with themes like Christmas and Valentine’s Day? In general, I would start small and aim to cover your expenses, and not quit your day job yet.
the electricity will cost more IMO, we are in Germany with currently 35ish Euro-Cent per kWh ;) at least my oven uses up to 3kw per hour (or is rated/capable of) so my guess is with pre-heating for this not finished bread about an hour. At least 45 Euro Cent but more likely 60+.
It is to expensive and time consuming IMO, a nice idea but you would need to be more efficient/effective with it... shipping... maybe a local thing? in combination with those unverpackt shops...
I know you posted this a long time ago, but I thought I'd answer in case it would help anyone else. We did something very similar as a business at the end of 2020, which lasted about 1 year (we had to shutter business because of family needs). Key points to think of: master batching is a critical skill for you to master; remember that there are skilled people who specialize in the regulations, taxes, and such that you are dealing with who are happy to work with and for you (including bookkeepers...seriously worth it!!); find someone there in Germany who does something similar with business to ask if they will mentor you. These are just 3 steps of many possible, but really will help.
The shipping, alone, will make this venture impossible. I don't know what a loaf would cost at a local bakery, but surely a shipped loaf would not be competitive; even if you made no profit. I like the idea, but it would only be a viable business if the shipping cost could be halved.
Cost would be fine 8,99 I think.. Which would be bad I guess, you wouldn't make money out of it.
Shipping and baking would have to be mass-produced..
Or at least 10 breads at once.
The bread parcels would have to be gotten from your door by the postal service to save time.. You can pre-print those shipping stickers/labels..and get a discount from your postal service if you ship alot.
Selling price must stay under 9 euro for sure... Ordering multiple loaves can reduce shipping price.. A good sell-point.. You can bake it any time.
You can do one bread with 9 euro. And one deluxe bread with better flour, more time to develop, or something special.... But a basic bread must stay under 10 euro, shipping included..
Perhaps similar to Barry's idea, you could have a limited number of slots per day/week/month. If your fridge can hold 5 loaves and you were able to upgrade your mixer(s) and all else to accommodate actually making 5 per day, then you could let people buy slots (each slot being for 1 loaf of bread) for what day they want their bread delivered. If you finish one day's loaves in the afternoon and mail them out, the evening can be used to prep next days and so on. It'd have to be a tight operation to fill every day with 5 loaves guaranteed, so, for example, just promising that bread would be delivered within the week would give more margin for error (like unforseen temperature shifts that ruin the loaf) and may make shipping easier to manage as farther delivery locations can be prioritized for sending out earlier in the week. This is sort of assuming you plan on selling just one "signature" loaf, and, if the bread really is worth all the effort, it could be considered a premium, "artisanal" product that is only in limited supply, and you rely on the demand always being high enough to sell however many slots needed to cover costs. Idk if that is the type of business you want to run. If people wanted specifics maybe you could have video call and discuss what they're looking for and how you can accommodate making and mailing it for a particular delivery day. I liked Barry's idea of joining with other bakers to make at least a "standard" recipe to help get around shipping roadblocks.
A great video today and I have some points to make. I also use 400gFl {12.7% King Arthur bread fl} and 300gWtr with 97gStarter and Salt. I have developed a hybrid Starter that solves the problem of stiff vs liquid. This same hybrid uses dry Yeast and wild Yeast in my Starter. It is made by adding 35gm of mature wild 100% Starter to 45gm of Water, 15gm Flour, plus 2 gm of dry Instart yeast. (About 97 gm total mixed starter) This combo rises 3x to 4x in 2 hours. It is then added to the 400gF and 300gW and mixed. 1hr later the salt is added. From there it is the usual s&f and coils hourly. At 4 hours it is shaped and refrig. in banneton. Anywhere from 16hrs to 20hrs later, it is baked from the refrig as usual. I developed the combo Starter because I like the taste of dry yeast and wet wild yeast together. Also the added dry yeast makes rising and proofing times more predictable. It also guarantees a high oven spring(4.5"), a tasty cross between sourdough and yeast breads, etc. I ran several experiments and determined that 1 gm of dry yeast = 25 gm of wild mature s/d yeast. In my recipie, 2 gm of Dry yeast = 50gm of Sourdough starter. When added to the basic 35gm of S/d starter, you have the equivalent rising power of 75gm of wild yeast. My 80 yr old Italian Bakery where I shop, makes all kinds of sourdough and other breads. Their speciality is an extra sour dough loaf than weighs about 1.5# when baked. They sell it for $4.95 each (abt .8 ¢ per gram) In terms of a suggested price for your loafs, I would suggest 1¢ per gram of baked weight, which is a little more than my Bakery charges, but it should be profitable to you as a starting point. For shipping costs, I would make a deal with the shipper and get a quantity rate which you then pass on to the buyer as part of the total cost of the shipped loaf. Ok this is my suggestion that you asked for. Holler if you have any questions. benalu
Good on you for this ambitious project. I wouldn't have the confidence that it would succeed in Canada (where I live). Shipping costs alone, I believe, would be cost prohibitive. Local delivery could be an option. However, bakeries are few and far between in my city (Ottawa) which leads me to believe that the demand for fresh-baked goods is very low. People seem content with supermarket baked-good offerings here, where sourdough selections are admittedly poor.
I'll follow your progress with great interest and I genuinely hope it succeeds! Cheers!
In my opinion, the idea of first going to local markets is the best - get your feedback directly from your buyers, get their opinion on pricing, offer some tasting and so on... Get broad feedback on your idea. This might also result in thoughts about pricing. As for pricing - I do my own bread for about a year now, and in an "emergency" we resorted to quite expensive "bio" bakery bread, which was a huge disappointment. So this really needs to be well elaborated and researched, where again the local market can help. In my opinion, about €5,- for a 800g bread is by far not the upper boundary :-)
There's a comment below about getting sourdough bread at the super market for 1,50 - I disagree with that. Rye sourdough is much easier, I've never seen good Wheat sourdough bread anywhere. And the flour alone for a good bread will cost more than this 1,50...
And I greatly agree to the comments by Walter de Brujin and Charles Bruggmann 👍
I have a KitchenAid 5qt Plus; which is great. I use it for mixing (pre-autolyse), and a little light kneading while mixing in salt. I only do 2 loafs at a time, but it can likely handle 4 loafs without any trouble. Might want to go with the 6qt or 7qt if you want to do more than 4 loafs at once. Definitely go with something that has metal internal parts.
I killed already 2 kitchen aids now have the strongest one but next time will invest in a famag they are a lot robuster
I have the kitchenaid 7qt professional DC motor and it can handle 3 loaves, more than that the engine struggles and the dough gets all over the top of the hook and its a mess.
Think I missed something and I'm not sure where to look, but why the need for different flours for stiff vs liquid starter :)?
Love the par-baked idea! May consider doing this for my own 2nd+ loaves since I make at least 2 at a time to save dough time during the week!
I think you will figure this out some how. As many others say here, you need to reduce costs as much as possible without loosing your vision. In the spirit of open source and community, maybe you can make som local partnerships? Collaborate with other local food artists for use of equipment, production space, joint raw ingredients purchasing or shipping? If you find someone close to you with the same vision but another type of food product you can perhaps do food boxes with more than one product. Bread and jam for instance. Try to find those kind of people in your community, so you can build each other up. I think your key to success lies in the open source philosophy. I look forward to following your journey. Good luck.
There's fungal mycelium packaging avaliable, the mycelium is grown on straw or other cellulose-type base in desired-shape moulds, then is killed in a hot oven. The packaging is a bit like Styrofoam.
You will need large stand mixers and ovens.
What a great idea, I'd love to receive bread in my mail. Maybe make it a "subscription thing"? I mean, I would love to have a new loaf delivered every Friday and bake it on Saturday mornings.
If you have a very good, high quality product it's the only way to make it work, I'm assuming your bread is really good (send loaves to confirm, how much shipping can cost to Argentina? haha) and you'll be surprised how much people are willing to pay for quality products.
Probably you will have to stick to plastic, at least for a while. I can't think of an alternative that doesn't increase your product to astronomical prices. maybe vacuum seal instead of zip lock?
Instead of shipping maybe you can "associate" with a small shop (coffe store for example) and deliver weekly certain amount of bread so people can purchase it there, no shipping cost.
"Please sir, may I bake some bread"
Good! Now do it a hundred times!
The easiest way to scale and spread your business is by cooperation preferably with a working wind or water mill milling organic ancient grains , a master bakery preferably with wood-fired oven, and a logistics and delivery network like Picnic. You can offer par baked or premeasured mixes with Bread Pitt in wet form like Seitenbacher or freeze dried to awaken by the customer. Your personal contribution would then be the Bread Pitt culture and the Gluten Tag branding and, of course, the selection of manufacturing and distribution partners.
As a fan,i would spend even 8 euros for a loaf to support YOU, but, really, a regular customer would spend 8 euro for a loaf of bread that have to be baked at home? Keeping in mind that in my local bakery I can buy for less than 1.50€ a freshly baked sourdough loaf, probably, a regular customer will just not buy it.
The real issue here is the shipping price. In the real world you can just sell bread made with solid and liquid starter, but, if only a few fan would buy it to support you, i don't think you can made a buisness out of it.
I'm really intrigued . New Baker here and have been following both you and fullproofbaking. The method of incorporating the starter is so different. Put them all in at once while fpb mixes the flour with water ahead of time before adding the levain. I'm really intrigued to find out why is there a difference
About the zip lock issue, have in mind that it is a problem only if people throw it directly. If it is used many times(and it really can), then, the ecological cost is reduced. So, add a sticker "please use me again" on the bag, or ask regular customers to send them back by 10 or so.
There may be health regulations about selling something in reused packaging, I know here, I would not be able to sell wine or jelly in reused bottles, only new.
@@bunhelsingslegacy3549 Surprising as it is exactly what Coca-Cola does with its bottles (nowadays only for the professionals). However, you implicitly point the fact it would be necessary to wash + microwave it, what may be boring and/or reduce its life time.
@@fr33z00 I wasn't even sure if Big Beer was still allowed to reuse bottles, and I have not seen a non-new glass Coke bottle in years, not since they stopped selling the 750 ml glass bottles when I was a kid. I know in the wine/mead industry here in Canada and most of the States, you are required to use new bottles for packaging for consumers, and I just looked up the provincial regulations for packaging honey and it states "Consumer containers of honey shall not have been previously used and shall be securely closed. O. Reg. 119/11, s. 17 (3)." So you can reuse your bulk containers so long as they're clean, but the containers you sell product in must be unused. Perhaps big companies are able to get exceptions, but I think for the small fish, the only way to get around this is selling product directly to the consumer where they bring their own container, I have in the past purchased honey in bulk in my own containers and the local bulk food chain was encouraging customers to bring their own containers, although I think that's all gone to hiell since the plague...
I think there is no need to start with two starter options. I think most customers wouldn‘t really know what to chose anyway. Maybe make a choice now, and later, you could add more options.
I live in munich and bake my own sourdough bread as well. More than Happy to give you any Kind of Feedback you seek for in one of your next loafs. Also Happy to do so via a Call and discuss solutions for the Problems you mentioned.
My local Costco sells sourdough bread that is par baked. It comes in a vacuum sealed bag. It lasts for months. I would like to send bread to friends in the US. It may take 3 days shipping. The cost is a lot higher to ship than it would be buying in the store.
Wowww woww wowwww
Your idea Finally coming to life ♥️
My thoughts on Packaging . Keep it simple with bread wrapped in a good quality butter paper , zip locked in a brown box and maybe a stamp with your YT channel name
There has to be a note mentioning what steps to do with the bread once recvd and how to serve it
There could be a QR code to put in their feedback and maybe a discount coupon for the next order (wink)
It's a WIP and sooo excited to see this develop this far....
Cheers
Here in Australian at a bakery we would pay around $9 a loaf now if it’s going to be organic it could be even more, make your own bread bag so customers keep it in there to keep it fresh, it can have your logo on it
"warum liegt hier stroh?"
Na dann back mir doch einen 🤣
I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to sell it on a big scale, part of the beauty of baking sourdough for friends or family is that you did it by hand. But if you would like to do it anyway. The package and carbon footprint would be solved, If it was delivered by bike courier locally. I am a great fan of good bread and I wouldn't buy it if it was sold in the way you are thinking of.
I think you brought a good bread to a lot of homes anyway just sharing your knowledge and passion :)
one thing about carbon footprint - why not start local with an electric bike? surely you can sell 3-5 loaves a day locally? would reduce costs as well