A cookie bakery's production runs in eight steps: scale the ingredients by weight, cream and mix the dough, chill it, portion it by weight, bake, cool, pack and code. Most of the difference between a cookie that sells for $4 and one that's a little different every time sits in two steps. Portioning by weight, with a scoop checked on a scale, keeps every cookie the same size, so it bakes the same and the per-cookie cost holds. And chilling the dough, overnight for many recipes, firms the butter so the cookies spread less and bake thicker, which also lets a small bakery mix one day and bake the next. Cooling fully before packing keeps the bags from fogging and the cookies from going soft. In the example below, a Utah cookie bakery runs its Friday mix and Saturday bake for a market and four cafés.
The short version
- Eight steps: scale, mix, chill, portion, bake, cool, pack, code.
- Scale everything by weight, from a recipe written for the batch you make.
- Chill the dough to control spread, and to split mixing from baking.
- Portion by weight, checking the scoop on a scale.
- Bake by pan, with the oven's hot spots known.
- Cool fully before packing; code and date every bag.
- TaroStack records the dough as a batch and the cookies as another, linked by lot. More below.
The eight steps
| Step | What happens | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Scale | Ingredients weighed for the batch | Weights, ingredient lots |
| 2. Mix | Creamed and mixed | Dough temperature |
| 3. Chill | Covered, chilled overnight or to the recipe's time | Into and out of the cooler |
| 4. Portion | Scooped, checked on a scale | Portion weight, count |
| 5. Bake | By pan, rotated as needed | Oven temperature, time |
| 6. Cool | On racks to room temperature | Time |
| 7. Pack | Bagged or boxed by count | Units packed |
| 8. Code | Lot and best-by on each bag or box | Lot, best-by |
How the bakery prices its cookies is in how to price cookies, and what each channel earns in cookie business profit margin.
An example: Friday's dough, Saturday's bake
Granite Peak Cookie Co., a made-up cookie bakery in Sandy, Utah, sells large chocolate chip cookies at a Saturday market and to four cafés. Its recipe makes 24 cookies of 3 oz a batch. For one weekend it mixed eight batches on Friday:
| Step | What happened |
|---|---|
| Scale and mix | 8 batches, flour lot FL-1012, butter lot BU-0930, chocolate lot CC-1001 |
| Chill | Into the walk-in at 4 pm Friday |
| Portion | 192 cookies at 3.0 oz, each tenth scoop checked on the scale |
| Bake | 350°F, 14 minutes, 12 to a pan, pans rotated halfway |
| Cool | 25 minutes on racks |
| Pack and code | 186 good cookies, lot CK-1017, best by Oct 24; 6 broken |
Of the 186, 96 went to the market in single bags, 60 to the cafés in boxes of 15, and 30 into half-dozen boxes for preorders. The 6 broken cookies became samples. Weighing every tenth scoop caught a scoop running at 3.3 oz early on, which over 192 cookies would have been about 3.6 lb of dough, more than a pan's worth. How the bakery tracks preorders is in order tracking spreadsheet template.
Get the run sheet
Download the cookie production run sheet. Two sheets: a blank run sheet to print for each batch, with the eight steps, the check at each and its target, and spaces for the actual reading, the time and initials; and the same run filled in from the example. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The run sheet covers one weekend. The dough made Friday and the cookies baked Saturday are two different things, and when a butter lot is recalled, the trace has to run through both to the cafés.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack records the dough and the cookies as their own batches, linked by lot.
Dough as a batch. Friday's dough is a batch of its own, from its recipe, taking flour, butter and chocolate off stock with their lots.
Cookies from the dough. Saturday's bake is a batch that uses the dough, with its own lot and best-by, and records the good cookies against what the dough should have made.
Where it went. Each café's order records the cookie lot it got, so one recall report runs from the butter lot to every café.
| The job | Clipboard | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Friday's dough | A note on the tub | A batch with its lots |
| Saturday's cookies | Counted at the end | A batch from the dough |
| Which cafés got a lot | Invoices | One recall report |
| What a cookie costs | A guess | True cost from the batches |
Recipes, batches, lots and recalls are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.