How to Make Cinnamon Rolls in Bulk, With a Calculator

To make cinnamon rolls in bulk, write the dough, filling and icing as one recipe by percentage, divide the dough by weight, roll every piece to the same size against a guide, and spread the filling by weight. Then use the cooler: rolls shaped in the afternoon and proofed slowly overnight bake at dawn, warm for the morning. Done this way, a bakery that baked three pans at a time makes 720 rolls in a day, and the cost of a roll falls from $1.97 to $0.91. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the bake loss, what a roll costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.

The short version

• Write dough, filling and icing as one recipe by percentage.
• Divide the dough by weight and roll each piece to a guide.
• Spread the filling by weight, then cut on a measure.
• Shape in the afternoon and proof overnight in the cooler.
• Bake full oven loads; ice while warm or after cooling, the same way every time.
• Weigh what comes out and use your real bake loss to cost a roll.
• TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.

The recipe, by percentage

Red Clay Bakehouse, the made-up bakery in Athens, Georgia, I use in these examples, baked three pans of 12 at a time until a coffee shop wanted rolls every morning. The recipe, weighed:

The 250 pounds cost $311.45 in ingredients. Butter is an eighth of the weight and a third of the cost. Writing the filling and icing into the recipe keeps a run from ending with dough and no icing. Pricing a roll is in how to price homemade cinnamon rolls.

The steps, at 250 pounds

1. Mix by the mixer. About 60 pounds of dough in a spiral mixer, mixed until smooth, then a first rise.
2. Divide by weight. The dough cut into pieces for one pan each, the same weight every time.
3. Roll to a guide. Each piece rolled to one rectangle size, by sheeter or pin, so the swirl is the same in every roll.
4. Fill and cut. Soft butter, brown sugar and cinnamon spread by weight, rolled up, and cut into 12 on a measure.
5. Proof overnight. Pans covered and into the cooler; in the morning they finish proofing while the oven heats.
6. Bake by the oven load. Twelve pans a load, rotated, until golden; weigh a few pans before and after.
7. Ice and pack. Icing by weight on each pan, then rolls packed and labeled with the run's lot and date.

The run takes about 12 hours of labor, split between an afternoon of shaping and an early morning of baking.

What a roll costs at each size

Flour by the 50-pound sack, butter by the case and cream cheese by the 30-pound block cut the ingredients by two-fifths, and the labor falls by two-thirds. The coffee shop pays $3 a roll, which leaves the bulk run room. The year is in cinnamon roll business plan.

The overnight proof

A cold, slow proof does two things for a bulk bakery: the shaping happens in the afternoon, when the oven is free, and the rolls taste better for it. It also moves the bake to the hour customers want them. Covered pans, a cooler at about 38°F, and out an hour or so before baking. How percentages work for other doughs is in scaling recipes for production.

Get the calculator

Download the cinnamon roll scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the pans, oven loads, what comes out after the bake loss, the rolls it fills and the cost of each roll; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average bake loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Rolls, morning buns and a seasonal pecan roll, a bake every morning, butter and cream cheese from two deliveries, and pans in the cooler from yesterday afternoon. A sheet can say how much butter a run needs, but not whether there's enough cream cheese for tomorrow, or whether the bake loss has crept up.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.

The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with flour bought by the 50-pound sack and used by the pound, and the cost of every roll comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the flour, butter and cream cheese on the shelf allow.

Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of butter and cream cheese it used, and gets a lot of its own for the rolls, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.

Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a bake loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A block of cream cheese past its date is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.

Recipes, batches, lots and yield 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.

Questions people also ask

How do you make cinnamon rolls for a crowd?

Write the recipe by weight as percentages, divide the dough by weight, roll each piece to the same size, and proof the pans overnight in the cooler to bake in the morning.

Can you make cinnamon rolls the night before and bake in the morning?

Yes: shaped rolls covered in the cooler overnight finish proofing in the morning while the oven heats.

How do you scale a cinnamon roll recipe?

Divide each ingredient's weight by the total to get its percentage and multiply by the batch you want; in the example, bread flour is 38%: 4.75 lb in a 12.5-pound batch, 95.0 lb in a 250-pound run.

How much does it cost to make cinnamon rolls in bulk?

In the example, $0.91 a roll in a 250-pound run, against $1.97 in a kitchen batch.