To make cookies in bulk, write the dough by weight as percentages, mix as much as the mixer takes, scoop every cookie by weight, and bake full oven loads of pans that all weigh the same. Cups don't scale, and neither does eyeballing a scoop: a cookie a quarter-ounce heavy bakes longer and throws off every pan. Done this way, a cookie bakery that made 24 cookies at a time makes 800 in a day, and the cost of a cookie falls from $1.43 to $0.71. Most bulk bakers scoop the whole run in one go and freeze the dough balls, then bake what each day needs. Below is the dough at three sizes, the steps, the bake loss, what a cookie costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Weigh every ingredient once and turn the recipe into percentages of the dough.
- Size each mix to the mixer; a 60-quart bowl takes about 30 pounds of dough.
- Scoop by weight: same weight, same bake.
- Bake full oven loads of pans that weigh the same, turned halfway.
- Freeze dough balls and bake to order.
- Weigh what comes out and use your real bake loss to cost a cookie.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Granite Peak Cookie Co., the made-up cookie bakery in Sandy, Utah, I use in these examples, made 24 three-ounce chocolate chip cookies at a time from a recipe in cups. Weighed once, it becomes:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 4.5 lb | One batch, 30 lb | The run, 150 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 28.5% | 1.28 lb | 8.55 lb | 42.7 lb | $0.40 |
| Butter | 20% | 0.90 lb | 6.00 lb | 30.0 lb | $3.20 |
| Brown sugar | 14% | 0.63 lb | 4.20 lb | 21.0 lb | $0.85 |
| Granulated sugar | 9% | 0.40 lb | 2.70 lb | 13.5 lb | $0.60 |
| Eggs | 9% | 0.40 lb | 2.70 lb | 13.5 lb | $2.00 |
| Chocolate chips | 18% | 0.81 lb | 5.40 lb | 27.0 lb | $4.00 |
| Vanilla extract | 0.5% | 0.02 lb | 0.15 lb | 0.75 lb | $25.00 |
| Salt | 0.5% | 0.02 lb | 0.15 lb | 0.75 lb | $0.40 |
| Baking soda | 0.5% | 0.02 lb | 0.15 lb | 0.75 lb | $0.80 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 4.5 lb | 30 lb | 150 lb |
The 150 pounds of dough cost $293.70 in ingredients. Butter is a fifth of the dough and a third of its cost, so its price matters more than the flour's. How percentages work for other recipes is in scaling recipes for production.
The steps, at 150 pounds
- Cream by the mix. Butter at about 65°F creams in a few minutes; colder butter takes twice as long and warmer butter makes cookies that spread. Five 30-pound mixes make the run.
- Scoop by weight. A 3-ounce scoop, checked on a scale every tray or two. Twelve dough balls fill a sheet pan, 2.25 pounds.
- Freeze what you won't bake today. Dough balls frozen on trays, then bagged and dated, bake straight from the freezer with a minute or two more.
- Bake by the oven load. Ten pans a load, turned halfway, out when the edges set and the middles look underdone.
- Cool before bagging. A warm cookie bagged sweats and goes soft.
- Weigh what comes out. Over three runs, the dough loses about 10% in the oven, so a 3-ounce ball is a 2.7-ounce cookie. How to measure a yield is in batch yield formula.
- Bag with a lot code. Every bag from the run carries the run's lot and date.
The run takes one person about 10 hours, mixing the next batch while one bakes, from weighing to the last bag.
What a cookie costs at each size
| Per cookie | Kitchen batch, 4.5 lb | Bulk run, 150 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $0.62 (grocery prices) | $0.37 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.18 | $0.09 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $0.63 (1.9 min a cookie) | $0.25 (0.8 min a cookie) |
| Cost of a cookie | $1.43 | $0.71 |
Butter by the 36-pound case and chocolate by the 25-pound box nearly halve the ingredients, and the labor falls by most of it, because a mixer and a full oven take about the same minutes for 30 pounds as a bowl does for 4. At a café's $2.50, a kitchen-batch cookie left about a dollar; a bulk-run cookie leaves $1.79, enough to sell to cafés. Setting those prices is in how to price cookies.
Frozen dough and the label
Scooping the whole run in one day and baking from frozen keeps the cookies fresh for every market and café order, and the run's lot follows the dough balls from the freezer to the bag. Every bag lists the ingredients by weight and declares wheat, milk, eggs and the soy in the chocolate; the rest is in how to label baked goods for sale.
Get the calculator
Download the cookie 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 mixes, sheet pans, oven loads, what comes out after the bake loss, the cookies it fills and the cost of each cookie; 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
Two doughs, a run every Monday, bags of dough balls in the freezer from three different runs, and a case of butter left out overnight. A sheet can say how much butter a run needs, but not whether there's enough for Monday, which run a bag of dough balls came from, or whether the bake loss has crept up since the new oven.
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 cookie comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the flour, butter and chocolate on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of butter and chocolate it used, and gets a lot of its own for the cookies, 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 case of butter left out overnight is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Monday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which butter went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real bake loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Butter left out overnight | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
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.