How to Make Pies in Bulk, With a Scaling Calculator

To make pies in bulk, write the crust and filling as one recipe by percentage, divide the dough by weight, weigh the filling into every pie, and bake full oven loads. The trick most pie bakeries use for a holiday is time: unbaked fruit pies freeze well, so the crusts and fillings are made in the weeks before, and the ovens run only to bake. Done this way, a pie bakery that baked 4 pies at a time bakes 100 a day in Thanksgiving week, and the cost of a pie falls from $21.95 to $7.81. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the bake loss, what a pie costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.

The short version

• Write crust and filling as one recipe by percentage.
• Divide the dough by weight: the same bottom and top for every pie.
• Weigh the filling into each pie.
• Freeze unbaked fruit pies ahead and bake to order.
• Bake full oven loads; cool fully before boxing.
• Labor is the biggest cost of a pie, at any size.
• TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.

The recipe, by percentage

Orchard Hill Pie Co., the made-up pie bakery in Kingston, New York, I use in these examples, baked 4 apple pies at a time until Thanksgiving preorders passed 300. The recipe, weighed:

The 272 pounds cost $286.74 in ingredients. Apples are more than half the weight; butter is a third of the cost. A pie is about 2.7 pounds before baking, about 0.9 pound of crust and 1.8 of filling. How percentages work for other recipes is in scaling recipes for production.

The steps, at 272 pounds

1. Make crust by the batch. Cold butter cut into the flour in a mixer, ice water added by weight, then rested cold.
2. Divide by weight. Bottom and top crusts weighed out for each pie and rolled or pressed to one size.
3. Slice the apples by machine. A peeler-corer-slicer, then the apples tossed with sugar, cornstarch, lemon and cinnamon by weight.
4. Weigh the filling. About 1.8 pounds of filling into every pie, then the top crust, crimped and vented.
5. Freeze or bake. Pies for later go into the freezer unbaked; pies for today bake in loads of 12, from frozen with extra time.
6. Cool fully. Three hours or more on racks before boxing, so the filling sets and the box doesn't steam.
7. Box with a lot code. Every pie boxed and labeled with the run's lot and date.

Thanksgiving week takes about 20 hours of labor a day for 100 pies, most of it crusts and crimping.

What a pie costs at each size

Apples by the bushel from an orchard and butter by the case cut the ingredients by about half, and the labor falls from 45 minutes a pie to about 12. Even so, labor is still the biggest cost of a bulk pie. The year, with Thanksgiving in it, is in pie business plan, and pricing in how to price pies.

Freezing ahead, and the custard pies

Unbaked apple, cherry and berry pies frozen solid keep for weeks and bake from frozen with 20 minutes or so more; that turns a week of baking into a month of making. Pumpkin is a custard pie: it's baked, not frozen raw, and kept in the cooler. Selling pies from a home kitchen is in can you sell pies from home.

Get the calculator

Download the pie 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 oven loads, rack loads, what comes out after the bake loss, the pies it fills and the cost of each pie; 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

Apple, cherry, pumpkin and pecan, a freezer full of unbaked pies from three weeks, and 300 preorders by pickup time. A sheet can say how many apples a run needs, but not how many unbaked cherry pies are in the freezer, which week they were made, or whether there's butter for Tuesday.

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 apples bought by the bushel and used by the pound, and the cost of every pie comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the apples, flour and butter on the shelf allow.

Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of apples and butter it used, and gets a lot of its own for the pies, 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 bushel of apples gone soft 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 bakeries make so many pies for Thanksgiving?

Most make crusts and freeze unbaked fruit pies in the weeks before, then bake in full oven loads that week; custard pies like pumpkin are baked fresh.

Can you freeze unbaked pies and bake them later?

Fruit pies, yes: frozen solid, they bake from frozen with about 20 minutes more. Custard pies are better baked first.

How much filling goes in a 9-inch pie?

In the example, about 1.8 pounds of apple filling, with about 0.9 pound of crust.

How much does it cost to make pies in bulk?

In the example, $7.81 a pie in a 100-pie day, against $21.95 in a kitchen batch.