I'm having issues with what I think may be time management. Some nights I'm able to get all my duties and replenishment done. Other nights when I'm scheduled to do 12-8pm on weekends my tables are not leveled but I have to be out on time.
I work alone at nights. Rarely take any breaks.
Last night was pretty awful. It was the first time I had to bake la Brea and baguettes. I started cleanup at 6 and by 7 there was still loads of people in the store. By the time I clocked out at 8, the front end had 3 registers going and uscan was packed. I didn't even have time to replenish my tables or cakes.
Need more details. How big is your bakery? How many tables and cases do you have on the sales floor? How many people work in the bakery department? Who does what? Are they good workers, or do they spend most of their time talking and/or texting?
how many people are usually scheduled a day, what are the duties of each person?
i've worked in the bakery for 4.5 years, i might be able to answer some questions but from what i've learned on here, every bakery is very different in how they operate. For example, some stores (like mine) have the closer do breakout, while other stores have the baker do breakout in the morning (there's no way that'd work in my store).
I take it your store closes at night? Why is only one person responsible for seeing that everything is full? One person can't be responsible for making sure the bread, the cakes, and everything else is full. The people who do those jobs (bakers and decorators) should be the ones to make sure their shelves and cases are full. At my store, the only thing the night people have to worry about besides cleaning is baking and boxing the pies and cookies. The bakers take care of filling the bread. The decorators take care of filling the cake cases. A third person takes care of all the pre-made stuff.
how many people are usually scheduled a day, what are the duties of each person?
i've worked in the bakery for 4.5 years, i might be able to answer some questions but from what i've learned on here, every bakery is very different in how they operate. For example, some stores (like mine) have the closer do breakout, while other stores have the baker do breakout in the morning (there's no way that'd work in my store).
The bakers (me being one of them) at my store do their own breakout, but we do it for the next day after the bread is baked for that day. There's no way you could get everything done if you had break out the dough from the freezer each morning. What are you suppose to do while you're waiting for the dough to thaw? We have two people on bread each day. One person person bakes. The other person makes the donuts and takes care of the bagging. The baker does the CAP report and does the breakout for the next day. Either the baker or the bagger is also responsible for unloading the frozen food order. With any time leftover, they work on baking cookies, croissants, and pies so the night people don't have so much to worry about.
in my store, we have our night person do cap, then do breakout, they get all the doughs/sweet goods/breads/donuts/pies/etc for the next morning. We put it all in our cooler so in the morning, the baker just has to put them all in the oven. And then the baker also packages and puts out their bake.
what do you have to do at night? do you have to bake cookies and all that? i run a high volume bakery and i sell tons of labrea so we do 3 bakes at night but i have 2 closers so it all depends on how big your volume is, and how much your tasks are
At my store im the overnight baker. The closer breaks everything out and i bake everything she took out, on top of baking la brea. I am having horrible time management issues i guess because i leave 2 hours late with out fail every morning. So i come in at 10:30 and don't leave until at least 9. Its horrible, i leave crying most nights. And it doesn't help that i have plantar fasciitus. I just don't know what im doing wrong. Sorry i don't have any advice for you. Hoping someone can give me advice too.
At my store im the overnight baker. The closer breaks everything out and i bake everything she took out, on top of baking la brea. I am having horrible time management issues i guess because i leave 2 hours late with out fail every morning. So i come in at 10:30 and don't leave until at least 9. Its horrible, i leave crying most nights. And it doesn't help that i have plantar fasciitus. I just don't know what im doing wrong. Sorry i don't have any advice for you. Hoping someone can give me advice too.
What exactly do you have to bake? Do you just bake the bread and sweet goods or do you have to bake pies and cookies too? How many ovens do you have? At my store, the bread baker only has to worry about the bread and the sweet goods, including the muffins. Do you do your own bagging? We have a separate person who bags and the baker (me) will break down and put away the frozen food order and then do the CAP and breakout for the next day. Personally, I like doing my own breakout because it gives me more control. Anyway, the first thing I do when I get there is turn the ovens on, and let them preheat for at least 30 minutes. While they're preheating, I start panning out the bread. I like to do rolls and buns first. Then, I do Italian and rye. I do sweet goods last. I like to have the first cart in the proofer within a half hour of me arriving at work. Keep in mind it takes me about ten minutes just to move all the channel carts out of the way, clear off the table, and pull the stuff out of the retarder (cooler). When my first cart goes into the proofer, that's when I throw all the parbaked stuff in the oven. Usually after the second cart goes into the proofer, I'll stop and put the muffins in the oven. While the muffins are baking, I'll pan out the sweet goods and get those in the proofer By the time the muffins come out, my first cart of rolls is ready to come out of the proofer. I'll let it rest for ten minutes before putting it in the oven. The main thing is once you start baking, never have an empty oven.
Here's a typical day for me.
Arrive at 4:00 AM
Have first cart in the proofer by 4:30 AM
Put parbaked loves in the oven at 4:30 AM.
Pan out Italian and rye and have it in the proofer by 4:55 AM
Put toppings on the muffins and put them in the oven at 5:00 AM
Pan out the sweet goods. Have them in the proofer by 5:20 AM
Check the proofer. Pull cart out if it's ready. If some things are proofing fast than others, I'll pull them out early so they don't overproof while the other stuff catches up.
While I'm letting the dough rest, I'll get the bagels ready to go into the proofer.
First cart of proofed bread goes into the oven around 5:30 AM. This could be earlier or later depending on how the bread is proofing. Muffins come out of the oven at this time.
Pan out the crusty bread and rolls. We pan ours out in the morning because we never know how much of the parbaked crusty will be left form the day before.
Put crusty bread in the oven when the first cart of rolls comes out, 5:45-5:50 AM.
Check the Italian bread in the proofer. Pull it out if it's ready (usually it is) and let it rest while the crusty bread is baking.
Put Italian bread in the oven around 6:05 AM-6:10 AM. Pull the sweet goods out of the proofer. Put fruit and streusel on them and put them in the other oven (6:20 AM). Pull and scan the outdates while the sweet goods and Italian are baking. Also, pull and refill the artisan bread wall using the bread that was baked at 4:30. If the ovens still haven't gone off, I'll run the bills so I know how big the frozen order is,
Pull the Italian out when it's ready (6:40 AM). Give the rye bread ten more minutes. Put bagels in the oven. Put sweet goods out as they get done and glaze them. Usually by the time I get done glazing the sweet goods, the bagels are ready to come out of the oven.
Take first break around 7:00 AM
Drizzle roll icing on the sweet goods. Ice the cinnamon rolls. Put the bagels in the case. Wipe off the table.
Break down and put away the frozen food order (7:45- 9:00 or 9:30) depending on how big the order is.
Take lunch when done with frozen order
Do the CAP for next day's bake (9:30 or 10:00) That only takes about 5 or 10 minutes.
Do the breakout. I usually give myself about 90 minutes to get all the dough, the parbaked loaves, and artisan bread broken out. Let's say if I come back from lunch at 9:30, the breakout is done by 11:00. Although I can do it in just over an hour if I bust my ass.
If I see I'm going to have plenty of extra time, I'll pan out the croissants and pies and get them in the proofer and oven before I start the breakout. If I'm not sure, I'll do the breakout first and then do the croissants and pies.
Take last break at 12:15.
Go home at 12:30.
My biggest variable is the size of the frozen food order. The very latest I can start the breakout and still have time to take my last break is 10:45.
All the times above are ideal times. They don't take into account such things as having to stop and wait on customers. Having to deal with bread that doesn't proof. Having to deal with a frozen order that comes in late etc.
As far as bagging goes, if I'm having to deal with the frozen order and the breakout, someone else can bag the bread. If I didn't have deal with all the other stuff, bagging the bread would be no problem.
Not sure how to quote you without making an account, but this is in response to the person who gave a timeline of their day.
We work alone. Theres only myself and one other person who does the overnight bakery so we cover eachother's days off. I bake the bread, sweet goods, pies, muffins, prime time, case donuts, and frozen la brea, so no cookies and we don't make bagels; but i do have to bag and label everything myself and we only have one oven.
Last night was the first particularly light order but i still got out an hour late. Thankfully i don't have to do my own break out, the closer does it, so i have a cap sheet waiting for me when i get there. And for the frozen, i am supposed to make a cap sheet for it, but i never have time...not to mention i was only shown how to do it once on my first day so i couldnt do it even if i wanted to so i just play it by ear and make what i think we'll need.
Its strange to me how different everything is from store to store. I'm starting to think the different ways of doing things and how strict my dept manager is on nitpicky things is the reason im having so much trouble.
Also i appreciate your response! Thank you for taking the time to try and help me, it looks like it must have taken you a while to type all that out.
Not sure how to quote you without making an account, but this is in response to the person who gave a timeline of their day.
We work alone. Theres only myself and one other person who does the overnight bakery so we cover eachother's days off. I bake the bread, sweet goods, pies, muffins, prime time, case donuts, and frozen la brea, so no cookies and we don't make bagels; but i do have to bag and label everything myself and we only have one oven.
Last night was the first particularly light order but i still got out an hour late. Thankfully i don't have to do my own break out, the closer does it, so i have a cap sheet waiting for me when i get there. And for the frozen, i am supposed to make a cap sheet for it, but i never have time...not to mention i was only shown how to do it once on my first day so i couldnt do it even if i wanted to so i just play it by ear and make what i think we'll need.
Its strange to me how different everything is from store to store. I'm starting to think the different ways of doing things and how strict my dept manager is on nitpicky things is the reason im having so much trouble.
Also i appreciate your response! Thank you for taking the time to try and help me, it looks like it must have taken you a while to type all that out.
Timeline poster here.
We used to have only one oven too. Does your oven only hold one channel cart? If so, then I can see why it's hard for you to get everything done. If it holds two carts at one time, do you try to arrange it so you always have two channel carts baking at the same time? If I had a cart of pies and a cart of LaBrea or primetime, I would put both in at the same time first thing as soon as the oven was preheated. When the bread came out, I would reset the timer for the remaining time left on the pies. If something else needed to be baked right then, I'd put it in the oven along with the pies. You do have to keep track of how long something has been baking and we would often use two timers to keep track of everything, but it was the only way to get everything done on time. If you got room in the oven, don't let something sit out while you're waiting for something in the oven to finish baking, unless of course the cart in the oven only has a couple minutes left to bake.
Thanksgiving week was especially bad with only one oven because we used to bake our own pumpkin pies. We would baked between 900 and 1000 pumpkin pies alone. Add on top of that several cases of fruit pies and all the bread and rolls. We did a lot more types of bread back then and there was no such thing as parbaked. The oven was constantly going literally 24 hours a day Sunday to Wednesday. The rule was the oven was never empty.
Oh wow, i would think it would be hard for anyone, no matter how big or small your store is, to get it done with only one oven. We have two ovens, that can hold one trolley each. Our proofer can hold two at once.
