Bakery production schedule template: par by day, batch sizes and bake times

A bakery's opening checklist says the ovens are on and the case is clean. It doesn't say how many croissants to bake on a Tuesday, or whether the scones go in before or after the sourdough. That's the production schedule's job: what to bake, how much, in which oven, and when it has to come out.

This template has four parts: a par-by-day grid, a batch table, an oven timeline and a daily production sheet. The daily sheet records when each item sold out and what was left, and that's what makes next week's par better. The cleaning side is in our bakery opening, closing and cleaning checklists.

This is general information, not legal advice. The food safety rules below come from the FDA Food Code; your inspector and your local rules have the final word.

Part 1: a par for each item, by day of the week

A bakery's sales swing by day. A Saturday can sell twice what a Tuesday does, so one par for the whole week means you sell out on the weekend and throw out bread midweek.

Set a par per item per day:

1. Start from what sold, not what you baked. For each item and each weekday over the last three or four weeks: baked minus leftovers. Use the same weekday only (Tuesdays with Tuesdays).
2. Take the typical day, not the best one. Drop a one-off like a holiday or a catering order.
3. Adjust with the sell-out time. If an item sold out at 10 am, it would have sold more, so the "sold" number is too low. Add a little.
4. Round up to full trays or batches (Part 2).

Review it once a week with the daily sheets in front of you. Two rules keep it simple:

• Sold out before your cutoff (say, 1 pm) two weeks running: raise that day's par by one tray.
• More than one tray left at close two weeks running: lower it by one tray.

A worked example (made-up numbers)

Sales sit around 70, and it sold out before 1 pm in weeks 2 and 4. A tray holds 12, so the new Saturday par is 84 (seven trays). If week 5 ends with 14 left, go back to 72.

Part 2: batch sizes

Par is in pieces. Production happens in batches: one dough batch makes so many croissants, one tray holds so many muffins. Write each item's numbers down once.

Then to bake = par − good carry-over, rounded up to full trays. Carry-over is only what you'd sell the next day. Most bakeries sell laminated pastry on the day it's baked, so carry-over for croissants is zero.

Part 3: the oven timeline, worked back from opening

Write down when each item has to be in the case, then work backwards: bake time, then proof, then out of the cooler or freezer. Items that need the oven at the same time, at different temperatures, are the ones to plan around.

Fill in your own times; your recipes and ovens decide them. Two rules help:

• One oven, one temperature per block. Group items that bake at the same temperature, so you aren't waiting for an oven to cool down.
• Plan a second, smaller bake. A top-up at 9:30 for the items that sell out lets you set a lower early par and throw out less.

Part 4: the daily production sheet

This is the sheet the baker works from and writes on. Print one per day.

At the bottom: cooling log for fillings, date labels checked (initials), and notes for tomorrow (a short delivery, a broken proofer, a catering order).

The last two columns are the most important. Without the sell-out time and the leftovers, next week's par is a guess.

Food safety on the schedule

Most bread and baked goods aren't time/temperature control for safety (TCS) food, but custards, pastry cream, cream cheese fillings and some glazes usually are. The FDA Food Code has three rules that belong on the production sheet:

• Cooling cooked fillings. Cooked TCS food is cooled "Within 2 hours from 57ºC (135ºF) to 21ºC (70°F)" and "Within a total of 6 hours from 57ºC (135ºF) to 5ºC (41°F) or less" (§3-501.14(A), 2022 Food Code). Put a time and a temperature for each batch of filling in the cooling log.
• Date marking. Ready-to-eat TCS food made in-house and held more than 24 hours is marked for use within "a maximum of 7 days. The day of preparation shall be counted as Day 1" (§3-501.17(A)). Fillings made on Monday are done on Sunday at the latest.
• Allergens in writing. The permit holder "shall notify CONSUMERS by written notification of the presence of MAJOR FOOD ALLERGENS as an ingredient in unPACKAGED FOOD items that are served or sold to the CONSUMER" (§3-602.12(C)). A new item on the schedule needs its allergen card in the case the same day. The allergen matrix helps.

The 2026 Food Code keeps all three rules, with the numbers spelled out as words. Which edition applies depends on your state; check with your regulator.

Where Mays fits

• One prep sheet per day of the week. Under Inventory → Prep, create a sheet for each day, say Saturday bake, and add a line for each item with that day's Target qty. Each sheet is a tab, so the baker opens Today and picks today's tab. Print gives a paper copy with the sheet's name and the date. See Prep sheets.
• Bake-off items you stock. For an item you buy and count, like frozen croissants, the sheet shows what's on hand and a Suggested amount: the target minus on hand, never below zero. Count before you plan. See Running stock counts.
• Leftovers in the waste log. Log what's thrown out at close under Inventory → Waste with the reason Prepared too much. The log lists any date range with a total cost, so the weekly par review has a dollar figure. Each entry needs an inventory item, so add your baked goods as items if you want them there. See Logging waste.
• Oven checks as a checklist. A Number answer for each oven's temperature, and the cooling-log checks, go on the production checklist under Tasks → Templates. See Creating a checklist template.

What Mays doesn't do yet: a prep sheet has one target per line, not one per weekday, which is why you need a sheet for each day. There's no oven timeline or batch rounding. A recipe line, like a scratch-made scone, always suggests its full target, because Mays doesn't track stock of things you make. Nothing on the sheet records sell-out times. Keep those on the printed sheet.

Bake to the day, not to the week

A par for each day, rounded to full trays, an oven plan worked back from opening, and a sheet that records what sold out. After a month, you'll bake about what you sell.

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