Running out of ingredients mid-batch: why it happens and how to stop it

Even after years of running my bakery, I'd get halfway through a recipe and find I'd run out of something I was sure I had. I always have jam. Except I didn't, and now there's a half-made Victoria sponge on the side while I drive to the supermarket hoping they have the good jam in, when I should be baking tomorrow morning's delivery. That hour comes straight out of my sleep.

I'd had a delivery from my supplier that same morning. The problem wasn't buying. It was that I didn't know what I needed.

Why it keeps happening

• Orders live in different places. A text, a notebook, an email, a market regular who told you in person. Nothing adds them up.
• Nobody multiplies the recipes. Your recipe makes 12, this week's orders need 80, and the maths happens in your head at 6am.
• Shared bases get forgotten. The same pastry goes into three products, so you need three products' worth.
• You don't know what's on the shelf. "I always have jam" is a memory, not a stock count.

A weekly routine that fixes it

1. Put every order in one place, with its date, as soon as you take it.
2. Once a week, total each product for the days ahead: 40 scones on Friday, 24 brownies, 18 bottles of hot sauce.
3. Scale each recipe to that total and add up the ingredients across everything, shared bases included.
4. Take away what you already have on the shelf.
5. Round up to whole packs, and group by where you buy each thing.
6. After shopping, update your stock, and take ingredients off as you make each batch.

The first time takes an hour. After that, it's twenty minutes, and you never stand in a kitchen with half a sponge again.

Keep a small buffer on the things that hurt most

For ingredients you can't easily pop out for (a specific chocolate, a flour you order online), keep enough for one or two extra batches. Running out of these costs far more than a bit of spare stock.

Or let something do the sums

I built MakrPrep because I was tired of doing this on the back of an invoice. Your orders go in once. The Production plan shows what to make each day, Recipes to prep scales every recipe and shared base, and the Shopping list works out what to buy from your orders minus what's in stock, in whole packs, grouped by shop. When you tick something done, the ingredients come off your stock.

See also spreadsheet vs software and how to cost a recipe.