How to Start and Manage a Medium-Sized Bakery: A complete guide to help you avoid mistakes and overcome the challenges

By JOSEPH NGUMI

Introductory concepts for starting up a bakery business.
• An indepth guide to; Bread making and yeast products bakery, Cake
production bakery, Cake decoration bakery and Pastry products bakery.
• A guide on Equipment and Machinery needed for the industry.
• A practical view of the Bakery business as narrated by the author through
a real life story of his journey in the Baking industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BAKERY MANAGEMENT
• Release date: Jun 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9789914748826

Book preview

How to start

and manage

A MEDIUM-SIZED

BAKERY

A complete guide to help you

avoid mistakes and overcome the challenges.

Joseph Maina Ngumi

Published by Joseph Maina Ngumi P. O. BOX 6280-00200

Nairobi, Kenya

Email: [e-mail]

© Joseph Maina Ngumi

ISBN 978 - 9914 -748 - 82-6

First published 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, on any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

PREFACE      IV

CONTENTS

Introduction      vii

CHAPTER 1      1

How To Start A Bakery      1

CHAPTER 2      6

How To Manage The Bread Making And Yeast Products Bakery      6

CHAPTER 3      22

How To Manage The Cake Production Bakery      22

CHAPTER 4      33

How To Manage The Cake Decoration  Bakery      33

CHAPTER 5      39

How To Manage The      Puff Pastry, Danish Pastry, Sweet Pastry, Choux Pastry, Short Pastry Bakery      39

CHAPTER 6      47

Stock Control      47

CHAPTER 7      50

Job Description Of Top Leadership      50

CHAPTER 8      53

How I Started And Managed A Medium-Sized Bakery (Real Story)      53

CHAPTER 9      58

Manual Processing By Small, Micro And Family Bakeries      58

BAKING INDUSTRY IN KENYA

PREFACE

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Six decades ago, the bakery was seen as consisting of a wood-fired oven into which firewood was fed continuously to heat a stone or metal oven bottom on which pieces of bread dough were placed to bake.

The baker would sweat a lot as he used the wooden peel to turn the dough pieces every so often to avoid over-baking on any one side.

Flour, water, solid yeast and salt would be mixed in a wooden trough and then covered to ferment overnight and used in small portions as a leavening agent to ferment big quantities of dough made from sacks of flour.

New bakers were trained on the job by the more experienced operative. A loaf of bread was a luxury that only the well-off could afford.

Today, the baking industry is one of the largest employers in Kenya. The majority of Kenyans can now afford to buy bread and it is no longer a luxury. Buns, Scones and Cakes are commonplace and many Kenyans can now afford to buy and eat them

In Kenya, Elliots Bakeries Ltd was the first Large Scale Bakery to trade commercially having been started after the second world war by the ex-military personnel at what was then known as white house (the old Nation house) along Tom Mboya Street.

Only the British war veterans worked in that bakery having been trained as bakers in the second world war.

After Kenya acquired self-rule in 1963, Asians of the Goan descent were allowed to work as cleaners and delivery operatives to supply the bread ordered by the military barracks, the British Airways, Golf clubs and high-class hotels patronized by mainly British colonial masters and Large scale wheat and dairy farmers.

Elliots Bakeries Ltd had been established to purposely utilize the wheat flour milled by Unga Ltd.

Large scale wheat farmers in the white highlands and the Rift valley sold their wheat to Unga Ltd which in turn milled it and sold it to Elliots Bakeries Ltd.

After independence, the first Black Kenyans were employed as cleaners and general Bakery workers doing the menial work.

At independence, the Kenya Government inherited a government managed by white experts in all the sectors of the economy.

Later they were allowed to work as plant hands, tin greasing, Dough makers, oven men, wrapping hands, packers, Loaders, turn-men and finally as drivers.

To alleviate the shortage of local experts, Parliament passed the Kenyanization of personnel law that established the Kenyanization of Personnel Bureau.

The companies owned by foreigners (mainly whites of British descent) and Government ministries were ordered to employ a black Kenyan as an assistant to understudy the