February 10 / 4-5pm ET

This free session will delve into key concepts from the Bakery Leadership Circle program, exploring how bakery owners and operators tackle their stickiest business challenges. Together, we’ll unpack lessons learned in the Circle and see how these insights are being applied to real-world operations.

Key topics include:

• Identifying and Addressing Adaptive Challenges: Learn to navigate complex issues that require creativity, flexibility, and collaboration to solve.
• Active Listening: Discover techniques to improve communication, foster stronger relationships, and create a more inclusive workplace.
• Sunk and Opportunity Costs: Understand how to evaluate your investments—whether time, money, or energy—to make better decisions for your business’s future.

Joining us to share their experiences are:

• Amy Corliss, owner of the Little Bird Bakeshop
• Nate Houge, owner of Brake Bread
• Kevin Masse, owner of Small State Provisions

The Bakery Leadership Circle is a program dedicated to supporting bakery owners and operators through education and peer consulting activities. To date, 44 bakery leaders have participated, and we are excited to showcase their insights and successes in this engaging discussion.

Craft • Culture • Careers • Community

February 11 / 4:00 PM - 5:30 pm ET

Chocolate lovers are among a bakery’s most loyal customers. Couverture lines have a variety of styles to meet the various needs of your diverse menu. These recommendations consider viscosity, fat, and flavor—but how does this translate to your tried-and-true formulas? Understanding the versatility of these options can streamline your inventory and make selecting the right chocolate products less daunting. 

In this class, Guittard pastry chef Josh Johnson will share his secrets for enhancing cocoa flavors and creating consistent results as he explores the nuance between distinct types of chocolate products.   

By the end of this class, students will have learned about: 

• Best applications for different chocolates 
• Emulsions and how to stabilize and fix them
• Which types of chocolates can be substituted and the fundamental differences between them  

Josh Johnson, Products Application Director

Josh Johnson is the Pastry Chef of Guittard Chocolate Company, the revered San Francisco Bay Area family-owned chocolate maker, where he brings his celebrated craft, artistry and palate in developing new recipes and ideas with Executive Pastry Chef Donald Wressell.

Josh has competed in and won the National Pastry Team Championship with team captain Donald Wressell and teammates Scott Green and Della Gossett.  The team went on to win Best Dégustation and Silver Medal overall at the 2012 World Pastry Championship in Las Vegas. Josh also competed in the 2015 Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie with teammates Scott Green and John Kraus, coached by Ewald Notter and Donald Wressell, where they brought home the Bronze medal.

Josh started working in pastry as a teenager in his uncle’s pastry shop in Illinois and honed his skills training under the tutelage of mentor Sébastien Canonne, M.O.F., and pastry chefs En-Ming Hsu, World Pastry Champion, and François Payard. He was Executive Pastry Chef at Everest in Chicago, co-owner of Cocoa Bean Fine Desserts in Geneva, Illinois, an instructor at The French Pastry School and, most recently, Head Pastry Chef at Destination Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin.

He is inspired by chocolate’s infinite variety of flavor profiles and its versatility as an ingredient that can also be sculpted and shaped to delicious and delightful effect.

March 5 / 8:00AM - 3:00pm ET

Institute of Culinary Education  

225 Liberty Street, 3rd Floor,

NY, NY 

In this interactive and immersive class, unlock the secrets to crafting the highest-quality, plant-based pastries and desserts. We'll explore essential ingredients, innovative techniques, and foolproof recipes that elevate your creations with Susannah Schoolman of Tourlami.  

You'll gain a deep understanding of the function of each ingredient and learn how to work with them to achieve exceptional results. Through demonstrations and hands-on practice, we'll tackle classic pastry techniques, including:  

• Laminated doughs for flaky croissants and puff pastry  

• Enriched doughs for soft, tender brioche  

• Perfectly crumbly scones  

• Elegant and flavorful tarts  

Whether you're a seasoned baker or new to plant-based pastry, this class will equip you with the knowledge and skills to create stunning desserts that taste as amazing as they look.  

We will make puff pastry, which we will then turn into savory tarts, sugar brioche tarts with vanilla pastry cream and fruit, fruit scones, and chocolate passion fruit caramel tarts.   

By the end of this class, students will:  

• Understand common bakery ingredients and their functions, and vegan substitutes and why they work  

• Fundamental principles of lamination  

• Execution and assembly of staple bakery items with a vegan approach that doesn't compromise on flavor or presentation.

Susannah Schoolman is the Founder and CEO of Tourlami, a plant-based ingredients company specializing in plant-based butter for professional use. Susannah has worked her way through some of the most lauded bakeries and kitchens in the world, beginning with her career at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in New York City, and then on the opening team for Lincoln Ristorante in Lincoln Center under Jonathan Benno and Richard Capizzi. Next she became the Head Baker at b. Patisserie under James Beard Award winning Belinda Leong at their San Francisco and Hawaii locations, before moving to Copenhagen to become the Head of Pastry and Viennoiserie at noma-partnered Hart Bageri under Richard Hart. 

In 2016, Susannah adpoted a plant-based lifestyle and instantly felt the disconnect between her personal and professional lives. Frustrated with a lack of consistent and delicious plant-based butters, Susannah created Tourlami as a way to bring the highest quality plant-based ingredients to bakers, chefs, and pastry chefs. 

 

Day One:  March 23 / 3pm - 7pm ET   

Day Two:  March 24 / 8am - 4pm ET 

Day Three:  March 25 /8am - 4pm ET 

3728 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor, MI

Join us in Michigan this spring for Bread & Butter—three days of essential education in the business of baking. 

March 23-25 at ZingTrain, 3728 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor, MI. 

Designed for early-stage bakery owners and operators—but open to all—this in-depth, interactive conference will cover: 

• Bakery Finances 

• Smart Operational Choices 

• Creating Good Jobs and Building a Strong Team 

• Menu Design, Optimization, and Pricing 

You’ll leave with actionable concepts, practical tools, and fresh ideas to implement in your business, setting your bakery on a clear path to thrive. 

The Full Schedule 

Day One: Sunday, March 23 - 3:00 - 7:00 pm 

• Welcome to ZingTrain, our host 

• Zingerman's Bakehouse Tour 

• Keynote Address from Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman's co-founder: Creating a Vision of Greatness 

• Light Dinner 

Day Two: Monday, March 24 - 8:00 am - 4:00 pm 

• Bakery Finance 101, with Amy Emberling and Ron Maurer of Zingerman's 

10 Rules of Finance 

Profit & Loss Statements 

Cash Flow Statements 

Balance Sheets 

Putting Finance 101 to work in your bakery

• Breakfast & Lunch served 

Day Three: Tuesday, March 25 - 8:00 am - 4:00 pm 

• The Good Jobs Strategy:  Smart operations and investments in people make for a strong, profitable business, with Sandhya Mahadevan of the Good Jobs Institute 

• Dough to Dollars: Menu Design, Optimization & Pricing, with EderiqueGoudia of In the Business of Food 

• Breakfast & Lunch Served 

For more information, visit the Bread & Butter webpage. 

Read about our cancellation policy here.

May 20 / 11am - 6pm ET Day 1  

May 21 / 9am - 4pm ET Day 2

King Arthur Baking Company,

Norwich, VT

Join us at King Arthur Baking and deepen your understanding of sourdough products and processes. In this course, we will produce a variety of breads and explore foundational factors such as build schedules, hydration, flour selection, and fermentation times. We will examine how temperature influences flavor profiles, dough characteristics and production timelines. Learning to manipulate these and other variables is critical to the baker’s success at any scale. The subject will be explored in its historical context with a focus on how principles affect production in real time.  

 By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Create functional sourdough maintenance schedules, to meet your bakery’s demands. 

• Select appropriate preferments, suitable for best outcomes. 

• Design breads  with an understanding of the dynamic relationship between percentages, prefermented flour, flour types, fermentation times, and temperatures.  

• Manipulate hydration and temperature, as seasons and daily needs dictate. 
  

***For this course, a basic knowledge of baker's percentages and some prior experience with sourdough is recommended. 

Lucas Diggle has been baking professionally since 2002. Prior to joining the Baking School in 2021, he spent ten years in King Arthur’s production bakery. He is one of a small number of bakers certified by the Bread Baker’s Guild of America and was a member of the team that traveled to Paris in 2018 to represent the United States at the Fête du Pain. He lives in Vermont with his wife and four beautiful children.