The Bread Winner Podcast

Your beginner workshop is not the whole business, it is the front door. This is the final episode in my three-part workshop series, and it might be my favorite one, because today is about everything that happens after that first class: how to give students a reason to come back, and how to sell workshop tickets as Christmas gifts without building a single new system. I am sharing every specialty c...

Last week I walked you through my whole sourdough class, start to finish. This week, part two of the series, I am answering the questions I get asked the most: how many people should I take, do I need help, and what should I actually charge? I am being completely open with real numbers, what I used to charge, what changed, and what it actually costs me to put one student through the class. You wil...

For a long time, I did not think I was allowed to teach a sourdough class. I am completely self-taught, I have never taken a baking class in my life, and I had a voice in my head asking who I thought I was to teach anyone. Several dozen workshops later, I know that voice was wrong, and if you have the same one, it is wrong about you too. This is part one of a three-part series on teaching sourdoug...

The simplest way to do meal prep when you run a microbakery is one short prep day where you cook three things at once: a pork shoulder in the slow cooker, a bag of sweet potatoes in the oven, and a big pan of roasted vegetables. Those three things turn into at least three meals, so dinner is mostly made before your bake days even start. That is the plan my guest Cassy Joy Garcia gave me when I ask...

Thanksgiving is so late this year that between Small Business Saturday and Christmas, you have exactly 27 days to sell. There is no time inside that window to go find new customers, which means the bakers who fill those 27 days with orders are the ones whose neighbors already know they exist before the end of October. This week I am walking you through a 10-minute check-in on your third-quarter nu...

In my very first holiday season, I said yes to opening day at a pumpkin patch because I was sure it would be packed. I sat there for nine hours in the September heat with my kids and sold four loaves of bread. That day taught me more about choosing events than any market I have ever done, and today I am handing you the exact framework I built from it. I am sorting every selling opportunity into th...

Online revenue follows an audience. It does not go out and build you one. That is the part the internet conveniently leaves out. This week I am answering a voicemail question from Lindsay of Lindsay Bakes Bread about building additional income streams in a microbakery. I break it into three categories based on how much each one depends on you actually baking and being physically present, walk thro...

I am still the one doing every single 4 a.m. morning. I am still the primary production baker in my own bakery. And somewhere in the last six months I realized I am not meant to be that person forever. This week is a real, unscripted six-month review, March through August, using the same four questions I ask every single month: what's working, what's not, what I learned, and how I'm moving forward...

If you asked me whether ingredient costs have gone up across the board the last few years, I would have said yes without a second thought, and I would have had zero actual evidence for it. So I went and pulled the real numbers, and butter genuinely surprised me. This week is a different kind of episode. Instead of a how-to, I am walking you through three things I found when I actually researched w...

There is a two-gallon jar in my bakery right now full of vanilla beans and cheap vodka, with a piece of masking tape on the lid that just says December. It is not going to be ready to sell until the holidays, and that is exactly the point. This week I am walking you through the nine real things I am doing in my own bakery this August to set up a smoother November and December. That includes auditi...

Did you know that up until the fall of 2021, selling a loaf of bread you baked in your own kitchen was completely illegal in New Jersey? Not just restricted — illegal. They were the last of all 50 states to change that, and it only happened because a group of home bakers decided to go and ask. That story is the backdrop for this entire episode, and I think it is going to encourage you more than yo...

Two years of the Bread Winner Podcast, and the episode you keep coming back to is the one where I looked back at my very first year in business. So I am bringing it back for our two-year birthday month. I am wrapping up year three now, baking out of a brick and mortar with a bread oven and a commercial fridge, and I have been out of the house for over six months. All of it was built on what year o...

If you have ever answered the question "so what do you do?" with "I just have a little sourdough business" — this episode is for you. This is one of my most personal and most passionate episodes, and I am so glad to be bringing it back for our two-year birthday month because I believe it deserves to be heard by every single baker who has ever minimized what she is building. This is not a tactical...

I have been talking about Project Broadcast on this podcast for years — and in this episode, I finally got to sit down with the CEO himself, Jake Dempsey, for a conversation I have been looking forward to for months. If you have ever wondered why texting works so well for microbakery businesses, how to set it up, or how to use it in a smarter way, this episode is going to be a game changer for you...

It's the two-year birthday month of the Bread Winner Podcast — and I am celebrating from the road! My family and I are on an epic three-week road trip this July, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to bring back some of the most loved episodes in the show's history. We kicked off the month with Episode 132, where I turned the mic on my kids and let them share what it's really like to gr...

This episode is one of my favorites I've ever recorded — and I think you're going to love it too. I handed the mic to my two kids, Jamey and Lila, and we had the most honest, sweet, and surprisingly insightful conversation about what it's actually like to grow up with a mom who owns a sourdough microbakery. From the early market mornings to the ribbon cutting at the brick and mortar, they share th...

The Bread Winner Summit was incredible — and then I crashed. In this episode, I'm getting really honest about what happens after we give everything to something big: the pre-orders that don't pause, the follow-up emails that get delayed, and that nagging feeling of having overpromised and underdelivered. I'm walking you through why this happens (hint: it's not a planning failure, it's a best-case-...

If you've ever wished you could sit in on a real, unfiltered business conversation with me, this episode is exactly that. I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing the live Q&A session from this year's Bread Winner Summit — our annual sourdough business conference — and it is a rapid-fire, honest conversation covering so many of the questions I know are on your mind. From time blocking and work...

In this short episode, I’m sharing why I believe the Bread Winner Summit is so much more than just another online business event for bakers. As I’ve been recording sessions and sitting in conversations with some of the most thoughtful voices in the sourdough world, I’ve found myself deeply inspired—not just by the practical strategies being shared, but by the reminder that we are part of something...

In this episode, I’m talking all about navigating the transition into summer as a sourdough micro bakery owner and why this season can feel both exciting and incredibly overwhelming at the same time. Between changing family rhythms, travel, hotter temperatures, lower energy, and shifting customer habits, summer often asks us to reevaluate the way we run our businesses. I share some of the differen...

In this episode, I’m walking you through the three marketing channels I truly believe matter most for sourdough micro bakeries—and why trying to be everywhere at once is probably exhausting you more than it’s helping your business grow. If social media feels overwhelming or like you’re constantly posting into the void, I want this conversation to feel like a deep breath and a reset. We’re talking...

In this episode, I’m sharing one of the simplest shifts I’ve made in my bakery that has had a surprisingly powerful impact—and it has nothing to do with my bread, my menu, or anything I’ve purchased. It’s a small, intentional marketing practice that’s helped me build stronger relationships with my customers and create an experience that keeps people coming back. I want you to think about the place...

In this episode, I’m talking about one of the most important shifts you can make in your sourdough micro bakery—and it has nothing to do with your recipe, your oven, or even your sales. It’s the shift from thinking like a hobby baker to thinking like a business owner. I walk through what that actually looks like in real life, especially if you’ve found yourself saying yes to everything, underprici...

In this episode, I’m diving into one of the most common frustrations I hear from sourdough micro bakery owners—feeling like your marketing just isn’t working and that you’re not being seen. If you’ve ever sat down to post and then talked yourself out of it because it didn’t feel “good enough” or “new enough,” you are not alone. I walk through what’s actually happening in those moments and why it’s...

In this episode, I’m talking about something that almost every sourdough micro bakery owner runs into at some point—bottlenecks. Those moments where everything seems to be moving along and then suddenly… everything slows down, stacks up, and you feel like you’re constantly trying to catch up. If your bakery has been feeling harder than it should, there’s likely a bottleneck somewhere in your proce...