Oven & Apron Guide: Plan Every Bakery Day

How a bakery day works

Every order ticket shows a customer, the pastries they want, a clock with their pickup step and the coins they pay. Tap a pastry on a ticket, then tap a free station that fits it; the stations it can use light up and show when it would come out. Loading takes no time, so you can fill every free station before you bake.

Bake one step moves the whole kitchen forward by one step. A butter cookie bakes in 1 step, a berry tart in 2 and a country loaf in 3. A finished order flies to its customer and pays its coins, as long as its last pastry is done by the pickup step. A pickup step of 4 means the order must be finished at step 4 or earlier, not started then.

As soon as an order can no longer be ready in time, the customer goes home and anything of theirs in the kitchen is cleared away. A ticket marked Start now must be loaded this step to make its pickup. The day ends when every customer has been served or has left.

Stations and recipes

Each pastry’s recipe is shown as small colored stages on its ticket: proof, mix, bake and cool, each with a number of steps. Big ovens bake anything. A little oven bakes small pastries (cookies, tarts, rolls, croissants and muffins) but not a loaf, an apple pie or a layer cake.

Cinnamon rolls and croissants rest in the proof box before baking, and blueberry muffins and layer cakes are mixed first, with only one mixer in the kitchen. When dough or batter is ready, its station says so; tap it and move it to an oven yourself. Until you do, it keeps that proof slot or the mixer busy, which is often the real puzzle.

Apple pies cool on the cooling rack for 1 step after baking and layer cakes for 2. They move onto the rack by themselves, earliest pickup first. If the rack is full, a baked pie waits in its oven and the oven stays busy until a rack slot frees up.

Walk-ins, parties and choosing who to serve

Some customers walk in later. Their striped tickets say which step they arrive, and you can start their order from then. Keeping an oven free for a walk-in who is about to arrive can beat filling it with something that is not urgent.

Party orders ask for two or three pastries and pay 2 extra coins, but only if every pastry is ready by pickup. On several days there is simply more to bake than time allows, and the chef’s best leaves someone out. Compare coins before you commit: a layer cake pays 8, a cookie 2.

Stars, the chef’s best and the check

One star needs 60% of the chef’s best, two need 80%, and three match it. A star opens the next day. The intro card for each day shows all three targets, and the bar beside your coins grays out a star as soon as it can no longer be reached.

Undo takes back loads and steps one at a time, as far as the start of the day. Check asks the chef whether the best is still possible from where you are; if it is not, it tells you how many moves to undo. Always loading the earliest pickup first, into the smallest oven that fits, earns two stars on every day, but it falls short of the chef’s best on almost every day from day 6, so three stars always need a real plan.

A worked example: Loaf First

Day 3 has two ovens and six orders: a loaf due at step 3, a cookie due at 4, loaves due at 5, 7 and 8, and a tart due at 7. Start the first loaf and the cookie at step 0, then put the second loaf in the free oven at step 1. At step 3 the first oven frees up and two orders are due at step 7: a loaf and a tart.

Loading the loaf first looks natural, but then the tart and the last loaf both need the other oven when it frees at step 4, and only one of them can be ready in time. Put the tart in at step 3 instead, the step 7 loaf in the other oven at step 4, and the last loaf in at step 5. Every order is served on time and the day pays 25 coins, the chef’s best.

Habits that help

1. Read baking time as well as pickup time. A loaf due at step 3 has to go in now; a cookie due at 3 can wait two steps.

2. Look ahead to when each station frees up. The question is often not what to load now, but what will fit when the next oven opens.

3. Keep the big ovens for large pastries when a little oven can take the cookies and tarts.

4. Move ready dough and batter promptly, unless an oven is better saved for something else. A full proof box or mixer blocks the next order.

5. Space out pies and cakes when the rack is small, so a baked pie does not sit in an oven waiting for space.

Controls, saving and taking a break

Tap or click a pastry, then a station. With a mouse you can also drag a pastry onto a station. On a keyboard, Tab to a pastry or station and press Enter or Space; B bakes one step, U undoes, C checks and Escape opens the day menu. The toolbar has pause, restart, sound, help and fullscreen.

Your stars, best coins and open days are saved in this browser on this device, and the day list lets you replay any open day. A day in progress starts again if you leave the page. A day takes about 2 to 5 minutes, depending on how long you like to think.