Stephen's Breads expansion

The Start

Stephen’s Breads started from a hobby that became a cottage bakery. I am a self taught baker and I am always working on improving my skills and knowledge. Christine has been the driving force for all the marketing, administrative work and packaging, labeling all the baked goods that leave the house. Stephen’s Breads would never have existed without both us being involved. I was baking for friends, family and coworkers for quite a few years and people always told Christine and I that we could sell our breads and pastries.

Fast forward to December of 2019, I reached out to the Winter Farmers Market at the Milwaukee Domes and we heard back from them March of 2020 offering us a space at the last 4 markets of the season. This was the first big challenge for us, at that time doing 5-10 loaves of bread in a week was a lot and now we were being asked to bring 60-80 loaves per market. Thursday evening before the first market we got a call letting us know that all the markets are now canceled due to the pandemic lockdown.

At that point in time all we had was a brand new facebook page and no following. Christine didn’t let that stop her and she went into the neighborhood Facebook groups and posted about the markets being canceled and all the bread we were finishing up for the first weekend. Within an hour she sold out of all the bread that we had available and started to take even more orders from there. Christine had so many orders on that first evening that I had a backlog of orders that lasted over a month. Once the city started putting rules in place for outdoor markets we got accepted into the Fondy Market followed by South Milwaukee and Tosa. So I had to become more efficient and get all my orders caught up to be able to produce for the markets on top of new orders that were coming in.

My side hobby had to become my main job and in May of 2020 I left the mortgage field to be a baker. Christine was able to still continue her day job and help me out in the afternoon and evenings. By the summer of the following year she also left her full time job to devote her time solely to our bakery. Those first 6 months we were taking orders through Facebook as we worked to get a website developed to help streamline orders.

We also had to look at getting at least a mixer and a better oven. We were operating out of the house and initially only had normal household equipment to get us by. I would be doing 12-14 hour days 6-7 days of the week just to keep up. All the bread was hand mixed which required extending the time for the dough to come together without the aid of a mixer and all the pastries that started in the summer were laminated with just a rolling pin. Our home oven was replaced mid summer of 2020 when the steaming process of baking the bread caused the floor of the oven to collapse.

We also had to reorganize the house to maximize the space to work. Our kitchen just wasn’t big enough. So we ended up mixing on one floor, proofing on another and baking on another. Then cooling the breads back on the main floor to be packaged and set to go.

We partnered with Artisan Grain Collaborative and their Neighbor Loaves initiative in 2020 to help support the Bay View Food Pantry and Farmers using local stone milled grain. Which led us to focus on all of our baked goods to use at least 50% stone milled local flour. Which has grown to using 100% locally sourced wheat in 99% of everything we make.

Every few months Christine would also pick out a charity that we would donate part of the sales for some of our breads to just so we could do what we could to support our community especially in the first year of the pandemic. All our flour comes from Janie's Mill, Anarchy Acres and some from Meadowlark Organics. We also mill a good portion of the flour that goes into all of our products ourselves so we can control the texture and crumb of the bread.

The Middle and Now

We learned a lot in that first year which allowed us to grow going into 2021 and begin to really get our name out in the community. We expanded to doing more winter markets and pop ups at other businesses. We also started working with other vendors and businesses to use their products in our breads. As the next few years went by we continued to grow and ended up with 6 markets in the summer, pop ups, 2 online farmers markets, CPA boxes and special events. We maxed our capacity at the house and going into 2023 we planned on getting our own commercial space so we could continue to grow.

Plans changed quite dramatically when Christine announced that she was pregnant with our son. Instead of continuing the plans in place for our commercial space we decided the best course of action was to pause the bakery to focus on the pregnancy and the health of Christine and Sebastian. Sebastian was born in fall of November 2023 and both mom and son are healthy.

Earlier this year we started doing pop ups again and started to get Stephen’s Breads back up and running. We are in the process of getting a lease signed for a commercial production space which will give us the growth that is needed. We will now be able to produce for restaurants and grocery stores and everything else that we have already been baking for. We would not be able to make this jump without the support of the communities and the customers that we have had over the years and continue to have. We will be able to focus on growing Stephen’s Breads to allow it to expand through the marketplace down all avenues.

We launched this GoFundMe to help provide funds to cover the cost of some new and much needed equipment and to help get everything off the ground again. Going into the commercial space we need to invest in a better deck oven and mixer initially. This will help to allow us to bake and produce more efficiently so we can take on more customers and continue to provide bread, pastries and other baked goods to the Greater Milwaukee Area. Currently we are able to do 20-30 loaves an hour, with the new oven we will be able to do 100-115 an hour. The mixer will allow us to triple our batch sizes to keep the dough cycle more efficient without having to split a batch down to 3-5 smaller batches. We also need to get more racks and shelves, more bread baskets, bread pans and a variety of other items. Even if we don’t meet our goal we will be using all the funds we do graciously get towards whatever equipment pieces we can and other additional supplies needed to fill out our space better.

We can’t wait to be up and running and back in the thick of it all. The best part of running a bakery has been meeting and talking to all the people at markets and on our deliveries. Being able to be part of making others happy by providing fresh bread, pastries and other baked goods really makes all the work involved worth it. Getting this space has been the goal of Christine and I for a few years now and we will be focusing all our hard work now towards it so we can grow and continue to provide bakery for all our customers for years to come. I personally can’t wait to get back to working the dough, standing in front of the hot ovens as hot, fresh bread is pulled from the oven with the crust crackling and just waiting to be cut. The biggest thing though is being able to do this with my family and to provide for all of yours. As we move forward we will be providing updates to this and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, our website to see some sneak peaks and even more updates!

Thank you all again for coming out to the markets and pop up events, ordering from our website and facebook in the beginning, ordering your holiday desserts from us and just for the support we have received through the years. We want to do everything we can to continue doing what we can and this is our next step.