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 

• Choosing your Coffee Partner

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 

• Choosing your Coffee Partner & Crafting the Best Guest Experience, with Evan DeVries of La Colombe

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

• Breakfast & Lunch Served 

For more information, visit the Bread & Butter webpage. 

Read about our cancellation policy here.

Bread & Butter is sponsored by:

                      

April 28 / 1:00 - 6:00pm PT

Guittard Chocolate Studio

2809 La Cienega Avenue

Los Angeles, CA

This immersive class with Arturo Enciso of Gusto Bread will highlight ingredients like beans, corn, squash and chocolate.  

Mesoamerican farming traditions prioritize building the soil and supporting plants just as much as they focus on the yields of produce. This style of agriculture, known as a Milpa or guild system, takes an integrated approach. Nitrogen-fixing beans are planted alongside resource-hungry corn, with the beans climbing the corn stalks, which act as natural trellises. Broad-leafed squashes provide shade to their agricultural neighbors, which helps to slow evaporation.  

Arturo will explore how these essential ingredients can be adapted to support pastries and bread, similar to how they reinforce one another in the earth. By the end of this class, students will learn about:  

• The importance of nixtamalization for nutrition and texture  
• How to utilize squash and beans in baking  
• How to work with masa harina  

Throughout the class, Arturo will share original recipes such as:  

• Bean and Cheese Bolillo  
• Bean Bun  
• Pan de Pozole  
• Birote with Masa Harina  
• Pumpkin Cornbread  
• Squash Piloncillo Teacake  
• Milk Chocolate Champurrado  
• Roasted Squash Flatbread  

Arturo Enciso is a self-taught baker from Long Beach, California, with over a decade of experience. He has turned his hobby into a vocation with his artisan bakery, Gusto Bread, located on Retro Row in Long Beach (established in August 2020). His bakery exclusively uses sourdough in making both breads and sweet breads, embracing ancient wisdom and high-quality ingredients. Arturo believes that good food and bread foster connections among people and link us to the traditions and knowledge of the past, helping to build community and a brighter future together.

This class is hosted and sponsored by our partners at the Guittard Chocolate Company.

 

May 19 / 11am - 6pm ET Day 1  

May 20 / 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.