The Baker's Formulary

A future app for bakers in need of your feedback

Like many bakers, I build and collect my formulas on Excel spreadsheets, using a template that I poached from someone else and adapted to my own particular needs. It works fine, though after years of working with it, I have hundreds of formulas scattered all over my hard drive, with little organizational rhyme or reason. Before I began using my spreadsheets, I used a Mac and iOS app called Breadstorm, which worked wonderfully, at least until its developers vanished without a trace and the app lost functionality with each Mac operating-system upgrade.

Having mourned the slow death of Breadstorm and never loving the chaos of spreadsheets, I was extremely intrigued when long-time reader of Wordloaf, baker, and app developer Jonathan Mandel reached out to me earlier this year to see if I’d be interested in testing his in-development web-based app for bakers called the Baker’s Formulary. I was very impressed with it, and though I dread the idea of porting my many formulas from my computer into another system, I can definitely see myself using it.

The app is not quite ready-for-prime-time, but it is getting close, and Jonathan needs your help in polishing up its functionality. I asked him to write something up about the app, and make a direct request for assistance from those willing to speak with him about it. If this sort of thing might be useful to you, please consider reaching out!

—Andrew

---

Why isn’t there an app for that?

Let’s fix formula management!

I started baking in 2010. As soon as I started baking, I started making spreadsheets. Every bread formula has a spreadsheet. Every experiment has a spreadsheet. Every shopping trip has a spreadsheet. It seems like every spreadsheet has a spreadsheet. 

In 2020 I started a cottage bakery. Now every order had a spreadsheet, and every farmers’ market day.

I’m lucky. I’m pretty good with spreadsheets, because I have a background in programming. So I thought, There has to be an app for formula management. I went looking for that app. There has to be an app for that.

There isn’t one.

There are huge bakery management systems that cost hundreds of dollars a month. But there’s nothing to help serious home and cottage bakers manage their formulas. I wondered how people who aren’t great with spreadsheets solve this problem. 

Meanwhile, I see dozens of ever more complicated spreadsheets that promise to solve this problem, but mostly make it more complicated. I heard the legend of Breadstorm, the Mac-only app that was actually the app, but that went away several years ago. There are a few intrepid souls keeping Catalina-era iPads alive so they can run the last working version of Breadstorm.I see a few web-based tools that solve part of the problem. But I don’t see the app. Bakers, apparently, get no love from techies.

After I closed my bakery in 2023, I decided to make the missing app. I built a prototype, and began working with my business partner Dennis. We could both see that there might be a business here. The question is, whose problem am I solving? Is it just my problem, or is it one that most bakers share?

That’s where you come in. 

Are you tired of screenshots of web pages, printed out and covered with messy notes?

Want an app that speaks baker’s math?

Got ideas on what would make your baking life easier?

If you’d like to see us make and release this app, we’d like to speak with you. We want to hear how you currently create and manage formulas, and what features you’d like to see in an app if we make it. If you’re a beginning, intermediate, advanced or pro level baker, and you bake at least once a month, we’d love to speak with you.

Think this is a half-baked idea? We want to hear that too!

If you’re willing to talk to us, please visit www.bakersformulary.com/heybaker. 

There oughta be an app for that. Pretty soon, with your help, baking spreadsheets will be so 2023.

—Jonathan Mandel