--- title: "Bakery & Patisserie Receiving Checklist" canonical: "https://peakscaleops.com/checklists/bakery-receiving-checklist/" --- > Source: https://peakscaleops.com/checklists/bakery-receiving-checklist/ [Checklists](/checklists/) / [Bakery & Patisserie](/checklists/bakery/) / Goods-In & Receiving # Bakery & Patisserie Goods-In & Receiving Checklist A Bakery & Patisserie receiving checklist should cover four things at the door. These are **shelf life on bought-in stock, delivery temperature on cream-filled lines, count against order, and dating every ingredient bin at intake**. This checklist has 7 checks across two sections. Each one is tied to published evidence. USDA ERS applies a 12% retail loss rate to grain products. CFIA found 8.8% of Bakery & Patisserie samples carried undeclared allergens. That is a prevalence figure only. The root-cause split, 71.1% labelling-related, comes from separate FDA recall data. Get receiving right and you remove waste and recall risk before either has a chance to happen. [Run this checklist - free](/run/bakery/?list=goods-in) [Download PDF](/checklists/pdf/peakscale-bakery-checklists.pdf)[Download Excel](/checklists/excel/peakscale-bakery-checklists.xlsx) The checklist · 7 checks ### Accept only stock that will sell in time **1\. Reject bought-in bakery under your minimum days-to-expiry** Short-dated cake and pastry is waste you've already paid for. Set a minimum shelf life, and refuse anything under it, every delivery, no exceptions. **2\. Check the temperature of chilled cream- or custard-filled deliveries when they arrive; reject anything above 8°C (46°F)** Cream-filled product that arrives warm never fully cools back down. It spoils before its date and you lose the sale too. **3\. Count every bread, roll, and par-baked item against the order, and log any difference** Getting too little of a bestseller means you sell out by mid-morning. Getting too much of a slow item means you throw it out tonight. Record both with the supplier. **4\. Check for crushed items, collapsed decoration, and split par-baked crusts** Damaged bakery items can't be sold at full price and won't look good in the display case. Reject them and get credit instead of marking them down. ### Set up flour, fats, and fillings to rotate safely **5\. Label every bin you pour ingredients into with the product name, lot number, best-before date, and allergens** An unlabelled bin of flour, nut meal, or dried fruit is how the wrong allergen ends up in a recipe. Bakery is the biggest category in allergen recalls. **6\. Store nut, sesame and gluten-containing ingredients below and away from free-from stock** Gravity and flour dust can spread allergens (cross-contact) on their own. Keeping ingredients separate when they arrive is cheaper than a failed gluten test on a finished cake. **7\. Record the best-before date when stock arrives, and put new stock behind existing stock (the oldest stock first, or FIFO)** You can't rotate stock you haven't dated. Dating stock as it arrives is the cheapest way to cut losses from expired stock. ## Frequently asked questions **What temperature should chilled bakery deliveries arrive at?** Cream-, custard- and soft-cheese-filled bakery should arrive and be held at 0–5°C (32–41°F). In the FSAI survey of 997 ready-to-eat cakes, pastries and desserts, samples held at 0–5°C were 97.9% satisfactory, versus 95.7% at 5.1–10°C (41–50°F). 5 of the 8 unsatisfactory or unacceptable pathogen results were in storage or display units recorded above the limit, at 5.1–10°C. A practical rejection line is 8°C (46°F) - above that, do not accept and do not sell. **Why should you date and label ingredient bins at goods-in?** Because an unlabelled flour, nut-meal or dried-fruit bin is how the wrong allergen reaches a recipe card. Bakery is the single largest category in FDA major-allergen recalls, at 31.5% of 1,415 recalls between FY2013 and FY2019. 71.1% of the recalls with a known cause were labelling-related rather than contamination. Dating at intake also means you can use the oldest stock first (FIFO) - you cannot rotate stock you never dated. **How much bakery stock is typically lost between delivery and sale?** It depends heavily on the commercial terms. Unsold-bread return rates run 12–20% of deliveries in Australian states that permit sale-and-return, versus 2–6% in South Australia where the practice is restricted. USDA ERS applies a 12% retail-level loss rate to grain products. German medium-to-large bakeries report up to 19% annual production loss. Counting deliveries against order and rejecting short-dated stock is where you take that number down. ## More Bakery & Patisserie checklists [Opening & Bake Plan](/checklists/bakery-opening-checklist/)[Display, Turnover & Chilled Control](/checklists/bakery-display-case-checklist/)[Cake Orders, Decorating & Collection](/checklists/bakery-cake-order-checklist/)[Allergen & Label Control](/checklists/bakery-allergen-labeling-checklist/)[Closing, Unsold & Waste](/checklists/bakery-closing-checklist/)[Weekly Checks](/checklists/bakery-weekly-checklist/) One free app has all of them: [open the Bakery & Patisserie Checklists app](/run/bakery/) - offline, no account, add it to your home screen. ## Sources Every statistic on this page comes from public inspection and food-safety data: - [End Food Waste Australia - Bread and Bakery Sector Action Plan](https://endfoodwaste.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bread-and-Bakery-Sector-Action-Plan_Full-Report-1.pdf) - [WWF Germany study via Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethrushe/2018/10/06/germans-waste-1-7m-tonnes-of-baked-goods-every-year-new-wwf-study-finds/) - [USDA ERS Loss-Adjusted Food Availability documentation](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system/loss-adjusted-food-availability-documentation) - [Annals of the Polish Association of Agricultural and Agribusiness Economists](https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/paaero/330067.html) - [Journal of Food Protection study reported by Food Safety Magazine](https://www.food-safety.com/articles/8496-most-major-food-allergen-recalls-caused-by-preventable-labeling-errors-study-finds) - [CFIA - Food Safety Targeted Surveys: Undeclared Allergens in Bakery Products](https://inspection.canada.ca/DAM/DAM-food-aliments/STAGING/text-texte/undeclared_allergens_bakery_products_report_1643649844061_eng.pdf) - [Food Safety Authority of Ireland - Survey of the microbiological safety of ready-to-eat cakes, pastries and desserts](https://www.fsai.ie/getmedia/fa18aa77-da0b-41b0-9003-78226f4f28fa/7937-ready-to-eat-cakes-accessible-\(1\).pdf?ext=.pdf) - [Where's My Shrink - National Supermarket Shrink Survey](http://wheresmyshrink.com/shrinkbydepartment.html) - [FDA - Report on the Occurrence of Foodborne Illness Risk Factors in Selected Institutional Foodservice, Restaurant, and Retail Food Store Facility Types](https://www.fda.gov/media/157223/download) - [Farage et al., 'Gluten contamination in gluten-free bakery products: a risk for coeliac disease patients', Public Health Nutrition](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/gluten-contamination-in-glutenfree-bakery-products-a-risk-for-coeliac-disease-patients/8315A5B961393978CFFF02A61A5A1633) - [LOWINFOOD project summary of a Sustainable Production and Consumption paper](https://lowinfood.eu/2025/02/04/the-power-of-prevention-and-valorisation-for-reducing-surplus-and-waste-of-bakery-products-publication/) - [Hübner et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology 28(5):1117–1131](https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/inecol/v28y2024i5p1117-1131.html) - [Food Industry Association](https://www.fmi.org/newsroom/news-archive/view/2022/12/06/retail-in-store-bakery-performance-on-the-rise) - [UK FSA retail surveillance survey reported by Food Safety Magazine](https://www.food-safety.com/articles/11616-uk-fsa-finds-persisting-compliance-issues-in-targeted-survey-of-retail-foods) - [UK FSA food product compliance survey reported by Food Safety News](https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/02/fsa-survey-assesses-food-product-compliance/) - [USDA Economic Research Service, Chart of Note](https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=89526) - [Cheesman, 'Prevalence of Gluten Contamination in Certified and Non-Certified Foods Labelled Gluten-Free', Current Developments in Nutrition](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8181807/) - ['An Impact Assessment of Par-Baking and Storage on the Quality of Wheat, Whole Wheat, and Whole Rye Breads', Foods](https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/13/2/224) - [WRAP - Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2022 press release](https://www.wrap.ngo/media-centre/press-releases/household-food-waste-levels-threaten-uks-carbon-reduction-ambitions)