BAKE! Puts the Flour in Your Hands
The eleventh and final stop in our Zingerman's Universe series. The teaching kitchen on Plaza Drive that turns customers into bakers.
Eleven entries. Eleven businesses. This is the last one.
BAKE! with Zing is at 3723 Plaza Drive, tucked between Zingerman's Bakehouse and the Creamery, now independently operated as Sanilac Creamery,1The Creamery, one of the eleven businesses referenced in this series, left the Zingerman's Community of Businesses in fall 2025 and now operates independently as Sanilac Creamery. in the same south-side commercial complex that has appeared in half the entries of this series. It is a hands-on teaching bakery where customers pay to learn how to make the bread, pastries, and cakes that the Bakehouse has been making professionally since 1992. If the Bakehouse is the production line, BAKE! is the classroom next door.
The concept is simple enough that it almost doesn't need explaining: small-group baking classes, taught by experienced instructors, in a purpose-built teaching kitchen. You walk in not knowing how to make croissants. You walk out carrying a batch of croissants you laminated yourself. The simplicity is deceptive. Building a sustainable business around teaching civilians to bake is harder than it looks, and BAKE! has been doing it long enough to prove the model works.
What They Teach
The class catalog runs deep. Bread baking covers sourdough, rye, challah, and other Bakehouse staples. Pastry classes include croissants, Danish, pies, and tarts. Cake decorating, cookie workshops, and seasonal specials fill out the schedule. Cooking classes (not just baking) have expanded the offerings beyond flour and yeast.
Classes are small. At least two instructors per session, which means individual attention at the bench. You are not watching a demonstration. You are making the food with your own hands while someone who does this professionally watches your technique and corrects it.
The BAKE!-cation program packages multi-day class experiences for out-of-town visitors. Someone flies to Ann Arbor, spends three days baking bread and pastry at Plaza Drive, and goes home with skills and a suitcase full of baked goods. It sounds like a niche offering, and it is, but it draws from the same national audience that ZingTrain serves: people who love what Zingerman's does and are willing to travel to Ann Arbor to learn from it.
Virtual classes expanded the reach during the pandemic and have stayed in the catalog. They work for some things (cookie decorating, simple breads) better than others (sourdough, where the instructor needs to touch the dough to assess it).
The Zingerman's Connection
Every other Zingerman's business in this series produces something: bread, cheese, candy, coffee, sandwiches, events, training, mail-order boxes. BAKE! produces knowledge, but unlike ZingTrain, which teaches businesses how to run better, BAKE! teaches individuals how to bake bread.
The distinction matters because it reveals the last layer of the ZCoB model. Zingerman's doesn't just make food. It doesn't just sell food. It doesn't just teach other businesses. It teaches anyone who walks in the door how to make the food themselves. That is a level of generosity with craft knowledge that most food businesses would never consider, because the logic seems backward: why teach your customers to make your product at home?
The company's stated logic is that people who learn to make bread at BAKE! understand the work behind the Bakehouse and remain connected to its products. The teaching creates appreciation, and the appreciation creates loyalty. It is the same dynamic that ZingTrain relies on: sharing knowledge can strengthen the business.
Plaza Drive, One Last Time
The Bakehouse, Creamery, Candy Manufactory, Coffee Company, ZingTrain, and BAKE! share a plain commercial strip near the Ann Arbor airport. Inside, the Zingerman's businesses make food, roast coffee, pull candy, ferment cheese, train managers, and teach people to bake bread.
BAKE!'s teaching kitchen sits beside the Bakehouse production operation. Class participants work at benches with instructors while the production bakery runs next door. The current class catalog is the source for dates, formats, and availability.
The Series in Full
Eleven businesses. Forty-four years since the Deli opened on Detroit Street. The Zingerman's Universe started with two people, a cash register, and a sandwich shop. It became a deli, a bakehouse, a creamery, a candy maker, a coffee roaster, a restaurant, a mail-order operation, a farm and event venue, a training company, a Korean restaurant, and a teaching kitchen.
The through line is not the food, though the food is good. The through line is the model: find a person who cares deeply about one specific thing, give them a business to run, connect them to a shared supply chain and a shared set of principles, and let them build something that could not exist anywhere else. That model produced eleven businesses, over 800 employees according to the company, and tens of millions in annual revenue, all within a few miles of a college town in southern Michigan.
The series ends at BAKE!, where participants learn techniques connected to the bread that started the Zingerman's story. The flour is in their hands now.
BAKE! with Zing is at 3723 Plaza Dr, Ann Arbor (between the Bakehouse and the Creamery). Classes at bakewithzing.com. In-person, virtual, and private options available.