Parts and technical support from the people who installed it. Se habla español. Monday–Friday, 8:00–5:30 Pacific.
Reading the tape…
How do you take a baker who knows exactly what they want their bread to taste like, and give them a room that can make it — every morning, at volume, for twenty years?
That question has never changed. The answer is a layout, a set of machines chosen for the dough and not the invoice, a crew who installs them properly, and a phone that gets answered when something fails at four in the morning.
Founded by Michel Suas, a French baker who arrived with a trade and a standard.
The people who answer your call have a stake in whether you call back.
Hundreds of ovens, loaders and retarder-proofers assembled and fired by the same hands.
A baker answers, not a menu. Parts on the shelf in South San Francisco.
You will not be handed between departments here. The person who plans your bakery is reachable when it is running — and every owner of this company works in this building.
Runs the company and still takes parts calls. Your downtime does not wait behind anyone else’s.
Greg came to baking equipment from marketing, sales, and general management at Apple Computer, Campbell Soup Company, Specialty Brands — including Fleischmann’s Yeast — The Gambrinus Company, and Fentimans North America. He earned his BA at Stanford and his MBA at Duke.
He has baked bread for pleasure since the 1970s, which makes the commercial side of the craft a good place to be. Greg grew up in Northern California, is married to Dutch native Annemarie Warwick, and has two adult children, Mark and Annette, whose joy and accomplishments bring him the greatest pleasure.
Thirty years in baking and hundreds of installations. If you are opening and do not know where to start, you start here.
Martin is a thirty-year veteran of the baking industry and joined TMB in 2003, after an earlier career in financial markets. He understands the whole process — from dough to bread — and the equipment it takes to get a baker there.
He has consulted on, recommended, and supplied equipment for hundreds of bakery installations, domestic and international. When he is not helping his customers, Martin keeps up with two very active boys.
An electrical engineer who has spent two decades inside these machines, and talks bakers through dead panels before dawn.
Michael holds a BS in electrical engineering and is originally from Kiev, Ukraine. He joined TMB in 2000, and has spent his career here designing control panels, troubleshooting bakery equipment, and saving many a bakery in the late-night and early-morning hours.
He speaks Russian, is married with two adult children, and heads for the backcountry — backpacking and hiking — when the phones go quiet.
Has assembled and fired up hundreds of ovens, loaders and retarder-proofers. The crew that sets your oven knows how it was set.
Carlos is our installer extraordinaire. Over his seventeen years with TMB he has assembled and fired up hundreds of ovens, loaders, retarder-proofers, and other bakery equipment, and he is the ace on the floor when an install calls for creative problem-solving.
Carlos speaks Spanish, has two adult sons, and is a proud abuelo. Ask, and the photos come out.
Your smallwares order has one owner from cart to carton. This is her.
Yessi is TMB’s right hand. She assists every department in the building and is one of the hardest-working members of the crew — when a smallwares order moves, she is the one moving it.
Wires the panels and finds the part your machine is waiting on.
Sergio joined TMB in June 2003. He supports technical service by wiring control panels and helps customers by consulting on and locating parts — and he keeps the cleanest workbench in the building, which is greatly prized around here.
Sergio speaks Spanish, and spends his off hours with his young son and daughter.
Invoices, terms, accounts — answered by a person who knows yours.
Raquel is our bookkeeper, with many years of experience behind the desk. Whatever your question on accounting, she is eager to help you sort it out.
During her off time, you can catch her enjoying the company of her dog, Woobie.
Keeps sales and marketing moving, so your question lands with the right person.
Justin manages marketing and business development, working closely with the executive team on the administrative, financial, and customer-support work that keeps the company growing.
Your order out the door on time, and your freight questions answered by the person who packed it.
Rick is our shipping and receiving specialist. He makes sure every order goes out in a timely manner, and he is available to help with quotes and any shipping question you have.
On the crew that sets your equipment.
+ Hundreds more
Photo · a loaded deck
Photo · croissant lamination
Photo · bread out of the oven
Some of these bakeries we equipped from an empty room. Some we have kept running for twenty years. Most started with the same conversation.
TMB baking consulted/guided me for over two years while I sought out an appropriate brick and mortar space to build my bakery. They made great recommendations when it came to bakery layout and equipment.
I placed an order for 5 bread proofing baskets on 2/13/22 and received them today, 2/16/22! The 13th was a Sunday, so yes, I am impressed.
Amazing service.
Archive photoA French baker sets up in the Bay Area to bring European bakery equipment to American bakers who are only beginning to want it.
PhotoThe company takes the name TMB Baking. The work does not change: layout, equipment, installation, service.
PhotoOwnership passes to the people doing the work. Continuity stops being a promise and becomes a structure.
PhotoBakeries we equipped supply the sourdough, baguettes and pastry sold under names you would recognise on any coast.
We are a Bay Area company and we are not only a Bay Area company. If you are opening somewhere else, that is a logistics question, not a reason to call someone nearer. [CONFIRM the coverage below with Greg.]
PhotographOur own crew, our own trucks, and a parts room twenty minutes from most of the bakeries we serve. Same-day is a real possibility here.
PhotographWe travel to install and commission, and we keep supporting the equipment afterwards by phone and by post. An Eastern US representative covers the other coast.
PhotographWe have equipped bakeries outside the United States. If the machines can get there, so can the drawing and the crew. /p>
Michel Suas founded TMB in 1986. He went on to found SFBI — the school that trained a generation of American bakers — and to write Advanced Bread and Pastry, still the text most of them learned from.
The two share an address. Bakers come west to learn the craft, and walk next door to find the machines that let them practise it at scale. We have never had to explain to a customer why fermentation matters.
Everything we sell, someone here has baked on.
An oven is a box that gets hot. A bakery is everything else.
Not the margin, not the stock on the floor, not what is easiest to ship. We ask what you bake and how long you ferment it before we say a brand name out loud.
Most costly mistakes in a bakery are made on paper, months before anything is delivered. Power, gas, drainage, door widths, and the path flour takes to become bread.
We stock parts for machines older than most of our competitors. Some sit on the shelf for years — then save a baker’s morning.
Our smallwares are priced and buyable, from a five-dollar scraper up. Equipment is quoted because a bakery is not a catalogue item — but nothing here hides behind a form for the sake of it.
Every one was chosen by people who have baked on it. Some relationships are more than twenty years old — which means parts, training and answers, not just a logo on a page.
Deck and rack ovens, built in France for bakeries that run them all day.
Ovens
French mixers designed around long fermentation rather than throughput alone.
Mixing
Italian mixing and dough handling, from the bench to an industrial line.
Mixing
French make-up equipment. We have represented them for more than twenty years.
Make-up
British bakery and confectionery equipment for retail and wholesale floors.
Bakery
Belgian slicing, engineered for volume without tearing the crumb.
Slicing
American refrigeration and cold rooms, built to the drawing.
Cold
Dough dividing and portioning.
Dividing
Photograph — Otto at the bench,Otto was baking hearth sourdough as a cottage operation and believed his community would support a real retail bakery. He was right. Getting there took the better part of two years.
He was already good — high-quality flours, a well-crafted hearth deck oven, and enough study behind him that every check-in turned up something new to discuss. What he did not have was a building.
So the first job was not equipment. We toured prospective spaces with him, working out what each site would cost in power, ventilation and workflow before anything was signed. Then the layout, drawn around the bread he was already making. Then the machines, matched to the drawing. [CONFIRM the machines by name.]
Otto knew where he wanted to be, and was patient, flexible and grounded about getting there. Salinas has a bakery now.
“They made great recommendations when it came to bakery layout and equipment.”
Otto Kramm · Otto’s Bread · Google reviewA machine, a part, an order, an invoice — the counter handles all of it, Monday through Friday. Call, write, or come by; either way you reach a person, not a queue.
(650) 589-5724527 DNA Way — next door to the San Francisco Baking Institute. Not a coincidence.
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