April 3, 2016 - 3:43am
Hello from Americas finest city
Good morning all. I am on daddy duty with my month old son and baking a batch of sourdough for friends, so I have a few minutes to write my introduction. I am a Navy vetran who is currently going to college for a degree in Biology. I am married and have two dogs. I am a spearfisherman and I love to forage for mushrooms and brewing kombucha. I love baking and eating sourdough. I have a starter that is almost 5 years old and I am contemplating going into baking bread for a living. Well thats enough about me. Here is what I made last night.
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Happy SD baking
Thank you.
Baking bread for a living ... well, i'm sure that would be pretty awesome!
Looking forward to seeing some of you loaves!
:)
Baking can be a great career for bread heads like us. Good luck in your endeavors.
Cheers!
Trevor
I have.been baking for a long time. Now and again I consider using it to make money. The thing that always holds me back is the the lifestyle. I'm pretty sure that I don't want to have the routine of getting up in the earliest hours of the morning most days to bake. I once met a guy who satisfied his passion for bread baking by setting up shop in a really delightful very small town without a good bread bakery. Because his market was so small he didn't have to get up at 2am; 4am was early enough for him. After doing that alone for a couple of years, he hired a local bread enthusiast whom he trained. That gave him some nights off with his family. It helped his marriage that his wife ran the accounts and the front of the store. She enjoyed her part and they benefited from the time together.
I'm now comfortably retired so I no longer need to make a living from selling bread but I still consider using it for spare change. What I'm considering now is planning to bake a certain number of loaves on specific days. I'll announce that to a select list of likely customers and take only enough loaf orders as that number, and no more. That way I can sell a bit but not lose my mind from exhaustion and absence from my family. It also means I don't have a need for a huge initial business loan for private investment. In addition, I'll be making breads I want to make and selling only what I bake; no day-olds.
That's pretty much my situation. I currently bake twice a week for a list of about 60 people (some of whom lurk but don't usually order). I send out a note two days ahead telling people what kind of bread I'll be baking and asking who wants a loaf. I then bake that many loaves. Sometimes I bake two different kinds of bread, depending on how I feel. I also now have a little bread shop in my garage, where I offer 25 to 30 loaves (usually) on Saturdays from noon till 4:00 PM. I hand delivered advertising around the neighbourhood, and the response was very good.
I make most of my dough a day or two ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. So baking day, I get up at 6:00 (for the Saturday shop) and shape & bake it all. Some of the heavier breads I'll bake the day before so they have time to fully cool and develop. I don't do 4:00 AM, ever!
Any bread that doesn't sell in the shop goes into the freezer and is offered to the mailing list customers, who usually snap it up.
One is bake to order like Lazy Loafer does, with the possible addition of telling your customers when their bread will be ready - not individually, but if you say all orders will be ready by a certain time, you can pick what that time is, which determines when you'll need to start. And you can stop taking orders if / when you have enough so taking more would require starting earlier.
The other is similar, but not to order. You can tell people, for example, that at X pm on a given day, you will have N loaves of bread A plus NN loaves of bread B available - all freshly baked that day or afternoon, first come, first served. Plus if you want, you can then let people put loaves on hold. Again, this approach would let you decide when you want to start and how much work you want to put in.
anyway? South America, Central America or North America?
Thank you everyone for the warm welcome. As for now I am doing small batches for friends and family. One of my recipes is a 3 day cold fermented loaf and the other is a five hour loaf. Both have barley, rosemary, ground flax seed and are made with spelt and bread flour. As for my mode of cooking I use a gas oven with either my La Cloche or romertopf depending on type of loaf. I have been hoping to put together plans for a stone hearth oven, however I need to educate myself a little bit more about the design for my application. I also think before I dedicate my self to the craft I need to apprentice under a master, locally we have a couple.
That's some great looking bread....I'm a Navy Vet too "Submarines" and love to bake bread also. I have a Rye sour and a wheat sourdough starter that I made about a year and a half ago and use it all the time. My bread has great crumb and very good rise. I need to use different designs on the scoring and more flour for visual effect. I love baking my own bread and find that the taste is superior to store bought. Keep up the good work, your breads look really delicious. "Fair heats and following bakes"...
Great looking loaves keep on posting!