This past week The Back Home Bakery had guest intern Greg (gcook17) visiting from Mountain View, CA.  He brought his extensive bread and pastry skills to the workbench and got to try his hand at using the sheeter too.  Thanks a lot Greg for all of your help - we hope to see you again up here!

-Mark
http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

stretch and fold on a 10 loaf batch of Rustic White

lining up the puff pastry bear claws

Here's Greg with his new found favorite toy.

On our way back from The Back Home Bakery, we made a quick stop at the Wheat Montana bakery/deli pictured here:

It is located in Three Forks, Montana and is just off I-90.  The place is big; I only captured part of it in this photo.  And yes, those are grain silos at the back corner of the facility.  I believe that they grind all of the flour on-site that is then bagged and sold, or used in their baked goods.  There is also a gas station out of the frame, about 100 feet to the right of my position as I took this photo.

The first thing that meets your eyes as you step through the door are stacks of 50-pound bags of flour: Bronze Chief (red whole wheat), Prairie Gold (white whole wheat) and their Naturally White AP.  There are also bags of wheat berries.  Prices are surprisingly low, compared to what I see in local supermarkets.  The berries were priced from $19-21 per 50-pound bag and the flours were priced $20-22 per bag.  If I hadn't been told just before leaving for vacation that I'm going to be spending the next couple of years in South Africa, I'd have purchased a couple of bags and worried later about where to store them.  As it is, I need to burn through my existing flour stocks in the next few weeks.

Further in, there are shelves with Wheat Montana logoed goods; caps, cups and such.  There are also flours in 5- and 10-pound bags, cook books and preserves.  Still other shelves hold various breads.  There is a deli counter where one can purchase various pastries and sandwiches, along with hot and cold beverages.  There are a number of tables to sit at while enjoying your food and drink.  I must confess to having been a bit of a bread snob after a week of seeing what Mark produces.  Any other day I might have thought their stuff looked pretty good, but it just didn't measure up to what we had been making at The Back Home Bakery.  So we stopped long enough to buy a drink and take this picture, then headed back to the road.

Paul

Hi all,

I was wondering if any home bakers here have had success selling their breads from their home kitchen.  Were you able to sell to more than friends and family?  Farmer's market?  Anywhere else?  Your trials and errors would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Mike

At the end of August, Diane came from Vancouver Island, BC for a week long internship at the Back Home Bakery.  During her stay we made everything from puff pastry dough to baguettes with everything in between.  Although both she and Sharon (aka 'the wife') are a bit camera shy, I did manage to snap a couple of photos of the elusive two during the course of the week.
Thanks a bunch Diane for helping out with the farmers' markets, daily deliveries, wholesale accounts and even dinner too.  Hope to see you again next time around.

-Mark
http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

Sharon and Diane working on some pain au chocolat

Diane putting them together

This is us pretending to have a good time

Three years ago I moved to the Cary, North Carolina and quickly became aquatinted with my new rural surroundings. My neighbor suggested I visit the Raleigh Farmer's Market conveniently located on I-40 and Lake Wheeler Road, exit 297; and it turned out to be am unforgettable experience. I was soon taken back by this 75 acre facility providing up to 225,000 square feet of covered, climate controlled, year round retail and wholesale space. Sold were seasonal vegetables and fruits by the pound or by the bushel. There were homemade baked goods, jellies, jams, honey, and the North Carolina Seafood Restaurant serving up deep-fried Calabash-style seafood, with mounds of home fries and hush puppies.

On that beautiful Saturday morning the baked goods caught my eye. I had not seen snicker doodle cookies or buttermilk pies in years; the array of baked goods was awesome. Let there be no misunderstanding, these are serious bakers and they take as much pride in their products as the North Carolina farmers.

First time visitors will be amazed at the amount of food and the number of customers that rolled through the market and after talking to a number of the vendors there is not doubt that North Carolina is a special state; not because it grows more sweet potatoes than any other state in the nation, but because it actually encourages home food processing. Food entrepreneurs can try their luck at creating unique specialties like pickled okra and homemade snicker doodles; taking their culinary creations from kitchen to market.

Years ago when the United States was predominately rural there were many home-based bakers, farmer's wives who sold their jams, and jellies for pin money, along with homemade breads, pastries, cakes, pies and cookies. It is this opportunity that is fueling the local economy by providing local bakers the chance to share their baked goods and earn extra income. Who knows when that culinary hobby will turn into a full time venture?

North Carolina is one of twelve states that allow home-based food processors the opportunity to sell their goods directly to the public. In fact the idea of selling homemade baked good has become so popular there is now a gated area for home-based bakers at the Raleigh Farmer's Market; and featured are homemade carrot cakes, pound cakes, pies, a wide assortment of cookies, and breads; there is literally something for every sweet tooth at the market.

So, the next time someone says, "You really should think about selling that pie," you might want to mosey on down the Raleigh Farmer's Market and see if your sweet treat can stand the heat.

If you're looking for a way to brush up on your baking skills and learn some new ones too, have I got good news for you!  Things are getting busy and I need one hard working baker to team up with me for a week in the middle of June (17th-24th).  This isn't a vacation or a 'come and watch as Mark demonstrates techniques' kind of workshop.  You'll be working beside me working baker's hours and sharing all of the tasks with me too. We'll be making everything from baguettes and sourdough to bear claws and croissants.  We'll be selling at the farmer's markets and making daily deliveries too.   How's that?  It's free to you and free to me, so we both win. 
If you're interested or just inquisitive, you can download more information about it here with this PDF. 

-Mark

http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

edit on July 2, 2009 UPDATE

I lived in the S.F. Bay area and my hobby for the last ten years was making sourdough bread. I previously owned a print/copy company. I sold the printing business and spent the last 8 years doing graphics for the new home industry. The mortgage debacle effectively ended this occupation.

So, I got on Craig's List and looked for business' for sale. The owners of a sourdough bakery in Oregon had just posted their business for sale on the S.F. Bay C.L. area board only. I called, my wife and I drove up and saw a very healthy business, and we decided to buy. We sold our house, bought the bakery outright, and started makng bread with an 80 year old sourdough starter.

Unlike bakers yeast bread, the sourdough process starts three days before the bake day. Much of the starter for the bake is prepared Friday for a Monday bake, the rest prepared the Sunday before it's used. Where you want a real sour taste (like white or rye), you use a combination of "old" starter and "new" starter. If you want less sour for certain breads (like raisin/walnut or spinach/onion), you use "new" starter only.

I also discovered "fresh baked sourdough bread" is something of a misnomer, sourdough breads don't reach their full flavor potential until the following day at the earliest. So the breads are delivered to restaurants and supermarkets the morning after an afternoon bake. All bread is "guaranteed sale" so any unsold bread is picked up by the delivery driver and credited to the retail outlet. Restaurants tend to underorder and run out (we freeze part of each bake to bail them out with, they never have returns), the amount that comes back from markets is negligible. Returned regular breads become croutons that always sell out quickly; older ryes, mulitgrains, specialty breads, etc. are sold out of the front of the bakery at wholesale prices, and it's a contest among the regulars to grab their favorites before the shelves are bare.

You wouldn't believe how satisfying it is to have a hugh room with racks full of hundreds of cooling loaves of sourdough, if you love making bread, it's like heaven. Best of all, I can go in on weekends and experiment with different recipes (I'm going to try a 20 pound batch of blue cheese and walnut soon, I just haven't decided on whether to use a whole wheat or light rye base dough, extra sour or mild sour; probably a mildly sour rye with extra whole wheat flour added, won't overpower the walnuts too badly), If I'm happy with the results, I can sell them out of the front to see how they do, if well received, I can make up a label with UPC code and sell them everywhere. This is really fun.

There's a wonderful bakery in Boone, NC called Stick Boy Bread Co. (http://www.stickboybread.com/); check it out!

Hi All,

I've recently started baking my own bread :) I'm still very new to this and so far have been using very simple/basic recipes. I've been trying to get my bread to turn out with really soft soft crust (like in bakeries or store brought bread). How do I do this pls? My mom loves those types of bread.

I've tried spreading some milk on the crust before baking, rubbing with butter after baking.. all these help, but i still can't get that degree of crust softness that you get from bakeries. The inside is lovely and soft though.

My recipe - 3 cups flour, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon yeast, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 tablespoon honey, 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 teaspoons salt.

any advise please?

Thanks

 Fresh Loafians,
Well, after much waiting and other stuff, we finally got our bakery licensed yesterday!  It's official, so I just thought I'd share the news with all of you.  Now it's just a matter of getting back into the flow of doing all of that mixing, shaping, and baking that I've been looking forward to.  Here's a photo of the main work area of the bakery which is located in the lower level of our house.

the bakery

-Mark

 thebackhomebakery.com