The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Designs for a small bakery

arifainchtein's picture
arifainchtein

Designs for a small bakery

Hello,

I am a software developer slowly becoming a farmer. My project is described in www.chilhuacle.com andwww.gingeros.org.  I am reaching a point where I need to build a small bakery to produce sourdoughs as well as other yeasted breads. ( I finally have the teleras I grew up eating in Mexico City down to perfect).  My idea at first is to supplement my CSA boxes with bread.  I am not growing the grain myself, but source it from a neighbour who grows it biodynamically.

My current very high level design includes a small building for the actual preparation, a wood fired breadoven and a dryer/smoker  (this is for another side of the operation but is logical to have it there because of the proximity to the wood storage area).

I have a couple of books for the oven, and have googled about the smoker.  The bakery is where I thought this forum could be a great place to ask for help. Because of the site, money and other council planning reguations, I am thinking  a 3.2m x 2m (ie 10 feet by 7 feet more or less) enough for a a 2 meter long  table and  a milling machine, a kitchen aid type machine that could mix  dough for 9 1.2kg loafs and a proofing cabinets.

I would love any suggestions for anything anybody thinks i should and should not do. All my ip is open source and will eventually end up formatted and uploaded to the above sites.

ananda's picture
ananda

Hi arifainchtein,

I believe you should look at a better and bigger mixer than you are thinking here.   Otherwise I predict your mixer will die young.

Sounds like a really interesting project; the very best to you

Andy

arifainchtein's picture
arifainchtein

Do you have any suggestions?  Ideally I would do two bakes a day, perhaps 20 loaves.  I am assuming an oven with about 1.5m2 of floor area where I could make 9 rounds at 30 cm of diameter each. Any suggestions on the mixer volume size?

golgi70's picture
golgi70

Neat project.  When I picutre this project I see a bakery without a mixer.  Room for ingredients and proper tubs for making dough in by  hand using old world  and "new" techniques.  I say "new" because they are probably very old but are just becoming popular ideas in bread making.  Using long autolyse, stretch and folds, french slap technique, or the newest I've seen in a video by ars pistorica.  He uses a long autolyse and pinches the dough off into pieces and stretches it a bit and stacks it and continues until the dough is well "mixed".  This is a great place to learn some of these techniques if the idea of no mixer interests you.  

Otherwise its sounds like you would be in the market for a 20 quart mixer if this is 10 loaves per batch.  If its 20 per 2+lbs per batch maybe a 40 qt.  I currently use a 60 quart mixer and it fits 60 lbs of bread dough comfortably. Theres a bit more room but thats where I max out the machine.  

Hope this helps

Josh

arifainchtein's picture
arifainchtein

Thanks for that.  I must confess that I have never heard of the techniques you mentioned, but I am sure to try them now.  I am off the grid and well, in the winter, every bit of energy counts, so the posibility of not needing a gigantic motor running is a strong motivation.