November 28, 2014 - 11:09am
Long distance gift of bread
Hi All,
My family is doing a secret Santa gift exchange this year. I would love to send my cousin fresh baked bread, but because we're a few states apart the logistics have me stumped. I was thinking of putting together a "bake your own" kit to mail to him where I would pre-measure ingredients and package it in nice jars with instructions and maybe a good loaf pan to round it outb.
What type of recipe (foolproof as possible) would you recommend to build such a kit? I would prefer yeast over quick-bread but am unsure if yeast would make it in the freezing weather. Has anyone had success with such an idea?
Thanks for the help!
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If it is dry yeast it wont hurt to freeze. I dont bake at home as much as I would like so when I buy my yeast I buy from sams club and buy 2 one pound packages at a time. I freeze one and keep the other on a air tight container in the fridge. Hope that helps.
are popular this time of year. How about baking a stollen? Or another type of fruit bread?
This is a beautifu Idea to make a * do it yourself * kit with the jars and all ready to bake.
I think it is better than a ready baked bread.
Last evening I was checking Fed Ex rates to see what it would cost to ship baked loaves "overnight" half-way across the USA. It was not very practical…molto caro! : ( Now I have been thinking about shipping frozen loaves with some cool packs or dry ice. That way, 2 or 3 days in transit would be OK.
Has anyone done this? I believe that is how some of the catalog stores like William Sonoma ship breads, but have never seen such a package. The companies that ship meats use dry ice and styrofoam boxes.
I've ordered frozen, partially baked loaves from my great grandparent's village in Spain for delivery to me in California. They set it a cardboard box that had foam sheets in the sides plus those blue ice pack thingies in it. It arrived semi frozen, I could not bake them right away so I threw them in the freezer. I finished baking one that night plus one a night for the next three night. They were fantastic (I wish I could make mine has such a shatteringly crisp, thin crust like that) and I never noticed any degradation in quality. Being able to finish the baking process at home, without having to have the skills of handling the raw materials (if I had those skills I would have just baked them myself) made this a very easy and completely enjoyable process.
I think that the typical person receiving loaves as a gift would appreciate being able to just throw them in the oven and then savoring them a short while later.
I send bread all the time via UPS and for one loaf it generally costs under $20.00. I always mail on a Monday because one person to whom I send lives in Calif. and it takes 4 days to get to him. UPS does not deliver on the weekends.
IF you do send bread cost goes up with the size of box you use so use the smallest box you can. I do not do anything special to mine at all. They are baked fresh, cooled and then put into a plastic bag which I tie shut. I pack them surrounded in paper so they don't flop around loose in the box.
Only issue I have run across is that of wildlife getting into the boxes before the person does….
If it were me, I would prefer a baked loaf rather than a kit…When people gift me with kits it just feels like work imposed on me by someone else because I feel compelled to spend time I do not have on a 'project' that they think I will enjoy…but that is just me….I love baking and I live close to a UPS shipping store so the work I make for myself is all fun stuff.
Janet
If you are sending a baked loaf, check out USPS Priority mail. For a package under 3 lbs it is less expensive than UPS, and delivery is normally 2/3 days. Priority mail also 'moves' over the weekend, when standard UPS ground service does not. The down side is that in busy shipping seasons the tracking lags behind the actual package.
Prior to shipping loaves to various locations I did a 'test'. Used both USPS and UPS. Consistency was very unpredictable with USPS while with UPS it was not. I therefore chose UPS - plus the shipping store is closer to where I live - a 5 minute drive rather than s 20 minute drive plus, with the post office there was alway more time spent waiting in line.
These were just the factors I had to take into consideration when mailing bread. All comes down to a personal choice. Whatever fits your situation is what will work for you. :*)
Janet
Nice to know that shipping fresh bread UPS and Priority mail works for you both. I will try it. I will make a couple of loaves of Challah Monday morning and ship them. Cookies are easy, of course, since they have a long shelf life. 3 day old bread, while still good….you all know,when you bake your own, you get so used to FRESH. Where is "Scotty" and that "transporter room"….
get expensive when shipped by UPS or FedEx - $16-$20 a loaf based on nze of package, Nothing like turrning a nice $1 SD bread into one that costs $21 :-) Might be better send then a $20 bill in a Thanksgiving card and hope the post office doesn't steal it so they can buy 3 loaves of bread at the best bakery in town not called Tartine where they could only buy 2!
I don't know about Scotty, but Mr. Sulu is busy running the Internet.
Keep in mind that packing your goods with ice will drive up the shipping costs. USPS has an "If it fits it ships" policy on priority mail but I don't know if USPS would allow you to ship goods packed in ice.