The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Summer Farmer's Market

Ovenbird's picture
Ovenbird

Summer Farmer's Market

This week was the first week of the new summer market in Dryden. Along with a few friends in the Bread Club, we prepared several types of bread for sale. We had a dozen each of Italian Semolina bread, Caraway Rye, and a couple types of Multigrain Sourdough. We also made a couple dozen brioche with different fillings which went pretty fast so I'll have to make more of those next time.

Italian Semolina

The Italian Semolina is from Hamelman's recipe for Durum bread. It uses both a biga and a wild yeast levain. For this I used my new Italian mother culture that my aunt gave me when we went to visit her in the hills of northern Italy last month. I prepared a total of 8kg of dough for about 12 loaves at 650g each. This bread is one of my favorite everyday breads with a thin crisp crust and lovely golden crumb. 

Caraway Rye

Caraway Rye

The caraway rye was also from Hamelman's recipe for Deli Rye. This is a great bread for sandwiches or toast. It is made with 15% pre-fermented rye flour so it develops a nice sour flavor that is great with the aromatic caraway, especially when the rise is retarded overnight in the fridge. I slashed these loaves a bit to early so they flattened out more than I wanted but they still tasted great. I made about 8kg of this as well for a dozen loaves at 650g.

Seeded Sourdough

I also made 2 types of multigrain sourdough. The one pictured above is Hamelman's Sourdough Seed Bread. This dough is leavened with only wild yeast. I wanted to make pan loaves for this but I didn't have room in the fridge for my large pullman pans so I reversed the time for the bulk and final fermentation. Bulk fermentation was ~8hrs, then it went in the fridge for a while before dividing into 1500g loaves and a final 2hr rise. The flavor was great and the texture was good but I thought the loaves seemed a bit short. I either need to load the pans more or (more likely) give it more time to rise in the pan before baking.

Spent Grain Sourdough

The other sourdough I made (above) was my own creation. It was a recipe I came up with to use the spent starter that comes from feeding my mother cultures throughout the week(s). Basically I had about 1 kg of spent starter (a mix of rye and wheat) in the fridge that I didn't want to go to waste. Going along with the theme of no waste, I also incorporated ~20% spent grain that I got from a local micro-brewery. This results in a pretty slack dough that doesn't gain much height when baking, but has a nice flavor & texture. They weren't the most eye catching loaves so I was worried that it wouldn't be very popular at the market, but after giving out a few free samples this was actually the first type to sell out! I made 6 loaves with the following recipe:

 

Bread Flour1360g85%
Whole Wheat Flour240g15%
Water (or Beer)800g50%
Instant Yeast32g2%
Salt32g2%
Spent Brewers Grain380g20%
Spent Sourdough (100% hydration; rye & wheat)1200g75%

Brioche

I made 2 types of Brioche dough. One is from Hamelman's book and the other is from Reinharts "Crust & Crumb". The Reinhart version has a higher percentage of butter (~80%!) compared to 50% in the other. Both are delicious but I wanted to see which would work better for my production schedule. I filled the Hamelman Brioche with fruit filling (raspberry and apricot) and shaped them into cornetti. The richer Reinhart dough was rolled flat and filled with nutella or cream cheese filling, then folded over. Both were delicious, but I think the Hamelman version rose slightly better this time. The others were kind of flat underneath the filling. I have made the Reinhart recipe in the past with better results, but making all this bread with limited tools constrains the proofing schedule and I think that didn't agree with the richer dough as well. Next time I think I will just stick with the Hamelman recipe and maybe try some different shapes so I don't confuse what filling is where when I am selling them.

So I was pretty happy with the first week at the new market stand. Traffic was low because of rainy weather, but I sold the majority and had a few loaves left to give to friends & family. Hopefully the weather will be better next time.

 

Comments

Edo Bread's picture
Edo Bread

A really wonderful presentation and all you products look great.

bakingbadly's picture
bakingbadly

Your breads look scrumptious! I'd definitely buy a loaf or two if I dropped by.

Best wishes to you and may you have continual success at the farmers market! 

Zita

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

so good.  I never have good luck with spent grain breads an mine come out much flatter than yours.  i think i found out why.  Your hydration is 64% and mine was 72%.  Mine was always a Frisbee;-)  So,next time we make beer, I will give it another go.  Well done and 

Happy baking 

Ovenbird's picture
Ovenbird

Yeah, these were a bit flatter than usual too, because I used all purpose flour rather than strong bread flower. And if the hydration had been much higher they would have been really hard to work with. 

KathyF's picture
KathyF

I love your display. And that is a good price (for the buyer) on the bread. At my local farmer's market bread was being sold for $6 to $7 a loaf.

Edo Bread's picture
Edo Bread

I had not noticed the price. That seems like a really great deal. I would see if the market could take an increase there.

Ovenbird's picture
Ovenbird

Thanks for the nice comments everyone! I have been enjoying the challenge of baking at a larger scale & look forward to seeing how this little business will do throughout the summer.

As for the pricing. I am still trying to figure out what will work. It was a rainy day here this Saturday so I was selling for a bit less than usual. In the past I have asked $5 a loaf and $2.50 for pastries, which seems pretty fair to me.