May 9, 2017 - 7:08am
Scaling up!
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"Pain Complet." Whole grain naturally fermented bread. 65% Home milled whole HRSW, 20% whole home milled Rye, 15% white commercial bread flour. The grains were sustainably grown by small family farms in the Driftless region of Wisconsin, and provided to me by the great people at Lonesome Stone Mills. I'm grateful to the 18 Chicagoans who wanted to try out my bread! 
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The loaves and the presentation look wonderful!
You must be super excited to be at this point - so much time and hard work in developing a special mix of flours and technique that is truly *yours*, and finally where you can start to get reactions and input and see how well it takes off...
I wish that I were one of the lucky few who get to be your testers --- I'm sure that they will be most happy with what they get.
Remember to keep enjoying what you are doing - even when it seems overwhelming (and to keep sharing with us here, please --- we want to see and enjoy your success, too).
Keep baking happy!
Thanks so much for your encouragement! I am very excited to explore every opportunity I can to keep scaling up. Good advice about keeping the joy alive. Business can be grueling, I know! I do wish that I could share the bread with some folks here... I wonder how difficult it would be to ship a loaf of bread... stay tuned, perhaps I can send some people a loaf in exchange for some serious feedback!
Your loaves are beautiful! My guess is that those lucky Chicagoans are feeling pretty grateful as well. Good for you on taking it to the next level. I wish you the best!
Trevor
Appreciate the encouragement.
Quite a prodigious haul. Curious as to how you can schedule so much. Do you have a special oven/kitchen set-up?
Also, your prior post about unlocking some of the secrets of the Tartine boule - great looking bread! Congratulations.
alan
Here's how I did this batch: I did everything up until proofing in baskets at room temperature. So the levain, the soaker, the mixing, the bulk fermentation, all at room temp. Then I shaped and put in baskets and put in my regular home fridge overnight. We emptied out our fridge completely in the days leading up to this. Even so, the fridge was absolutely packed, and because of that, it did not cool the loaves as well. Some of them got close to over-proofing, but luckily I squeaked by.
For the bake I used a method I have tested once before. I baked the loaves for 20 minutes, two at a time, in my normal home gas oven in cast iron dutch ovens. I then move the loaves to a pre-heated large size counter top oven for the rest of the bake. This way I can get two new loaves in the oven every twenty minutes.
Impressive results all around, and very clever use of heat. Inspirational, thanks for sharing.
I went for a second fridge before I got to the point you are at...a cheap Frigidaire with wire shelves, no freezer, one big door, no frills. Need to adjust timing to compensate for the bigger mass that needs cooling, as you discovered.
The next step after that...building a DIY walk in cold room using a Coolbot...
Great work and good luck with scaling up...
Very nice. Yeah, that makes sense. I actually have a small Baker's Pride deck oven sitting on my porch which I plan to bake eight loaves at a time in. I got a good deal on it on eBay, and I'm now looking for some kind of commercial space to rent/borrow so I can put it to use. My guess is that I may be able to find a space that has available fridge space. We'll see.
Great to hear about the walk-in project! Love to see updates on that.