PALM Bread Baker's Recipes - tiny amounts of levain, room temp 18hr+ bulk, and scalable with a home oven

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PALM Baker's Recipes screenshot for reference

I've been trying to see how far an artisan home sourdough bread operation can scale up using a standard oven, and it's getting pretty exciting. There are lots of obvious things, but also a ton of little hacks or odd ways of working that have made a big difference in how I make and bake bread.

I've been calling this method PALM (a French acronym for "Pain Accessible - au Levain et fait Maison") and documenting the process as I go so others that want to scale up their own baking can use it as an open source research reference... and hopefully not spend the years it took me to get here!

There are two main sections:

  • PALM Guidebook: An end-to-end description of everything I do, why I do it, and the specific approach/materials/etc. needed if you want to use it in your own baking.
  • Baker's Recipes: A dynamic recipe book containing the production artisan bread recipes I've been using and selling locally. There's a range of bakes, from demi baguette and pain de campage, to semi-enriched breads with maple syrup/fenugreek and pumpkin/currants/pepitas, up to a large 1.5kg miche.

To give a sense for how it scales up, here is one day's set of bakes (104 loaves in 7 hours of active time). In many ways I'm still in disbelieve that these are coming out of my home oven.

104 loaves baked in 7 hours of active time

If you're feeling extra nerdy, there's a timelapse video of the whole process to get a sense for it looks like to truly bake this way.

I frequently check out TFL and get inspired by all the bakes and ideas on here, so serious, thank you. I wouldn't be where I am in my baking journey without you all.

PALM is clearly still a work in progress (and I have so much more to learn) -- would love to hear any thoughts you have on this approach!

Following your post on 16 baguettes at a time, I made a few loaves using a mere 5g starter with 300g flour.  I got bulk ferment times of about 18 - 21 hours to double.  The loaves (batardes, not baguettes) came out pretty darn well and were especially tasty. 

Looking forward to checking out your links...

TomP

That's awesome! Glad to hear it :)

The other recipes follow a very similar level of levain + room temp bulk time. Definitely play around with the parameters (to adjust intended bulk time, ambient temperature, etc.).