After 12 years of owning a bakery my partner and I sold Bread Obsession to a nice young couple and retired.
I found that I am just as avid to bake as ever. I got a new starter going and started experimenting with flour from Ground Up Mills in western Mass. Here is one with a mix of their 83% extraction wheat flour plus King Arthur patent.
- varda's Blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Welcome back - having been a member for a mere 11 years, I never contributed to any threads that may have been yours, but your name often crops up when I browse old posts.
I'm hoping you can share some of your professional expertise with all of us, including the small but slowly growing band who use domestic kitchen sized spiral mixers.
Lance
I am looking forward to seeing what people are up to. I have to say I have come to the opposite conclusion re home mixing. You need a good spiral mixer to mix 60K of dough. Not so much to make say a single loaf. I am using my old Bosch which works just fine - it does the mixing and then I do the dough development with a few stretches and folds.
Congrats and welcome home!!!!
Rob
It is good to be back!
It's so nice to hear from you. I've always admired how you pursued your dreams and made an excellent 11-year run at it!
We all look forward to seeing posts from you and gaining knowledge from your professional experiences.
Welcome home indeed!
Best regards,
Ian
I just looked at your last post. It looks like you learned a lot. I think home baking is amazingly different from commercial baking. I haven't totally wrapped my mind around it, and have to say I'm just enjoying baking for the family again.
While I know that you got your bakery going “some” years ago, I wouldn’t have guessed it has been that long. Does it seem longer or shorter to you?
Glad to see you back here at TFL again
Paul
I'm not sure how to answer that. It was completely absorbing for twelve years. Waking up early to get the bread made. Constantly hiring and training to make sure there were enough hands to get the bread made. Dealing with customers, landlords, builders, oven repairs, etc. We were open all through Covid baking with masks on because making artisan bread is an essential service. In other words life. And now that it's over, it just feels completely natural not doing all that!
I’ve checked your bakery over the years and watched as you moved to new locations and prospered.
I remember so well all your posts from your home and your oven adventures as well as your first sales at markets. What an amazing career you have had.
It’s so wonderful to hear the bakery will continue in new hands. A testament to your knowledge and abilities and your commitment to passing that along to the next generation.
Congratulations and so happy you are back. Caroline
Caroline, It's great to see that The Fresh Loaf is going strong and I remember you from back in the day. How has the site changed over the last decade I wonder? My goal in owning a bakery was to get the bread out there. We were super happy that we found a buyer who was interested in keeping it going, and not changing it into a sub shop or something like that. Now the new owners are working very hard and innovating and putting their own stamp on it. I love to be on the sidelines (instead of the front lines) cheering them on!
You were so lucky in getting these buyers to carry on and add on their new ideas.
Yes the TFL of old isn’t the same but then nothing ever is.
Postings are very different from new folks . We get a lot of “ drive by” posts that the person has been a member for 1 hr. Never returns.
We still have the old timers like myself over 17 years ( where did the time go) and wonderful inventive posts from so many familiar names.
I hope you will post so we can all learn from your amazing store of knowledge. c
I am enjoying my home baking and I'm really interested to see what people are doing and getting new ideas. I don't know if my baking experience translates that well to this environment. When you are baking in volume for sale, the key thing is consistency over widely varying conditions, and widely varying baking staff. Every new bread requires months of test baking to make it bullet proof, so you don't add breads very often. But if I try something interesting I will definitely be posting!