Farmer's Market Season Baking
I've put myself to the test. I plan to summon 10 loaves of my own at home, freshly baked, every Saturday Morning, to bring to my local farmer's market as trade. This is week one for me. As some already know I am a full time professional baker and believe it or not the last thing I want to do on the weekend is bake. Actually as I've aged I prefer to cook opposed to bake on my free time. I used to bake at home endlessly but with a full time job doing such that teetered off. I'm back. I see all of the wonderful stuff created from home on this site, much of which blows away professionally made product. I want in. I'm gonna be a part-time home baker. I bet I'll need some advice from those of you with more skills baking bread in rinky dink home ovens with pots and pans and the such. I've done it and done it well but I'm only a novice. Most of my breadwork is with commerical tools, and in some cases top notch.
Also my plan is to be spontaneous and just kinda wing a new loaf every week. This week I've made up what I'll call the "Super Grain Sour Wheat" I did some reading on super grains this week and thought well those should be a soaker for a loaf of bread. So I made a levain of Central Milling High Mountain High Protein, Central Mill freshly ground whole wheat, Central Milling freshly ground whole rye, starter, and h20. This was built off of a 100% cold living white starter and essentially a second build 8 hours after it was previously fed 1:2::2.
Soaker:
3 oz toasted millet 3 oz, toasted buckwheat (kashi), 3 oz toasted kamut, 3 oz toasted quinoa
Levain
3 oz Rye
7 oz Wheat
10 oz HP
20 oz H20
10 oz White Starter 100%
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Rise 8 hours.
Final Dough
85 oz HP
20 oz Wheat
70 oz H20
3 oz Sea Salt
4 oz H20 #2
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Autolyse 2 hours
Add levain, salt, soaker and mix on speed one (uh oh super wet) 5 minutes
Turn to speed 2 (medium) 5 minutes (looking better)
Turn to speed 3 hi about 5 minutes (phew it came together)
Bulk Ferment plan: 3 1/2 hours (3-4 s+f) at 20 minutes intervals but I'll let the dough lead
Shape/ partially proof (2-3 hours) Retard overnight
Wake up early set up my oven and bake in 3-4 waves. cool down. make sure its not terrible and then head to market
I'll add some pics of dough and the such as I go.
I'm mostly sharing this to motivate me to do this and to document some of my findings. Hey I bet I'll make a few good loaves before the markets over in November.
Happy Baking
Josh
Comments
good to be spontaneous baking at home... so much to explore! no routine.
thanks for sharing! any pictures??
happy baking Josh
evon
I'm up early to get to baking. This dough was wet. Hopin for good results. ill upload some photos later when all said and done.
crossin fingers for decent loaves.
Thanks for the encouragement evon
josh
Where or how can I get a stone that is the size of my oven. I have a rectangle pizza stone that barely fits two loaves. I may be able to do 3 at a time if I figure this out. But at least two with eAse. well I'm learning. Wet towel steam is fantastic. I'm using it in combo with a cast iron pan and a couple ice cubes to start.
I like Sylvias steaming pans too, especially in conjunction with a 12" CI skillet where the bottom of the pan is coved in lava rocks and half full of water. This gives mega steam required for getting that thick, boldly baked, blistered crust on home baked bread.
It is good that you are going to bake at hiome so that you can bake the fine and unusual breads that just won't or don't sell out of a bakery because of cost or what is in them. Just bake all the breads you never thought you would or could at the bakery, there are a thousand ingredients and millions of ingredient combinations to design a new bread from - and then maybe some of them you will find a way to bake and sell at work too!
Over the last year and a half I have baked 150 dfferent breads (some more different than others) - many you would never find at a bakery - anywhere. There is no need for a stone to hold more than 2 loaves of bread around here. Almost all of our bakes are single loaves for the 3 of us. But you do need 2 stones - one to bake on and one on a rack 12" above the bread.
I figure there were 1,000 different recipes for bread in Clayton's Complete Book of Breads so... I only have 850 more to go to catch up with him - 40 years ago :-)
Happy Home Baking
I do have two stones, one above and one below. but there is a good 6" wide and a couple " deep that would be great to utilize. I will have to look further into this. Maybe I'll start a new thread and get some ideas. I've consider just buying firebrick and laying it out to fill in the whole rack. There must be a stone that is the size I seek out there.
Indeed the ideas/recipes are limitless. I'll have some fantastic bakes and some not so fantastic but thats fine. Today's bake was average. Deffinately need to cut back the hydration on this dough and I think I'd be on to something. But I promised I wouldn't just keep revisiting the same recipe until it was perfected as that is already part of my job. I'll log it put some notes down for future attemps and come back to it down the road.
Just finished the bake and waiting for the last loaves to cool. Started with 10, lost 2 to a peel with not enough flour, gave two away already. Still got 6 loaves to go with. The first load was for the dogs but those are gone now. They improved afterwards but once again I didn't get the spring I wanted. Taste is quite pleasant. A light wheat with a touch of twang, some nuttiness and texture from the soaker. All in All I'm happy and hopefully some farmers will want to trade.
Pics comin up.
Josh
So the first photo is the thrid wave of baking and the best profile I got.
The crumb shot is from the first load which had some sticking issues and the lowest profile. Unfortunately or forutnately its the only crumb shot I got. i bet the others are a bit more open through and through.
The last is the bounty I got in trade. I lost 2 loaves, gave 2 away to neighbors and traded 6 at the market for a big bag of spring mix, 2 heads of kale, 1 of chard, 3 heads of new garlic, 2 bars of goat soap, and a bag of dried figs, and a bouquet of flowers for the lady. (market value $36) And I only traded 75% of what was planned. Can't wait for next week. Those figs are going into a light rye sourdough. Or thats the current plan. This was so worthwhile and I'm stoked.
Some updates to the previous formula. I gave the dough 5 s + f's at 20 minute intervals and a total of 3 hours bulk fermentation. Then I proofed at room temp for 3 hours before retarding for 8 hours. Changes I would make:
lower hydration to about 70% (its currently at about 76%) with the soaker it felt like nearly 80%
shorten the final proof at room temperature by an hour (although this may not be true with a lowered hydration)
Happy Baking
Josh
Looks lihe things will work out fine. Soap, veggies and dried fruit on the first run - very nice.!
Good luck with your venture. Hope you don't get too frustrated with home equipment. -Varda
It's just a new challenge but it was actually a lot of fun. So was trading it for great products.
I need to find lava rocks. Fish Store?
Any thoughts on using unglazed tile for the baking stone which will then give me the larger hearth that I want?
On amazon they are listed under patio, lawn and garden. Shipping is three times the cost of the rocks, so a local place is probably a better bet.
http://www.amazon.com/Onward-Multi-Corp-05002-Lava/dp/B002Q7EGVY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369532511&sr=8-2&keywords=lava+rocks
I haven't tried the tiles but I believe many people use them, and it sounds like a good idea for getting a larger hearth. I bought a kiln shelf that is 17 by 17 (I think) and pretty well fills up my oven shelf.
Where did you buy a Kiln shelf from?
Hi Josh,
Go to your local building supply co. and get some fire bricks, then either find a sheet pan large enough to accommodate your hearth needs, or build/have built an angle iron frame to your desired size that the bricks will snugly fit into, and can be fitted on to the oven racks. Using firebrick in a domestic oven takes a fair bit of energy to bring them up to proper heat but you should be able, with a some supplemental heat, to do a 2x4 load of loaves over 80-90 minutes or less, depending on scaled weight. Like you, I bake professionally and do the at-home artisan thing when I have the time and inclination. With out a doubt, the knowledge I've gained over the past several years from the members and discussions on this site has had a profound and very positive affect on what I do on the job. Hope your Farmer's Market endeavour goes well for you, and looking forward to reading your future posts about it.
Best wishes,
Franko
Nice loaves! I wish you all the best in the Farmer's market. PLs. keep us posted.
(Ps. nice lined brotformens!)
-khalid