Starting slowly, what oven/mixer?
Here's the scoop.
I live where there is no good bread. Truly, no good bread. I've been baking bread and selling it to coworkers and daily I get comments like "this is the best bread in the county." Granted, the competition is virtually none, so that's not saying much. But, what it does say is there's a market for good bread. Lots of funky restaurants, tourists, foodies and locals.
So, my husband and I are thinking about starting a small-scale bread bakery. But, I'm terrified. Here's where my question comes in:
I'd like to start small. Not as small as me and my off-brand home oven and kitchen aide mixer. But not so big that I'm sinking $15,000 into an oven. If I can start "small", maybe baking 100 loaves a week, selling at the farmer's market and CSA-style to locals and it goes well, investing in major equipment and converting our garage into a commercial kitchen will seem like less of a stretch.
SO, what are your suggestions for an oven and a mixer, given my present goal?
Thanks in advance. The Fresh Loaf is such an inspiring, helpful community of like-minded folks.
Since I don't have the background to answer your question directly, I'll point you to the Search tool in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Type in the phrase "open bakery" (don't include the quotation marks) and click on the Search button. You'll get a melange of results, but a number of them are previous discussions by people like yourself who were interested in starting a bakery, whether from home or a store-front. Lot's of good general information there about things that might not have occurred to you yet (insurance? health department certification?).
You can also read blogs by people who are already headed down that path (mcs, varda, drogon, PiPs, and others).
Best of luck.
Paul
Hi there! I read your post and thought I'd reach out because I am sort of on the same boat! Perhaps two minds are better than one? If you're interested, email me at pawlingbreadco@gmail.com :-)
you should probably look into the regulations that exist in your area for home-based food businesses since they may affect various aspects of how you can and can't operate.
I need to look into this further. I have had the luxury of making my bread in a restaurant kitchen, thus procrastinating on actual research. Babybirdbreads, where will your business be located? I'm in New York.
However I'm in the UK where we have a long tradition of making/selling from home - and good laws, rules,guidelines that let us do just that...
I'm guessing you're not in the UK by your use of a $ sign - however there are about a dozen countries that use $ currency of some sort of another, so hard to guess where you are, but the first thing you need to do is check your local laws, regulations, etc. and see if it's actually possible.
Then the fun starts :-)
I bake about 100 loaves a week - don't kid yourselves, it's not going to be easy.. Not initally, anyway. Especially if you're bulking up for 2-3 markets rather than daily which I do.
Thinks to think about: How much flour will you use for 100 loaves? I'm buying a 25Kg sack every week now (and that's just organic white flour - I also buy spelt, wholemeal, Rye and other stuff like seeds to add, etc.)
So think about storage.
Ovens - Your choice of oven might initially be limited by the power available. Single phase or 3 phase. Most commercial ovens are 3 phase. I have what's probably the biggest single phase electric oven that will plug into a UK 13 amp power socket. (3Kw) I also have a slightly smaller domestic oven. So find out what's available to you. My Lincat EC08 cost me about £1200.00 new. You might want to see if Rofco ovens are available where you are. I'd consider one if I had somewhere to fit it. They're in the region of £1600.
I have my arms and hands to mix and can comfortably hand knead up to about 2.5Kg of dough, but I also have a Hobart A200 which I bought via gumtree and a Kenwood Chef Major (mostly used for cakes though)
Once you know how big your oven is, you'll know how much bread you can bake at once. Or twice, etc. I baked 26 loaves this morning and that needed 2 lots through the smaller oven and 3 lots through the bigger one. I budget 45 minutes per oven run. I can get 6 large loaves in the big oven or 12 small ones - it's all a matter of juggling the numbers and times, and this morning I baked 12 large loaves...
Then you need to think about the actual bread! Sourdough, yeasted, combinations... Extras like buns, local delicacies, cakes, patisserie,Viennoiserie, and so on.
And don't forget insurance either ...
But if you think you can do it, then go for it! Its fantastic seeing the smiles on peoples faces when they eat real bread!
-Gordon
Hi- I've just started a part time microbakery in another bread desert so perhaps some of my experiences will help:
1) After checking out local and state regulations, consider whether home sale or farmer market would work better. I do home sale because that's all cottage laws allow here. To do markets or retail would require a commercial kitchen. I use a website for ordering once a week, Saturday pickup. Word of mouth, Facebook, Twitter, etc all help build up clientele. This works well in a medium size city. If you're in a rural setting, markets are probably better.
2) In terms of ovens, I think the best choices for single phase residential power are a 1/2 or full size Cadco and a Rofco. I haven't used the first but there are a few positive threads on forum about them. I wish I could endorse the latter more, since in many ways it offers home bakers the best blend of capacity and "bread" design. I use a B40 model, which takes 220v and can bake up to 12 loaves. It behaves a bit like a wood-fired oven (another alternative) and can create some very nice bread as long as you are prepared for a learning curve. Unfortunately I have had nothing but problems with it, ranging from build quality to design and responsiveness of company. It's seller in the US, Pleasant Hill Grains, is a solid outfit, though they can only do so much if the product itself is flawed. You might call them. The B40 costs about $3800.
3) I do all the mixing by hand in larger 13-20 quart bowls and bus bins. Using basic stretch and fold techniques, doing up to 8k of dough isn't very tough. For me, a mixer can wait for the day I decide to do this full time. Which is probably never.
4) A great help is a modified freezer for overnight retarding. I can fit up to 70 loaves into mine. You can adjust temperature using a digital thermostat popular among home brewers. This way you can shape the night before, proof, and bake in am. It takes a while to sort out the retarding times and temps, but it's worth it in my opinion. If you have some breads you do the night before or the day of, such as ryes, you can put out 100+ loaves with a Rofco.
Good luck in whatever you decide to do
Sam Temple
Fire Dog Breads
Norman OK
I've been scouring around for what users really think about them. What freezer do you use? Would you mind sharing more insight? I'd be happy to contact you in private if that is preferred. Thanks! --Cynthia
Sure Cynthia- you can email me at firedogbreads@gmail.com. Your stuff looks good!