December 9, 2015 - 10:42am
Refrigeration and Racks
In continuing to think about a small bakery design, one of my persistent questions is what to do about refrigeration. I will retard most if not all loaves, so loading loaves onto racks and being able to wheel the racks into a walk-in would be great...unless I can't swing a walk-in.
I know folks use large refridgerators instead, but I'm not sure how best to handle loading racks of loaves in and out of individual refridgerators. I'd like to avoid having to go board by board from speed rack to fridge both in and out, so I'm imagining racks that can be loaded into and out of fridges, carrying many boards at a time...???
Insights into the most efficient and economical way to handle refrigeration in a one person artisan bread operations?
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If you're mixing, shaping, proving, baking etc. all by yourself then there's a limit to how many loaves you can create a day. Might not speed-loading batches of, say, a dozen loaves a time into fridges be a very small time saving compared to everything else? Maybe having a look at what you're producing and shifting away from the most time-consuming of them would be more efficient? At first, at least. Until you can afford to build a walk-in retarder.
That is a good point, as it is now just a hypothetical bottleneck (and it is all hypothetical now, of course), which really depends on the rate of output. If it is just a few boards at a time that isn't such a big deal, and it would likely take way too long to fill a full height rack by myself.
In any case, if anyone is in a similar situation and can explain how they handle it (and why that way), I'd appreciate it.
(BTW - it is always nice when worries like this get deflated)
How big is your budget? If it can stretch to this here is your solution then.
http://www.lbcbakery.com/lbc_products/proofersretarders/