Aggressive Purchasing

Every dollar that I don't spend on ingredients or supplies is equal to 3 or 4 dollars coming in the front door. I'm taking advantage of being closed mid-week to get the best prices I can for anything we use here at the shop. Some of the savings are shocking. The price of sugar at a local vendor vs our regular supplier saves us $30 each time we buy.
So I made up an inventory list with three columns for price comparisons (did it in MS Word). I do my ordering inventory, email it to my suppliers, get their prices for the week, go to local stores and buy whatever is cheaper, then purchase the remaining order from whichever supplier has the best overall  pricing.
It takes time but saves me more money than I can net in weekday sales. 

We’re still new at this…

…who do we see about a day off?

 (Note: This article was first published in the BBGA newsletter several years ago.)

   It took a frantic amount of organization, physical labor and nagging, lots and lots of firm, polite, incessant nagging to get everything done. There was wiring and plumbing and drywall, there were floors that needed reinforcing, a foundation that needed shoring up. Floor plans had to be drawn for Labor and Industry codes that needed addressing and inspecting, not to mention the health codes with their ensuing inspections. There were benches, walls and shelves that needed to be built, painting, papering, and restoration of the beautiful but crumbling mullioned windows that made the shop what it was. Equipment was purchased and installed, most of it used, most of it needing some kind of special attention. We spent the final week doing basic prep work and overseeing the removal of several dead or dying trees.

   In fewer than ninety days from the time we closed on the real estate and loan, we took down the “coming soon” sign, turned on the lights and clicked the key in the lock to open the door of our bakeshop.

   Nothing happened.

***

   There I was, lying on the couch recovering from a bit of surgery when Traci came in and announced, “The bakery is for sale”.

  We swung into action. Traci began by refinancing our house in order to free up some cash for a down payment while I began badgering the real estate agent into selling us the property for far less than the original asking price.

   The quaint, albeit shabby, little building with the big windows had never been a bakery, it had been any number of different gift shops, the last of which hadn’t been open for a decade or more. I’d spotted the place in 1979, remarking how like a European pastry shop it appeared; we just called it ‘the bakery’.  

     Taking full advantage of the seller’s foot dragging we worked on a business plan for the bank, then took full advantage of the bank’s foot dragging to cost out formulas.

   In the cover letter of our plan we stated that the reason for going into trade is not to do something for the community or to educate the public, or to do for a living what one loves, it is to make money and stay in business. 

   Our loan officer was impressed.

   There were maddening delays with the title insurance but we used that time to negotiate with contractors doing work on the building.

   I purchased the book “Breads from the La Brea Bakery” and started learning about natural leaven, and made a starter. In the back of the book was a reference to The Bread Bakers Guild of America. Hmmm…they seemed to have the same philosophy about bread baking as we had about cooking. We joined.

   Asking the advice of people we knew, who either were in or peripheral to the bakery business, was another ongoing project. The first question we put to them was ‘why do so many bakeries go bankrupt?’ Every single person had a different answer: location, products, cleanliness, unions, ignorance; there must have been a dozen or more to go around and around.

 

***

   If you have ever experienced a tornado first hand, you will know that an eerie silence precedes the actual event.

   At six a.m. that first day we unlocked the door, ready for business, with Jane (Traci’s mom) steady at the counter. Seven o’clock came and still there were no customers. At seven-thirty someone came in, Traci’s sister. Then someone else: the contractor who had built the front steps. Unanimous sentiment in the shop questioned whether the area really wanted or needed a bakery. Then someone, somewhere (not us) sent out an email. By ten a.m. we were inundated. Two newspapers had come and gone with pictures and interviews while patrons jammed the place. The till filled up.

   It was exhilarating and fun. After all, we were no strangers to long hours under high pressure; we’d owned a catering service for nine years. In addition to that, Traci had worked the front of the house for a fine country inn or two, and I’d been a chef for decades. We unwittingly started out in the baking business with a twenty quart mixer for me and a FIVE quart mixer for Traci. That configuration worked in all of those fancy restaurants, didn’t it?

    That first day I worked until three o’clock in the morning and then opened again before dawn, a phenomenon that instantly became my permanent work schedule. The first four months I worked twenty hours a day seven days a week. Traci worked twelve hours a day, afterward going home to take care of our three kids and the house. Then the morning arrived when I came to, shivering uncontrollably on the stockroom floor, completely disoriented. I vaguely remember a lot of angry customers who didn’t get their sticky buns that morning, but it didn’t matter. I still had the best job of my life, even without a paycheck yet.

   A woman came in and told us that the loaf of sourdough she had purchased a few days earlier was so good it actually had her family sitting down together at dinner for the first time in months. (When you hear things like that, remuneration almost becomes irrelevant, but not quite.)

   It certainly helped to ease the workload when Traci got the twenty quart mixer and I got an eighty quart Hobart three weeks after opening, but other businesses were pressing us for wholesale breads and Traci’s fabulous pies; retail customers kept multiplying even though it was one of the snowiest winters on record. I swear they were arriving by dog sled.

  Then summer hit. Hundreds of expensive homes in nearby communities filled up for the season, nearly doubling our business. By then we had acquired a bit of savvy and a couple of freezers, and hired on some help. We paid ourselves one small salary, less than half of what a chef makes in a French restaurant.

   Thanksgiving was the big holiday kickoff, with one of our helpers quitting at just the right moment. Then Christmas came along with the guy who gave us two days’ notice for sixty extra-large baskets filled with all manner of breads and treats, wrapped and tied with huge bows.

   We closed for the first week of January.

   After looking at the books we decided wholesaling was only slightly more attractive than self-immolation; the shop was set up to make money from retail sales. I contacted our accounts to inform them that they would thenceforth receive a discount of fifteen percent instead of the forty percent they had formerly enjoyed. The desired result was immediate: one or two anteed up, but the rest were content to go back to the mass produced stuff available everywhere, quality (or lack of it) be damned.

   Our second year focused on streamlining the workload, chopping costs and improving the quality of some of our breads and pastries. We made significant headway on the first two challenges by setting weekly and daily schedules and by cost-comparative purchasing.

   Improving quality was a bit more eclectic, our semolina bread being a good example. It lacked oven spring, the crust was leathery and the flavor boring. Karen Bornarth’s article in the Bread Baker’s Guild of America newsletter, regarding the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, mentioned using a preferment and honey in semolina bread. Coupling that with theartisan.net’s biga formula and semolina pre-soak resulted in the finished loaves having deeply fermented flavor and very loud crusts, looking like flexing, oversized biceps tearing through shirt sleeves. Increased sales to existing customers will be the next focus, partly through offering our own par-baked frozen breads for finishing at home.

   So here we go, careening head first into our third year. We’re still barking our shins on the eighty quart bowls and thanking God every day for it. Any regrets? Well, no, actually. 

ESSENTIALS OF ARTISAN BREAD BAKING

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ARTISAN

An artisan is one employed in the manual arts who creates with both skill and dexterity.

AUTOLYZE

Many artisan breads require a rest, or autolyze, during the mixing process, usually before the addition of salt or yeast. This rest, from 20 minutes to 1 hour in duration, helps to develop gluten without mechanical means, and improves the overall quality of many breads, from flavor and texture to their overall appearance.

CALCULATION OF DOUGH TEMPERATURE

The importance of proper dough temperatures cannot be overemphasized. Different doughs have different temperature requirements, and the following simple mathematical calculation will determine how to achieve a proper dough temperature. Proper dough temps help ensure consistency and allow us to follow production schedules by removing guesswork from fermentation times.

Dough temperature is calculated by averaging the temperatures of the main ingredients in a dough with the room air temperature, plus an additional one to two degrees of friction heat, depending on your mixer,  for each minute of actual mixing. ( Friction heat is heat added to the dough by the action of mixing. ) For this exercise we will assume 1 degree of heat for each minute of mixing.

Since water temperature is the only variable that can be controlled, we calculate it's temperature in order to achieve a proper dough temperature.

EXAMPLE: A batch of sourdough requires a dough temp of 73º. It will be mixed a total of 13 minutes. What is the necessary water temperature if the flour is 68º, the air is 75º, and the sour starter is 41º?

73º ( Desired dough temp )

- 13º (Degrees friction heat )

60º (Averaged temp of variables: air, flour, water, and sour starter )

60 ( The average temp of our variables )

x 4 (The total number of variables )

240 ( Static Number )

240 (Static Number) minus:

-68º ( flour temp )

-75º ( air temp )

-41º (sour starter temp )

56º = Desired Water Temperature

To recapitulate: We take the desired final dough temperature and subtract the friction heat ( one degree per minute of mixing ). We multiply the result by the number of variables in the formula. ( The variables can be as few as three and as many as five. ) This result is the Static Number. From the Static Number we subtract the temperatures of all variables except water (or other formula liquids). The result is the water temperature necessary to achieve the desired dough temp.

Once a static number has been calculated it should be included in the formula for the dough; water temperature calculation is then simply a matter of subtracting the temperatures of the variables other than water from the static number, resulting in the desired water temp.

COUCHE

Made from sturdy French linen, couches are long pieces of fabric used to cradle delicate breads while proofing, wicking excess moisture from the crusts while helping to retain their shapes. The banneton is a basket used to hold breads while they proof; they may be lined or unlined.

CRUMB

The inside of a bread loaf is referred to as the crumb.

DIASTATIC

Yeast metabolizes only the simplest of sugars through the use of it's own enzymes and the enzymes present in wheat flour. Diastatic action, through the use of malt products, furthers this process by supplying very strong enzymes capable of breaking starches down to sugars that may then be shortened by wheat and yeast enzymes.

Great caution must be exercised in the use of diastatic malt, as even a slight miscalculation can result in a weak dough so slack it cannot support it's own weight.

DOCK

The primary reason for docking, that is, slashing the skins of proofed loaves with a lamme immediately prior to baking, is to allow for even expansion of the bread as it bakes. Failure to dock properly usually results in loaves that either burst or collapse in the oven.

A secondary reason for docking is to impart aesthetics to the finished product.

DOCKER

A docker is a small hand-held tool used for imprinting the tops of rolls.

DOUGH CONDITIONER

Dough conditioners are essentially powdered acids added to bread dough in order to mimick secondary fermentation. ( See: FERMENTATION ) By adding these chemicals much time can be saved: the dough is mixed, given a half hour rest instead of a proper ferment, then divided, proofed and baked. The result is insipid. There is no place for dough conditioners in artisan baking.

FERMENT or BULK FERMENT

When dough is mixed, it is "bulk fermented", that is, given enough time for the yeast to work. The term "rise" is generally not used by professionals.

FERMENTATION

PRIMARY FERMENTATION:

When dough is mixed it is allowed to ferment in order for the yeast to leaven it. Yeast cells first scavenge all of the available oxygen in the dough, and then begin to metabolize damaged starches inherant in the flour into water, alcohol, and carbon dioxide. It is owtward pressure from the buildup of carbon dioxide gas that causes dough to expand.

SECONDARY FERMENTATION:

Acid-forming bacteria are ubiquitous, and are responsible for much of the finer characteristics of a superb loaf. The acetobacter present in dough metabolize some of the alcohol created by the yeast into acids, strengthening gluten molecules for better oven spring, and imparting deeper flavor and aroma to the finished loaves. Secondary fermentation does not necessarily impart a sour taste to bread.

OVER-FERMENTATION:

When dough overferments a buildup of alcohol begins to kill the yeast. In addition, an overabundance of enzymes begin to break down the gluten structure of the dough, resulting in dense, inedible bread.

FLOUR

The generic term "flour" simply means seeds ground into powder. We can therefore have corn flour, or malt flour, or wheat flour. Several flours are used in the bakeshop; here is a short list:

WHEAT FLOURS:

All Purpose Flour is a moderately strong flour rarely used in a professional setting.

Artisan Flour is sometimes referred to as unbleached all purpose flour, it has moderate gluten strength.

Bread Flour is strong flour capable of withstanding manipulation and long ferment times, resulting in loaves with superior oven spring and excellent crusts.

Cake Flour is soft wheat flour, high in starch but low in proportional damaged starch, sometimes used to weaken stronger flours.

High Gluten Flour is often used for challah bread or breads with a large amount of coarse ingredients added.

Whole Wheat is milled from the entire wheat kernel and can go rancid if not used quickly enough. It adds character, flavor and enhanced nutrition to breads.

RYE FLOURS:

Dark Rye is commonly used for rye bread production, although it can sometimes be difficult to work with. Unlike wheat flours, rye does not improve with age or produce gluten.

Pumpernickle is whole rye flour, coarse in texture. Sometimes called rye meal, it is not dark.

Rye Chops are broken pieces of rye grain and are used to impart character and flavor to a variety of breads.

Rye Flakes are extremely coarse pieces of rye grain.

FOLD

Some artisan breads are given a "fold" halfway through their fermentation times. The dough is turned onto the bench and folded in on itself several times. The purpose of folding is to help strengthen the gluten and equalize the internal and external temperatures of the dough. Folding evolved from the old-time "punching down" of dough.

FORMULA

"Recipes" are known to professionals as formulas.

GLUTEN

Wheat is the only grain that produces a gluten suitable for bread production. When the two protiens found in wheat flour, glutenin and gliadin, combine with water and motion they form gluten molecules. With the remarkable properties of both extensibility and elasticity, gluten allows for the manipulation and shaping of loaves without tearing. Gluten traps the gasses released by yeast during fermentation, thus allowing bread to leaven.

Vital Wheat Gluten is a readily available ingredient that is sometimes added to weak dough or dough with coarse ingredients to give extra support.

GLUTEN DEVELOPMENT

Judging proper gluten development is one of the most important skills a baker must learn. Gluten becomes stronger the longer or faster it is mixed; the more gluten is developed, the larger the resulting loaves will be, but the less flavor they will have. Further mixing after full development will result in an irreversable breakdown of the gluten structure within the dough.

Most artisan breads are given a "modified mix", that is to say, they are mixed slowly at first, then worked on a faster speed toward the end of mixing. This technique results in full-sized, richly flavored breads.

GOURMET INGREDIENTS

Breads may have specialty ingredients added to them, ingredients such as dried fruits, nuts, roasted pumpkin or squash, fennel, herbs, spices, citrus, chocolate, cheeses, potatoes, leeks, shallots, roasted onions, ale, wine, etc. It falls to the artisan to determine which basic bread formulas will best highlight a given set of gourmet ingredients.

HEARTH

The stone floor or deck of an oven is called the hearth.

HYDRATION

The percentage of water relative to the flour in a given formula is referred to as hydration. A biga pre-ferment, for example, has very low hydration, while the hydration of ciabatta dough is quite high.

LAMINATE

Pastries such as croissants and danish are made using a lamination process, wherein yeasted dough is layered with butter, then rolled out and folded, or "turned" multiple times in order to exponentially increase the number of butter and dough layers. The result is a pastry that is rich, buttery, and flaky.

The most important rule to remember during lamination is that the butter must remain cold.

LAMME

The razor used by bakers to slash bread loaves immediately prior to baking is called a lamme.

MAKE-UP

When dough has completed it's fermentation, it is turned out onto the bench where it is cut and weighed for proper size, given a pre-shape, a rest, a final shape, and then either placed on peels or in pans.

MALT

Malting is the process of sprouting seeds. When barley is malted it releases very strong enzymes capable of reducing starch into sugar; this is called "diastatic action". Malt is available in diastatic and non-diastatic varieties, yet discretion must always be exercized as all malt contains some enzymes. Too much malt will slacken any dough.

MIXING

Professionals refer to kneading dough as mixing.

OVEN SPRING

When bread dough is placed in the oven the yeast cells warm and begin to metabolize faster, creating a push of carbon dioxide gas within the loaf. This sudden expansion of the loaves is known as oven spring.

PAR-BAKE

Artisan breads may be "par-baked", that is, baked at a slightly lower temperature for a shorter amount of time than necessary to be finished. The loaves are thoroughly baked through, however the crust is not colored. The loaves are then wrapped and frozen for future use. When needed, the loaves are placed frozed in a very hot oven to finish the crust. This process allows bakers to make many varieties of breads in large batches, ready in a moment's notice for wholesale and retail.

PEEL

The wooden ( or plastic ) boards that hold shaped loaves while proofing are called peels. The wide wooden board used to rotate and remove breads from an oven is also called a peel.

PICKUP STAGE

The very beginning of the mixing process when the dough is still an inchoate mass is known as the pickup.

PRE-FERMENT

This particular aspect of artisan baking is at the heart of many superb breads, pre-ferments often being used to improve the flavor, crumb, crust and aroma of finished loaves.

The pre-ferment is a technique in which a portion of the formula flour is fermented before being blended into the final mix, where it is fermented again. Thus all of the flavors and benefits of extremely long fermentation times are present, while the drawbacks of overfermentation are absent.

The following is a list of the more common pre-ferments:

BIGA:

This Italian pre-ferment has the very stiff consistency of pasta dough, however a tiny amount of yeast leavens the whole into a very soft sponge overnight. It is used when strength is required, such as in semolina bread.

FLYING SPONGE:

Primarily used for pan breads, this American innovation combines half of the flour with all of the liquid and all of the yeast in a given formula. It is generally allowed to work for an hour or two before all the remaining ingredients are added and mixed. This sponge may also be retarded overnight.

PÂTE FERMENTÉE:

Simply a portion of bread dough from one day's batch allowed to ripen overnight, pâte fermentée is primarily used in bâtards and baguettes. It may be mixed from scratch if necessary.

POOLISH:

Originally from Poland, this French technique uses a variable amount of flour, a miniscule amount of yeast, and water to make a batter. It is fermented anywhere from 4 to 24 hours, 12 hours being average. It is often used in breads such as baguettes.

SOUR SPONGE:

Often used in rye breads, sour sponge is much like a flying sponge with the addition of white or rye sour starter.

SOUR STARTER:

Sour starter, also called liquid levain, is a batter-like culture of flour(s), wild yeasts, and acid-producing bacteria. Dilligence must be used in it's care and feeding in order to bring out it's natural tartness without bitterness or excess enzyme buildup. Liquid levaine is often added direcly to the breads it is used in.

Rye starter is a sour starter made with rye flour in place of wheat flour.

PRE-SHAPE

As each loaf is cut from the batch and weighed, it is given a tuck in order to orient it's gluten strands in the direction of the final shape. This makes shaping easier to accomplish without tearing the skin of the dough.

PROOF

After dough has been cut, weighed, shaped and peeled up or panned, it is then proofed, that is, allowed to rise. The term rise, however, is not used by professionals.

REST

Resting doughs and loaves before final shaping is quite important in breadmaking. As the gluten in the dough rests, it looses some of it's elasticity and gains extensibility, allowing for easier handling and better results.

RETARD

Retarding dough requires that it be refrigerated sufficiently to slow the growth of yeast. Retarding shaped loaves enables the baker to produce breads for baking the next day. Many sourdoughs are retarded as part of their overall formulas, as a better crust develops over time under refrigeration. Some pre-ferments are also retarded both as a way to prepare in advance and improve their overall quality.

RISE

The professional does not use the word "rise", as it can be confusing. Bakers say " ferment" when they mean bulk rising, and "proof " to describe rising loaves.

ROTATE

Breads are rotated, that is, turned and repositioned in the oven in order to ensure even baking.

SALT

Salt plays a decisive role in bread baking. Besides bringing out all of the flavors in breads, it also strengthens gluten. Salt's most important function, however, is it's action on yeast. Salt kills yeast, and in so doing controlls it's growth. This indirectly affects crust color by preventing the yeast from metabolizing too much sugar, allowing for caramelization of the crust to occur.

SCALE

When ingredients are weighed and measured prior to mixing it is referred to as scaling.

SHAPE

Bakers mold dough with their hands into some very specific shapes: bâtard, baguette, boule, pan, roll, etc. Good, proper shaping requires practice and experience.

SLACK

This old bakers term refers to dough that either has super-high hydration ( ciabatta ) or one that overfermented into soft, weak dough, or a dough with too many enzymes ( from malt, or sun-dried tomatoes, or underfed sour starter ).

SOURDOUGH

This classification of breads, also known as levain in France, uses a natural yeast and acid-producing bacterial culture. San Francisco is famous for their sourdoughs due to the acetobacter native to the area. Regardless of where a starter begins, it will eventually be colonized by whatever yeasts and bacteria are native to the place where it resides.

Sourdoughs lend themselves to the addition of many gourmet ingredients.

STARCH

Comprising approximately 90% of wheat flour, starch gives bread it's bulk. It is also responsible for crust flakiness. Stronger flours ( flours with higher gluten content ) have a higher proportion of damaged starch than do soft flours. This is important to know, as yeast metabolizes only damaged starch.

STEAM

Steam injected into an oven full of baking bread gives the loaves a crisp, shiny crust. The white vapor commonly called steam is actually mist; steam is invisible and is extremely dangerous. Care must be exercised when using steam injection.

STRAIGHT MIX

A straight mix refers to doughs with no pre-ferments. All the ingredients of a given formula are simply scaled into the bowl and mixed.

VIENNOISERIE

The branch of artisan baking that pertains to yeast-raised patisserie, most notably croissants and other laminated doughs, is viennoiserie.

WHEAT BRAN

Wheat bran is the outside layer of the wheat kernel, and is used to add nutrition and flavor to some breads. It may also be used to garnish the tops of loaves.

WHOLE GRAIN

All grains are seeds. The whole grains used in baking must contain all the essential parts of the naturally occurring nutrients inherant in the entire seed grain. Some common whole grains used in bread making are: Barley, Corn, Millet, Flax, Oats, Quinoa, Brown Rice, Rye, Wheat Berries and Cracked Wheat, Whole Wheat, and Wild Rice.

WILD YEAST

Natural yeast is everywhere. In fact, the whitish coating found on grapes is actually wild yeast, explaining why crushed grapes spontaneously ferment into wine.

Many artisan breads are made using a sour starter colonized with wild yeasts. These indigenous organisms are incredibly adept at surviving the low pH caused by their acetobacter neighbors also flourishing in the same culture.

YEAST

Central to the art of making bread is the lowly single-celled fungus known as yeast. Many strains of yeast exist in nature, and cultivating a local wild yeast for bread production is central to the art of the craft baker. Commercially available yeasts, also used by the artisan, are strains with particular characteristics that have been isolated and grown in mass quantities by manufacturers.

The various types of commercial yeast available to the baker are actually different strains of the organism. For instance, active dry yeast is not simply a dried version of the fresh cake yeast used by bakers, they are different species.

ACTIVE DRY YEAST:

While this yeast stands up to higher sugar content ( raisin bread for example ), it must first be dissolved in 100 degree water in order to activate it. This extra step makes it difficult to control dough temperatures.

FRESH YEAST:

Fresh cake yeast of good quality is sweet smelling, friable, and free of mold spots. Fresh yeast stands up well to high sugar content, freezes well in doughs, and posesses a demonstrably superior flavor to dry yeasts.

INSTANT DRY YEAST:

Added directly to the mix during scaling, instant dry yeast is sufficient for most applications. However, it does not tolerate high sugar levels very well.

Par-Baking Artisan Breads

  Par-baking bread is a great way to increase variety and still produce exceptional quality. The process, as I use it, is very simple.
  First of all, I only par-bake sourdoughs. They are mixed, given full ferment, then made up, and retarded overnight. The next day they're given a final proof and baked. That is the same as always.
  It is the baking that is a little different. The breads are baked at a slightly lower temperature for a little less time than usual. For instance, plain sourdough normally bakes at 450 for fifty minutes. To par-bake, it is given forty minutes at 400 degrees. Most specialty breads are baked for the same amount of time, but at a slightly lower temperature (375). The crust color is light, but the bread is baked through. The loaves are cooled almost completely, then double wrapped in plastic and frozen, and I can then pull the exact number of loaves I need to finish.
  Finishing is simple. In fact I often use a convection oven set very hot (425-450) for this. I just slide the still frozen loaves off of a peel directly onto the oven racks and bake them for about 10 or 15 minutes.
Done.
  Can I tell the difference between a freshly proofed and baked loaf and a par-bake? Well, yes, I can. Are my customers able to tell? No, probably not. In fact, many of them buy the frozen par's to finish in their ovens at home!

At the Farmer's Market

Son, that's beer bread you're eating. I'm going to need to see some identification.

Timer for Hobart 20Qt Mixer

Apparently, even the Hobart repair guy can't change a mixer's on-off switch from a toggle to a timer, which means there has to be a timer in the mixer's power supply.

Enter the darkroom timer, the kind that was in every high school darkroom before digital photography. It works great: no more listening for the ring of a wind-up timer, the mixer shuts off when the mixing is done with a buzzer you can hear in the next county.

Perfect Baguettes

The best way to move a proofed baguette is on a piece of pine house siding  smoothed with fine sandpaper.

Untitled

I needed more bread pans, the kind that are strapped together in gangs of four or five and are easier to rotate in the oven than singles. And I like used bread pans better than new ones because they're seasoned. That is to say, I like used pans better if they don't look as if they've been hit by a forklift.

So we, Brian and I, made the hour-long trek to my friends bakery equipment warehouse.

"Warehouse," said Brian, as we stepped from the office into the storage area, "It's more like a graveyard."

There were no electric lights turned on; the heaps of tools that first greeted us were illuminated by ambient light. The second thing to greet us was the smell. The sickly sweet odor of rancid fat and mildewing flour permeated the clammy dusk.

Not in the market for small tools we turned left and walked down the center aisle, past the nearly colorless forms of gigantic ovens stacked up two stories high, their doors gaping open, silently keening. Large, complicated machines with uses difficult to understand cluttered the way. When we reached the place where one turns left or right, Brian went to the right, into an area lit by skylights. I turned left.

I was familiar with the place, having been in the old building many times before. It had been built as a boiler factory in the late 1800's, and was now a part of the industrial decay of this nation, filled to the girders with the contents of numberless defunct bakeries. The kind of place to find, say, parts for an antique mixer.

The room I was heading for was completely dark, and I could never remember where the light switch was. There were switches all right, and bare wires sticking out of conduit on the wall, too. Fumbling around, I noticed a small alcove I'd never seen before. A trillion specs of dust hung motionless in the waxy light that leaked through a filthy, ancient window, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw at my feet stacks of cake pans. They were all prepped, each one with a fluted paper liner inside of it.

I began to ponder this. There they were, all of them ready to be filled with cake batter. So why would pans that were to be taken from a closing bakery be readied for use? What happened that day?

Did the boss come in and say,"Sorry fellas, this is it," at the beginning of the day or the end.

Did the guy who put those liners in there know he was about to become unemployed, or was the shop padlocked when he got to work one morning?

A faint voice called me from the office door, and my friend, the owner, came to where I was and turned the light on for me. I searched for about an hour, and found the pans I was looking for. Back at my shop, I filled the pot sink with hot, soapy water and let the pans soak overnight. The next day I scrubbed them with a stiff brush, rinsed them in hot water and dried them in the oven. After all that, they needed to be seasoned, which I did; even so, bread stuck to them at first.

But after years of use, nothing sticks. There are almost never any surprises.

Bakery for Sale

Just the thing for a young couple starting out. Just the thing for two kids who happen to be bakers. The challenge for us was to turn an ugly old building into something beautiful and functional; the work space is pleasant and sunny, the outside is inviting. But really, the challenge for us was in getting it going, and now we're ready to move on to the next adventure, whatever that is.

(I think for me it's to get my masters and teach cooking in a post secondary school.)

Well, the right people will come along and fall in love with it, growing it into the future.

Why I Don't Get More Days Off

(Christmas was my first day off since sometime in March.)
Well, my family and I were all sitting at our dining room table choking down filet mignon with bearnaise and mushroom cognac cream when I turned to my sister and asked her how Elvis was. My wife nudged me. Hard. My sister's quizzical look prompted me to ask her what her friend's name was.
"Oh, Albert," I said. "He has that Elvis thing going on with his hair...".
The rest of the gang was in apoplectic fits of laughter. My wife kicked me savagely under the table.

Bowl Hoist for Hobart 60 & 80 Qt.

An eighty quart bowl full to the top can weigh nearly two hundred pounds... way too much for a guy who's had three hernia operations to pick up and set on the bench. I got the idea to use a block and tackle from a local machine shop, and quickly located a lift along with an "I" beam truck in a catalog. A local welder got me the beam, which we installed overhead.
The real problem was in coming up with a safe way to lift a bowl without it's slipping off the hoist, and after some thinking I came up with a design for flat double hooks with beveled tops. They fit snugly into Hobart bowl handles (both eighty and sixty quart sizes) with no chance of dislodging once the weight of the bowl rests upon them. The aforementioned welder fabricated two of them for me, and after a little bit of work adjusting the chains, they performed as advertised.
No more disc crunching, gut shredding lifting.

Modern Baking Magazine

For such a seemingly generic and institutional magazine, I've gotten more excellent ideas from this publication than any other. Just recently, in fact, when I was ready to give up on my baguettes after more than five years of struggle to perfect them, Modern Baking mentioned in passing baguettes with three pre-ferments. I tried it, and the battle was over.
Liquid levain, poolish, and pate fermente, along with an autolyze, proof on linen, and an overnight retard have my customers reminiscing about Paris!

Briotta

Briotta. At least that's what I think I should call it. I've developed a new bread that is a cross between brioche and ciabatta.

My concept was to create a basic technique that allows me to turn many of the flavor profiles I used as a chef into breads. Foie gras and quince, for example, or grapes and shallots cooked au sec in white wine. The dough is very delicate and needs to proof in baskets, the crust different from any other bread I've ever experienced, it is so thin and pastry-like.

The process begins with a sour sponge, then a light dough is developed and finished with the flavoring ingredients and a form of fat: unsalted butter or olive oil, for example.

If only I knew how to popularize it.

Calculating Dough Temperature

When I started out in the bakery business the doughs that took the longest to ferment got mixed first, and, counter intuitively, they were all ready for make up at the same time. I hate being disorganized. It means ruined bread and chaotic scurrying about trying to get the loaves retarded before the doughs get old.

So I sat me down and concentrated on the problem, figuring that mixing the doughs from the shortest to the longest fermentation times was the answer, except for the doughs that took extreme amounts of time, say, three or more hours to ferment. They needed to be mixed first. The system works very well for the most part, but I needed to be certain of my ferment times, and the only way to guarantee a ferment time is to guarantee the dough temperature, and that requires a little calculation.

Once the optimum dough temperature is determined, 73f for sourdough say, the formula is simple. The finished dough temp is an average of it's ingredients, the air temperature, and the added heat of friction from kneading. (On most mixers the friction heat is one degree per minute of kneading.)

OK. We take 73 (the desired final temp of my sourdough) and subtract the mixer friction (13 minutes= 13 degrees). The result is 60. So, all of the main ingredients plus the air temp must have a combined average of 60 degrees. It is now a matter of determining how many components we are averaging, and in the case of my sourdough there are four: air, flour, starter and water, each with an arbitrary value of 60 (the desired average temp). We multiply 4 ingredients by 60 degrees and the result is 240.

Obviously, the ingredients will not all be the same temperature. I refrigerate my sour starter before using it. If the flour was just pulled from the stockroom and dumped in the bin it will not have the same temp as the air. And really, there is only one ingredient that can have it's temperature changed at will: water. All of this comes down to very simple arithmetic:

240

-Air temp

-Flour temp

-Starter temp

=Water temp

That would be, realistically:

240

-72f (air temp)

-69f (flour temp)

-40f (starter temp)

=59f (water temp)

I then mix the water to the proper temperature as it comes from the spigot using an instant-read thermometer as a gauge. The ferment time is 3 hrs. 30 min.

The desired temperature of my Italian bread is 80f. It gets mixed 16 minutes. 80 minus 16 is 64. The three main temperature considerations are air, flour and water. 64 (the average desired temp) times 3 (the number of factors) is 192. A realistic calculation would be:

192

-70f (air temp)

-69f (flour temp)

= 53f (water temp)

The ferment time is 2 hrs.

This works every time. Just remember that we are averaging main components only; minority ingredients such as salt or yeast are not included. You will need to experiment to find the optimum temperatures of your doughs, but this system will allow you yo do it with ease.

Sometimes a baguette

is just a baguette.
I enjoy baking. It's challenging and rewarding, but it isn't cooking. The palette available to me as a chef was well over a thousand ingredients, from the elegant and sublime to the pedestrian. I always prided myself in being able to make something extraordinary from ordinary fare; the price of an ingredient never had any bearing on whether or not I used it. So it didn't matter whether I used foie gras simply to thicken a sauce, or if I used fresh herbs from the garden in summer squash Provencal.
Baking, on the other hand, is essentially flour, water, yeast, and salt. Oh, sure, it might get dairy, or some produce, or require days of fermentation or very delicate manipulation, but it isn't tuna threaded with pickled ginger on a bed of leeks stir-fried in walnut oil with salt-cured lime, celeriac and butter emulsion and sauteed bitter greens.
Cutting up mirepoix and gathering herbs for a pot of stock is infinitely more rewarding to me than making a good croissant.
Oh, well, I guess it's too late to do anything about it now.

The Rocky Road

New Year's Day was bright and blue, the air clear and unseasonably warm. We had decided to open at 10 a.m. on that holiday so our regular customers could get some bread and dessert and a New York Times to go with them. Breezes moved softly in the daylight as I pulled open the screen door, key poised to turn in the lock.

My eye suddenly lit upon the shattered pane of glass smashed into the building. The first thing I checked was the cash box. Hell, we only leave a few coins in it... nothing disturbed, nothing missing, not even a brownie.

The steamer was up to pressure and I was docking a full bench of boules when the police arrived. I was starting the day's bake, by God, and a forced entry wasn't going to change the slightest thing in my schedule. I felt remarkably sanguine about the matter, but, then, dark specters began bubbling up from my subconscious, flitting out of view from the corner of my eye in a singularly sinister, disconcerting experience.

The cop found bloody fingerprints on pieces of glass, and blood inside the building, which meant the guy had punched his way in with a bare fist. Now let me tell you something: if ever there was a readily available implement in rural Pennsylvania, it is a stone. As a matter of fact, there is an old farm nearby with a professionally painted sign out front that reads:

FRESH EGGS

FREE ROCKS

But this guy used his bare hand, which told me that he was high, or desperate, or livid, or some volatile cocktail of the three.

After the photo shoot and evidence bagging the detective asked, "How much was the damage, a hundred and fifty?"

"No" I said, "Two fifty."

He seemed incredulous.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars?" he asked.

"No, no. Two dollars and fifty cents," I explained. "I'll fix the thing myself. It won't take an hour."

It took two hours. I broke the first piece of replacement glass.

The cop came back a week later to inform me of the perfect fingerprint he'd found on one of the glass shards. It would take about six weeks to process the bloody thing at a lab.

I went to speak with Chris, a shopkeeper in my neighborhood who'd had an attempted break-in. We quickly decided kids were responsible for this, and just as quickly decided which kids. I remembered them, two squirts from around the corner on Oak Lane who had come into my shop late one afternoon, when no one else was around, trying to strong-arm me for cookies. I thought they were fooling and gave them each a chocolate chip, joking with them, whereupon the older one began to mock me.

"You're an asshole" I announced, "get out."

Falling silent, I stared into their eyes until they became extremely uncomfortable and left.

I had a sense that there would be more trouble with those two pitheads.

On another day, I was talking with the maintenance guy from a local resort about the situation, and he informed me that the two boys in question, at the tender ages of eleven and thirteen, were under investigation by our regional police force for housebreaking. I informed the local constabulary of this.

A few weeks passed before the next report. I was at my bench doing the makeup on a batch of batards when the policeman in charge of the investigation came in with Polaroids of the delinquents. I recognized the older one, but wasn't too sure about the younger kid in the picture. I just wasn't. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king; I passed the pictures to the cop and got back to the dough at hand before it started getting old.

Business is brisk on Sunday mornings, and customers seem anxious if they wait more than a few minutes before being served. After packing the day's special orders in the back, I go out front to front to help expedite service.

I was shoveling sticky buns into a box when Ryan ( by this time the investigating officer and I were on a first name basis )walked in. After ringing up the sale at hand, I went over to the coffee pot and we started talking in hushed, cryptic language. Our conversation revealed that the fingerprint on the glass was not of the quality originally believed, and was in fact unusable for evidence. He promised to interview the two as soon as they were done testifying in another criminal case.

It didn't turn out like that. It was snowing the day of the Vernal Equinox when Ryan came in the front door, stamping his shoes and shaking snow from his jacketless back. The police were ham-strung by the boys and their parents refusal to respond to a request for an interview. That was it. Case closed. I squelched whatever emotions were rising inside of me... those people were within their rights.

Investigations don't use clocks or watches, they use calendars; those kids grew a foot each by the next time I saw them. They came into the shop again, obviously enjoying their pubescent growth spurts with the gun-moll-in-training that accompanied them, and asking for some ridiculous thing or other. They cleared the sample tray like hurdlers. Close behind their eyes they were laughing at me, and what was I going to do about it anyway. I consoled myself with visions of lengthy prison stays looming in their collective futures.

A few days later, I was chatting with Chris in front of his shop about the whole thing. Well, we agreed, no real harm done, and after all they didn't make off with anything.

Just then, a limousine pulled up, the window rolled down, and the driver stuck his head out. "Hey, which way is Oak Lane from here?"

I looked at Chris. "I guess dey made out bettah 'n we thought!" he boomed.

We just threw our heads back and laughed, and laughed.

The Ryes Have It

Working with rye breads is a little like a composer learning to write in the minor mode. It's the same only different, if you get my meaning.
I never bothered with a separate rye starter, I simply used "old" white starter that had become very sour. After reading the book "Bread Alone", I decided to give all rye a chance. The formula and directions for rye starter in "Breads from LaBrea Bakery" were a good starting point, but I changed a few things, most notably the addition of a little whole rye flour (pumpernickel) to each feeding.
The breads were a revelation. They tasted the way rye bread should taste, not like an imitation loaded up with caraway seed in an effort to give it some kind of flavor.
Caraway, as listed in "On Food and Cooking", is a member of the carrot family, as are parsley and anise. So that got me thinking, thinking about carrots, then root vegetables in general. Rye bread may pair well with roasted root vegetables. I'll have to try it and see.

Croissants

Many of our customers travel a great deal, so, when I hear them say that our croissants are equal to the best that Paris has to offer, I can only infer that the croissants in Paris suck. Or, at least, that used to be my reaction.
I have spent at least three years of my life on a Quixotic quest with a more and more elusive goal, one that appeared to be unattainable: that is, to produce a perfect croissant that was both light and flaky with a firm bite. I was able to create a reliably flaky crust, but that firm crumb was a stickler; mine was always gummy and heavy.
At one point, I even went online to some chat group in that snakepit Yahoo, where a bunch of bread nerds told me to bake them longer and at a lower temperature.
Guess what happened! Flaky became cast-like enough to set broken limbs. The inside was gummy.
My vexation grew. For years I'd been using a formula from the Culinary Institute of America, applying my knowledge of baking to correct it's flaws, but every correction created a new and unexpected problem.
And then an odd series of events occurred. For one thing, I chucked that stupid recipe in favor of one from the Bread Bakers Guild of America. At first try it showed tremendous promise, but was only an approximation of what I had in mind. Then a friend of mine, DeliRay, called and said he had some flour he wanted to give me. I wasn't familiar with "patent" flour, but I dumped it in my bread flour bin and used it as such. It is here that my continuing saga enters the realm of the surreal.
While kneading croissant dough for the first time using this new flour, it was obvious in a few minutes that it was much too dry. I shut off the mixer, got more water and added it to the dough. Another couple of minutes of mixing and the necessity for more water was again evident. I stopped the mixer, added water, and turned the mixer back on. I kept track of the total amount of water added, but not the rest times in between each addition.
When the croissants came out of the oven and cooled, I had by that time given way to a life of silent desperation concerning the goddamned things, I bit into one for my customary "test". I cannot suitably convey to you here what I felt, but I can certainly describe the pastry. Light for it's size, it had a crispy-flaky crust redolent of butter and cream. The internal structure was firm to the bite but airy with the slightest bit of stretch. It tasted of fine butter.
I turned to my wife, "I can't believe it! Oh my God I just can't believe it! This is it, it's the croissant I've been trying to make for all these years!". Or something like that.
One of the tenets of scientific research is reproducible results. When I made the next batch of croissants I simply increased the water to the previous batch's total amount. The result was, well, just OK. Now what the hell, I wondered. I thought back over what I did for the perfect batch, and the only differences I came up with were the stopping, adding water, and starting the mixer again, and the assumption that the patent and bread flours had mixed in the bin. After several tries I determined the ratio of flours, but the croissants still weren't spot on. The only other thing left was the method in which the water was added to the best batch. It seemed preposterous to me, but if all other variables were ruled out, it was the only thing available to explain the difference.
As skeptical as I was, I tried it, and the result was unmistakable. They were perfect, at least according to my opinion of things, and our globe-trotting customers seem to concur.

Starting a Powerful Levain

The book "Breads From LaBrea Bakery" is where I learned how to make starter, with one small change.
My background is in cooking, not baking. French cuisine, actually. My larder always included seven or eight different vinegars, one of which was an unfiltered, unpasteurized cider vinegar. It had a creepy looking slime growing in it, which I surmised was the mother. So, I filtered it through a jelly bag and scraped the captured bacterial culture into my baby starter.
That was six years ago, and man, does our levain have some wang to it! A single tablespoon of that seething mush added to a paste of rye flour and water turned into a ripe rye sour in just one day.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. After I made the starter, I put it in the refrigerator until we opened our bake shop, about a four month period. Now, I greatly respect Jeffrey Hammelman and Professor Calvel, but I must disagree with their assertion that refrigerating sour starter will kill the wild yeast. Boys, the yeast is wild. It lives outside all winter. Ten below and all that, yet still it liveth. How can refrigerating yeast at 40f kill it if it is native to a place with a cold winter climate? To wit, when I fed my hibernating levain it sprang back to life instantly.
My poor starter had been sorely abused by ignorance when I first began using it to make bread. Working twenty hours a day at the shop, I only fed it once daily. It became offensively sour, and weak as far as leavening was concerned; at one point it actually began to liquefy. So I made a habit of feeding it three times a day, which vastly improved the yeast content but diminished it's tang to the level of insipid. I discovered that a bit of whole wheat flour restored it's acidity.
Now the starter sits in the fridge over the weekend and gets fed for a full day before being used in bread. My sourdough is better than the stuff they sell in San Francisco. At least that's what they tell me. (See "Croissants".)

Wake Up and Smell the Fermentation

It isn't so much the fact that our breads are mixed on low speed, or hand cut and hand shaped, or that they are put on wooden peels and baked in stone-lined ovens that makes them so good, it is the fermentation that they are allowed. An experienced baker can tell just how far along the fermentation of a batch of dough has gone simply by smelling it; the phases are unmistakable.
God knows, I have to endure lectures from people who've never tried my breads telling me about some big bakery in some mid-sized town, and how superior their bread is to anything I can produce. Fact is, the leftovers languishing in my freezer, if popped in the oven for ten minutes, far excel just about anything belched from the machines of most large bakeries. And here's why: those huge shops have to move the product out FAST, so, instead of allowing their doughs to ferment naturally, they shovel chemicals into it ("Dough Conditioner" on the label), let it rest 30 minutes, put it in the divider, shape it, proof it and bake it. All in a couple of hours.
Not so in our shop. The craft of the baker is based largely upon his ability to control and manipulate fermentation in order to achieve specific results. I'm going to make a list of some of my breads and the ferments involved, editing them as I discover something new. And, since nobody other than blood relatives and people trying to sell me shit ever read this blog, I have no fear of anyone stealing my "secrets". (Not that anything to follow is original, mind you, it's mostly a concentrate of research from many different places. I may have observed something in my work, but no doubt it has been observed and noted before.)

Italian

Flour, water, yeast, sea salt, malt syrup.

A straight dough, it will smell grassy as it first begins to ferment, then develop a fruity aroma. Both of these stages are too young to render an excellent bread. The dough will take on the smell of beer after that, which will grow stronger over the course of about an hour. This is the time to do the make-up and, if not, the dough will get old, it's aroma taking on the sting of alcohol, the reek of beer overpowering.

After making up the loaves and rolls, they are retarded overnight with their final proof occurring in the refrigerator. This slow ferment changes everything about the final bread: the crust, the flavor, the oven spring. The loaves are peeled into the oven directly from the retarder, and an hour later as I shovel the bread onto cooling racks, the smell of fermentation is still readily discernible.

Baguette

Preferment: Soft flour, water, a trace of yeast.

As the name suggests, part of the batch is fermented first. The ingredients are mixed into a batter and, in my shop, allowed to ferment overnight at an elevated temperature, around 90f. The next day, a wallop of alcohol will come from it as the lid is lifted; if not, it is allowed more time until the sting of alcohol does develop.

Dough: Preferment, strong flour, yeast, sea salt, whole wheat flour.

Mixed into dough, with an autolyze before the yeast and salt are added, and given one turn halfway through the bulk ferment. The dough is gassy and delicate.

The loaves are given a quick mise en tourne as they are cut, then full shaping, and long bench rests as they are gradually elongated into baguettes. They are retarded overnight on linen couches, given a final proof with plenty of humidity, and baked in a very hot oven with steam. The aroma of fermentation permeates the finished loaves, and they are remarkably crusty.
UPDATE: WE NOW USE THREE PREFERMENTS.

Sourdough

Sour starter, flour, water, whole wheat flour, sea salt.

Starter requires about as much care as a puppy. It needs to be fed three times a day, hydrated with filtered water, and stirred frequently to give it plenty of oxygen. The balance of white and wheat flours must be exact in order to give it the proper balance of sweet, complex tang, and beer flavors. It will be kept at room temperature, or in a warm spot, or refrigerated, depending on it's mood. Moodiness is more like it. But oh, what breads you can coax from it!

Once the water temperature is determined for a batch of sourdough, it is mixed, with an autolyze ( 20 minute rest ) before adding the salt. Bulk fermenting to thrice it's original volume, this dough usually requires between three and four hours to ripen. It is scaled up, given a mise en tourne, rested, then given it's final boule shape. The loaves are proofed to half the desired size in an hour or two at about 80f with moderate humidity, then retarded overnight. Next, they are given a final proof in the same conditions as the first proof, then baked in a moderately hot oven with steam. The crust smells of citrus, caramel, and toasted pecan; the crumb has a subtle, earthy tang to it.

Rye

Starved Sour Starter, Yeast, Bread Flour, Water, Molasses, Dark Rye Flour.

Everything but the Rye Flour is mixed and left to ferment at room temperature for 12 hours. The Rye is then added and refrigerated overnight. The dough goes slack at worst and forms an ugly loaf at best when the rye flour is over fermented, and the dough lacks flavor when the preferment doesn't work long enough. The solution is to add the rye after the sour has had a chance to develop, then retard it.

Above Sour, Bread Flour, Dark Rye Flour, Bitter Cocoa, Caraway, Salt, Wheat Gluten.

I'm sure purists will give me a hard time about some of the ingredients in this bread, but I'm not making my breads for them; I'm making bread for my customers, and I can either make things the way they are supposed to be made, or I can make them as delicious and beautiful as possible.

The dough is mixed, given a 30 minute rest, made up and put on the peels as it is shaped. The loaves are given 3/4 proof, sprayed with water and sprinkled with rye flakes, docked, and baked with steam. It's good and crusty with a nice tangy flavor.

Semolina

Bread Flour, Water, Yeast. Think pasta dough. With a little yeast. The next day it will be light and give off a zap of alcohol when the lid is lifted.

Semolina Flour, Water. Semolina is granular and needs a bit of a soaking (an hour or so) before it can be mixed.

The Above Mixes, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Honey, Yeast, Salt, Whole Wheat Flour.

The dough is fermented to double it's original size after mixing, and has an alcohol smell. Scaled, given 3/4 proof, and baked with steam, it has muscular oven spring and a shattering crust. Breads with this deliberate level of fermentation, that is, with the smell of alcohol, are not ready to be eaten until they are completely cooled.

Three Raisin Vanilla Bean Cardamom

All of the Liquid, Half of the Flour, all of the Yeast. This is called a flying sponge; it's an American style preferment. It works for two hours, then all of the other ingredients are added:

Flour, Butter, Vanilla Syrup, Vanilla Sugar, Egg Yolks, Yellow Raisins, Dark Raisins, Currants, Salt, Cardamom. (The extra sugar requires extra yeast.) These loaves are baked in old, lidded Pullman pans that keep in the fragrance of the ingredients. These ingredients mask the smell of fermentation pretty completely.

European Style Whole Wheat