Happy Monday peeps! Just musing over the weeks that have slipped by since my last update. I continue to be busy in and out of the bakery and enjoying all the bread challenges, not so much the other worky stuff… My latest additions to my Brotfollio (see what I did there? Brot is German for bread – biggest eaters of bread in Europe, incidentally) are my 100% Spelt sourdough and my Rye with Caraway seeded loaves. (second picture). Spelt has a lovely flavour to it, but it can be really tricky to perfect; I think the one in this top picture was a bit of a fluke as it managed to keep a perfect structure. Subsequent loaves have over-proved a little but I can only learn by keeping at it.
Every bakery is different, all flour is different, the weather temperature is fluctuating greatly at the moment and all these factors are difficult to control when you don’t have expensive bakery equipment to regulate the whole process. My Rye-bread – the brick looking example in the second picture I thought was a wrong’un (shape-wise) only until I saw more-or-less the same loaf being sold on a Farmers Market in Harpenden yesterday, so thrilled and relieved that there’s nothing wrong with my baked off-spring.
I also took a couple of inner pictures of the loaves so you can see that they are far from bricks:
So onto this week’s new products, that are hopefully going to be successful and possibly born out of error; I had the misfortune to temporarily remove my brain whilst I was shopping for desperately needed loaf tins. I have ended up with 10 whoppa tins, which would mean a whole new overhaul of my recipes, so instead I am trying out some DOUBLERS. These will be two smaller loaves baked side by side in the one tin, making one big loaf that can be split in half – one for eating now, one to give away/freeze for a soup day or something. Not sure on the name yet, my they might just end up looking like a giant chest…
I am also now offering SMALL Foccacias, perfect for the twosey picky tea, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dunk it into to. hmm hmm.
NEXT BAKE DAYS:
Although I am always baking for Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I still need 48 hours notice as this is when I need to refresh my sourdough levain from the fridge. If I do too much, I’ll end up having to throw some, or if I do too little, disappointed customers.
Or why not do a standing weekly order, as many of my customers do?
TUESDAYs (Order by Sunday 10am)
THURSDAY only MALTED (Order by Tuesday 10am) – delivery to Stopsley Baptist Church, Term-time.
SATURDAY’s (Order by Thursday 10am)