No tent, no sign, and not enough product

Tater Dave’s just had its first Anniversary!

Last year I was unknown, my bread looked undercooked, and my condition for the opening day of market could have been summed up as “woefully unprepared”. No tent, no sign, and not enough product.

Opening day at the South of the James Market with The Market Umbrella was very different this year.

I showed up with 40 loaves of bread for opening day last year and barely sold them all. The original five types of bread available were Mixed Wheat French, Mixed Wheat Garlic, Mixed Wheat Italian, Multi-grain Rye, and a plain Potato Bread.  Mixed Wheat French & Garlic have continued in the line-up and the Potato Bread spawned the savory Rosemary Potato, which has become a market favorite.

This was the original Mixed Wheat French bread - no joke (4/2010)

Over the course of the first season, we got a tent, fashioned a sign from a re-purposed closet door, bought two tables, made PVC tent weights, and generated a presence at the Summer market as well as the Winter market on Forest Hill Avenue.

Entering year two, we still have a tent, fashioned a NEW sign out of fabric, and opened the market with nine varieties of breads, gingerbread cake, and Cake Pops.

This year, Tater Dave’s brought over a hundred loaves of bread for opening day. We were prepared for the masses.

We look forward to providing tasty bread and other baked treats for the summer market!

One of my market helpers!

Bread Foundations

Bread Foundations

Potato Bread, Mixed Wheat, and the Barmy bases are the three staple bread foundations I’ve developed for the variety of breads offered through Tater Dave’s.

Common varieties for the Potato Bread base include:

Rosemary Potato

Chili Potato

Cinnamon Raisin

Pepperoni Potato

Sundried Tomato Basil

Stolen

Mixed Wheat varieties mainly entail the Mixed Wheat French and the Mixed Wheat Garlic.

Barmy varieties manifest themselves as the Barmy Baguette and the Barmy Parm.

Why Potato Breads?

Because my Mom taught me to always add a little bit of potato flakes to yeast bread recipes to increase the moisture and softness of the final loaf. I’ve found that this subtle addition to the ingredients lends a softer crust and more tender crumb to the potato breads I make. Flavorings for the breads are kept to a ratio of 1 tablespoon of spices per four pounds of bread and/or 1 ounce of dried fruit/meat per pound in order to properly flavor each loaf.

Why Mixed Wheat?

I prefer to call the Mixed Wheat French and Garlic Breads “Mixed Wheat” because they start with 50% whole wheat flour.  Breads I produce as “Whole Wheat” contain 100% Whole Wheat Flour as well as additional whole grains. While the “Mixed Wheat” label generates questions, I feel this is needed in the bread world so customers can be better informed of the bread they are purchasing and consuming.

Why call it Barmy instead of Sourdough?

I just think Barmy sounds cooler than Sourdough – also, my wife makes a Pirate’s, “Aargh!” whenever she hears Barmy. My barmy breads are 100% naturally leavened and go through a lengthy rising cycle in order to develop good flavor. The starter for these varieties was captured locally at the beginning of 2011 and I have kept it living ever since; rebuilding it as needed to always have enough starter for the Barmy Baguette and the Barmy Parm!

Additional Bread Varieties

I’m still growing and learning as a baker, so I’m always interested in trying new spice blends as well as new varieties of breads.

I’ve dabbled with 100% Whole Grain Breads which give a hearty kick to the digestive tract, Ciabattas (golden and dusky) with light airy crumbs,  and am now trying out some Portuguese Sweet Breads due to my wife’s Cape Verdean heritage.

First attempt at Portuguese Sweet Bread

Bartering at the Market

Bartering goods at the close of market builds strong relationships between vendors.

It’s always a good week at the market selling bread when one or multiple of these things happen:

1 – Repeat customers return to purchase and enjoy more bread!

2 – All the bread is sold by the close of the market hours.

3 – Remaining breads at the close of market are traded with other vendors.

Option #1 is always a good choice and I’ve received good feedback from customers on how to improve some of the bread varieties – most significant has been the suggestion to make sandwich sized loaves.

Option #2 needs no explanation from a financial and time investment perspective.

Option #3 is where things get interesting. Take a look at the picture below:

One bottle of Trekker from Grayhaven Winery, a half-gallon of raw milk from Faith Farms, one dozen eggs from Sullivan’s Pond Farm, and Butter Milk Ranch Dressing, Salsa, and Olive Cheese Spread from Simply Savory.

These are all the items I bartered for two weekends ago at the market. On one day.

Since then, goodies from Simply Savory made up most of my weekly lunch, the milk was used in this past week’s breads, the eggs went into Cat Ruble’s new cake pops, and the bottle of wine is being saved for future consumption.

Bartering is a great way to take care of surplus goods at the end of the day and to trade with other vendors who have goods that may not keep until the following week. Yes, I could go home and freeze my bread for personal use, but freezing 4 or 6 loaves a week at the moment would build up fast to a full freezer.

Turning bread into wine or eggs or milk or savory goodies has a higher value than just more bread on hand at home. I’m grateful that this spirit of bartering has continued at the farmers market!

John Henry and the Stand Mixer

I’ve always admired the mythical black “steel-drivin’” man named John Henry.  He was a testament to the days when work happened on the human-scale and tragically died after outpacing a steam drill.  John Henry also lived at the end of the time period populated by Heroic Artisans.

Why am I talking about John Henry and Heroic Artisans?  Because one common conversation I have at the farmers market related to the bread I produce generally goes as follows:

Customer: Do you use a mixer?

Tater Dave:  Not usually.

Customer:  So you do all of this by HAND?

Tater Dave:  Pretty much.

Customer:  HOW?!

So this is the full answer for all the inquiring minds about how to make so much bread without a stand mixer (KitchenAid or Hobart).

Some quick work is due on your part first though – you need to go find your copy of Betty Crocker, the Joy of Cooking, or some other favorite cookbook with a yeast bread recipe in it.

Got it?  Good.

How much bread does the recipe make?  Maybe two loaves?  If the two loaves fill a 9” x 4” pan, then your recipe makes about 4 lbs of dough.  4 lbs of dough is just about the upper limit of capacity that a standard Kitchen Aide stand mixer can handle.  More than this and it’ll start to burn up the motor on your mixer.

My standard run of bread for the farmers market is 8 lbs of bread.  This is twice the capacity of a regular home stand mixer.  If it’s nearing peak season at the farmers market, then I can increase my run of bread to 16 lbs of dough or four times the capacity of a stand mixer.

In the amount of time taken to prepare 4 lbs of dough in a stand mixer, I could have already prepared either 8 or 16 lbs of dough by hand.  How is this possible?

The mechanics of a stand mixer require the use of a dough hook.  A dough hook only stretches the dough that it is immediately pushing through with a little bit of tug on the outside of the dough ball as it is pushed around the bowl.

The mechanics of hand kneading the dough stretches a greater volume and surface area of the dough with each turn.  Since more of the dough is being worked at a given time, the gluten can develop faster than in a stand mixer.

Also, it will take nearly the same amount of time for the gluten to develop with a standard sandwich loaf of bread whether using a stand mixer or mixing 8-16 lbs of dough by hand.

I need to be able to produce 8-16 lbs of dough on a fairly tight schedule since I’m making dough at a home-production scale.  Why 8-16 lbs of dough?  Because my oven can only hold 8 batards or boules of bread at a go or 4-8 sandwich loaves at a go.  But that conversation can develop on another day.

I can outpace a standard home stand mixer when making 8 to 16 lbs of dough which makes me more like my hero John Henry.  I’m proud of this because it shows where working on the human scale of ability is more productive than at a larger industrial scale.

An investment of several thousand dollars would be needed to find a machine that could out compete my hands in making dough as fast as I’m able.  The scale of dough production I’m currently at with one oven is more than a KitchenAid ($250-$600) but less than a Hobart ($1,500 – $3,000).

Once again, John Henry wins.

As a disclaimer, I will admit, for some of the wetter dough, brownies, and cakes I make, yes I do use a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  I’m not saying that a stand mixer doesn’t have a place in the kitchen; it just doesn’t currently have a place in Tater Dave’s production line!

Preparing for market

Okay, here it is – a nearly complete pictorial guide to preparing some bread for market.  First off, I use baker’s percentages to prepare my bread and several other great baking bloggers have posted about this so I will recommend you check out this tutorial series at the Wild Yeast blog.  It’s where I learned how to use baker’s percentages and began designing my own bread recipes (err… percentages…).  Second, all images below related to bread preparation and packaging were taken by my lovely wife Cat who takes fantastic photos.  You can learn more about her photography and our kids at her blog The Bird’s Nest.

The first picture below is the dough after it has been hand mixed as far as I’m able.  It looks somewhat crumbly with softer and firmer patches in it depending on the wetness of the dough.

This is about as far as you can get with a spoon, so it’s time to get my hands dirty and start to knead the dough.  In the slideshow below you can see the ‘crumbles’ of dough begin to stick together and then stretch into a semi-smooth ball of dough as the gluten is developed.

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Next it’s time to test for gluten development in the dough with a window pane test.  This is done after the dough feels right and is beginning to get resistant to kneading .

 

 

 

I’m happy with this level of development (medium to full) and knead the test pinch of dough back into the larger ball.  This gives us the finished lump of Rosemary Potato dough which is now ready for it’s initial bulk rise.

After the bulk rise, the dough is turned onto either an oiled or floured surface, divided and scaled to the right size for the loaf that needs to be made.  In this case, I’m making batards (16 ounces) and full sandwich loaves (32 ounces).

Skip ahead a little further and the bread is scored, baked, cooled, packaged, labeled and taken to market.  This market is at 4910 Forest Hill Avenue with The Market Umbrella from now (December) until the end of April.

Where it is sold by me to all the smiling customers!  Yes, it is winter, and yes, there is snow on the ground.  The winter market is a lot of fun and I encourage you to visit sometime!

I hope you enjoyed this little journey and there will be more fun with bread in the near future – stay tuned!

Weekend update #1

Okay….so I was bad and forgot to get pictures of this past week’s baking.  That will have to wait another day….  On another note, revisiting the Sourdough entry, I did make my first batch of sourdough baguettes this weekend and they came out great!  Yes, the Barmy Baguette is a new addition to the Tater Dave lineup; it was well received by the family and moved pretty quickly at the market.

I’m also doing some courtesy baking this week – one is for the CVC fundraiser at the office for Monday and then office Holiday parties later in the week.

That’s all for now!

Sourdough Starter

One of my goals over the winter is to develop a couple of sourdough starters.  I’m testing my first batch of starter tonight to see how it’s doing and below are a few pictures of what’s going on.  As a reference, I’ve used Peter Reinhart’s directions in his book Crust and Crumb for developing this starter.  At the moment it has a fairly strong ‘sour’ smell to it, but does not smell offensive.

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I’ve built up a little over 2 quarts of starter so far.  In the measuring cup is roughly 1/2 c. of the starter I’ve pulled out just to observe to see if it grows.  This is the day after feeding it so the yeast should be on the upswing.

The 8 qt. bucket the starter is living in is one of my food grade proofing buckets that is used for the bulk rise on most of my breads.

I may stay up later tonight to check on the starter, but I’ll most likely head onto bed since it’s 11 p.m. already.  The sample starter I’m “proofing” shouldn’t escape the liquid measure (unless it quadruples!) so even if I go to bed, I can measure the high water mark on the inside of the glass in the morning to find out how much it rose on it’s own.  I’m hoping to get a double or tripling in volume to show that the starter is alive and well!

Now for a little teaser of what’s in store for later in the week – I’m planning a post to chronicle a day baking and preparing for market from start to finish.