Week 43

The scene: We had another food truck pow-wow at the DFM on Saturday.  Monuts, BikeCoffee, Cafe Prost, Onlyburger, PiePushers, and Jeep's Kettle Corn were all in attendance.  Unseasonably balmy weather made for a pleasant, busy morning.

The product:  Both the French Bread and the Potato and Onion Bread came out well.  We have found from prior experiments that our starter needs to be fed every six to eight hours to retain maximum freshness without becoming too sour.  This is quite a chore, but AR took it on and did a great job with it.

The hearth oven was already running at our production house, so we were able to use it for the first time (we ordinarily use large convection ovens that can hold up to one hundred loaves at a time; the hearth oven takes 3-4 hours to heat up so we usually don't use it).  The hearth's added heat intensity (the loaves bake between two 500-degree brick slabs separated by twelve inches of space) gave the bread a deep carmelization and a more artisinal crumb texture.  If I did it again, I would bake the loaves for slightly less time -- we found that the center of the hearth was significantly hotter than the front and we could get better results there without the loaves drying too much.

The crew: Many thanks to AR, RML, RG, and SZ for helping out.  AR has been really helping me a ton in the kitchen and with product development.

Our awesome customers: Adam and Heather, Jamie, Meg, Joel+2, Roseanne, Amy T.

This week: Back on the donut train!