Do you bake bread?

I used to be a rare bread baker.  That changed this summer when I started to do the farmers market.  All of a sudden I was making bread twice a week.  When I started selling at the market I didn't have much for produce yet so baked goods were my way to have enough things to offer for sale.  There were other bakers at the market and other breads for sale.  I wanted to find my niche in the baked goods area, offering something different from the others so I made white bread as buns and small loaves and French baguettes.  Both were familiar breads.  I wrote about the baguettes here.

my baskets of breads at the market

My older daughter also has an interest in bread baking.  When she made known that interest she began to amass a collection of tools that she would need.  I helped with that. She has a beautiful cookbook on bread making that details what they recommend for baking fabulous artisan breads. A trip to the restaurant supply store for the bench scraper and cambro box for proofing that were on her Christmas wish list last year and a few treasures found while thrifting since have been my contribution.

She gave me my baguette pan for Christmas a couple of years ago and I have a couple of thrift store treasures that have found their way to my kitchen gear stash.  I am, after all, a gadget girl.  And I am also a cookbook girl.  During the market season my mom bought me a bread cookbook and my daughter sent me my own copy of the cookbook that was her inspiration.  Both are a treasure trove of information and recipes that I am excited to try.

the cookbook from my mom

cookbook from my daughter

After a couple of shoppers at the market asked about gluten free offerings I decided to try my hand a gluten free breads.  We do not have any family members that are gluten intolerant so it was not something that I had ever done but it was a need that none of the other market vendors were attempting to fill.  Gluten free baking has its own learning curve and its own specialty ingredients.  I love a baking challenge.  I have had some successes and some repeat customers.  I have one that I will be baking for even now that the market is done.  And that will be fun.

Each market day I would make baguettes and buns and little loaves and sometimes I would try something new.  A couple of times I used my Pullman pan or pain de mie.  It is a rectangular pan with straight sides and a cover.  The bread raises in the pan and the cover keeps the loaf from having an arched top.  The loaf makes squared off slices, kind of like the shape of commercial breads available at the store.  The pans come in two sizes and mine is the smaller one.  The bread is perfect sliced thinly for appetizer toasts or fancy tea sandwiches.

Pain de mie

I also tried my hand at focaccia.  I thought it was good but best fresh from the oven. Probably better to make and eat than make and sell the next day.

Another thrift store find just recently was a baking cloche.

It prompted me to get out the new cookbook and try my hand at an artisan bread.  There is a lot to learn and I started with a prefermented bread. A prefermented bread requires the making of a starter so it is not something that is done spontaneously.  I started my starter, called biga, on Saturday and baked my bread on Sunday.   I have extra biga in my fridge so I will probably be baking bread again over the next couple of days.  The bread that I made is a white bread, using only all purpose flour, but it has a slightly different taste and a little darker color.  It tastes great both fresh and toasted.  I baked a baguette from a baguette recipe using the biga.  Instead of baking on a stone I tried my baguette pan.  It turned out nice.  I also tried two artisan breads.  One recipe but one-half baked under the cover of the cloche and one-half baked in the cloche bottom without the cover.  The recipe was for one loaf but it was a fairly large recipe and my cloche is supposed to hold dough made from three cups of flour and mine was more than that. Both breads were good but the covered bread and the baguette had a chewier crust.  The baguette had a pan of water for steam in the oven and the cloche created steam from the moisture in the dough.  The unsteamed version had a softer crust.

All in all it has been great fun.  I will be sharing the recipes soon but in the meantime I will be sharing this post with Susan at BNOTP here.