Double Hydration
Elsewhere on this site is an article highlighting the bakery (Red Hen Baking Company's Baguette) and in it we cover some of the techniques used by a small wholesale bakery in rural in Vermont. They make fantastic, if not entirely traditional, organic hearth breads which they distribute across a wide swath of central Vermont. From that article:...
Read
Baker's Percent
Perhaps this subject of baker's percent has been written about so much that not one more ounce of ink needs to be spilled on the subject. But perhaps not. You still go into so many bakeries where the formulas are written out based on 'gallons of water' or there's a notebook somewhere near the mixer where someone has, through trial and error, written down all of the relevant batch sizes, but with n...
Read
Baguette: Shaping
It would appear that the art of shaping a baguette is beginning to fade. With the pressures on bakery owners to increase volume and decrease labor costs much equipment is being brought into the bakery with these goals in mind. A baguette, even a well made one, is often one of the cheaper items in a bakery's list of offerings, and often it commands the highest volume in a typical retail/wholesale ...
Read