Proof Bread; Mesa, AZ
This is a "micro bakery" run out of a garage in Mesa, AZ.. All strictly legal due to a local "cottage" law.
Their array of breads and pastries are sold to the public at a slew of open air markets in the Phoenix metro area. Very nice website is here.
However, for a real treat take a look at their youtube channel. For me this was the motivation for this forum topic. In video after video, one of the owners, Jonathan Przybyl, relates his bakery journey in fascinating detail. Real nuts and bolts stuff including how he saved a ton of money rehabbing a junked dough mixer.
The folks here will also be pleased to know that forum favorite Trevor Wilson commented on the video about their English muffins. In short Trevor is highly impressed with what they're doing. He raved about them in his comment.
This video is a start to finish about their standard loaf. It's about an hour long and in my humble opinion well worth your time. In addition to the story about their dough mixer, Jon talks a bit about the flour blend they have custom made for them by Hayden Mills. All that and so much more.
Six different grains go into that flour blend. Some of them may include White Sonora, Durum and Red Fife. I've gleaned this from the videos and their website and of course I could be completely wrong. I think it would be fun to reverse engineer this. Who knows? Maybe Jon derived this proprietary blend by reading this forum. Wouldn't that be a kick?
I hope you enjoy the videos as much I did. Have any of you tried their bread? Please chime in. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing that video link. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will definitely watch some of their other videos.
Oh, and welcome. :)
Rich
One thing I'm finding intriguing about the start to finish video is when Jon talks about the stretchiness of his dough prior to stretching and folding. He apparently prefers his dough to be well developed before stretching and folding. The dough I just made today from Central Milling AP with about 64g of supermarket whole wheat flour, 4 tsp vital wheat gluten, 10 g of diastatic malt powder and 150g levain - no way can I stretch it like that. But then Jon is using a powerful dough mixer and I'm hand mixing. And theperfectloaf best sd recipe calls for the dough to be somewhat underdeveloped prior to S&F. So interesting.
I'm glad you liked the video.
VRini, I wanted to thank you again for posting that video. Why? Well, after watching Jon do that stitch shaping technique so many times on the video, I thought I'd try it with my loaves today. I like it! I feel like it's a bit more straight forward for me to get my batards evenly shaped with that technique......I AM a visual learner. :)
Today's results:
Yeah. I've adopted Jon's shaping and stitching technique too. See my blog for bake pictures. Now YOURS is the color I wanted to get. I got distracted and overbaked but it's funny that a lot of folks here seem to like their sd loaves that way.
Superb bake. Thanks for sharing.
I actually prefer them a bit darker than this. :)
R
Beautiful bake Rich, really nice.
Benny
Thanks, Benny!
R
I have been enjoying these myself. Real talk, real life, real bread.
Another hour long epic video. Enjoy. (Only if you have the hour to spare.)
The discussion about the butter and the consequences of not getting the temperature and other factors just right is humbling. You'll never look at a Croissant again the same.
C: Hi, if you watch this french patisserie to flatten the butter they actually seem to throw some dusting of flour to either side of the butter sheet before passing thru the sheeter machine it seems better than the process you use. The sheeter machine they use seems to be less wide than yours. There is many things you can get about the proper technique from this video not sure if you have seen it
J: the flour addition is a great thing for us to revisit. I’ve done it in the past, but got away from it. This may help us get to that full 5th butter.
C: I know you experiment alot, but was wondering if you have tried this: say you make a trifold. Have you ever tried slicing through the folds before running through the sheeter (basically creating 3 sheets of dough), so that the butter goes all the way to the edges. It really does work pretty well.
J: Back when I was manually laminating in a pasta roller, the folded over side was a helpful starting point through the roller. The sheeter removes its benefit. I’ll have to give it a whirl. Some habits die hard.
C: cutting the rolled edge of the book fold off also allows for more "puff" in the final product
J: I’m going to put this to the test. I’ve seen that done. It’s not a test we have ever run. Thanks for sharing.
C: Dude, you are driving me crazy. You talk on and on and on and never give us any usable information. You talked for over an hour on baking sourdough bread but you never gave us what we need. Baker's percentages. Hydration, cooking times and temperature. All this other stuff you ramble on about is somewhat interesting but not what we need.
J: I think it’s best you find some other content then. The formulas are truly the least valuable thing I can offer. You can find dozens of formulas. They are meaningless out of context. If you want to make sourdough croissants, it’s actually all the in between info that will make it possible, if all you need is a formula, they you probably don’t need much instruction at all.
On a lot of different topics, like industrial bread and the importance of grain and fermentation over hydration. The history of Jon's takeover of Proof Bread from its founder Jared and developing it into a thriving business starts here and is really gripping: