March 22, 2015 - 4:19pm
Indoor Market Video
One more video for the Freshloafians. Yesterday was a great day at the market and I made a video about it! Enjoy :)
-Mark
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One more video for the Freshloafians. Yesterday was a great day at the market and I made a video about it! Enjoy :)
-Mark
Comments
Your customers have tob e the happiest on this good earth. Well done and happy baking Mark
Well if the baker ain't happy ain't nobody happy, so if the baker is happy then everybody's happy :)
-Mark
You are amazing!
Thanks for your kind words :)
-Mark
Hi Mark.
I love watching you work with dough and always pick up something new.
Curious about your 'preferred' steaming method with your Blodgett. It appears as though you use only about a cup of water at the beginning of your bake - judiciously tossed onto the floor of the oven. I assume the oven is convection??? If my assumption is correct, how then do you keep the steam from venting out of the oven the moment the water hits the hot steel?
I am also curious - which dough/bread is your favorite to work with and why?
Thanks so much for this video!
Take Care,
Janet
Hi Janet,
Yes you are correct both ovens I'm using in the video are convection. The one that I'm using the most (to the right as you're facing them) is electric, the one to the left that I load the potato rolls in is gas. The gas one loses the steam almost immediately and has a fan that operates on either low or high speed. The electric one holds the steam (about a cup as you noticed) for about 5 minutes total. I have a cast iron griddle on the lowest rack space that I (mostly) pour the water on, so it forms a little bubbly pool until it dissipates.
I like working with the baguettes the most since they are the most challenging and variable. They also give me the most fits at times, so it's a love/hate relationship :)
Glad you enjoyed the video and take care,
-Mark
Another great video, Mark! so inspiring, as always.
I echo Janet's question on steam. Do your ovens bake with convection mode only?
Thanks a lot for the videos. We at TFL get all excited when you post your videos.
Best of luck to you, and Happy baking!
Khalid
Yes my ovens only bake in convection mode, there's no way to shut the fans off without turning off the heat. In the past I did a lot of experimenting with preheating high, steaming, shutting the ovens off, and then turning them back on after a while, that sort of thing. It wasn't worth it and there was too much to remember with everything else going on.
Thanks Khalid and happy baking to you too!
-Mark
Thanks for the information. I will experiment more with my Cadco which is convection only to see if I can get better results....I turn off for the first 10 minutes of the bake but then, when I turn the oven back on, it has to catch up for all the lost heat while off and judging where to set the temp. can be problematic....crusts too dark etc....I bake lots of different types of bread so it is hard to pin down one exact regime for them all. ALways tweaking.
Baguettes eh...those are one type of bread that I don't bake - or haven't yet simply due to the grain I use. 100% ww creates challenges unless one has the talent of txfarmer....Some day. Right now I am having fun with the dense rye loaves and all their permutations. I am curious to see if you learn anything about them while in Eastern Europe. Baguettes may be on the horizon...one never knows where this passion will lead.
Take Care,
Janet
Experimentation is necessary with every oven, no matter how much you pay for it. Especially with artisan/lean breads. I bake all of my lean breads at the same temperature 405F convection and baguettes at 425F. That's what they are at the entire time from start to finish. IMHO it's best to find a fixed temperature that works, rather than adjusting the temp up and down throughout the process. At the bakery I learned breads at about 20 years ago, we did no temperature adjusting, in fact we only adjusted the temp by flame height (like you do on a gas stove top) since none of the ovens had temperature dials. ;)
In Prague I'll get to see how they work at the bakery and their breads. However since they're paying me to be there and I'll be in their place I'll just follow the #1 rule of bakeries which is ,"Do whatever the boss man says to do" and I will help out however necessary. :)
Take care,
-Mark
I'll start experimenting with leaving the oven on and see what happens now that I know what happens when I turn it off for 10 minutes. THanks for the nudge.
Have fun on your journey.
Janet
Great video Mark. Thanks for sharing...I get tired just watching you and imagining all the work that goes into what you do.
Regards,
Ian
Thanks Ian. Yes, so much preparation goes into each market and as you can imagine, what I show in the video is just the tip of the iceberg. It's tiring of course but very rewarding at the same time :)
-Mark
... SO much effort goes into the prep, the baking, the packing (several times) and unpacking (again several times), wow!
Very interesting, loved to see the process and decompressed along with you with the music on the way home!
Decompression is a good word to describe the drive home. I describe the drive home and let-down after the market as being in 'zombie mode' where I have to force myself to drink plenty of water and have something to eat too. Then the next day it's re-stocking all of the supplies, washing the tablecloth and towels used, and tons of dish-washing and cleaning. Then I take a break and sit at the computer to post something on FB or here :)
-Mark
.
......you, Mark, of course. Thank you so much for posting this, not to mention making it. I am reminded of Phil Agnew's (Pips) posts that were such unrivaled combinations of photographic and culinary art. Well, you are the cinematographic equivalent. I've very much enjoyed your previous videos, the solitary peace at your former bakery and now again in your mobile version. How do you pull this off, the filming that is? Do you have a bunch of GoPros stationed around the bakery, running continuously? That you can make such an beautifully edited, engaging and informative video while keeping all those doughs moving and happy, on schedule, well, it's a miracle of multitasking that is a wonder to behold. And I have to say, your pastries look fabulous. I can see why your Romanian apprentice chose you as a mentor (surprised her bakery wasn't on your upcoming Tour de Europe).
One thing missing though. WHERE'S THE CRUMB SHOT?
:-)
Thanks again,
Tom
I better start practicing my Oscar award acceptance speech then... :)
Thanks for the compliments, Tom. I only have one camera and one tripod that I move from place to place to show different angles/viewpoints. On the close-up baguette shaping shots the camera is sitting on the far end of the workbench without a tripod. Ideally for a given stage of the baking process I'll try to capture it from 3 different viewpoints. So for instance for shaping loaves I'll shoot 1/3 of the shaping from my right, 1/3 from the left, 1/3 from over the top or a high viewpoint. Then sometimes I'll edit it together when I'm moving so it looks like it's the same loaf I'm working with and it's clean. So I pick up the dough viewed from the right, then shape viewed overhead, then as I move it, I shift to a third view and I place it on the pan. Three different loaves.
Anyway, the whole process is time-consuming but easier by myself since I don't have distractions from the actual baking that is taking place.
Sorry, no crumb shot. All the bread was for my customers. I ended up pulling some old bread from the freezer for my Sunday breakfast :)
-Mark
"a person that makes a high-quality or distinctive product in small quantities"
Your dough is so ALIVE !! Watching the play between you and your dough, as you work ,is like watching a ballet. You have such a gift. Thank you for sharing a small part of your craft. c
Yes the dough is quite active and sometimes I need to show it who the boss actually is...The handling of the dough is the part I enjoy the most of the whole bread process. It's why I have no desire to go into the gluten-free area of the market, no matter what the demand.
Thanks again for your kind words!
-Mark
new tubs. Keeping up with the volume, eh?
But 1AM on market day? Seems like you need
slave laboran intern so you can sleep in until 2. Let me know when. Varda is my reference for "I can still work hard and just love to wash dishes..."Best of best of...
Raggedy Baker
Eh 1AM's not so bad, as long as it's just for market day. Watching the video afterwards as I was editing it, I thought I looked remarkably perky. :)
Yes, I heard Varda was heading towards you to get some spiral mixing experience. Don't worry, you'll get word when the time is right. Things are heading towards possible internships this summer. We shall see. And you know, dish washing is the only stress-free part of the operation, so you'd be doing some of the other stuff too to delegate some of the stress elsewhere.
Take care Pat.
-Mark
I was curious how your van bakery was set up. Now I have a case of bakery envy. The efficiency of your set up is wonderful. Thanks for taking the time to make the video. What mixer are you using? How many kilos ( pounds) dough can it handle? I'm thinking of something similar to take some of the stress off the old arms. Would love to taste all those breads and pastries but I'm a few thousand km's away.
I'm using two different mixers in the video. The mixer at the very beginning of the video is a 60qt Hobart and is not in the trailer. There I am mixing about 32 pounds / 14kg of baguettes, but it can handle more. The mixer shown at the 3:15 mark is a Berkel 20qt which is at the rear/driver's side corner of the trailer. There I am mixing about 8kg of rye dough and that is over the recommended capacity :)
Depending on your space, your budget, and what you like to make (besides bread, I mean) a commercial 10qt or 20qt can be good for almost everything.
-Mark
Thanks so much for posting again! I love your videos and have seen your past ones as well. Very inspirational.
I also want to someday open my own bakery and hit the farmers markets as well.
Oh man, I would love to mentor under you someday!
Keep posting!
Cheers!
Dave
Thanks Dave and I'm happy to hear that you're finding the videos inspirational. Keep in touch and maybe we can do some baking together sometime :)
-Mark
Holy wow! So this is entirely a one man show? Amazing...
How much of what you do is 100% sourdough/ and pre-fermented commercial yeast?
I just bought a deck oven, thinking to start really small. Wondering if you can give an out line of your schedule :)
Wow, you must be tired after that days work, really enjoyed watching it, but now I want all that professional equipment!!
very impressed with your set-up and output , amazing use of space
I never tire of watching you work; beautiful products!
Thank you very much for your kind words! :)
-Mark