FoodBanter.com - A saga..... and a revelation

Some of the background of this note will be familiar to some readers of
this note, but I'm including it because I'm sending this to several
mailing lists.

Different people have different tolerances for change. Some people love
change. Some are reluctant to put a new roll of toilet paper in the
dispenser. Some, probably most of us, will change only if circumstances
force us to.

For reasons that probably don't bear close examination, after we closed
our bakery, we decided to sell breads at our local farmers market.
(Actually, my wife and I just had a "but, I thought it was YOUR idea"
conversation.) We were determined enough that we helped reoranize the
market after last year's organizers left town. And, in a moment of
weakness, wound up being the director of the market.

I found a bakery I could use, and work began. However, last week, the
first week of the market and the first week we used the bakery, the
mixer at the bakery died. The owner, who only does sweet things, had
just bought the used mixer and had mixed feelings about it. It was
still under warranty, and she felt that now was the time to show up its
weak points. I felt better when I learned she felt that way.

All week long, the dealer kept saying, "tomorrow you'll see the repair
guy and it'll work again!" Friday, he finally showed up. He looked at
the mixer, cursed, and put it in his truck saying he had to take it back
to the shop.

This left me with 5 batches of bread ranging from 12 to 20 1.5 lb loaves
to make and no mixer.

And a sense of dread. I have made lots of bread by hand, but not that
much. We're talking about 125 pounds of dough. How the heck will I
knead that much dough by hand? Should I blow off going to the market?
On the other hand, I have a bucket of sourdough starter and a bucket of
poolish that will need to be used or thrown away, and if I don't go to
the market, I won't make any money.

In the end, I sent a "what do I do now? Please give me advide or
commiseration" note to the Bread Baker's Guild of America mailing list.
(As a side note, if you are a serious baker, you are elgible to join.
The rates are reasonable, and the mailing list is just awesome. Look at
http://www.bbga.org/)

A few people commiserated, some said they'd help if they weren't 1/2 way
across the country. Two gave me good advice. And then I got an email
that may well change my life.

Craig Ponsford sent me a note saying, "Call me at 555-1212" Craig is a
baker's baker. He is also very generous to the bakery community. He's
the president of the Bread Baker's Guild of America, he owns a very
successful bakery in Sonoma, California, and he was on, and then
coached, the American teams that won the
Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie. His bakery has the
http://www.artisanbakers.com web site, and there's lots of good
information there. Getting that message from him is sorta like an
amateur physicist getting an email from Steven Hawking saying, "please
call".

Lucky for me, he is kind, generous, and a wonderful person, so I felt at
ease talking to him seconds into our phone call.

"Mike, when I teach classes, I teach students to not knead. You don't
need to knead. If we weren't doing thousands of pounds of dough a day,
I wouldn't own a mixer, or knead dough. If you give up kneading, your
breads will only get better!"

At this point I was conflicted. When I was growing up, my mother made
all our bread. She kneaded. When I learned to bake in the late 1970's,
I kneaded. When we opened a bakery, we got a big mixer to knead our
dough. Sure, Craig knows what he's talking about... but is he giving me
the straight skinny, or is he shitting me? On the other hand, nothing
ventured, nothing gained. I want to be at the market, and I want to
sell bread there. And better bread sounds pretty cool.

He asks about my dough hydration, and I tell him it ranges from 55 to
about 75%. He comments he likes wetter doughs better, and he routinely
makes 95% hydration doughs. (A side note to WSCJohn - you are no longer
the "King of Glop", you may select between "Ambassador of Glop" and
"Crowned Prince of Glop" as your new title.) But, Craig assures me,
this technique will work with the doughs I'm talking about.

Craig further asked me how much flour was in the starters as a percent
of the recipe. I think he was impressed that I knew, and that I was
using about 30% in poolish based recipes and around 25% in
levain/sourdough based recipes.

He then asked how long my bulk fermentations were. I told him between 3
and 6 hours, depending on the bread. He again made approving noises.

Then he told me what I needed to do.... Here is, roughly, what Craig
told me. Roughly mix the ingreadients, make sure all the flour is
moistened. If you are using a poolish, don't worry that it hasn't been
incorporated into the dough. It's OK if its a slimy mess with strands
of unincorporated poolish in it.

Put the roughly mixed dough into containers and let them sit 45
minutes. Then dump out the dough onto a work table. Spread the dough
out until its a rectangle about 3" thick. Then fold in the edges of the
bread - top and bottom, left and wsummer.