Hello, Again!

Well, the holidays are over, and we bakers are catching up on sleep and settling into winter. The holidays at a bakery are busy, and January is the perfect time to recover and enjoy quieter days. January is also an opportunity for some spring cleaning! We’ve already re-dressed the mill stones, which means we re-sharpened them so we can mill consistent flour (we do this about every four months because the groves in the mill wear over time). We’ve also done some deep cleaning and testing of new recipes. (We may have made donuts last week….!) We are ready for a new year.

One thing I’ve been thinking about this January is how much we value customer feedback. Please email us if you have a question about baking with our flour. Please email us if you’d like to see one of our products at your grocery store. Please email us if you have a question about ingredients. You get the idea.

Last week, a customer took the time to email us a compliment. We are happy to accept those as well. :) Seriously though, as a wholesale operation, we don’t get to talk to our customers as much as we’d like to, so we enjoy hearing about what we’re doing right.

Customer Paul wrote: “I just tried my first loaf of your bread, the Complete bread. It was everything a loaf of bread should be! I can’t praise this bread enough. I now have a new favorite bakery (and no town is complete without a great bakery)!”

How nice is that? As Head Baker Steve said, “We bake our bread with the hopes that it will bring joy.” So it’s nice to know that we at least brought joy to a customer.

Happy New Year, bread-lovers. In 2019, let’s resolve to eat more bread!

--Baker Hannah

Announcement: Pop-Up on September 30th!

We’re throwing a party! Well, sort of…. Baker’s Field is actually hosting another pop-up bakery event at the Food Building on September 30th at 10am. Our version of a party! The bakers will offer some fun sweet treats we don’t usually make, including pie, and we’ll also have lots of bread and flour for sale, of course.

In preparation for our pop-up, we’ve been thinking a lot about pie. Siri is leading the efforts on this one and has tested a few recipes (more than once) and serenaded us with some delicious pies that the bakers always happily devour. Notably, a peach and rhubarb pie with hints of clove… so heavenly.

Pie can be tricky, so I asked some of our bakers for their secrets to success:

Siri: First: Measure out all the crust ingredients except the water, and freeze for twenty minutes before mixing. Second: Let the dough relax in the refrigerator after you roll it out and before trimming it to the pie tin. This will help prevent shrinking. Third: Have fun with fluting! Use your fingers or other tools to make your pie crust unique.

Wes: Most recipes will tell you to keep some of the butter in pea-sized pieces for the ultimate flakey crust. This is good advice, but I also massage some of the butter into the flour.

Steve: Hold back about one third of the flour when scaling the dough. Mix the ingredients as you typically do, but before the crust comes together, add in the rest of the flour. This will prevent the gluten structure from becoming too strong and will also create a flakey crust.

Eager to make a pie with the last of summer’s fruit? Check out our recipe and use our all-purpose flour. See you at the pop-up!