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July 9, 2024

 Rusty’s log

Stardate: -300520.5

Perth Ontario: temperature 23 C Humidity 93%

Basic Kneads: temperature 30 C humidity 46%

Pressure: 100.9 kPa 

Day 2 of the new venture and the bake has already increased. Over 100 loaves baked and sold out before 1pm.

Today and tomorrow we are lucky enough to have Kieran stageing with us. She recently finished the pastry program at Algonquin College and is filling her hours with us. Today she gained experience in shaping dough, forming loaves, baking and preparing tomorrow’s mix of doughs. It was a long hot day and she pulled through like a trooper, I have no doubt she will go far in the industry.

Last night I babysat Carl jr, who Yoshi introduced you to yesterday. He had been lazy all day so I took him home with me for an extra feeding and closer attention. About 10 pm he woke up in a fever of excitement so I chilled him out in the fridge until morning. Due to our increased production volume we are using 1600g of him a day so we need him to grow up big and strong in a hurry. He is fed equal parts All Purpose (AP) and Brita filtered water at least once a day and lives in the bottom shelf of our fridge behind Yuri Poolish when we want him to calm down, otherwise he watches us work from a bread shelf he shares with the fresh bake as it comes out of the oven. 

Today we also received an order of 14 x 20kg bags of AP we store on a skid attached to 4 caster wheels for easy handling and movement around the bakery. I love equipment that is on wheels. As we designed our workspace I insisted that everything that could be on wheels should be on wheels for easy rearranging and cleaning. There are only a few pieces of machinery that are sitting on their feet: the ovens, the Captain, Gwen and our work tables. Everything else rolls and that makes me very happy. Another design element that makes me happy is the amount of strong earth magnets we have for attaching everything to everything, clip boards, scissors, bench scrapers, lames, so many things are at arms each when we need them thanks to those wonders of nature.

Our other order that came in was an assortment of Cambro food safe storage containers. Yoshi painstakingly washed each one and I returned to Kneads after a dinner of pulled pork tacos with my beloved to scale out tomorrow’s mix in the hope of speeding up and lightening our afternoon work load. We are still working out a number of processes, continuously finding faster and more efficient ways of bringing those sweet sweet loaves to our friends and neighbours.

If you had been on the edge of your seat, the dough from two days ago did not over ferment and no, Yoshi did not get enough sleep. But my hope is that he is dreaming of crispy crusts while I write this and tomorrow’s bake rises to the occasion.

Till tomorrow, 

Same bread time, same bread channel 


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