It's hard to believe that Basic Kneads has been here on Gore st for over a year. Time flies when you are slinging loaves and taking names. Here we are back into the busy season of cottagers returning to the many lakes surrounding Perth and tourists looking for a weekend or even an afternoon away from the busy cities. Locals are filling their social calendars with music festivals, camping trips and get togethers with friends who are out of their winter hibernation or back from their winters spent in warmer climates. There are so many occasions to share a meal and break bread with the people you love.
The bakery rolls on! We have added to our roster and extended our hours, welcoming Beau to the team three days a week, the return of Mix Master Michael to full time and opening up 7 days a week to bake wheat while the sun is shining. The current summer schedule actually works out better for Yoshi and I as we each get (theoretically) two more days off a month. In reality July was a madhouse and due to special events like Curds and Cooks at the Back Forty and the Stuart Park Music Festival there has been little time off for either of us. I did get a night of camping in the Gatineau hills and Yoshi and Mrs. Yoshi made it to Quebec City for their anniversary.
Now that a year has passed it is surreal to think about what things were like back at the beginning. We are now making twice the bread in the same amount of time and space. Mostly that is thanks to our larger mixer Boku and streamlining our routine. Also, we have made two new mechanical additions to the bakery. One is a dough divider which we are still working out the kinks and fine tuning how to get perfectly shaped buns. The other is my new favorite best friend (sorry Antoine), our brand new dishwashing machine. How did we ever go an entire year scrubbing every single bus bin of dough and oil? Never again. It has saves us so much time, that now we actually make it home in time for dinner instead of late night dish washing by hand sessions that seemed to never end. Now the only raisins are in the bread instead of at the end of our fingers.
We also expanded our daily offerings to include cheese twists as a regular item on the shelves instead of just once a week, Pain Perdu is being made first thing every morning and to the sheer delight of several of our regular clients (you know who you are) as well as grandchildren of all ages we have made our Cinnamon Sugar Fritter a fixture of the bakery, keeping true to only doing bread but also appeasing the demand for sweet treats that so many people have been asking us for. Drizzled with Yoshi's secret vanilla lemon icing these beasts are irresistible and I'm lucky if I get one for myself most days.
We keep dreaming big and have started laying the ground work to slowly expand into selling retail in shops in the area. Yoshi has put many hours into grant funding and I have begun the deep dive into learning to mill our own flour. We hope to really get the ball rolling on these projects once the summer season is behind us and we switch back to a winter bake schedule that will involve fewer days of baking a week and hopefully Yoshi and I getting down to 10 hours a day each instead of our current 13-14. It may seem like a lot but we knew what we signed up for and we still get to spend our days doing the thing we love for the town we love.
Hope to bake for you soon,
Rusty
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