http://wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/article_d6166a8b-2951-5e70-a7ba-6361700386f1.html
A local retiree started baking for his retirement community. Pretty cool.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Conversions
http://www.traditionaloven.com/tutorials/conversion.html
This is a super converter for all kinds of cooking supplies. I used it this morning to figure out how much 1 1/3 cups of honey weigh (500 ish grams)
This is a super converter for all kinds of cooking supplies. I used it this morning to figure out how much 1 1/3 cups of honey weigh (500 ish grams)
Who am I and What is This All About??
Hello,
My name is Justin, and I bake bread (among other things). I've always had a soft spot for the carbs. In 2008, after 10 years of living in Minneapolis (a bakery paradise) my real job took me to Waterloo Iowa. Among the things I missed (foreign movies, a place to get gyros at 2 in the morning, Prince...) was decent bread. So, I decided to try making my own. I'd used a bread maker in the past, but the results were always so so. It tasted OK, but the crust was pretty bad (more about why that is in a future post). We had a Kitchen Aid stand mixer (the big one) from our wedding, I had a couple recipes, and I went to town. The first loaves were OK, better than what comes out of the machine, but not all that fantastic. Next, I started reading The Fresh Loaf and picked up a dedicated bread cookbook. The bread was good, it turned out to be pretty easy, my friends all liked it, etc. My suggested we try selling at the local farmers' market, so in the summer of 2009, Holmes & Holmes bread was born. We're pretty much a micro business. Most Saturdays from May-August, we can be found at the downtown Waterloo farmer's market. At first, the business was a pretty dicey proposition. It rained every Saturday in May, there weren't many customers, and it was discouraging. But then things picked up. We gave out samples and started building a fanbase of repeat customers. Things went too far the other way. I was baking with a medium sized home mixer, and one oven, and it took from 6 am Friday to 2am Saturday to have bread ready for the market. In 2010, we added a double oven (we now have the only home kitchen I've seen that has 3 ovens), and mixed in a commercial kitchen. This year, we bought a Hobart, now built into a closet, so we can mix at home. We sell out pretty consistently, and people seem to like what we are doing.
So why the blog? Well, I think baking is pretty swell, and for some reason, it terrifies an awful lot of people, many of whom are much better cooks than I am. There are plenty of cook books out there (more on that later), and The Fresh Loaf presents is full of knowledgeable and nice people. But much of this info can be pretty daunting, and what I've found over the last few years is that baking bread is really easy. People tend to miss the forest for the trees (ugh), and I'd like to help people focus on the big picture. Besides that, my Fridays in the summer are broken up into weird 15 minute chunks while the bread bakes, and those chunks seem perfect for a little blog.
Why should you listen to me? Well, probably you shouldn't. I didn't go to cooking school. The fanciest restaurant I've worked in was a Steak n Shake in college. But, I've baked about 2000 loaves of bread in the last two years, and I've made pretty much every mistake imaginable. So I figure, I can save you from making the same mistakes I have. Hopefully someone will read. Probably they won't.
-Holmes
My name is Justin, and I bake bread (among other things). I've always had a soft spot for the carbs. In 2008, after 10 years of living in Minneapolis (a bakery paradise) my real job took me to Waterloo Iowa. Among the things I missed (foreign movies, a place to get gyros at 2 in the morning, Prince...) was decent bread. So, I decided to try making my own. I'd used a bread maker in the past, but the results were always so so. It tasted OK, but the crust was pretty bad (more about why that is in a future post). We had a Kitchen Aid stand mixer (the big one) from our wedding, I had a couple recipes, and I went to town. The first loaves were OK, better than what comes out of the machine, but not all that fantastic. Next, I started reading The Fresh Loaf and picked up a dedicated bread cookbook. The bread was good, it turned out to be pretty easy, my friends all liked it, etc. My suggested we try selling at the local farmers' market, so in the summer of 2009, Holmes & Holmes bread was born. We're pretty much a micro business. Most Saturdays from May-August, we can be found at the downtown Waterloo farmer's market. At first, the business was a pretty dicey proposition. It rained every Saturday in May, there weren't many customers, and it was discouraging. But then things picked up. We gave out samples and started building a fanbase of repeat customers. Things went too far the other way. I was baking with a medium sized home mixer, and one oven, and it took from 6 am Friday to 2am Saturday to have bread ready for the market. In 2010, we added a double oven (we now have the only home kitchen I've seen that has 3 ovens), and mixed in a commercial kitchen. This year, we bought a Hobart, now built into a closet, so we can mix at home. We sell out pretty consistently, and people seem to like what we are doing.
So why the blog? Well, I think baking is pretty swell, and for some reason, it terrifies an awful lot of people, many of whom are much better cooks than I am. There are plenty of cook books out there (more on that later), and The Fresh Loaf presents is full of knowledgeable and nice people. But much of this info can be pretty daunting, and what I've found over the last few years is that baking bread is really easy. People tend to miss the forest for the trees (ugh), and I'd like to help people focus on the big picture. Besides that, my Fridays in the summer are broken up into weird 15 minute chunks while the bread bakes, and those chunks seem perfect for a little blog.
Why should you listen to me? Well, probably you shouldn't. I didn't go to cooking school. The fanciest restaurant I've worked in was a Steak n Shake in college. But, I've baked about 2000 loaves of bread in the last two years, and I've made pretty much every mistake imaginable. So I figure, I can save you from making the same mistakes I have. Hopefully someone will read. Probably they won't.
-Holmes
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