A plastic free sourdough microbakery. Can it be done? I think yes, but we are not quite there yet. Although our outflow is plastic free (un-packaged returnable crates of unwrapped or paper bagged sourdough), there remains some single use plastic lurking in our incoming supplies. So I've gone about identifying it, and thought about the next… Continue reading A Plastic-Free Sourdough Micro-bakery
I have a question for you Lochaber - what is in the loaf of bread you picked up today? Well if you've been lucky to pick up one of our sourdough's from the Deli or at a market, I can honestly tell you - here's what is in your loaf of bread, (with some rough… Continue reading Lochaber – what is in your bread?
"Do one thing well - it's enough." We've been looking at incremental reductions we could make to avoid waste of our bread (see this blog pondering a zero waste bakehouse) and have now turned our attention to embedded distance (distance travelled) of our ingredients. We're pondering a locovore bakehouse. What's a Locovore? A locavore is a person interested… Continue reading Pondering a Locovore Bakehouse
Flour, salt and oil (and beer) First ingredient order has arrived from the fab guys at Highland Wholefoods in Inverness. Their company is a worker owned co-operative supplying wholefoods to people and businesses in the highlands, and was recommended to us from Mike at Golspie mill who supplies them with flour. We received several types… Continue reading First ingredient order
I think it is the Guinness advert which says "good things come to those who wait". And well they do. At least when it comes to bread. Added to the simple ingredients of bread (flour, water, yeast and salt) there is the more fickle variable of time. And when it comes to bread, real bread… Continue reading A little bit of time…
Salt. Sodium chloride. Plants, animals, humans - we all need a bit; but not too much. Same goes for real bread - a bit is good (salt is a basic human taste); too much is both bad for us (FSA guidance - 1% or less of final product weight), and the yeast that make's the… Continue reading A little about Salt
Yeast. It's a microscopic fungus that makes Bread rise. Yeast eats sugars naturally present in the flour, and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide raises the dough and forms the crumb; the alcohol evaporates in the oven. There's lots of types; with lots of different Latin names - the one type most used… Continue reading A little about yeast
Flour. It's simply a milled (i.e. ground up) cereal grain. In the case of most bread, the cereal grain is good ol' Wheat. There are two main methods to produce it:- 1) Grinding it between two big stones (stoneground) - an old, slow, cool process which leaves a lot of goodness in 2) Rolling between… Continue reading A little about Flour
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