How far ahead of your desired delivery or pickup time do you need to order bread? Chad bakes bread to order, so it can be helpful to know!
Most of our breads require two days to make, because I use a delayed fermentation method. This involves letting the dough raise for a long time in refrigeration, rather than the more common method of encouraging dough to rise quickly in a warm place. Delayed fermentation allows time for enzymes within the wheat and produced by the yeast to develop deeper flavor than the faster method. Sourdough breads, such as our sourdough boule or onion rye, require an additional full day, as the mother starter is fed and expanded first to create the starter used to leaven that batch of dough
For example, when I bake for a Saturday market, I make sourdough starters on Wednesday evening. I make all of the doughs on Thursday. Then I begin baking around 10:00 Friday night finishing moments before leaving for Saturday’s market.
I can generally predict what we will sell on a given Saturday, so we simply set the inventory for the online store for what I plan to bake. However, Thursday deliveries are much less predictable, and I bake bread to order, beginning baking about 5:00 Thursday morning. This means I need to prepare dough on Tuesday evening, and sourdough starters Monday.
We’ll keep an updated cheat sheet at the bottom of the weeklyish to remind you, but just make a habit of ordering bread early, eh?
