Le Quartier Bakery: 3rd Phase For Le Quartier, Part 2

This past week has been one of the toughest weeks that I can remember in recent memory. It reminds me a lot of when I moved into our current space; doing the normal production and then working on the upgrades to the bakery. Double duty is a real...pain in the butt. My other bakers, especially Martha and Steve also got a good dose of it too.

Early in the week the pieces of equipment came in; the Rondo Smartline and Polyline, the bagging machine and a used double rack gas oven. The Rondo Smartline is a stress-free dough processing machine that I chose to buy so that I can process my well hydrated dough more quickly and consistently. This is especially important for my restaurant accounts that desire a consistently sized product. There are my in-store customers and smaller café-type accounts that can work with a hand formed product but we are at a point where we are trying to attract larger, multi-location, restaurants that require more consistency. For example, my ciabatta has improved in two ways by being degassed less and being divided at exact dimensions than by hand. The bagging machine, which I haven’t had a chance to use that much right now, will hopefully be able to bag most of my large quantity breads more efficiently. So far I’ve had marginal success with it. Like most new things there is a learning curve and like the Rondo I’m at the very bottom. At this point I think we’re actually slower than doing it the old way. No, I know that we are slower with the new machines. We just need more practice; I’m guessing at least 3 months of practice. The final thing that we bought was a double rack oven to bake our pastries and some breads faster. The thing with used is that it can end up being VERY used. My brother and I rejected the first oven but found another used oven that, yet not up and running, looks like it will do a fine job for us. The next time I think that we will buy new. It’s more expensive but there are fewer surprises.

Here are some photos of the what the week was like.