To Be Or Not To Be...Artisan

What does it mean to be an artisan bakery? Doing everything by hand? Doing most things by hand? Using all natural ingredients? Why am I even asking this question? I even have my own employees asking this same question. To begin, I do consider my bakery to be artisan. Why? Well, I use all-natural ingredients, time-tested European recipes, mixing methods and baking procedures. Can I still be considered “artisan” even though I use machines to help me produce my bread? Some may question this but I have wisely, I believe, chosen the machines that I use to help me actually do a better job of making my bread. Should I mix my dough by hand to be artisan? Should I form every loaf by hand to be artisan? Should I bake using a wood fired brick oven to be artisan? All legitimate questions. There are pros and cons to every stage and decisions that each baker makes in producing his/her bakery products. Mixing with a machine can deteriorate the flavor profile of the dough. Forming by machine may force you to lower the hydration of your dough, producing a worse crust/crumb. Baking in modern oven may produce a worse crust, lessened oven spring, etc. There are also economic realities that will help determine which direction the baker will go. In a recent article in Modern Baking I read about a bakery that expanded into a near 100,000 square foot bakery and still claimed to be artisan. To be honest I was a bit skeptical myself but from reading the article I think that they may be legitimate.

This is what I think makes my bakery artisan:

- Ingredients: Only all-natural

- Mixing: I use an “improved” mixing method which means it fully mixes the dough with minimal oxidation of the dough. I use a spiral dough mixer because I need to be able to mix up to 400 lbs of dough at a time. To help me reduce oxidation of my dough I autolyse the flour in my recipe, which reduces the mix time.

- Forming: This will drastically change with the addition of my new stress-free Rondo Smartline machine. From what I’ve seen so far it will be even better for my dough than forming by hand. For example, when I was in France the bakery formed baguettes by cutting strips of dough using a hydraulic dough cutter. This required some squishing and stretching, by hand, to get the piece of dough into the right shape. It is very similar to how we handle the dough for our ciabatta loaves. This will inevitably degas or malform sections of the dough piece before division. The Rondo Smartline is designed to minimize this as much as possible while allowing me to process many times the amount of dough that I could by hand. It seemed like a no brainer. With this machine my bread will be better than before. No question. However, it does work on a smaller tolerance level than by hand. This part of the equation will need to be worked out.

- Baking: Both the bakeries in Montreal and France used a gas, stone multi-deck oven. Like those bakeries I need to be able to bake on demand throughout the day with consistent results. I’m also able to get reliable steam and radiated heat on each deck to get a great crust and oven spring which is much more difficult with a wood fired brick oven. I also want some sleep so it’s nice that I can turn on a “cold” oven and within an hour have an oven ready to bake in.


If you have any thoughts on this subject I would love to hear them. I want to make great bread and I want more people to demand great bread from their bakery.