To Market To Market

Backstory of the last three weeks in bread land. 

Over the last three weeks I have been selling my bread at a local farmers market. It’s organized by a community center for kids on our block. The Brotherhood and Sister Sol buy from the Corbin Hill Food Project CSA and sell side by side during the CSA pick up. I had been passing out little treats here and there when I would stop buy to pick up my farm share goodies. They asked if I would be interested in selling a few loaves of bread every week at the market. I of course said yes. I didn’t think about how I was going to manage that with my almost full time teaching job. I just said yes.

I wasn’t sure how I could get all the bread made. Even just four to six loaves. I decided to start with a recipe I’d been working on called 505Grain. It had a long fermentation and used my sourdough starter. It was the first week of classes.....

Tuesday morning (the day after Labor day) 6:30am I put together two batches of dough. It rises all day. I come home from work. Make dinner, bake the bread, go see Hello Dolly with my daughter and Mom, and come home and prepare another double batch of dough.

Wednesday morning, with my mom’s help I bake off the last two loaves. I get home from work, and take the bread to the market. Thankfully I have a short work day on Wednesday which makes me able to get the bread to the market.

All of the bread sells.

Then next few weeks progress similarly but without the help from Mom, or post Broadway show highs.

I’m still working out what types of bread will sell best, and trying to get the loaves to the market as early as possible. This week I made Challah in celebration of Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year. I ended up with a guerilla sell from the playground when the market closed early. It still feels daunting even though I almost have a system….