Notes from North Carolina
Apologies in advance - A little dense with detailed baking-specific observations.
During the first week of March (2022) I ventured to North Carolina to visit Boulted Bread and Carolina Ground. Carolina Ground sources mostly North Carolina grain to mill and supply to some of the best bakeries in the South. Boulted Bread, in a similar vein, is a craft bakery that sources grain locally, mills onsite, and has a full lineup of bread and pastry.
Carolina Ground
Heading in to Carolina Ground, I’d never really been in a flour mill (besides a school field-trip to the historic Adluh Flour mill in Columbia, SC - think biscuits not bread). I have milled quite a bit of grain with a home-style mill (mock mill) though and always felt like I was on the edge of both milling too finely and overheating the flour which risked destroying the starch. Milling at home is great to add flavor to a loaf, but it’s hard to make a large quantity of high quality flour (not saying it can’t be done).
I did wonder - how complicated is it to mill high quality flour? Stevie, a miller at Carolina Ground, said that honing and monitoring the milling process was about listening and touch. Listening to the stones touching, let grain into the mill, continue to tighten while monitoring the resistance evident by how much power is being pulled. On the other end, you assess the size for the grind by rubbing the flour through your fingers — is it sandy? when you make a fist, does it clump? Not too course, not too fine. It’s what you might expect going into it.
Lots of adjustments are required as you mill different grains. And, it all can get more complicated when you start to sift the bran and mids. Your extraction ratio depends in how fine the grain is being milled and the screens you use to sift the flour. So, you have to keep making sure you’re milling finely enough (but not too fine) and you’re screens are extracting the right weight in larger particles.
Another big piece of the puzzle in a medium to large mill is to keep the grain moving into the mill and the flour moving through the sifter and into bags (as long as it’s not too warm). Flour moving through tubs tends to get stuck and needs to be mechanically knocked out from time to time and there are certain points in the system that hold flour (before bagging for example, if bagging is manual) and will overflow and back up the system if you’re not careful. Luckily, in a small bakery setting - this part is a bit more straightforward (no suction tubes / compressors required - just a bucket to pour grain in and a bucket to catch the flour).
Probably most importantly though, millers need to understand the specs of the grain they are milling so they can deliver a predictable product to bakers who need to understand: how active the enzymes in the flour are (how fast will the dough break down weaken), how strong the flour is, and how thirsty it will be. When it comes to flavor, most bakers will know the flavor profile of different varieties - which ones lean towards nutty, sweet, or spice etc. But, as Jennifer explained, sometimes there are tradeoffs between flavor and strength and in those situations they have their bakery customers weigh in: “can they work with a weaker flour that has great flavor or will that be too disruptive, unworkable”
I left Carolina Ground feeling more confident that milling the amount of flour we need here at the bakery would be doable - which is a good thing because the mill will ship out in a few weeks. So grateful to the team at Carolina Ground for hosting my short visit.
Boulted Bread
Boulted is craft bakery and stone mill in Raleigh, North Carolina. When I came in for my stage on a Thursday morning they had 2 bakers on bread and 2 bakers focused on pastry + 2 people running the retail shop and organizing wholesale ordering and pickup.
Here are some questions I came in with and a bit of what I learned.
How do they train new bakers without sacrificing quality?
The hard truth is the only way to really learn is by doing. Like in restaurant kitchens, it’s sort of a guided sink or swim situation. So, when I stepped in to shape a few during my time — it wasn’t pretty. But, I was encouraged to keep going and reassured that we could afford to lose a few loaves. You have to build in buffers in your numbers so that you can afford to lose 5%. Side note — it was nice to be back in the uncomfortable position of mishandling dough as the other bakers on the station repressed their grimaces while I learned their shaping method.
The real answer to the question is that the best way to keep quality high is by retaining bakers so that you have experienced hands on (most of) your dough. It seems like Boulted has been able to do that pretty effectively.
How does Boulted achieve the tender, chewy texture of the crumb in their croissant and really crisp crust?
Flour blend - how much spring wheat? Well, turns out - they use a very soft flour mix in their pastry (a soft AP flour) + a small portion of whole wheat, a poolish, and a little of their whole wheat starter
A dry egg wash? Yolks and cream make for a really nice crunch. (We use equal parts whole eggs and yolks)
Dough dev during mix & lamination - Very little development during mixing, dough is not smooth. Bulk ferments in bowl for 1 hour, divided and sheeted.
Leavening: Poolish / levain / Yeast — They use .4% instant yeast + addition of 54% poolish (made overnight with instant yeast, AP and water)
Lamination - Seems like they sheet thicker with no stretching? 6mm? Yup, about that and no stretching when shaping croissants. They do a double (book), a letter, and a single fold (in half) - ultimately creating 24 layers vs. the 27 layers of 3 single letter folds.
But, when it comes to morning buns they use a less laminated dough (2 double folds - 16 layers) and sheet down to 4mm (means you can roll up a 14 inch long, 6cm wide strip and tuck into a regular size muffin tin). Guessing here but it seems like by sheeting thin, using a weaker AP flour, and having a dough with 16 layers vs. the stronger croissant dough allows the morning buns to stay firmly in their tight muffin tin quarters—> flaky top exterior and a soft and sticky interior (those morning buns are their top seller for a reason).Hydration - It was fascinating to me that their pastry seems sort of immune to forming a skin. I looked at the hydration and when you factor in the poolish, they are at about 54% hydration. Our dough is about 60% hydration and will skin very quickly (especially in the winter). But, I think it comes down to humidity — most days in North Carolina are over 60% relative humidity and it seems like moisture would likely go into the dough vs. the other way around.
Reducing waste: What are they doing with croissant scraps?
They create cups in muffin tins and fill with raspberry jam and dark chocolate topped with more pastry scrap pressed into a lid. It’s a sleeper pastry — sounds like a dessert from TGI FRIDAYS but is actually really good.
Bread - Freshly milled grain
Boulted is all about highlighting the grains they work with from a porridge of grits to freshly milled turkey red wheat for their levain loaf. They mill most of their own flour (everything besides their t65, pastry flour) and use low acid fermentation to express the character of the grain. Staying true to that core principle, you won’t find many (if any) breads with inclusions that are not grains (think pepper, cheese, olives, cranberry, walnuts etc). Some grains come directly from farmers and require careful attention to hydrate and develop them properly. This is because the farmer is not blending multiple varieties to achieve target specs for protein or falling number etc (as I understand it).
Bread Process
At a high level, their levain / country dough is well hydrated (~88%), mixed to medium development, folded ~3x during bulk, shaped young with a series of 6 folds (top down, left -right across, bottom up, left -right across, fold bottom to top and lightly tighten) after a 30-45m bench rest, proofed up a bit at room temp and put in the walk-in overnight. In comparison, our country dough has a little less water, higher protein flour, mixed closer to full development, bulk fermented a little longer and lightly shaped.
As I tasted their bread I was so envious of the tenderness of the crumb (it had great flavor too). Things I’d like to play with: 1) soften the flour mix I use in the country loaf 2) mix to medium development and develop strength gradually 3) play with a bit more hydration earlier in the mix.
Bread - Lower Baking Temp?
One thing that has stood out to me is the difference in baking temperatures - we bake close to 290C (550F) and their oven is generally around 265C (~500F). Our higher baking temp is tricky — The result is a thinner, crisp crust but sometimes we can end up with residual moisture in the crumb. When the proof is dead on, we end up with a great bake between crust and crumb, but when under-proofed we run into trouble. Another advantage of lower baking temp — pan loaves that need more time do much better around 260C than 290C.
Menu build out
Boulted’s bread and pastry menu cover plenty of ground for a small bakery. They have 6-7 loaves available each weekend (seeded, sesame, kid’s loaf, seeded rye, grit porridge, baguettes, and levain + a rotating baker’s choice special). On the pastry side, in addition to classic laminated pastry items like croissants, pain au chocolat, ham and cheese etc, they also offer a variety of savory items:
bialys
jam pinwheels
2 types cookies that feature different grain varieties
einkorn pound cake
quiches - ex brocoli rabe
scones
savory buns - Ex kale pesto, olive, and feta
With some extra hands in the bakery, we will be able to take on some of this fun stuff.
Operations: Baking schedule and staff schedule.
Scheduling-wise, they are already at the 4 day, 40 hour work weeks with only a 1-2 early bake mornings per baker. This seems to be the place that every smaller bakery that typically runs the risk of burning out their bakers wants to get to.
Man, that was a lot to take in.
I was second-guessing the decision to take off to North Carolina and have to close the bakery for a week given the state of the bakery bank account at this point in the season (mud season is always quite slow). Ultimately, I’m so glad we went for it because this was an incredible way to learn.