48 hours

48 hours until the opening of the, every Saturday, Green City Market. It’s a sustainable farmer’s market in Lincoln park. The market has a very strenuous application process. This year we are only one of two bakeries at the market. We sell artisan breads, scones, croissants, brioche and fruited Danish. The market is frequented by all the foodies in Chicago. Top area chefs have a constant presence there. I am very proud of the fact that we are associated with this market in particular. It says a lot about our beliefs and principles. Very appropriately said, “know your bread, know your baker”.

Today our gang is busy preparing sourdough starters and soakers. A soaker is simply whole grains or seeds that will be added to a bread dough. If the seeds aren’t soaked in a prescribed ratio of grains to water, the dry grains will draw all the moisture from the bread's interior. We will also mix the doughs that will be laminated and shaped tomorrow, for the croissant and Danish. We will be featuring fresh blackberries over vanilla bean pastry crème on the Danish. Our feature bread will be a flax seed loaf made with a good percentage of soured rye flour. Incredible flavour, really will be best on Sunday, after some post oven aging.

Today, in our retail store, we will have palmiers around noon. Not boasting, but nobody does ‘em like us. All butter puff pastry, made within 50 feet of the bakery door. Kinda unusual. Most places buy their puff dough. Who knows where it is made, or what’s in it. During the last two folds of the puff dough, we sprinkle the inside of the dough with cane sugar. When it comes time to shape them, Mark will use vanilla sugar instead of dusting flour. We dry all our vanilla bean pods in cane sugar. Run it thru a food processor and sift out the chunks. Unmatchable flavour. The palmiers are baked halfway and flipped over to finish baking. Simplest things are the best, right? Flour, butter, caramelized sugar and vanilla bean.

Oh, that oven timer again………