Buns in the oven! (and other half-baked schemes)

If you haven’t gathered from the cheesy puns, this post is all about BAKING, so I hope you’re not hungry! If you haven’t read the last blog post on the store, you might be wondering what baking has to do with the future Hust Roost.   Let me turn the question right back on you guys: what farm stand or farm store is complete without some unique, home-baked goods??

The next question you may ask: How can anyone possibly have the time to bake for a whole community? Right?? That’s what I’m wondering. Baking is fun but let’s be real here. Here are the ideas we have come up with to make that possible:

1. Having an order sheet. We’ve been working on our order sheet for a little while now (it’s also the way people will order meat from our chickens, turkeys, goats, pigs and rabbits) and it will start being available as soon as we are ready to produce! That way people can order fresh (and even custom) for when they want it.  Baked goods we hope to have on the order sheet: classic pies and select pies with seasonal fruits, and any large orders.

2. Having only a FEW things available daily, things that we can manageably make on our schedule. Two things we are considering are artisan bread and baked donuts.

Artisan bread. Has anyone heard of the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day? Yeah. That’s what these professional bread bakers claim at least… Can I accomplish anything in five minutes? Ha. Not usually! I’ve given it a try, though, and it really is revolutionary and easy with beautiful results. The only catch is that it takes planning ahead–which most people don’t do–so that’s why we will sell it! 😉  We’ll probably have a set number of loaves we make each day, both white and wheat, and we’ll try to cater that number to our demand.  The extras we can eat ourselves, feed to our animals, or donate!

Baked donuts. If you haven’t heard of these, you’re missing out. While they don’t have the exact taste and texture of a fried donut, they’re still delicious, and with only half the calories, people don’t have to feel so bad about eating them! The bonus for us is that they’re also MUCH easier and less messy than a fried donut (see below for our funny looking fryers). When we tried frying, my skin got welts from the splatters of hot oil! NO thank you. 😛

 

 

 

 

 

So far I’ve only made three batches of the donuts (the donut pans were Christmas gifts!) but I’m excited to get them down. They are keepers!

3. Having “specials” on certain days. For example, Pie-Day Friday! or Bagels on Saturdays (though bagels may become something we do daily, eventually). We will also have special events at the farm, Lord willing, like a Farmyard 5K or Taffy-pulling Day, things like that. On those days we will surely have special things like granola bars for the 5K, or cinnamon rolls for the taffy-pulling etc. We are planning to have a customer suggestion box if people really like something!

4. Having miscellaneous items available at the stand or the store counter, like big cookies, cinnamon rolls, granola bars, or sweet breads. The availability of these would depend on how much time we had to bake them… In summary, we’ll see how all of these ideas work, and how much we truly enjoy it before taking on too much responsibility.

Those are the ideas. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I (Rachel) am an expert baker. The best bakers I know are the older ladies at church that have 70+ years of experience on me! But I do have those people for advice, plus oodles of internet blogs and cookbooks. 2014 was a year of much learning in the kitchen, and I am excited and committed to learning more…  for the Hust Roost and for God’s glory!

*****

Some BLOOPERS:

This glaze may look pretty, but it pretty much ruined the donut! Next time I will be using evaporated milk instead of water 🙂

 

 

Take a look at these ugly bad-boys. I definitely have to work on pastry crust! Didn’t help that I used whole-wheat instead of pastry flour.

 

This is what happens when I’m in a hurry and don’t let the crust chill before putting the pie together. Talk about chubby strips!

***

And let’s not forget the countless granola bars that have turned out too floppy or too hard, the cookies I’ve burned after not setting the timer, and things that were too ugly for pictures! In other words, pray for me and the Hust Roost as we consider adding a small bakery to our enterprises! ((experts–please offer your tips as well)) 🙂

God bless, and happy  2015!