Bouzies Bakery Tour

It has been a busy month (you've never heard THAT before, have you?) and I really intended to get this post up long before now.  Even better I intended to learn to make this amazing ciabatta bread.  It's still on my list of things to do.

As I said in my last post, Tara of Bouzie's Bakery was friendly and fun.  After she and the little one gathered eggs, she invited us right in to see the bakery.  She was making a specialty cracker they do not sell to anyone except Luna for their wonderful cheese boards.  But we were able to see part of the process and then taste the results.

 This is what we saw first, several large trays of crackers waiting to be baked.

Here Tara is mixing four types of seeds to sprinkle on the crackers.

Next she spritzed the crackers with water.

Then she sprinkled the seed mixture over the crackers

 I can only remember two of the seeds she used.  Flax and sesame...but there were two more.

Then Tara took us into the other room where they have this huge steam injected oven.  She says this oven makes the difference between a mediocre bakery product and an extraordinary product. So I know that even if I do everything else right I'm not apt to have the oven so my bread is not going to be this good.  I will have to live with this fact and it's probably good because I would just eat all the more.

Here are the crackers that were finished.  It only took a few minutes.

There next to the oven were racks and racks of finished bread.  The rack on top was the fluffiest English muffins I've ever seen.  We bought a bag and ate them for breakfast the next day.  YUM!

Kind Lady Tara:

The story of Bouzie Bakery:  The owners spent some time in the small village of Bouzie France.  It is a cozy community where much bartering takes place.  They so enjoyed the experience and decided to create a bakery in Spokane to try and recapture the experience as much as possible.

That night at dinner we had ciabatta bread on the table:

with Cristie's delightful salad and pasta.

One of the tips she shared with us is when making up the Ciabatta dough it is more like a pancake batter consistency than a bread dough.  Then it is beat on high for 30 minutes to make the long gluten strands.

In this photo they were making scones.

Ummm...that mixer was over 4 feet tall.

Simple ingredients in this bakery include Fleur de Sel...

and extra virgin olive oil.... but most importantly, non-GMO flour and no synthetic sugars.