PALM Guidebook

Hooray! You've made it far enough into the guidebook that you seem pretty serious about PALM and curious to try it out. Buckle up. :)

There's a lot of information here, and it's easy to get overwhelmed or assume you need to buy a bunch of things to get started. That couldn't be further from the truth! PALM is an approach, and it's intended to work with what you have, while also providing a framework to scale up as you're ready to grow.

Essentially, anyone with a basic home kitchen can start baking with what they already have on-hand. From there you can level up over time. The key is to learn from doing and find what works best for you. Each element of PALM is designed to improve the quality of your bread and make the overall baking process more efficient, but you can cherry pick whichever parts are most important to your workflow as you go.

More concretely, that means starting your first couple bakes without buying a single thing (except maybe some flour and baker's yeast if you don't already have some) and trying your hand with the benchtest loaf. From there, we recommend creating your own levain (sourdough starter) so you can jump into the full set of tested PALM baker's recipes.

Then, as you look to grow your venture, check back here for specific tools and detailed techniques to scale up and improve your bakery over time.

PALM aims to scale up home baking, while still retaining the benefits of the local, artisan approach and operating within cottage food regulations. To do that, we need to re-think the home bakery at every level, getting the most we possibly can out of a household kitchen space.

Compared to starting a commercial bakery which could easily cost $100,000+ ($50,000+ for the equipment/infrastructure, $30,000+/year for a lease, and $20,000+/yr for an employee to run the counter), the PALM approach is about 100x less expensive and leverages the appliances and space most home kitchens already have. That said, it still takes some real investment in your baking setup to turn out 100+ loaves of bread per day.

PALM really shines when all of the processes, tools, and techniques work together. But there's no need to do it all at once.

Start out with what you already have, then use the elements of PALM that seem most beneficial to your baking setup and revisit/expand your capabilities as you look to improve over time.

Baking happens in batches. While batch size may seem like an odd place to start, so much revolves around the tools and methods for a given quantity of dough. Working with larger amounts enables more efficient operations, but smaller amounts are easier to handle and maintain.

The most dough you can fit in a standard residential oven for any one bake is around 7kg total, with 6kg being plenty for common loaf sizes. That 6kg of dough can make a wide range of bakes depending on how it's divided (ex. 32 x 200g demi baguette, 12 x 420g bâtard, 9 x 560g pan loaves, 8 x 750g boules, or 4 x 15000g miche). Anything much larger than 7kg can be too difficult to mix, knead, or divide without specialized tools.

Working backwards from that, we end up needing a container that can hold about 10-12 quarts of dough for all of our mixing and bulk fermentation. The container itself must also be easy to wash in a standard kitchen sink; containers with a capacity of 15 quarts or greater are extremely cumbersome and difficult to thoroughly clean.

Which brings us to our first stake in the ground — PALM uses round 12 Qt polypropylene dough tubs. These are restaurant-grade food containers, and made of a food-safe plastic that minimizes sticking with dough. They can easily stack, and since they're round, they can also be rolled (see the Gravity Kneader section below).

Of course, like all of the sections in this guidebook, you are not required to use these exact containers to make great bread! We've just found them to be the ideal size, shape, and material for working with large quantities of dough, which can make the entire process easier as you scale up. If that's helpful to you, go for it. But if not, don't sweat it.

Scaling up a home bakery also means thinking more creatively about how to store and manage bulk ingredients alongside your living space, while also following best practices for food safety.

Bulk flours usually come in 25-50 pound bags. You'll need both active use storage (a lidded container to keep the currently used bag fresh), as well as excess storage for multiple unopened bags.

Bulk seeds/nuts/fruits usually comes in either cases of sealed bags (ex. 6 x 1 pounds bags) or a single larger box (ex. 5-10 pound box).

Customized bulk containers are also important. Ingredients like bolted flour (ex. sifted whole wheat) or batch-mixed combinations (ex. pain aux céréales seed and grain mix) can be made in larger quantities ahead of time so they're ready to use later.

Bulk cans of purees are also surprisingly useful since ingredients like pumpkins and apples can be harvested when ripe and then preserved via canning for use any time of the year. Bulk cans range in size, but are often 2-10 pounds which quickly add up.

Given the previous sections, it's clear that you're going to need some dedicated space in your home to store and use everything for a PALM home bakery.

Where exactly everything lives is up to you, but explicitly laying out the primary spaces needed may be helpful in your planning. Consider the following spaces you're likely to need to scale up your bread operation:

• Dough Tub Storage/Use: With 4 to 8 large dough tubs, you'll need a space to store, mix, and rest them while your dough is proofing. This is ideally in the kitchen somewhere if possible for easy access, sanitary considerations, and a fairly predictable ambient temperature while dough bulk ferments overnight.
• Primary Ingredient Storage: You'll want nearby access to the bulk flours, seeds, fruits, etc. used in your recipes. A room neighboring the kitchen may be a good choice if possible. Using wheeled bins makes it simple to bring the most common items directly into the kitchen when needed.
• Secondary Ingredient Storage: Many ingredients can be kept for months if unopened. And since some items come in very large amounts (either due to package sizes or minimum order quantities with some distributors), you'll want a second location to store them. This can be a more out-of-the-way location, so long as it is kept clean and items are placed up off the floor. This secondary space may also be used for non-food items, like bulk food packaging, labels, etc.
• Primary Baking Area (temporary): Only needed during the baking day; the heart of the bakery is in the kitchen, with ample counter space to divide, shape, and rest dough. There's also a staging area to load/unload bread from the oven, and cooling racks (wall mounted is ideal) to hold the hot bread until it's ready to package or transfer.
• Packaging and Labeling (temporary): Only needed during the baking day; once the bread is cool, it can be taken to a neighboring room in the home with a large table (such as a dining room) where it can be inspected, packaged, and properly labeled.

Great, consistent baking comes down to accurate measurements, so we need to make sure we get the exact right amount of each ingredient. Many ingredients can vary in volume depending on how they are packaged or handled (especially powders, like flour). Using a scale allows for quickly achieving precise, repeatable results without the guesswork.

Scales vary in precision generally proportional to their overall capacity. That means that a 200g scale may have a precision of +/- 0.01g, while a 10kg scale may only be accurate down to +/- 1g.

Having multiple scales may seem like overkill, but it allows for accurately measuring very small quantities (for example, 0.21g of baker's yeast with a 200g scale) as well as heavier ingredients (like 2.5kg of flour with a 10kg scale). At Le Phare, we use 2 scales:

• 200g scale (+/- 0.01g): A sub-gram scale is critical for measuring baker's yeast and levain for long room temperature fermentation. These kinds of scales are very sensitive, so treat them gently to ensure they don't get damaged.
• 10kg scale (+/- 1g): A good digital scale that goes up to 10kg (22lb) is key for measuring all of the main ingredients directly into the dough tub, as well as dividing the dough equally before shaping it into loaves.

After adding all ingredients to the container, it's important to fully incorporate them together. This can be achieved via 2 minutes of vigorous stirring by hand with a 0.75" to 1.25" wooden dowel (about 16" long) for up to 7kg of dough -- no big machines needed.

You can mix with whatever you like, but from our experience, larger diameter sticks or spatulas become too difficult to stir as thicker doughs come together, and smaller diameter sticks can break. 3/4" diameter seems to be about perfect; just make sure the wood is food-safe and you remove any hard edges to make it easy on your hands (and the dough tub).

Check out the DIY Mixing Stick in the tools section below for more info about how to make your own.

For stiffer doughs, after mixing with the stick you can also shear the dough with a flexible dough scraper to eliminate any remaining dry spots or clumped ingredients. Hold the dough scraper as if it were an extension of your hand; scraping down the far side of the dough tub, then lifting a section of the dough and smearing it across the larger mass.

PALM is built around long-fermented, high-hydration doughs so there's plenty of time for gluten networks to develop on their own. All we need is some slow kneading to align and stretch the gluten and build up structure to hold air bubbles for when the dough is baked.

The simplest approach as you're getting started is to use traditional "stretch and fold" motions. By letting the dough relax for 30-60 minutes and then stretching the dough over itself a few times, the elastic gluten strands in the dough are slowly woven together. It's effective and simple, but it also has 2 major downsides: it increases oxidation and contamination risks (constantly opening dough tubs and bare-handing the dough), and it is difficult to scale (manually stretching and folding multiple batches of 5kg+ of dough is time intensive, messy, and laborious).

But there's a better way! Since our dough tub is round (i.e. the aforementioned 12 Qt container), we can use the weight of the dough itself to do the kneading. Just slowly rotate the tub at an angle, and it practically kneads itself. And with the lid still on, we reduce the chance of contamination, drying, and dough oxidation.

Gravitational rotary mixer, sped up ~15x and shown without lid to demonstrate functionality.

Using the same basic motors and approach as 3D printers, we can make a little machine that slowly rotates the dough tub to automate our kneading. Just place the tub on the rollers, specify the speed curve, and let it run. That dough can be slowly and quietly kneading itself off to the side while you're scaling and mixing ingredients for the next batch.

When you're ready to work with multiple, large batches of dough that can benefit from this kind of kneading, be sure to check out the Gravitational Rotary Kneader below for more info, plans, code, etc. to build your own.

The real magic of dough transformation happens during bulk fermentation where it is allowed to rest for many hours while the wild bacteria and yeasts in the levain begin to thrive. This is where deep, complex flavors are created along with lots of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide that help the bread rise when it's baked.

Resting also gives the gluten in the dough time to relax and form stronger networks that give the dough strength. With rapid-rise bread, the gluten is forced to build via an autolyse followed by intense mixing; under mix and the dough is weak, over mix and the gluten begins to tear and the dough is ruined.

But with PALM (and the Respectus Panis method it's built upon), we let gluten networks in high hydration doughs naturally occur on their own by giving them over 18 hours at room temperature to form. There's no need to use an additional autolyse step, hefty high-capacity mixers, or worry about over-mixing.

Critical to bulk fermentation is the ambient temperature of the room. The nature of levain and baker's yeast grow at an exponential rate depending on concentration, temperature, salt, and nutrients. Most recipes assume a room temperature around 70°F. If your room is cooler or warmer, you should compensate for the temperature difference using the rule of thumb below.

Assuming 70°F and an 18hr target bulk time:

• If your room is 5°F cooler (i.e. 65°F), use ~1.20× levain/yeast or bake ~2 hours later.
• If your room is 5°F warmer (i.e. 75°F), use ~0.83× levain/yeast or bake ~2 hours earlier.

We bulk ferment our dough as one large mass in a dough tub, so before shaping and baking individual loaves we need to properly divide it into portions.

While it may seem simple at first to just cut the dough evenly and get equally sized pieces, in reality there can be substantial variations in dough density (due to air bubbles, seeds, fruits, etc.). And since the weight of each loaf can greatly impact how it bakes (and the final product should include its weight on the label), ideally all loaves are as close to the desired weight as possible.

Like any professional bakery, we need to divide the dough by weight with a scale. Portioning the dough like this can be time consuming at first, but once you get the hang of it the process can go fairly quickly.

For smaller loaves, scaling and geometrically dividing can be combined to increase efficiency while still maintaining adequate precision. For example, smaller 200g portions (like demi-baguette) can be approximated by scaling 400g of dough (~15 seconds per division), rolling into a cylinder of consistent size, and then cutting in half (~5 seconds per division); that averages out to be about 33% faster than individually scaling each loaf. Or if you really trust your eye, you could scale 800g of dough, shape into a ball, and then divide into 4 (~50% faster than scaling each individually).

We've also found that using a plate on top of the scale makes things simpler and faster. Dough can be easily transferred off of the plate to the bench after each weighing, and when a batch is complete, the plate can go directly in the dishwasher. Then use another clean plate for the next batch so there's less risk of contamination between doughs.

Also note that we're not adding any additional flour while dividing. With a properly fermented dough and semi-flexible scraper, you should be able to cut and move dough around on your counter top as-is.

Shaping your divided portions of dough into the correct form plays a critical role in your final product; how the bread rises, the nature of the crust, whether or not it has an ear where it was scored, and how open/closed the internal crumb structure becomes. That's a LOT riding on simply how you push, roll, or pinch the dough into its characteristic baguette, bâtard, miche, etc. form.

Shaping can also be quite time consuming, especially when working with high hydration doughs that can easily stick or lose shape. Adding extra flour at each step makes it easier to handle, but negatively impacts the crust. And accidentally folding in large air bubbles can overwhelm the smaller fermentation bubbles and ruin the crumb structure.

After much experimentation, we've landed on a consistent way that seems to work wonderfully with PALM's final "microproof" (i.e. just a short bench rest of 10-20 minutes, without the use of a banneton or couche). We use this same method with all 3 common forms (baguette, bâtard, and miche), the only difference being how much the dough is rolled to elongate it. Baguette are rolled to 14.5" long, while bâtard and miche are closer to 10" long (and much heftier).

This all happens for each bread in about 15-20 seconds total, so it goes quickly once you get confident with it. Here's the PALM shaping method:

• Dust the counter (not the dough) with flour. This is where it will be rolled/shaped later.
• Slap the top of the dough to pop any large air bubbles. Do not dust with any flour yet.
• Tuck the edges of the dough into itself by making quick motions with a dough scraper. Since the dough is unfloured and flat against the counter top, it should form a nice smooth top and not trap any additional air within.
• Transfer the dough top-side down to the floured area of the counter (using the dough scraper). Plopping it down somewhat forcefully onto the counter can help the dough scraper to release.
• Pinch the bottom seam to ensure that it stays together and keeps the top of the dough under tension. Make sure to pinch all of the way to the ends so that flour won't get trapped when you roll.
• Firmly roll the dough in the flour, working from the center outward toward the ends. For tapered loaves, press slightly harder as you go so that the ends become much smaller. Be sure to pop any large bubbles (with a quick slap) that you notice as you go.
• Finally, transfer the shaped dough to your dough loader of choice, seam-side down. Take a moment to make sure it is the correct length and won't bump into adjacent loaves when it bakes.

Since we're baking bread directly on a hot surface (i.e. a stone or steel deck, not inside a dutch oven or on a baking tray), we need a way to accurately transfer the dough from the counter where it's proofing into the hot oven without deflating it.

Many bakers choose to keep their dough on pieces of parchment paper to make moving it around easier. But parchment does strange things to the bottom crust of bread because it doesn't let the dough fully dry and can leave characteristic wrinkles. On top of that, at the temperatures needed to make great bread (525°F+), we're well beyond the safe range for parchment which could cause it to burn, crumble, or release bits of silicone into the bread. For super high hydration doughs, we can bake a little cooler if needed, but overall parchment isn't a great solution for most artisan breads.

Other bakers swear by using a peel to place dough into an oven by gently sliding it to the desired location and then quickly jerking it away. But with a small home oven, there's very little room for error. Too far back or off the sides, and the dough will deform and burn. And if the dough is too close together, it affects the crust (or even sticks together). There's also a risk of wet doughs sticking to the peel itself, and when you're placing 6 or more loaves at a time, 1 stuck loaf could ruin the entire batch by bumping into the others.

That's why professional bakeries often have hefty, dedicated conveyor belt devices to precisely load dough into a hot oven. While these are impractical and wildly expensive for home use, we can make something that works similarly ourselves (and that's designed to fit a home oven).

We experimented with a lot of different approaches, from kitchen towels and cookie sheets to ball bearings and machined aluminum. In the end we found that putting together some basic home store materials in the right way worked quite well with minimal overhead.

Using some inexpensive sheets of plywood, cotton canvas, wooden dowels, and binder clips, you can build your own DIY Dough Loader to take the stress out of precisely placing dough into a hot oven.

If you're new to artisan sourdough, steam may seem like the last thing you'd want to purposely add to your oven while baking bread. But steam is crucial to both the loaf's initial rise and overall crust formation. That's because steam keeps the outside of the dough flexible enough that it can expand, and then as the bake continues, it allows the starches to gelatinize so that it forms a crisp, deeply flavorful crust.

If you're baking a single loaf of bread, steam can be generated by the dough itself inside a vessel, like a dutch oven. As it gets hot and starts to steam, that moisture gets trapped and keeps the dough rising nicely. Then, about halfway through the bake, the lid can be removed to allow the steam to escape and the crust to fully brown and crisp.

But lidded vessels don't scale well — they're large, slow to heat, heavy to move around, highly inefficient, and can easily cause burns.

And since we're fitting as much dough into the oven as possible directly on top of baking stones/decks, we need to fill the whole oven with steam for the start of most bakes.

Some bakers use rolled up kitchen towels in a sheet pan filled with water to add steam, but that gets messy and requires a watchful eye to make sure the towels don't get too dry and burn. Other bakers prefer to mist the oven and/or the tops of loaves with water at the start of a bake, but the steam quickly dissipates and actually wetting the dough changes its texture and visual contrast.

We've found the simplest and most effective way to get a blast of steam for the start of each bake is to just add some thermal mass to the bottom of the oven (like a small old cast iron skillet), and then make a little aluminum foil chute from the front of the oven that extends down to it. That way, after the dough is loaded, water is poured into the chute and the oven door closed for consistent, effective steaming.

The idea is super simple, but we've detailed it out in the Steam Generation section below in case it's helpful.

Commercial bakeries use deck ovens to efficiently bake large quantities. But under many cottage food regulations, home bakers are required to use standard residential ovens. So let's turn a residential oven into something that gets us as close to a commercial deck oven as possible.

Deck ovens have a lot of mass to retain heat. That means that they take a while to get hot, but once they're at temperature, they hold the temperature extremely well. That leads to more consistent bakes, and for breads, much better oven spring as the heat is efficiently transferred to the bottom of the loaves (causing the little air bubbles in the dough to expand and create an open crumb structure).

The deck itself can be made of either stone or steel. From our experimentation, steel is great for extremely flat, quick cooking bakes (like pizza, naan, or pita bread), but for anything thicker it's difficult not to burn the bottom of loaves while waiting for the upper crust to caramelize and crisp. As such, we recommend food-safe stone as the default oven deck material for baking artisan breads.

For specific details about how to convert your home oven into a deck oven (and the science behind it), check out the Residential Deck Oven section below.

While most attention is placed on baking the bread, cooling is also a critically important step — both in terms of the final crust formation, as well as reducing the chance of spoilage.

Bread should be cooled to <= 100°F before packaging so that water doesn't condense on the inside of the bag (which can lead to mold). Bagging too soon also ruins the crust we've tried so hard to produce, leaving it chewy and tough instead of tender and crisp.

The specific amount of cooling time varies on the size of the loaf (a 420g bâtard takes about 50 minutes, while a large 1500g miche takes around 2 hours). An inexpensive infrared thermometer is a great way to quickly check the loaves before bagging — just aim it at the warmest point (usually the underside of where the bread was scored) to know when they're ready.

Many home bakeries choose to buy large rolling carts that can hold lots of cooling racks to handle all of the bakes coming out of the oven. But those carts take up a lot of space in a home kitchen, and if the bread it being packaged as it cools, are overkill for what's truly necessary.

Instead, PALM uses a wall-mounted rack system that allows for temporarily placing up to 6 cooling racks as needed, and only on baking days. Wall mounting keeps the floor clear, and being able to remove/store the racks when not in use keeps the kitchen feeling like a home on non-baking days.

Check out how to make your own wall-mounted cooling rack in the tech section below.

First and foremost, your labeling must meet all requirements for your region. In Ohio, this is outlined by the ODA Cottage Foods resources page.

Beyond what's required, your label is an opportunity to excite, inform, and educate those who see your products.

At Le Phare, we've chosen compostable bread bags with a clear, PLA window. This allows for loaves to be seen and selected by appearance, while also maintaining freshness and preventing contamination from handling from other customers, all while remaining eco-responsible.

To close the bag, you can either use the label itself as seal (though this can be cumbersome to place on a rounded loaf), or adhere the label to the front and use a simple paperclip to fold/hold the bag closed. We prefer the label-only approach (it's faster, simpler, and creates less waste), though using a paperclip (especially a colorful one) allows for easier bag reuse, while also serving as a colorful, tangible reminder of the bakery via the paperclip itself.

As for the labels, knowing that the breads we bake (and sometimes the target weight or specific recipe) can change from week-to-week, it makes sense to print the labels on demand. A basic color printer (ideally one that can print "borderless" or edge-to-edge) and some label paper is all you need.

We've landed on some specifics for printing that have made it simpler for us; see the labeling hacks section below for more details.

PALM greatly reduces the amount of cleanup compared to traditional baking, but alas, there's still some cleaning to keep in check as you go. In addition to general tidying and cleanliness for health and safety, there are a few callouts where how you clean can make a big difference in terms of time and effort.

Cleaning Counters: Your counter top is your most valuable tool when dividing, resting, and shaping dough. To reduce the chance of contamination between batches of dough, it needs to be cleaned. This is generally a 3 step process:

• Use a dough scraper to get off as much flour and dough as possible.
• Wipe down with a wet cloth to dissolve any thin solids remaining.
• Finally, do a sanitizing wipe down to make it truly clean.

Cleaning Dough Tubs: 12Qt dough tubs are large, but should still be manageable to wash in a standard kitchen sink. Seeing a tall stack of dough tubs to wash can be overwhelming at first, but this workflow makes it much easier:

• Take a few extra seconds when you're removing your dough to get out as much dough as possible. This both reduces food waste, and it reduces the amount of dough to clean later.
• After a dough tub has been emptied, add 1/4" of water to the bottom, put the lid back on, and set aside until you're ready to wash it. The moist environment will keep the bits of dough soft so they're easier to wash off later.
• When ready to wash, start with the lid and use soap and water to clean it. Set aside to dry.
• Add soap to the tub, scrub with a hand brush, and wash. Set aside to dry.
• When working with multiples, feel free to stack the washed tubs/lids as you go. Remember to thoroughly dry them after you've completed the batch.
• Put cleaned and dried tubs away to free up kitchen space.

And don't be afraid to use the dishwasher when helpful. For example, at Le Phare we often use glass plates on top of our scale when dividing dough. Those used plates can go straight in the dishwasher after each batch of dough has been weighed to reduce cleanup.

With traditional brick-and-mortar bakeries and farmers' markets alike, up to 1/3 of your time can easily go into selling what you baked. For example, a small bakery may have 2 bakers in the back, while a salesperson works up front. Or for a home baker, 8 hours of baking on Friday can require 4 hours of setup and selling at a market on Saturday.

PALM looks to move beyond these 2 common models and directly distribute bread to people that live nearby. The bread we're making is valuable and merits payment, but it's also a literal nourishing force for the community and doesn't need to be kept under tight lock-and-key.

A self-serve kiosk allows bread to be immediately placed for sale, available for customers to pick on their own schedule, and all without losing any time delivering it by car/bike/foot, selling at a booth/market, or paying overhead for vendor fees or consignment. And by using an honor system where people add up the prices of what they select and pay accordingly, there's also a refreshing element of trust and universal neighborliness that generates significant goodwill (in fact, we've found that many customers even overpay). In short: we believe that if someone is hungry enough that they think it's worth stealing a loaf of bread from a home baker, we want them to have it anyway. It's a win-win-win.

Do check with your local zoning and cottage food laws to see what's possible where you live. There are likely limitations to size and location of your kiosk, as well as safety considerations (making sure it can't tip over, or someone can't easily get stuck inside), as well as other non-obvious local guidelines (such as not looking like a mailbox that could confuse a letter carrier). But otherwise, your point of sale is a great way to make it clear that you're open for business with whatever branding and experience elements you wish. Check out the Le Phare kiosk plans below for inspiration.

Of course, even with great bread some loaves are bound to be left over at the end of the day (especially if it rains). That's okay, too. A responsible business isn't only about profit — those extra loaves can be freely shared with local food pantries. Giving is great for the community and your quality of sleep at night, both of which will find their way back to strengthening your venture in due time.

You can have a great product, but if people don't know about it (or where/when to get it) then it will go stale on your shelves.

Consider these 4 touchpoints to keep customers engaged and informed:

1. Point of Sale - The place where people buy your bread is itself a part of the customer's experience, so take it seriously. Make it clear, even from a distance, whether you're open or not with something as simple as a window light or an open sign.
2. Upcoming Schedule - People need to know when your bread will be available. For most customers, it's okay that the specific days and times flex as needed, but there should be a simple way for customers to get informed. Consider a public calendar where others can see your baking schedule and plan ahead.
3. Context - People want to know what makes your bakery different. What's your story? Your approach? And why is it worth making an extra stop to get your artisan bread vs. buying from somewhere else?
4. Outreach - Your neighbors will know by just looking out their window, but for everyone else, you'll need to share pictures or videos when your bakes are ready to get people talking (at least to start). From there, you'll likely want a direct way to reach out to your customers (such as email) to let them know when you bake.

As a food provider, you must take health seriously on all levels.

Personal Health

The health of your bakery starts with your personal health. If you are sick, you shouldn't be baking and sharing what you made with others. Period.

But personal health goes beyond just feeling sick, it's also about how you take care of yourself physically and mentally. Ovens are hot and can lead to burns. Sourdough is full of fermented bacteria and wild yeasts that can go bad if not maintained. Lifting 50lb bags of flour can cause hernias and back injuries. And the stress of trying to run a business out of your home can take a toll on your mental well-being.

So make sure to check in with yourself as you go and do what's best to keep yourself healthy every step of the way.

Food Safety

Full food safety guidelines are beyond the scope of PALM (definitely look into food safety info, classes, etc. in your area!), but some high-level guidelines can keep you pointed in the right direction.

The kill step: Germs (bacteria and viruses) can make people sick, but most cannot survive above 165°F. Cooking something above 165°F is known as a "kill step" and it's why most states categorize bread as a safe food for home bakers to make and sell. But after your bread comes out of the oven and cools, you must make sure to not accidentally contaminate your product post-kill step. That also means ensuring that your bread doesn't come into contact with any raw dough or uncleaned surfaces after it's baked.

Allergens: While operating a home bakery, most allergens are likely to be unavoidable in trace amounts. That's why most states require specific wording on labels to indicate that "this product was home produced" so that those with serious allergic conditions can take warning. But even with that caveat, it's important to take labeling about potential allergens very seriously, and make your best effort to avoid any chance of contamination. These include the Big 9: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame.

Foreign objects: It's possible for things to end up in your baked goods that you didn't intend to include. Simple behaviors, like wearing a hat, can reduce the chance that hair gets into your dough. It's also possible that ingredients (like low-quality grains or seeds) could have similarly sized objects (such as small rocks) mixed in and eventually end up in your final product. And even things you use in your kitchen every day, like wooden spoons or can openers, could chip or break and wind up in the wrong place. You can reduce the chance of this by regularly checking over your tools to make sure they are in good condition, and only using trusted high-quality ingredients throughout.

Cleanliness

Beyond just the food you're making, the environment in which you are operating is also critically important to keep clean and maintain.

Clean: Keeping things clean (especially your hands, counters, containers, tools, etc.) reduces the chance that what you make could cause someone to get sick.

Sanitize: In addition to wiping things down and staying organized (i.e. cleaning), it's also important to sanitize by using bleach or other germ-killing products on areas that will contact food. Sanitizing is also important for any rags, sponges, or scrubbers used for cleaning.

Timely wash-up: Bacteria can multiply exponentially. While it's perfectly fine to wait a few hours to wash up larger items like dough tubs so that you can efficiently clean a batch at a time, putting off washing for a prolonged period (like dishes in the sink overnight) can lead to significant health risks. Remember, you are working with fermented sourdough/levain recipes — unclean conditions can quickly lead to unwanted mold and bacteria.

Pets: Generally, pets should not be in the spaces (i.e. the kitchen) where you are operating your cottage food business. Store ingredients and doughs in containers that are not accessible to pets, and keep cooling racks and packaging workflows at or above table height.

Community Health

The real sign of a successful PALM bakery is one that feeds its local community. That means that the choices you make have real impact on the lives of your neighbors, friends, and peers.

Taking health, food safety, and cleanliness seriously is a way of also taking care of your community. It's the ingredients you choose, how you run your kitchen, the skills of your craft, and who gets to enjoy it in the end.

That last part is often overlooked — "who gets to enjoy it". PALM encourages bakers to stay grounded in humanity and take actions that ensure everyone is invited to enjoy the bread you make.

How you support your community best is up to you, but we've had a good response to making loaves half price 2 hours before close, and pay-what-you-wish for the final hour (to our surprise, many people still pay full price). And unsold loaves should never go to waste; find a local organization that welcomes food donations and pass the kindness forward.

Putting the PALM approach into action, here's a rough breakdown of what you'll need as you scale up. Keep in mind, you can start baking small batches right away to hone your skills before you invest in dedicated tools and setups.

For Le Phare, here's what we ended up using. Links are included as a reference (to make sure you know exactly which one we use), but feel free to source your equipment from wherever is most convenient. These are not ads or affiliate links.

Equipment

• 6 × Cambro Round 12 Qt. Polypropylene Dough Tub: ~$11 each
  - used for mixing/kneading/proofing/storing up to 7kg batches of dough.
• 6 × Cambro Polypropylene Lids: ~3.50 each
• 4 × 11" x 16" Rectangular Cordierite Pizza Stone: ~$80 each
  - used to make 3/4" thick oven decks within a standard 30" wide home oven.
• 6 × Display Basket: ~$35 each
  - Fits 12 x 420g bâtard or 16 x two packs of 200g demi baguette.
• 3 × Dough Scrapers: ~$9 for set of 3
• 3 × Large 16"x24" Cooling Racks: ~$27 each
  - Holds up to 1 batch of bakes if carefully placed. Fits wall-mounted oven rack supports.
• 1 × Self-inking Date Stamp: ~$13
• 1 × Baker's Hat: ~$9
• 1 × 200g Scale (+/- 0.01g): ~$10
• 1 × 10kg Scale (+/- 1g): ~$23
• 1 × Infrared Thermometer: ~$19
• 3 × 47Qt Polypropylene Storage Bin w/ Wheels: ~$37
  - Used to store opened 50 pound bags of flour.
Optional:
• 1 × NSF Chrome Wire Shelf (18x24"): ~$15 each
  - Holds 450lb, and roughly the size of a 50 pound bag of flour on it's side.
  - Also need a set of 4 NSF Chrome posts to hold it up (~$3 each).
• 1 × Vibrating 12" Flour Sifter (#40 & #60): ~$140
  - For bolting whole wheat flour down to ~83% extraction (use #60 sieve)
  - Can also use 12" #80 Sieve for bolting down to ~78% extraction.
• 2 × Cambro Round 22 Qt. Polypropylene Dough Tub: ~$15 each
  - For storing sifted flours.
• 3 × Cambro 1Qt containers w/ lids: ~$11 for set of 3
  - Nice for storing seed mixes or dried fruits.
• 1 × Color Printer (such as Epson ET-3850): ~$335
  - Used to print labels, ideally has a borderless setting to minimize wasted margins.
• 1 × Dual-Channel K/J Thermocouple Meter ~$29
  - Used to measure oven deck temperatures.
  - Also get 2 × 500°C Type K thermocouples to handle the oven's high heat.

Supplies

• Medium/Long Compostable window bags (#XFSZN520NPX, 5.25 x 3.25 x 20"): ~$0.18 / bag
  - Ideal size for 400-700g bâtard or two 160-240g demi baguette.
• Large Compostable window bags (#XFSZN585NPX-FCR, 8.5 x 3.25 x 14"): ~$0.12 / bag
  - Ideal size for larger bakes, 700-1200g.
• 8-up Labels: ~$0.03 / printed label @ 250 sheets
  Each sheet has 8 labels, sized 4.25" x 2.75", works with inkjet or laser printers.

DIY Builds

• 2 x Mixing Stick
• 1 x Gravitational Kneader
• 2 x Dough Loader
• 1 x Residential to Deck Oven Upgrade
• 1 x Oven Steam Generator
• 1 x Modular Wall Cooling Rack Holder
• 1 x Self-serve Kiosk (audio optional)

Sourcing flours and other ingredients for early test bakes may be as simple as going to your local grocery store, but as you scale up and get serious about creating the best bread possible, you'll likely need to look elsewhere.

Larger Quantities

The first issue you're likely to come up against as you grow is buying ingredients (especially flours) in larger quantities. Depending on your local grocery store options, you may need to buy practically every bag of high-quality flour they have to handle a typical baking day (which can use upwards of 30 pounds).

The simplest scaling option is to get 25-50 pound bags of flour via ground shipping. Sites like WebstaurantStore, Central Milling, Breadtopia, and others are a great option as you start ramping up. The flour is quite reasonably priced per pound, but after adding on the shipping charges, it's likely to be on par with the price of quality flours at your grocery store. On the plus side, you can get a much wider range of flours, many of which are organic.

It's also a good idea to take a look at local bulk suppliers that may be close to your location. Brands like Gordon Food Service and Costco are probably not going to be your primary source for specialty flours or organic produce, but they do often have common use ingredients (like kosher salt, olive oil, or rolled oats) at reasonable prices without any shipping overhead.

Specialty / Pure Ingredients

As you begin to sell your bread, you'll also become intimately aware of what you source, since everything must be properly included in the label's ingredient list. That means that adding something as simple as dried currants can itself be a challenge; not only do you need to find them, but finding ingredients without additional additives, colorants, and chemicals is itself a lot more difficult than expected.

Some unadulterated ingredients can be sourced from common online marketplaces, but others can be rather elusive (such as plain dried apricots, without added sulfur dioxide). For these, consider talking with your local natural food stores to see what's available, or trying out distributors like Azure (a very atypcial delivery model, but feasible for things you can't find elsewhere).

Organic Flours

Once you get past the "can I make decent bread?" phase and begin to ask "what is the best bread I can make?" you'll quickly realize that the flour you choose has a major impact on your final product.

Using organic flours is a simple change you can make (if you're not using them already) to drastically up the quality of your final product. Consider heritage varieties of wheat and other grains, and begin to call around to any local farms or mills you can find to see what options exist in your area.

And yes, high quality flour and other ingredients are going to be more expensive. But it's not nearly as much as you you might think (on the order of $0.50 more per loaf) — and it may be one of the most important factors why people choose your bread over factory bread from the grocery store.

Distribution

But wait, there's more! The final major step for sourcing ingredients is to work with a high-quality restaurant/food service distributor.

This feels overwhelming at first; getting a representative to take your home bakery seriously, lots of paperwork, financial policies, and unexpected levels of "proprietary locks" on ingredients that only certain customers can access without special permission. Additionally, there are likely order minimums around $500 or more. But it also opens up a large set of new possibilities.

Unlike standard ground shipping for 50 pound bags of flour (that could nearly double their overall price), distributors often use a flat rate (around ~$10) per order.

This can all feel pretty abstract, so let's use some real numbers. For us at Le Phare, 10 × 50 pound bags of organic flour through an online supplier might cost $615 + $210 for shipping (via a site like WebstaurantStore), while through a food distributor (like Hillcrest) that may look closer to $565 + $10 shipping. That's ~30% less expensive for the same exact product.

Of course, keep in mind that when you get to the distributor level, you also need a place to store 10+ large bags of flour at once. A couple of 18x24" racks can help out here.

Deriving Sub-ingredients

While you'll end up buying most of the ingredients you need directly, others can be derived from those ingredients or pre-mixed in batches for easier use later.

Bolting flours — sifting whole grain flours to remove some of the larger bran and germ pieces — is a great way to create hard-to-find flours with more micronutrients and texture than plain bread flours. An automated sifter is a big help if you decide to sift large quantities of flour for your various bakes.

Seed mixes are also a great way to save time. Certain mixes are common (like pre-toasting black and white sesame seeds, or combining poppy, sesame, millet, and flax seeds for pain aux céréales), so working in batches and storing your own custom mixes for later is a simple way to improve the efficiency of your bakery. Just make sure to label and date anything you make so you can always be sure it's still fresh to use.

Traditional household baking appliances and wares are a great place to start, but they often become impractical or inefficient when scaling up (like using stand mixers, repeating stretch-and-folds, cold-proofing in the fridge, resting in bannetons, managing bulky dutch ovens, loading steaming towels, and so on).

As fellow makers, we love to build things and run experiments. So after each baking day, we look back at what worked well and think about how to improve the aspects that were difficult, fussy, inefficient, or error-prone. Over time, those observations have led us to a range of helpful DIY tools and techniques that make PALM run as smoothly as possible.

Running a home bakery at scale involves a lot of moving parts. While many of the enabling technologies for PALM are more technical, even low-tech pen and paper can make a big difference.

Having a printed daily routine and logbook can keep things running smoothly and reduce the overall stress of worrying about forgetting an important step along the way.

You can mix your dough with any food-safe implement you like (including your hands!), but as you scale up your batch sizes, using a purpose-built tool can make the work a lot easier.

A good mixing stick should feel comfortable and sturdy in the hand while also effectively working the dough as it comes together. We've found that a 0.75 - 1.25 inch diameter wooden dowel is the sweet spot. Much thinner, and it risks breaking. Much thicker and it's hard to hold and push through stiffer doughs.

We also like having a flattened end such that it can be turned to give more/less resistance in the dough. It also enables you to use it as a wedge to lift the dough off the bottom of the dough tub while mixing with minimal effort. And flat sides make it easier to scrape down and clean.

In less than 10 minutes of sawing and sanding, you can make your own optimized mixing stick for just a few dollars.

Trying to stretch-and-fold 5-7kg of dough is difficult and laborious. It also takes time, adds to cleanup (frequent hand washing to limit cross contamination), can introduce foreign matter (like hair or allergens), and further oxidizes the dough before fermentation.

By keeping the dough fully contained in the tub with the lid on during all of the kneading and bulk fermentation process, we solve all of those issues at the same time. Simply place the tub onto the rollers and press a button to run a program with a specified speed curve that optimally kneads the dough by rotating.

The gravitational rotary kneader was invented specifically for use with PALM to provide a quiet, low-power method for developing gluten structure without requiring a large industrial mixer or needing to tend the dough for hours while performing multiple stretch-and-fold actions.

Once the dough is initially mixed, the lid is placed on the dough tub and it remains fully sealed until it has completed its full 18hr+ bulk fermentation period. During that time, there are typically two rotary kneading cycles; immediately after mixing, and 1-4 hours later, each running between 10 and 20 minutes.

Close-up of pain aux céréales dough structure before and after using the rotary kneader. Notice the smoother, shinier texture on the right as gluten is developed and becoming more elastic.

Dough tubs can be cycled through the rotary kneader with minimal overhead. And for even greater throughput, multiple kneaders can be used to handle batches in parallel if the kneading itself becomes a bottleneck. Though, from out experience at Le Phare, one rotary kneader is more than adequate for handling up to 6 dough tubs per baking day (which equals more than 100 loaves of bread with our standard bakes).

To use the kneader, first mix up a batch of dough in a round 12Qt dough tub. Ideally all ingredients should be wetted (i.e. no dry spots), but as the dough tumbles even small dry spots are often kneaded out.

Then ensure the lid is fully in place and gently rest it sideways on the machine's two silicone rollers. Select a rotation speed curve depending on your dough and timing, and let it run. The most commonly used curve consists of an initial lull (while the dough settles to the bottom and begins to touch the lid), then a brief ramp up to max speed (around 1.0 revolution per minute), and slowly tapers down to around 0.2 RPM over a period of 15 minutes as the dough gradually strengthens.

If you're very patient, you can try this method without a machine by very slowly turning the dough tub on its side with your hands. Even from the outside of the tub, you can feel the weight of the dough pulling against you as you turn. You can also feel the change in how tight/relaxed the dough is over time.

By building a little machine to do this simple task for us, we free ourselves to work on other tasks in the bakery and improve the consistency of the process. The rotary kneading action is an example of "working smarter, not harder" — giving the dough time to develop gluten at its own pace and using its own weight as the force with which it is kneading itself.

Sourcing high quality organic whole grain flours (whole wheat, whole rye, etc.) and organic bread flours is reasonably accessible and affordable. But getting a flour that's between these two with a mix of small bran/germ pieces can be difficult to source and is often priced much higher as a specialty ingredient.

These flours are often achieved by "bolting" — starting with a whole grain flour and then passing it through a tightly controlled sieve to leave only particles of a certain size range. This includes many flours used in European baking, like T65, T80, and T110 which are graded by their ash content and made by bolting to leave a certain percentage of bran/germ pieces in the flour. There are two important numbers to keep in mind if you choose to bolt your own flours: mesh size and extraction rate.

Mesh size is measured by the number of openings (holes) per linear inch. Therefor a lower number mesh, like 40, has 40 fairly large holes per inch. Whereas a higher number, like 80, is much finer with 80 holes per inch. For bolting flours, 40 - 60 mesh sizes are common, with 80 mesh being about the finest for flour use (the finer mesh, the longer it takes to sieve and the easier it clogs).

Extraction rate is a measure of the percentage of flour (by weight) that comes through after bolting. For example, starting with 100g of organic King Arthur whole wheat flour and passing through a #60 sieve produces around 83g of bolted flour (and 17g or bran/germ/endosperm). That's an 83% extraction rate. If you pass the same whole wheat flour through a finer (#80) sieve, you'll get less bolted flour (around 78g, or 78% extraction rate).

Bolting by hand is easy, but very time consuming and labor intensive. If you do choose to bolt flours as part of your PALM baking venture, consider looking into an automated vibrating sieve. These machines allow you to place a few cups of flour in the top, turn it on to vibrate for a few minutes while it bolts the flour for you, and then collect all of the unbolted bran/germ (which can itself be a useful ingredient) before the next batch.

If you do take the plunge and use an automated sieve to bolt your own flours, you'll also want to have a few clean kitchen towels that can be used as dust covers while it runs. Fine flour particles can travel quite far and will easily cover your space if you don't keep things covered while you work.

Like professional bakeries, most PALM breads are baked directly on the hot deck/stone of an oven -- no pan or parchment needed. This improves heat transfer while also allowing bread to be any shape or size that fits into the oven.

However, actually getting the tender, sticky dough into a hot oven at the correct location can be a major feat. For smaller loaves that don't need to be precisely placed, a simple peel (flat wooden board) can be dusted with flour and used to quickly jerk and slide the dough off onto the hot baking stones. But when you want to place multiple pieces of delicate dough that use the entire deck area, we need something a bit more accurate.

In commercial bakeries, bakers use "dough loaders" that allow for carefully placing the dough where it's desired on a conveyor belt, and then sliding the whole belt into the oven and rolling it back out to place it perfectly inside. These devices are heavy and expensive, but the general idea is simple.

We experimented with many different versions of DIY dough loaders, from basic cookie sheets and kitchen towels with strings, up to prototypes with precision bearings and aluminum roller bars to reduce friction.

In the end, we settled on a version that's easy to build, inexpensive, and holds up to daily use. All for about $20 in parts.

A good deck oven is key to producing great bread. That's because baking is not just about the temperature of the oven, but how heat is transferred to the dough as it bakes. Let's consider a quick thermodynamics review to put things in context.

Convection transfers heat to the dough through the air. This can be passive convection (standard "bake" oven modes) or forced convection ("convection", "fan", or "air fry" oven modes). This is primarily how the edges and top of the bread are heated.

Radiation transfers heat through electromagnetic means, most commonly infrared waves from the heating elements themselves (think "broil" oven modes). This allows for very quick browning, but only on the surfaces facing the hot elements (the top of loaves on the top rack only). Also note that radiation transfers proportional to the inverse square of the distance. That means that if your bread is twice as close to the element, it actually receives 4 times the amount of heat.

Conduction is the transfer of heat by direct contact between solids, where the food is literally touching part of the hot oven. By using heavy decks (flat surfaces with large thermal mass, made of materials like stone or steel) that have been pre-heated, when dough is placed on top of them they begin to quickly heat from the bottom. This is critical, as heating the dough enough to make the tiny air bubbles expand before the top/side crusts can harden allows for an open, airy internal structure. Otherwise, the crust can "lock" the shape of a loaf, and the result will be a dense, flat bread.

In short, a surface with large thermal mass is necessary to enable conduction baking. But what material is best? Steel has very high thermal conductivity (how easily heat can transfer in/out of a material), and that's great for very thin breads (like pizza, pita, or naan). But for common artisan breads (like baguette, bâtard, boule, and miche), steel can transfer heat too quickly and easily burn the bottom of your loaves.

Alternatively, baking stones have lower thermal conductivity than steel, but still significant thermal mass. That makes stone the ideal deck for bread baking — they give the dough an initial heating boost from the bottom, but are less likely to burn the bread than steel.

Over time, you'll grow to intimately know your oven's preheat and turnover behavior. But before then, having a way to monitor the deck temperatures can be a big help. A quick read with a contactless/IR thermometer is a great way to start; just open the oven door, point it at the deck, and check the temperature.

But opening the oven door lets out a lot of hot air, and the internal stone temperature is likely to be lower than the surface temperature during heating cycles. So if you want to get serious about it, you can use a pair of high temperature thermocouples. This allows for monitoring the deck temperatures in real time without needing to open the oven door.

Because each deck is actually made of two stones, you can place the thermocouple between the stones. Route the wiring through a small gap around the bottom seal of the oven (or wherever is convenient for your specific model). Then any time you want to know the deck temperature, just plug the probes into a reader and take a look.

We need a quick burst of steam for the start of most bakes, and after trying a wide range of approaches, the simplest way seems to work best.

Just place a hefty, small cast iron pan or two on the bottom of the oven. Then make a sturdy little chute out of aluminum foil so you can easily pour water into it whenever you need steam. No towels, lava rocks, or spray bottles needed.

With the oven cool, place the cast iron pan and the foil chute where you want them. Make sure the foil chute is well secured to the oven rack (by folding the foil around it) so it won't slip off as you're working when everything is hot.

We typically use a gooseneck kettle to make pouring the water easy (counting ~5 seconds delivers the ideal amount of steam for us). Alternatively, you can use a measuring cup with a spout if you wish to test specific amounts of water as you dial in your process to see what works best with your oven.

Hot bread comes out of the oven with a golden crispy crust. But if bread is not cooled properly before handling or slicing, the crust gets chewy and the risk of spoilage increases.

Cooling racks are a staple item in most kitchens, but when managing multiple decks full of bread in constant rotation (bake, cool, package, repeat), those cooling racks can take up a lot of kitchen space.

Many home bakers opt for dedicated metal carts that fit standard full size sheet pans. These are highly effective, but they're also expensive (like this one for $900, or even an "economical" half size like this one for $80+$36/rack), take up a significant amount of room, and overkill for a process that only needs 3-5 cooling racks total.

Instead, a modular, wall-mounted cooling rack system allows for placing racks only when needed while also keeping the floor and counter space clear. The modular cooling rack is another simple tool that, when used in tandem with everything else, helps PALM run smoothly and efficiently.

Labeling seems like a piece of cake. Just hit print, peel off some stickers, and apply them to bags. But labeling is also important to get right, both for health/safety reasons when it comes to allergens, as well as branding, appeal, and education for your customers.

First things first, make sure your label is in line with your local cottage food regulations. That likely requires you to include a product name, list of ingredients (in descending order by weight), bolded callouts for any allergens, net weight, your address, and a statement that it was home produced.

It's also important to date your labels so that you can ensure that customers know when it was baked — we suggest using an adjustable self-inking date stamp on the labels right before bagging each cooled batch of bread.

And if you're baking 100+ loaves each day, it's important to make the process of sizing, printing, peeling, and adhering the labels as simple as possible. For that, we've landed on labels that cover an entire sheet of 8.5"x11" paper, equally dividing it into 8 pre-scored labels (2x4) per page. Then once your printer is set up and your design is properly sized, you can just load the paper and hit print whenever you need them.

Making your own self-serve kiosk is a fun project, but it can also be quite a bit of work. Your best bet is to find an appropriate sized box, cabinet, or greenhouse that you can repurpose as your mini storefront.

Keep in mind that your kiosk will likely be living outdoors in the full spectrum of weather, so take your time as you go to make sure it feels sturdy and well sealed against rain, snow, wind, and sun. You'll also want to include vents to allow for air circulation.

And don't forget safety! You must take care to ensure that your kiosk cannot tip over, either by accident or by playful kids monkeying around (like trying to lean on the door when it's open). You may want to consider some combination of sturdy ground anchors and/or deeply planted posts in the ground to make it secure.

A bread stand is about a lot more than just bread. While some customers may buy simply to bring home a fresh loaf, for many, the choice takes into account a whole spectrum of factors. That includes things like proximity, supporting local initiatives, the health benefits of genuine sourdough, convenience, relative cost, neighborhood charm, specialty flavors, and many more.

In short, there's a deeply human element to why people show up to your kiosk, so it's important to remain as genuinely human as possible. That's why things like like security cameras, vending machines, and slick marketing gimmicks can be major detractors from the experience.

Experience. That's the key word to keep in mind. It's the totality of what customers do and feel throughout their journey with your product. Putting in some extra effort to make sure the customer feels considered and rewarded can go a long way.

One simple example of this experience thinking is the sound and light elements we've used at Le Phare. A small rechargeable battery is placed inside the top of the kiosk when we open, and that powers both a set of inviting light bulbs (a calm way of indicating that the store is open) as well as an endless loop of audio (playing sounds of ocean waves off the northwest coast of France). There's also a small physical chime that dings when you open the door, like you've just entered a little corner shop.

The bigger take-away is to truly consider the user experience. Audio and lighting are two elements that we chose (and you are welcome to incorporate those elements as well), but do take some time to truly think about what could set your experience apart. Why does someone go out of their way to buy from you instead of somewhere else?

The PALM Méthode Artisanale logo is copyrighted, but it may be used by any home baker so long as they agree to the following terms:

• You are a person making baked goods from your own at-home bakery only (not part of a factory or baking as part of a commercial operation, restaurant, grocery store, etc.).
• You take cleanliness, safety, and proper labeling seriously (adhering to local food laws, being mindful of allergens, etc.).
• You use the benefits of scaling up to put great bread into more hands (i.e. keep pricing reasonable and accessible).
• You use an approach that's aligned with the tenets of Respectus Panis (specifically room temperature operations, long fermentation, low salt, economical pricing, and health-mindedness).
• You leverage efficient, low-intervention approaches and techniques to reduce energy and contamination risks (lidded containers and hand tools, not open vats and high-power industrial mixers).
• You remain open and inviting to those who want to learn or make bread themselves (share the love, and the knowledge).
• You use eco-responsible packing (no plastics, unless they are compostable).
• You are focused on being present locally (your baked goods are primarily for those in your local community).
• The logo is sized to be less than 30% of your bakery's logo/branding for any packaging and signage (i.e. PALM is not the brand, but only a signifier of your approach).

Hi-res PALM logo: Download

A few high-level thoughts before you get baking...

Baker's yeast (the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a small natural yeast that converts fermentable sugars present in the dough into carbon dioxide and ethanol, causing the bread to rise when it is baked.

Levain (i.e. sourdough starter) is made by fermenting flour and water such that a colony of microorganisms including wild yeasts (often 70 strains or more) and lactobacilli (often 50 species or more) co-exist. As such, levain is more flavorfully complex and nutritionally varied, but is less likely to yield as much rise when baked.

PALM generally uses levain and long fermentation times whenever possible, but using baker's yeast is also totally acceptable and can be a worthwhile addition for many sourdough recipes. By using much less yeast in a recipe (as little as 1/10th of a teaspoon for 5kg of dough), longer fermentation times can still be maintained while boosting the oven spring.

In short: baker's yeast is not bad — it's just a tiny subset of what is found in sourdough starter, and as such, we generally prefer to use levain whenever possible.

Seeing a label with ingredients you can pronounce is comforting, and we recommend using high-quality, all-natural ingredients whenever possible. But the history of AP/bread flour and food fortification is a lesson worth understanding.

In the US, all refined "white" flours sold for retain consumption used in bread baking (such as the omni-present All-purpose or Bread flours in your local grocery store) are legally required to be enriched.

To many, all of these fortifications can seem scary to add to an ingredient list (such as niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid) and some bakers seek out flours that do not have these additions. But without them, very real health problems can occur (like beriberi, anemia, pellagra, and birth defects) for those that consume bread as their dietary staple.

That's because AP/bread flour is made by removing all of the bran and the germ of the seed, and that's where many of the micronutrients are contained. Enriching the flour adds back those nutrients that were lost when the bran and the germ were removed, as well as others that are scientifically deemed to be beneficial for the health of the general population. That's generally a good thing, but for those eating an otherwise balanced diet, it's also unnecessary.

So if you really want to have a clean label while still ensuring balanced nutrition, the solution is to use whole grain flours that still have all of their nutrients whenever possible. And even for white breads, supplementing with 15% or more of whole grain flours, seeds, or other nutritionally varied inclusions is preferable (and that's exactly what we do in most of the baker's recipes). Otherwise, stick with high quality enriched flours to keep your fellow community members healthy.

If you're just getting started (and don't have a sourdough levain up and going yet), we recommend practicing with this basic recipe that still has fantastic flavor due to the extended room-temperature fermentation of the PALM approach with substantial hydration (68%).

And you can (should!) definitely play around with this recipe. For example, try substituting up to 20% of the AP/bread flour with a flour that's a bit more flavorful (whole wheat, rye, spelt, corn, etc.). You can also add a handful of your favorite seeds, nuts, herbs, cheeses, or dried fruits to this recipe for a wide range of delicious homemade breads. It really is that simple!

Levain is the french word for all-natural sourdough starter and it's used in every single PALM bread recipe. Using levain instead of only baker's yeast gives bread a much more complex flavor profile while also improving digestibility.

There are lots of ways to create a sourdough starter, but we're sticking with the most fundamental approach that can work anywhere (and is exactly the same process used to keep it going).

You only need two things -- clean, room-temperature unchlorinated water and organic whole wheat flour.

Follow these steps to make your own starter.

1. Mix: Using a scale, add 40g of room-temperature water and 40g of whole what flour to a clean glass jar with a lid (If you don't have a scale yet, don't sweat it; The exact ratio is pretty forgiving, and since water is roughly twice as dense as flour, just use 1 small scoop of water to 2 small scoops of flour). Then mix the flour and water together with a clean butter knife (or handle of a wooden spoon) and loosely place the lid. Make sure there's room in the jar for the starter to expand.
2. Wait: Keep the jar out of direct sunlight or heat and wait a full day. If you don't see any bubbles yet, that's okay!
3. Feed: Each day while you're still getting your starter going (this usually takes 4-7 days), discard about 3/4ths of the starter and then feed it again with the same process (40g water and 40g flour) you did before. If it's not making many bubbles yet, just put the lid back on loosely and wait another day (step #2).
4. Use & Store: When the starter shows strong signs of activity (it grows at least twice as tall after 8-12 hours of fermentation and has a tangy and complex yet sweet smell) and is adequately sour/acidic (a pH < 4.6 to be safe), it's ready. You can use your starter immediately, or store it in the refrigerator for a few days at a time.
5. Maintain: Then every few days, take your starter out of the fridge and do the discard/feeding process like before (40g flour, 40g water). Let it sit out on the counter at room temperature for 8-12 hours to grow, then it's ready to use again in any bread recipe (step #4). If you don't need it after that time, place it back in the fridge for another few days and repeat.

If you take care of your starter and feed it regularly, it can last a lifetime. But if you do notice any signs that things aren't going well (mold on top of the starter or any strong off-putting smells), you can try to save it by scraping off the bad parts and feeding it again. If after a few feedings it still seems unhappy, it may be a lost cause. Just restart the process and you'll be back in business after a few days.

It's also worth noting that you can't really rush natural fermentation. It takes time for all of the microorganisms to do their magic... Fortunately flour is cheap, so if you're worried about things going wrong, consider making a few starters at the same time to increase your odds of success.

Ready to start baking? We openly share a wide range of recipes we've tested that work well with the PALM method via our flagship bakery, Le Phare.

The PALM baker's recipes tool lets you select from any of our tested bakes, then quickly see ingredients, quantities, and steps while adjusting for yield, portion size, hydration, fermentation, and temperature in realtime.

Feel free to use the recipes as-is, or expand and modify them to your own liking!

PALM Baker's Recipes »

PALM stands on the shoulders of incredible bakers, thinkers, and eaters from around the world, and we are greatly appreciative of everyone who has shared their love of bread to inform and inspire the next generation of the craft.

There's always more to learn in the humble art of breadmaking, so if you're looking to dig deeper, make sure to check out these books, videos, and sites to get your wheels turning.

Books

• Respectus Panis - Révélation d’une panification, by Ambassadeurs du Pain. The primary source and approach that led to PALM. Using room-temperature fermentation, lower salt, and a focus on working with the dough's natural evolution (slow/no kneading).
• Advanced Bread and Pastry, A Professional Approach, by Michel Suas. A professional cookbook for use in culinary arts schools. Incredibly well researched and built around formulas that are made to scale.
• Flour Water Salt Yeast, by Ken Forkish. Lots of insight about how to make beautiful, naturally leavened breads by hand using a home oven.
• The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. Great recipe reference and technical descriptions of a wide range of authentic artisan breads.
• Crust: Bread to Get Your Teeth Into, by Richard Bertinet. One of the early publications describing ways to handle sticky, high-hydration doughs by hand to make great, natural breads.
• My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey. Lessons on how time and hydration can allow gluten to build itself with minimal kneading, as well as how a lidded vessel can act as a foolproof way to generate steam.
• The Larousse Book of Bread: 80 Recipes to Make at Home, by Éric Kayser. Recipes and inspiration from one of France's most celebrated bakers, all designed for baking in a home oven.
• Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat. An essential framework for understanding compelling flavors and how to build them into new recipes.
• The Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas, by Niki Segnit. An excellent resource to have in the creative toolbox when exploring new flavor combinations.
• Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread, by Andrew Whitley. Lots of info about the state of bread and how to keep the focus on making great bread that's also natural and highly nutritional.
• Bring Home the Bakery, by Grego Montalbán Sánchez & Hanna Löfgren. Insights and observations about running a bakery out of a home and how to make it work.
• Baking School: Lessons and Recipes for Every Baker, by King Arthur Baking Company. A nice fallback reference for basic recipes to get a general feel for flavors, hydrations, and techniques for common bakes.
• Bread Bread Bread, by Ann Morris & Ken Heyman. An old-school children's classic illustrating the democratized, global need and appreciation for bread of all kinds.
• In Search of the Perfect Loaf, by Samuel Fromartz. Great description and insights into what makes a fantastic baguette using long-fermented doughs and artisan French methods.

Videos

• Boulangerie Pas à pas, by Fabrice Cottez. Invaluable resource of information, techniques, and behind-the-scenes looks with some of the best bakeries and bakers in France. Most videos also have English subtitles.
  - My day spent in a Micro Bakery
  - Micro Bakery: All the Secrets to Success
  - How to Make the Perfect Baguette
  - Breadmaking Step by Step: Respectus Panis Method
  - and so many more...
• Nos pains nos gains. Focused on authentic french levain-based breads and helping others understand how to make and appreciate them.
  - La baguette de tradition française
  
• Bake with Jack, by Jack Sturgess. Over 200 videos covering a broad range of sourdough recipes, techniques, and pointers.
  - Sourdough Playlist

Sites & Posts

• The Fresh Loaf. An insightful and lively forum for amateur artisan bakers and baking enthusiasts to share knowledge and ask questions. Wide range of topics and deep dives into mastering specific recipes.
  - 36 hour+ sourdough baguette
• Breadtopia. Curated set of well researched bread recipes and useful tools. A great place to start when attempting a new recipe to gain insight into common methods and ingredient ratios.
• Breadit. Community of over 1 Million bread makers and appreciators. A quick place to get inspired, share feedback, or asks questions as you look to improve your baking skills.
• The Rye Baker. Rye flour has bold flavor and a long history, but it's notoriously tricky to bake without turning gummy. These recipes provide clear instructions and highlight the differences of using rye vs wheat flour in breadmaking.
  - Tourte de Seigle
• The Perfect Loaf. Nice range of sourdough recipes and information.
  - Seeded Sourdough Discard Crackers