As we do every week, today we made bagels for Bagel Monday. This Bagel Monday was quite a bit different from last Bagel Monday. Last Bagel Monday I only made 1 batch of 6 bagels. The bagels had been shaped the night before, and had overproofed; they were also about double the weight of our usual 85g Sour Flour Bagels. The Bagel Monday Weekly Review happened a day late, and was rushed. I didn’t start the week off right, and was anxious the entire week.
This Bagel Monday has been running smooth from the start. I woke up at 7:00AM, which is just a bit after sunrise, and turned on the stove to boil water, and the oven. I had shaped 1 batch of 6 bagels, and had preshaped another batch the night before. I shaped the 8 bagels, and then went off to deal with the rest of my morning until everything heated up.
At 7:40AM, I put the first batch in the oven. As one batch was boiling, or baking, I was able to scale, preshape, or shape another batch. I ended up shaping 4 more batches, for a total of 6 batches of 8, 48 bagels total. The dough was 8.5X from the starter, meaning I started with 480g of starter and ended up with 4080g of dough.
I had one Bread Trainee come over, as well as a few people to pick up bagels. Sour Flour was given a hand cranked solar powered radio for the bakery by KQED, which is already working on this sunny winter day. The Bagel Monday Weekly Review will be happening later, and I am beginning to gain more clarity as to what Sour Flour is as an organization. We will continually getting people to be baking bagels and give them away. We will also continually be working to improve our breads.
We will soon be sending out our donation request to a slightly larger audience, and hope to get the necessary funds we need to continue to operate. It is currently possible to donate to Sour Flour, but more work needs to be done to show people how it will help, and explain what we are doing.