Today I got to visit Acme at the Ferry Building. Bryan, who is the brother of a family friend, is the shift supervisor, and he guided me around. It was an awesome visit, as I got to learn a lot about what goes on there, and it demystified a lot about larger bread production for me.
The first thing you see when moving to the production side of the bakery is their deck oven. They’ve got 4 levels of 3 windows, meaning 12 total decks. Each deck can fit 18 of their baguettes, and although it does get breaks every so often, it starts running fairly non stop at 9PM each night. They also have a rack oven, which gets used for a lot of their products.
They cool all of their bread on plastic stackable racks, and proof their loaves on couches sitting on metal screens. Their dough mixer is in fairly continual use, and fits about 350lb of dough. After mixing, the dough gets turned over onto a wooden bench for dividing into 20-30lb tubs. The tubs all sat next to the bench, and they were stacked to the ceiling in several piles. They go through about a palette of flour each day, which would be 2500lb. The staff includes a dedicated office person, 1-3 supervisors, and about 4-6 bakers at any given point. With 3 shifts that rotate, there are about 12 people that work in any given day.
There are several workbooks, which have the daily schedules, along with checks to make sure everything gets done. There is one main workbench, that can fit 4 bakers, each in their station, similar to La Victoria. I got to see them shape quite a few loaves, including shaping two boules, one in each hand, at the same time. Bryan told me that their hydration was a bit wetter than many bakeries, but it looked drier than what I am used to working with. They used the same method to seal their shapes, a sort of high pressure palming, that I saw at SFBI.
At some point, I hope to visit Acme’s whole sale bakery, which is on a much larger scale. They have 3 or 4 deck ovens, along with a wood fired oven, and more. Bryan told me that the operation is similar there, but just bigger.
Although there is so much I could not take in, I felt good about being exposed to their operation. Acme supplies a huge amount of the Bay Area, and was a ground breaker in the baking scene. They were Michel Suas’ first major client out here, and they make delicious bread.