Good Afternoon readers,
My name is Joshua Pickens and I have recently come to Lawrence, KS to fill a vacant Head Baker position. In the short time I have been here and been involved in the bakery specifically the bread department I have come up with a few ways to connect with our customer base this being one of them! A blog is something new to me (hence the title) and will be a work in progress! Please bear with me!
The idea to start this blog came when I was given my job description here. I have been tasked with product development and down the road starting bread classes for the public! Now what is important to start these two things is I need to know what the consumer wants. This got me thinking about many different ways to reach you whether it be surveys or word of mouth or just taking shots in the dark and just throwing stuff out there to see if it is successful or not! The last option did not seem too business savvy so we dropped that one. As this process of pondering continued I was at home reading one of my favorite blogs and the though hit me why not start a blog about Wheatfields! It is an easy(and free) way to get in touch with customers and get instant feedback. It is also a great way to help you feel connected to what we all do here.
We are all very passionate about what we do and we want to share that with you and allow you to see a side of the bakery that you might not have ever gotten the chance to see. We will post product photos, maybe even some action shots! We want you to see how much time and effort we put into making the best product possible for you!
This blog will also be used to educate you on all the different aspects of baking such as the basics of shaping a loaf of bread down to the different types of flour we use and why we use them. This blog will help me dig into some much needed research to give you answers to any questions you might have. Many questions come in all the time from allergies to what is sourdough? I will do my best to answer your questions as quickly and as detailed as possible even if that means research which I love to do!
There will also be surveys given out to see what you think about new products we are developing! Like right now we just mixed a new bagel for employee taste testing to see if it is something we want to serve as a special! It will be a Sprouted Grain Bagel. If all goes well tomorrow you should see that at the counter by next week. But we will post photos of new products, which hopefully tomorrow I will have some of this bagel for you so you can see and comment! There has also been the idea of a "Baker's Choice" bread on Fridays and Saturdays which I think should be starting with the previously mentioned bagels. Also I have mentioned bread classes, we would love to start a few bread classes during or slower season but we need to know what kind of class you would enjoy for example maybe a 1 day baguette class or a weeklong classes involving the full spectrum of classic french style breads to pizza and beyond! These classes would probably involve mainly hands on teaching but with some sit down and quick note taking sessions! But to do all this we need your feedback and when the time is right the surveys will be posted and make sure to get as many people involved as you can! The more the merrier!
So here we go this journey is about to begin and ohh yeah Welcome to the Wheatfields Blog!
An interesting idea would be to combine a wood-fired cob oven building workshop with a how to bake great bread in one.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as though these ovens are a hot trend. I know that the Peters family from the Lawrence Farmers Market is baking in theirs. I believe that Debby and Jim Smith, up my way (So. Jeff Co), went to a workshop on this last month.
I understand that the ovens are fairly simple to build and can produce a wonderful product. And WheatFields is home to the wood oven masters, no?
And I just wanted to share that I am thrilled about the new blog and can't wait to see some of the behind the scenes secrets.
I would love to take bread baking classes at Wheatfields! Either the short or long format you suggested sound appealing to me. I would also be interested in a weekly course that ran for a number of weeks in a row. Perhaps an added benefit for the classes would be making some of your flours available to the class participants to buy. I know I would love to buy some of your flours or even some of your sourdough starter!
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