For those of you who have no idea where this website came from or who the heck is writing this, let me introduce myself! In case you breezed over the ‘about us’ section, here’s a run down.
Big Stretch Bakery was born out of the many arduous months and years that the owner, me (Al is my name) spent baking hundreds of loaves of bread. Let’s get one thing straight right away: there were a lot of not so good loaves of bread and other baked goods. This took a long time specifically with the sourdough aspect. I had been baking yeasted breads for years before, but the last few years, I ventured to take on my own sourdough starter.
I know, I know. You’re probably thinking ‘oh jeez here’s yet another person who got into sourdough during the pandemic.’ To which I would say in my defense, I had no idea this fade was taking over social media when I started to get into it. I hadn’t the faintest idea of the Instagram void that is the sourdough cult when my wife got me ‘Flour Water Salt Yeast‘ by Ken Forkish. So please, hang on whilst I try to explain myself.
Some of my first loaves pictured above. These were definitely some of the better ones that I baked early on.
Anyways, back to the beginning. I got into sourdough and artisan style breads after my wonderful wife, Jenny, got me that book by Ken Forkish. I’d like to believe and tell you that I couldn’t put the book down the moment I got it. However, I read it and my first thought was, ‘I don’t need all this stinking direction. I can bake bread just fine.’ Then I immediately proceeded to bake terrible loaf after terrible loaf. After a few failures, I became woefully aware that I needed better direction, more reading, and humility.
If I impart anything on anyone from this mediocre blog it’s that baking bread has been an extremely humbling undertaking for me. Definitely not the most humbling thing I’ve ever done, but I’m not sure much can be more humbling than having flour, water, salt, and some magical sourdough continually fail and prove to be insanely frustrating to master. Take a little bit of flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter and spend hundreds of hours trying to manipulate it and you’ll find yourself much chagrined by the inability to bake a simple loaf of bread.
So, once I finally felt confident, I began to…imbue my workplace with loaves of bread. First, it began with my friends at work and out. Then, it grew to friends of friends and second degree coworkers. The loaves were ok, but definitely not great. However, with each loaf gifted to a coworker, I got slowly better and more confident.
At some point early in my bread baking, a small seed of an idea was planted in my widely overconfident brain. I thought that maybe someday I could sell my bread. That’s when I began to experiment with how much bread I could bake at one time. It was also about that time that my over confidence was shattered by what it takes to bake several loaves at one time and do it well. I could hardly consistently make good loaves so it was awfully bold to think I could do it well in a home oven.
Cut to a couple years later and that idea crept back into my head about wanting to sell bread. I was actually beginning to get good at bulk dough prepping and my confidence and ego had finally recovered from the years of getting my butt handed to me by flour, water, salt and yeast. When I brought up the idea to my wife, she came up with the idea of a home bakery name and thus, Big Stretch Bakery was thought of.
Glossing over the details and struggles that began shortly thereafter of deciding to start a home bakery, the biggest hurtle to overcome was the oven. A basic home oven was not going to cut it. I’d had premonitions of what kind of dream oven I’d want, but never thought I’d actually get the chance to make that dream a reality.
Months of planning, running numbers, working long hours as well as a second job, and trying my darndest to convince my wife it was a good idea, I was able to make my first large purchase as a home microbakery.
I bought a Simply Bread Oven not to show my wife how much of our hard earned money I could spend at one time, but because I knew it would be a great purchase and would absolutely be worth it. With the oven, I could go from baking 2-4 loaves in an hour to at least 12. It was a huge increase that drastically changed what I could do with not only loaves, but other baked items as well.
Please ignore the cat feeder next to it. I was too excited to take a picture that I couldn’t to move anything around.
Since getting the Simply Bread, my baking has taken off. I can bulk produce loaves, focaccia, scones, biscuits, literally anything in the matter of an evening. It’s been a huge pay off and a key reason for my initial success. My bakes have also turned out so much better and tastier as it bakes far better than my home oven.
Equipment and story aside, Big Stretch Bakery was born out of a desire to make great yet simple bread. I’m not going to sit here and type up all the cliche natural ingredient statements that others will say about their bread. However, if you want bread that’s made from a sourdough culture started here in St. Paul, MN and made with flour, water, salt, and a few other simple ingredients, then Big Stretch Bakery is your spot.
Give it a shot. Worst case scenario you got good bread with a cool logo on it.
Big Stretch Bakery 