Home of Brick Oven Bread in Regina, Saskatchewan

Hi everyone,

Wow, last week was a bit of a challenge, to say the least. I got hit by a nasty flu bug on Thursday and I’m still working my way back to full fitness, so the vast majority of the firing, baking and packaging fell to Cindy last week. I helped where I could from a respectful distance and wrapped in a blanket, but it all worked out in the end. Sorry I wasn’t able to say Hi to everyone who picked up bread but I’m sure you’ll agree it was for the best!

You could tell we were a little out of kilter because for the first time in our history, Friday didn’t have the nicest weather of the week. I know it wasn’t too terrible, but I’m used to seeing sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures when we’re baking. Perhaps we’ll be treated to a chinook this time round.

This week, we’re making two slight modifications to some old favourites:

#1: Orange Boot Birdseed Loaf: This is a “transitional” multigrain loaf — that is, it still contains white flour but has lots of healthy additions like wheat bran, buttermilk and of course, fresh-roasted pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds. The roasted seeds give the loaf a unique flavour and crunchy chew. Yum!

Orange Boot Birdseed Loaf, 750g Batard, $4.00 [Note that the shape is different than pictured, but the insides are the same!]

#2: Our Semolina Loaf is a simple loaf with a deceptively complex flavour thanks to an extremely slow rise. We start building the dough Wednesday for a Friday bake and the dough does most of its rising in the cooler. The bread contains a mix of white flour and durum semolina flour from locally grown, organic grain and when shaped in the traditional ‘S’ and topped with sesame seeds becomes Pane Siciliano, which makes it more fun too!

Pane Siciliano, 500g S-shaped loaf, $3.50

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

Robyn promises to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

Best wishes this week!
Mark, Cindy, Ben and Robyn

Hello Bread Lovers!

The weather has warmed up a bit and we’ve found a source of seasoned firewood, so we’re back to baking this week!

As we’re getting back into the swing of things, we’ll be sticking to two of your favorites this week:

#1: Orange Boot Multigrain Loaf: Our best seller, this large loaf is bursting with corn meal, rolled oats, brown rice and local organic unbleached flour. A touch of honey and plenty of buttermilk gives a touch of sweetness and tang too!

Please note: We’re no longer making sandwich loaves in the brick oven. You’ll get the same great flavour in an oblong shape — it’s still a nice high loaf which is great for your morning toast.

Orange Boot Multigrain, 750g Batard, $4.00

#2: There’s nothing ordinary about our Pain Ordinaire – our french loaf is given an extra slow rise starting Thursday night to extract the most flavour from our organic flour.

French Loaf (Pain Ordinaire), 700g Batard, $3.50

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

Robyn promises to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

Best wishes this week!
Mark, Cindy, Ben and Robyn

Hello Bread Lovers!

Happy New Year everyone. We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season. December has been a very busy and exciting month for us and it was nice to take a few days off to relax and have fun as a family.

We’re getting ready to start baking again and we’ll have a ‘bread order’ email shortly. This isn’t it, though. There have been several inquiries about what we’ve been up to so this email is a summary of the events of the past couple weeks…

The Bakery: We spent most of December attempting to purchase the existing bakery in the River Heights mall on Regina Ave and Montague St. Pretty much did it too, but on December 18 we finally decided to hold off for now. The space was larger than we needed, the equipment much older than we’d like and the layout is pretty awkward too.

The good news is we had a really good meeting with the mall landlord and will work together to design an appropriate space in the mall over the next 18 months or so. We’re both excited about the type of bakery we want to build.

In the meantime, however, we’re still looking for some rental space (hopefully with equipment) so we can continue to bake 1-2 days a week for all of you. We have pretty much maxxed out what we can do in the house while still preserving our sanity, so if any of you know of a commercial kitchen we can rent by the hour, please let us know!

The Bread: The last four months have been a lot of fun as we’ve worked to figure out how to scale up our baking, manage the brick oven and expand on the types of breads we offer. We learned a couple really good things:

1. 60 loaves per baking day is a good number when baking out of the house. We did 75 on December 1 and that was hard, and the 155 we did on December 14 pushed us (mixer, oven, Mark and Cindy) to the limit. So the solution is to expand to a bigger space (with bigger equipment), bake two days per week, or change my mixing technique. We’re open to ideas here — please let us know if something ‘obvious’ comes to mind.

2. Bread pans are damaging the brick oven. We were disappointed to learn that the heavy pans we’re using for our multigrain and birdseed bread are causing the firebrick hearth to deteriorate. Lots of scoring on the bricks from sliding the pans in and out of the oven. So we will no longer be offering pan breads (aka ’sandwich loaves’) and will be investing in proofing baskets so you can still get nice high loaves for your morning toast. We started experimenting with the baskets in December and are pleased with the results. We think you will be pleased as well.

At every step on this adventure we’ve been obsessive about how to provide the very best experience for each and every one of you. What new breads do you want to see? How can we make ordering easier? Can we improve how the bread is packaged or delivered? You are our ‘A-team’ and we rely on your comments to make the bread and the bakery the best you’ve ever experienced. We’re thrilled that you are part of this — please keep the comments and suggestions coming!

Happy New Year everyone. We look forward to seeing you again in January!

Mark, Cindy, Ben and Robyn

We hope you’re having a great December so far. Things have been really busy for us – Robyn got over her flu bug, a little hockey was played and we’re getting used to the fact that it’s going to be really, really cold for some time yet. But nothing beats the cold like a wood fire and fresh bread, so we’re back baking this week!

Please note: This Friday will be the last baking day for us before Christmas –- we’re frantically trying to get our head around leasing a commercial space in the New Year (more details below) and we need to get some shopping done too.

This Week: Many of your old favourites — order some extra to freeze if you need. All the loaves freeze well; the multigrain especially so.

#1: Orange Boot Multigrain Loaf: Our best seller, this large sandwich loaf is bursting with corn meal, rolled oats, brown rice and local organic unbleached flour. A touch of honey and plenty of buttermilk gives a touch of sweetness and tang too!

– Orange Boot Multigrain, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#2: Our “birdseed” loaf is a multi-grain loaf chock-full of roasted pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds. The seeds add extra crunchiness and pack a lot of flavour!

- Orange Boot Birdseed Bread, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#3: There’s nothing ordinary about our Pain Ordinaire – our french loaf is given an extra slow rise to extract the most flavour from our organic flour.

– French Loaf (Pain Ordinaire), 700g Batard, $3.50

#4 (Sweet Special): Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread. This is a very pretty sweet loaf, with six strands of dough all braided together and baked till a golden brown. A luxurious treat with a hint of oranges and as many cranberries and nuts as we can cram in there!

– Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread, 850g Braided Loaf, $7.00

Note: If you’ve got a large gathering, we’d be glad to make a 1.2kg behemoth for you for $9.00.

#5 (Savory Special): Herb and Garlic Focaccia. This amazing flatbread is built over two days for maximum flavour and then we go even further with a home-made herb oil. Wow! This is sold as a slab which you can cut up for guests or tear apart with gusto.

- Orange Boot Herb Focaccia, 8”x12” slab, $4.00

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

We promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

Best wishes this week!
Mark, Cindy, Ben and Robyn

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

It looks like we might be going “legit” sooner than we thought. An opportunity came up to take over a local bake shop and we’re seriously considering going for it. Lots of details to work out – negotiations, financing, equipment appraisals, staffing, renovations to plan, etc. and we’re trying to get a final decision made before Christmas. Exciting and scary all at once.

Mark is also enrolling in an Artisan Bread baking course at the San Francisco Baking Institute in early 2008 so we can offer up some new and interesting varieties for you to try.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mark’s researching some new whole grain breads to give you some even healthier alternatives. More news to come in the New Year on this topic too.

Hello Bread Lovers!

I spent far too long yesterday reflecting on how I could feel so darn happy after watching football on TV this weekend. Very entertaining 2-0 win by Arsenal over Wigan Athletic on Saturday and a pretty darn special CFL game on Sunday. I know I’m not the only one thinking how things have changed in our lives since the last time the Grey Cup came to Saskatchewan. One example — we received lots of nice comments about how our Herb Focaccia was a tasty addition to your Grey Cup parties; in 1989 the only wheat products I consumed came in an amber bottle…

As promised, we’re offering our “Sweet and Savory” specials again this week along with a basic (but exceptional) french loaf. We want to keep the number of varieties each week small so we can focus on producing bread of a very high quality.

#1: There’s nothing ordinary about our Pain Ordinaire – our french loaf is given an extra slow rise to extract the most flavour from our organic flour.

– French Loaf (Pain Ordinaire), 700g Batard, $3.50

#2 (Sweet Special): Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread. This is a very pretty sweet loaf, with six strands of dough all braided together and baked till a golden brown. A luxurious treat with a hint of oranges and as many cranberries and nuts as we can cram in there! We were overwhelmed by the response last week — I wish I took a picture of our prep table laid out with over 150 little dough strands waiting to be braided!

– Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread, 850g Braided Loaf, $7.00

Note: If you’ve got a large gathering, we’d be glad to make a 1.2kg behemoth for you for $9.00.

#3 (Savory Special): Herb and Garlic Focaccia. This amazing flatbread is built over two days for maximum flavour and then we go over the top with a home-made herb oil. Wow! This is sold as a slab which you can cut up for guests or tear apart with gusto.

– Orange Boot Herb Focaccia, 8”x12” slab, $4.00

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

We promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

Best wishes this week!

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

Lots, as usual!

First off, we’re pleased to announce that our daughter Robyn has taken over the position of VP of Replies and Keeper of the Order List. She’ll be confirming all your orders from now on and making sure I bake the right things.

Second, I’m fretting over how the oven will perform now that the weather has turned extra cold. We’ll be paying close attention to the firing time on Thursday to make sure the oven is good and hot come bake time.

Finally, we’re trying to find the right balance between baking old favorites (multigrain, birdseed, cheddar-chive) while also getting our wild yeast breads and lean doughs just right. We’re working on a monthly bake schedule so that you can stock up on your favorites and we can still experiment with new varieties too. More news to come next week!

This is our eighth week of baking for friends and family. Two month’s worth of good bread, prepared with care every Friday. It’s extremely gratifying to see the smiles and hear the great comments about our bread. We really appreciate it – frankly, making a direct happy contribution to your weekend is a big reason why we’re doing this in the first place!

We’re approaching the time of year where many of us are heading out to Christmas parties, pot luck suppers or maybe even hosting a gathering of your own. We think we can help you out a bit in this regard, by offering two very special breads to go along with our regular fare (which is special in its own way!) So you will see two special loaves each week from now till the New Year. One sweet, one savory – either will make a nice gift, pot luck contribution or decadent treat for a winter evening in.

This week’s offerings:

#1: Orange Boot Multigrain Loaf: Our best seller, this large sandwich loaf is bursting with corn meal, rolled oats, brown rice and local organic unbleached flour. A touch of honey and plenty of buttermilk gives a touch of sweetness and tang too!

- Orange Boot Multigrain, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#2: Saskatchewan Sourdough: Flour, water and salt. Take three simple ingredients, add lots and lots of time, and you get the most complex and delightful flavour possible. If Mark was stranded on a desert island, this is the bread he’d want.

- Saskatchewan Sourdough, 700g Batard, $3.50

#3 (Sweet Special): Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread. This is a very pretty sweet loaf, with six strands of dough all braided together and baked till a golden brown. A luxurious treat with a hint of oranges and as many cranberries and nuts as we can cram in there! We were sampling this loaf last Friday and got 100% huge grins from everyone who tried it!

- Cranberry Walnut Celebration Bread, 850g Braided Loaf, $7.00

Note: This is slightly smaller than the 1.2kg behemoth we served up last week, to make it a little more manageable for you. If you’ve got a large gathering, we’d be glad to make the big ‘un for you for $9.00.

#4 (Savory Special): Herb and Garlic Focaccia. This amazing flatbread is built over two days for maximum flavour and then we go over the top with olive oil, garlic and fresh herbs. Wow! This is sold as a slab which you can cut up for guests or tear apart with gusto.

- Orange Boot Herb Focaccia, 8”x12” slab, $4.00

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.
We promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

We’ve got heat in the garage! Yay! We’re still mixing in the house, but fermentation, shaping and proofing has moved to the garage to be closer to the oven. Your bread is also available for pickup in the garage too. Please come on in!

It was great to get back to baking last week. The weather has been remarkable all fall and that continued. Each week is a little colder but the sun keeps trying to warm us up!

Last week was a great example of what we mean when we say we’re still starting up. The combination of extra-fast rising and a too-hot oven meant our semolina loaf was not up to our standards. So, several of our customers got shorted on their order. It was double disappointing because we haven’t been able to share our favorite loaf at its best — yet.

This Week: we’ve received several requests for specific varieties so some of your favorites are making a re-appearance on our menu:

#1: Our “birdseed” loaf is a slightly sweet multi-grain loaf chock-full of roasted pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds. The seeds add extra crunchiness and pack a lot of flavour!

Orange Boot Birdseed Bread, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#2: Our Cheddar-Chive torpedo is a big favorite as well. Potatoes are added to the dough for extra smoothness, fresh chives are mixed in for a great herb flavour and aged cheddar cheese adds a lovely bite. This loaf looks great and tastes even better.

Note: The limiting ingredient here is the amount of fresh chives I can find in November. Please order as much as you like but we may have to limit quantities.

Cheddar-Chive Torpedo, 600g, $5.00

#3: We’ll bake it later in the day, when the oven’s cooler. We’ll have a dedicated person watching the dough rise. We’ll never give up! Pane Sicliano is on the menu again. This deep brown ‘S’ shaped loaf contains Durum flour in the dough and roasted sesame seeds on top.

Semolina Loaf (Pane Siciliano), 500g loaf, $3.50

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday, November 16 and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

We promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

We’re really pleased to announce that we have an official flour supplier! Bob Balfour at R&J Milling in Riceton, Saskatchewan is an organic grain farmer who mills several varieties of flour, including the unbleached white flour and semolina flour we’ve used over the past several weeks. We’re going to be working with Bob to test new flours over the next few months. Stay tuned!

Our construction work is still in progress, but we can’t wait any longer — we need to bake! Here’s hoping you’re in need of some bread this week too.

This is a ‘back to basic’ week. Three loaves which are the building blocks of all the bread we make. But don’t let that deter you! Sometimes the simplest things are the best:

#1: Our multigrain loaf is our best seller. OK, it’s also the most offered loaf but people really seem to like it. This large sandwich loaf contains corn meal, rolled oats, brown rice and honey in addition to wheat flour giving a complex and slightly sweet flavour. It’s the mainstay of our breakfast routine.

– Orange Boot Multigrain, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#2: Our semolina loaf (Pane Siciliano) doesn’t the love it deserves — until you taste it. This deep brown ‘S’ shaped loaf contains Durum flour in the dough and roasted sesame seeds on top. It’s Cindy’s favorite. Yummy!

– Semolina Loaf (Pane Siciliano), 500g loaf, $3.50

#3: There’s nothing ordinary about our Pain Ordinaire – our french loaf is given an extra slow rise to extract the most flavour from our organic flour.

– French Loaf (Pain Ordinaire), 700g Batard, $3.50

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday, November 9 and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

We promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again.

Best wishes this week!

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

So we have power in the garage and we have a furnace in the garage. But we don’t have power connected to the furnace yet. Brrr!

Our week away from baking meant we put a great many hours into getting the prep / pickup area cleaned up, but there is still a lot of work to do. So pickup is in the house for at least another week. It’s getting there, though.

One of the problems people have been mentioning is not getting emails from the Orange Boot. The main reason is that I forget to add you to my Outlook email list. That’s pretty risky for both of us — we miss out on a regular customer and you miss out on good bread. Booo!

I think I can fix that. Now you can subscribe to updates from the website. Just check over on the sidebar where it says ‘Subscribe.’ Over there, on the right hand side of the screen —-> See the two links? “Subscribe by email” will 100% guarantee that you will get every single update on this site sent to your email inbox. “Subscribe in a reader” will let you get updates sent to your favorite RSS feed reader (if you don’t know about RSS, just stick with email.)

Either way, in three clicks or less you’ll be guaranteed never to miss an update, and never miss a chance to get some great bread. Yay!

Hello Bread Lovers!

I hope you enjoyed the bread last week. We had our busiest day yet with several new customers joining the Orange Boot list and a great many repeat orders, but we’re also getting the hang of the daily bake schedule now too. So even though we baked the most bread yet, we still had a chance to chat with everyone. That really makes the sore shoulders worthwhile!

We are bringing back some old favourites this week — a nice mix of bread styles to satisfy the most particular craving:

#1: Our multigrain loaf received a huge amount of positive feedback two weeks ago. This large sandwich loaf contains corn meal, rolled oats, brown rice and honey in addition to wheat flour giving a complex and slightly sweet flavour. If you didn’t get a chance to make toast with this bread last time, please get enough to try it this time. It makes the best toast ever!

– Orange Boot Multigrain, 800g Sandwich Loaf, $4.00

#2: Our semolina loaf (Pane Siciliano) was turned out a little rustic looking on Week #1 but the flavour was spot on. This deep brown ‘S’ shaped loaf contains Durum flour in the dough and roasted sesame seeds on top. Yummy!

– Semolina Loaf (Pane Siciliano), 500g loaf, $3.50

#3: I couldn’t keep enough Saskatchewan Sourdough around last week, so we’re making more this week. The wild yeast starter is strong and ready to perform for you once again. We add some whole wheat and rye flour for extra (not too sour) flavour.

– Saskatchewan Sourdough (Pain au Levain), 700g Boule, $3.50

#4: There’s nothing ordinary about our Pain Ordinaire – our french loaf is given an extra slow rise to extract the most flavour from our organic flour.

– French Loaf (Pain Ordinaire), 700g Batard, $3.50

As is our custom — please order by 6PM on Wednesday by sending an email to mark@madbaker.com or calling (306) 522-1592. Your bread will be ready for pickup between 3PM and 6PM on Friday, October 26 and can be picked up at 2904 Wascana Street. If you need the bread delivered I can do that after 6:00PM Friday but please call in advance to arrange for delivery.

*Please Note* — we promise to reply and confirm every email order we receive. So if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours please call or email again. We had a couple orders slip through the cracks and I still don’t know how that happened.

Best wishes this week!

Mark and Cindy

Ben and Robyn (chief order takers and phone support!)

mark@madbaker.com / cindy@madbaker.com

522-1592

http://orangeboot.wordpress.com/

=== What’s Happening at the Orange Boot? ===

Gas work got delayed by a week but we’re told it will be Thursday. Touch wood.

We’re working on getting bread pictures on the web site so you can see what you’re ordering. Hoping to get a start on that this week.

The mid week essay didn’t happen last week. Sorry about that. I think I over-reached. Right now we’re focused on getting better order tracking so we don’t miss you. That and pictures.