Without the bakers’ precisely timed and executed dance each night, all the specialized equipment and ovens are useless.
Seven nights a week, skilled bakers at the award-winning Bit of Swiss Artisanal Bakery produce scratch-baked items for Michiana residents to enjoy the next day. Their elegant, decadent and downright delightful croissants, Danish, scones, muffins, coffee cakes, cinnamon bread and cinnamon rolls are a sweet part of each night’s 10-hour production-baking shift in two brightly lit work areas.
The process that brings them to life is amazing. It’s all in the hands. Mostly flour covered. Always working. They touch each item as they bake through the night.
Overnight baking meets the next day’s specific retail and wholesale needs. But overall, the bakers’ nightly timeline (see below) is basically the same each day.
While we eat dinner, they pull the next day’s pre-shaped croissants and Danish from the cooler to proof. When we think about heading to bed, they, not even halfway through their work, bake coffee cakes. As we dream through early morning hours, they busily ice pastries. Long before most of us awake, they scale mixes for tomorrow’s day crew.
Bit of Swiss employs only six bakers (and one always-busy dishwasher) to accomplish everything. The bakers’ combined experience totals more than half a century. Amid their easy banter and the constant waves of ventilation system roar and dishwasher din, they bake racks of Danish and loaves in one oven and the next day’s miches and free-form breads and rolls in another massive, recessed, wall-size oven. They demonstrate a bone-deep understanding of their work. One casually flings flour to dust dough and work surfaces. Others quickly scale ingredients, knead and hand-shape loaves or mix poolishes so tomorrow’s staff can prepare the next night’s ready-to-bake breakfast pastries. The night’s particular workflow permits brief, opportunistic breaks, rather than ones based on the clock.
As each baker finishes one task, he glides into the next. One moves from working in the front room to the back. One shifts from manning the oversize oven to shaping loaves at a bench. Another finishes racking oven-fresh, aromatic baked goods, turning to fill the next batch of pastries. Although a head baker is present, there seems to be little direction. Rather it appears that each person’s intuitive knowledge of the night’s overall workflow and techniques allows him to move effortlessly from role to role. Like well-choreographed dancers, each baker knows exactly where the others will be and trusts their teammates to do their part. Their fluid progress demonstrates clearly why they, the bakers, are the bakery’s most efficient and effective technology. Without the bakers’ precisely timed and executed nightly dance, all the specialized equipment and ovens are useless.
This Friday’s production calls for only 764 breakfast items, down significantly from the previous Friday, now that the last farmers markets have closed. November schedules briefly add the bakery’s signature Wild Rice Bread. December nights find bakers producing Christmas stollen, an item deeply woven into multiple generations’ breakfast memories. Between Easter and Labor Day, the area’s increased second-homeowner population and reopened farmers markets swell demand again. The finite numbers of bakers and overnight hours somehow produce inevitably increased “high season” needs.
The number of clean pans, tubs and bowls starts to surpass ones yet to be washed. Ovens cool. The mixer quiets and is cleaned. In pre-dawn peacefulness, after using nearly 500 pounds of flour, the crew goes home in a largely still-slumbering world. Bakers sleep through the day and see their families and friends on days off or briefly the afternoon of their next overnight in the bakery.
The team’s working relationship enables it to consistently complete nightly and seasonally changing baking needs. When I asked for a baking schedule for the night I observed, I was told no detailed plan like this had ever been written down before. The bakers have worked together so long they understand the nuanced requirements by looking at what needs to be produced, or they talk through it on the fly. However they do it, they get everything done, almost magically.
Vinny Casciotta (pictured below), the Bit of Swiss night crew’s number-one baker, prepared this timeline. With his 20+ years of experience, it is a clear path through the night. Most descriptions contain multiple steps for the bakers. See the glossary below for definitions of baking terminology.
Adapted from baking dictionaries on the web.
Bit of Swiss
4333 Ridge Rd.
Stevensville, MI
269.429.1661
bitofswiss.com
@ Martin's Supermarket, various Indiana & Michigan locations
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