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00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Alain at Triskell Bakery. How are you? Hi, good morning. How are you? I'm good. Sorry to make you talk shop on your vacation. No problem. Okay. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do.

00:30 Yeah, so, well, I'm a baker now. I was a food scientist for all of my career, and I retired last September, and I always wanted to start something from scratch. And I had several options, I had several hobbies, and I ultimately selected baking, because that was...

00:57 passion of mine. I've been baking for about 15 years and you know, I came from a family of baker in France and so I started the bakery in January of this year. January 23rd was my first day and so I you know I posted on on social

01:27 thousand followers from my town and you know, neighboring towns and quickly realized that there was a need for an artisan French baker in Medina, Medina, Ohio, where it is. And it started from there. And yeah, it's taken off fairly quickly. That's amazing. So I have a quick question. In Ohio, do you guys have the cottage food producer?

01:55 thing like Minnesota does? Absolutely. That's exactly how I operate. So back in December, I started an LLC for Triskell Bakery and I looked up the rules and regulations for college law and made sure that I followed those guidelines. So I operate out of my house. I converted

02:24 mixing and my ingredient storage and all the extra equipment that I need. And I essentially used the oven in the kitchen and I've taken over several rooms in the house now. So my dining room is my office and a freezer in there and a refrigerator. So my wife is very gracious.

02:50 That helps a lot. Gracie's spouses are amazing. Absolutely, absolutely. I could not have done this without her support. She still works, she's a marketing project manager for a pet food company. And she's the one who told me, follow your passion. I was ready, I was ready to retire. I'm 57, so I was 56 when I retired, so fairly young. But I had enough seniority that

03:20 I was able to do that. So she's the one who carries the load for, she's the breadwinner and no pun intended. And she carries the family with all the insurance and things like that. Yay, girl power. I love it when women have the chance to do that stuff. She's a rock star. Awesome.

03:47 Okay, so since you've taken over a bunch of your house, does that mean that you might be considering moving into a bigger space? You know, we thought about it and eventually I think this is something that I would like to get, you know, at least a commercial kitchen so I could expand and grow because I'm close to capacity right now.

04:14 And so that's something we've talked about. A couple of options that came up. Ultimately, we decided that we want to go through at least an entire conduit year and see how this progresses and make sure that it's not a flash in a pen and it's something that's sustainable, both from a business standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint for us. We didn't want to go into taking a significant investment at this point.

04:43 So, but in the future, I think this is something that I'd like to do. Not to have a retail place to sell bread. That is clearly not my, my, my, my objective. But, you know, we'll talk a little more about this. I'm sure I, besides selling bread at local stores and farmers market, I also teach classes. So what I'd like to do is to have a commercial space where I can, I can have more equipment.

05:13 and that I could also teach my classes out of. Yeah, yep. Because you'll need the room because you're very popular and people are gonna wanna learn from you. So speaking of classes, I have a question. I have a question about croissants. When you make croissants, we have never attempted that here. My husband loves to bake breads, but we have not attempted croissants yet. Is that?

05:39 Is that like the puff pastry dough? Is that how that works? So croissant is a laminated dough. So that means that there's layers of, yeah, so it's essentially it's a puff pastry but with a commercial yeast. So it's using yeast. So it's, you know, a very simple list of ingredients. It's, you know, very similar to puff pastry, but there's also yeast in

06:09 overnight then I create my butter layer which is Typically deposited on the center of that dough that I stretch and fold until I get multiple layers. So You know you you make what you do You make what you call a butter block butter layer and then the dough is Encasing that butter and then you stretch it and you fold it stretch it fold it you do that about three times

06:36 which creates about 81 layers of butter and dough. And then you stretch that, shape it, proof it, bake it. And it's been very popular here. So when you, I'm asking, because my husband is probably gonna listen to this episode. He doesn't listen to very many of them because he's busy, but because you're a baker, he's gonna wanna listen. So with the butter, is the butter cold when you do that, or is it room temperature? Absolutely.

07:04 Okay, well the butter needs to be cold but pliable. So when I'm, you know, so last night I started on vacation, but I have been baking. Just, you know, just for my neighbors here. It's something I do. So the butter, I make my dough the night before so I made two batches of croissant dough last night. And if they've been proofing overnight so this morning.

07:29 After this call, I'm going to make my butter block. So basically you shape and you use a European butter. So it has a higher fat content, so lower moisture. And that really helps in the proofing and it, not the proofing, but it helps during the baking of creating those layers of butter and dough. So the butter has to be cold, but pliable. So you don't want it to be brittle and you don't want it to be warm.

07:59 because then the butter would melt in those layers of dough. So it's important to keep that butter at the right temperature. So it's about maybe 50 degrees, 50, 55 degrees, when I do the stretch and fold. OK, thank you, because he's going to want to know. I suspect that I have croissants in my future this winter, as soon as he listens to this. He's going to be like, that's not.

08:28 That sounds simple. Yeah, it's not hard at all. It's just time consuming, because you start your, the French call it the trempes, you start your dough the night before, then the next morning you make about a block. You go through your three successive stretches and folds, and then I let that final dough rest again overnight, and then tomorrow morning,

08:57 I'll be stretching it to its final shape and shape the croissants and let them proof and bake them tomorrow morning. So it takes about two days, two, two and a half days. So what you're saying is that tomorrow morning, wherever you're staying is going to smell amazing. Uh huh. Yeah. And I have a German neighbor. She's 85 years old.

09:21 and she loves my croissants. And so I haven't told her it's gonna be a surprise for her. I'm gonna bring her croissant for breakfast tomorrow. Aw, sweet. That is adorable. Okay, so I read in the email you sent me that you are from the Brittany region, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I was born in France, born and raised, and I went to school in France. So my...

09:49 All my family is from the west coast of France in a region called Brittany. So if you look at France, kind of an hexagon, Brittany is the westernmost region in France. My family comes from the north coast of Brittany, so it's alongside the channel. And when I was a kid, I used to spend my summer at my cousin's bakery. He's my cousin now, but he's my cousin, but his dad owned the bakery at the time.

10:19 So when I was a kid, I used to spend my summer there and go and work with him at night. When I was a little too young, he would shoo me and send me back to bed. But I would help him in the bakery and then go on delivery runs with them because they live, it's a countryside area. It's rural, it's not urban.

10:45 So we would load the van and we would go house to house and farm to farm and sometime it was, all right, you take two baguettes and a large loaf, you go in the kitchen, don't mind the German shepherd, drop the bread on the table and pick up the money and come back. And that's how it was. And so that's what I did when I was a kid, my brothers and my cousins would go to the beach, I would go to the bakery.

11:13 And so, but I was born in Paris and I went to school in Paris. I studied food science. So I was a, you know, food scientist, like I said, and, uh, but yeah. Uh, so, um, French through and through, uh, I've been in the US for 33 years now. Okay. Thank you for all that. The reason that I asked about the Brittany region.

11:38 is because you said hence the name Triskell bakery and I don't know the reference so you want to fill me in on why it's hence Triskell? Absolutely. So a triskell is the logo, you know the three arm logo that's on my website and on my Facebook page, that's called a triskell. So when I was looking for a name for the bakery, I was looking for something that was reminiscent of my origins.

12:08 And so I had several options and I went to my social media and asked my friends, my family, what do you think of the different names that I had? And Triskell was one of the ones that was intriguing. The logo was very compelling, very unique. And Triskell is a Celtic symbol that has been present over

12:35 over centuries, so originated in Ireland and the British Isles and has had multiple meanings across generation. The one that I'm most familiar with is birth, life and death. There's other meanings as well. So I thought the logo was very compelling as a logo for a business. The name was easy to pronounce for Americans.

13:04 compelling for me as a Frenchman from the region of Brittany and all my family over there thinks it's wonderful that I chose Triskell as a business name. Awesome. Thank you. Because I was like the only Triskell I know about is in pagan stuff. And I was like, I don't think it's a pagan reference. So I need to know. Okay. Awesome. So tell me about your classes. How? Actually, no, don't tell me about your classes yet.

13:33 How much bread are you producing and selling a week? Because I'm really curious. We're a cottage-brew producer. OK, so right now, I do the farmers market in Medina, which is Medina, Ohio, which is located about one hour south of Cleveland. So we are between Akron and Cleveland, roughly, just to give you a location. So from a bread product, I make bread for the farmers market.

14:02 The preparing for this is a two day ordeal. I feed my starter on Wednesday night. I shape the bread on, I make the dough and shape the bread on Thursday. Then I start the croissants on Thursday, shape them on Friday. And then Friday evening is when I start baking everything. So I make about between 25 and 30 loafs of sourdough bread, either sourdough bread or

14:31 I also make little Brazilian cheese bites, cheesy bread. You can find it in stores. In Brazil, it's called Pão de Queijo. And I traveled there. I worked there for Smucker's back in early 2000. And this is a little recipe that people in Medina love. So I make that as well. And I make about 100%. So between

14:59 croissant, pain au chocolat, the Pound de Queijo, bites, I make about 250 of those, and the sourdough. Yeah, that's quite a bit. So it's a, you know, I start baking, you know, I heat up my oven around eight, nine o'clock on Friday night, start baking around 10, I'm done with the sourdough about maybe one o'clock in the morning, and then after that, it's the Pound de Queijo and then the croissant lastly.

15:29 I want the croissants to be as fresh and crunchy as possible. And sometimes they are still a little warm when I get to the farmers market. Wow. So you don't sleep the night before the farmers market. I don't. It's a yeah, I pull probably 30 hour to 36 hours straight when I do the farmers market. So I think I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to do all this. And I do it all by myself. So

15:59 It's very time consuming, but I love it. And I think I might scale back a little bit next year. And there are some farmers markets in the winter as well. We have a couple of greenhouses here, one's called Boilips, and I do that farmers market in the winter. It's more like every other week or once a month. Oh, so you sleep in the wintertime. That's helpful. Yeah, exactly.

16:27 So and then to make my sourdough, so the process is I'm using Dutch ovens. So because that I want that nice opening of the ear on the sourdough to have the microblisters on the side and to have this kind of like gelatinous shiny surface of the bread. So it's not only I want the bread to taste good, but I also want it to look good. So I use Dutch oven for the first part of the baking process.

16:56 And then halfway through the baking process, I removed the lid, which enables the bread to start developing color and the crust. And since we have a fairly wide and deep tall oven at home, it's a commercial. It's like a wolf or Viking, but it's to do quite a few loaves at once, which is the only way I could do this. Yes. And

17:24 I understand about you want them to look good too because we eat with our eyes first. Absolutely. Absolutely. So one little thing that I do is, I don't know if you saw some of the pictures of the bread that I make, but I have little stencils that I put on the bread before it goes in the Dutch oven, before it bakes, and I sprinkle some flour through the stencil. So then I remove the stencil and I have either the Eiffel Tower or a

17:54 uh... you know stock of uh... of weeds or uh... even my logo or or the gazebo of our town center so it's kind of a way to differentiate and uh... you know to give a little bit of that uh... uh... differentiation you know aspect of of my bread and and and people react to it pretty well at the market they want to start with like oh do you have one with the Eiffel Tower or do you have one with the

18:23 So my sister-in-law has helped me a lot with a lot of, you know, setting up the bakery and doing all those things. And so she's made all those signs for me. That's fun. Okay. It is fun. Okay. So I still want to get to your classes, but I keep coming up with other questions that don't have to do with classes. We will get there eventually. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. So you learned a lot of this as a young kid.

18:53 Did you go to any culinary school at all or have you just learned this on your own? It's learned on my own. It has been, you know, I was gifted a bread machine back in 2006, 2007. And so I started with that. And then I realized quickly that I didn't meet my, my, my, my ideal of a, of a, you know, advertising loaf of bread.

19:20 So then I started using it just to make the dough and then shaped it and baked it in the oven. Still was not happy. Then we started investing into, you know, KitchenAid mixers. And then I bought my first sourdough starter, which was a San Francisco sourdough starter, back in 2009, I think. So my starter is about 15 years old. And then I never went back. So, and I learned from

19:50 You know from failures and it's really how I've have grown in in in making bread is trying and taking notes some help from some you know bakers and some people that some authors there's there's a great. How do book called the perfect loaf gentleman by the name of Mauricio Leo and.

20:17 friend of them online and he's been giving me some advice as well as sharing some of the tools that he uses in his bakery. So I've not attended a culinary school and it's been all about learning myself and practicing

20:43 especially making baguettes and making, well actually everything, sourdough baguettes as well as croissants. It took me a while to get to to the quality that I have now and it was sometimes frustrating but you know you just like everything you once you persevere eventually you'll get some results that you're happy with. Yep, it's funny that you mentioned that you got the

21:12 the bread maker machine back whenever you got it. My husband started out making yeast breads using a KitchenAid mixer to do the kneading. Two years ago, he made a honey oat bread and he had cleaned off our island and everything to get ready. He started making the bread and I said, you're not using the mixer. He said,

21:39 It doesn't need it the way I want it to. He said, I'm just going to do it with my hands. And, and I was like, Oh, okay. Fine. Use your hands. He said, I'm not being prissy. He said, it just doesn't, it just doesn't do it the way that I do it. And I said, have at it. You are the bread maker. Enjoy. And he's so funny because when he's making bread, he hums.

22:05 He's so happy to be baking that he hums under his breath. It is adorable. You know, it's funny because even when I, after the farmers market, I need a couple of days to recoup. So usually my weekend is a Sunday and Monday. And we're lucky enough to have a little cottage alongside a small lake here in Ohio. So that's, we come down here and regroup and re-jump, you know, refresh. But when I go back,

22:34 I'm excited, I'm ready to do it again. I'm ready to, just the process of feeding my starter first thing in the morning. I make coffee, I feed the dogs, I feed my starter. And then I decide like, what am I gonna do today? And sometimes it's making bread for the neighbor or it's just practicing testing a new recipe. And sometimes I've got people reaching out to me and say, oh, I'd love to learn how to make eggs. And say, huh, I've never made those.

23:04 Because I, you know, like I said, don't have a culinary background. So my portfolio of product is expanding, but it's still fairly limited. Okay. And with that, let's get into your classes. Do you hold them in your home? No, no, I don't. That's one thing that we decided my wife and I, like our home is outside of, you know, doing the making the bread is we keep it private.

23:34 So people ask if they could pick up bread from the house and say, no, I'll find places where people can go and find bread. So back in January, so very sweet was it, for a second, I was having breakfast with a friend at a little cafe in town, and they have a little kitchen which is set up for classes like this. And the owner was talking with us, and my friend said, oh, Alain could,

24:02 teach classes there and the, you know, the, the owners are years parked up and said, Oh, you, you know, you, you, you, I don't, I had done a few classes with a school with my, with my children and, but I had never done something like that. So it's like, yeah, I could. So pretty much simultaneously between starting the bakery, starting to sell bread.

24:28 and I started planning classes all at the same time. So March 2nd was the first class that I held. I did a couple of dry runs and just to make sure I had the material that I had the content of the class. I put together a little presentation which I joked that I thought my PowerPoint days were over. And it was, that's how it started. So,

24:56 I hold classes mostly at a little cafe on the square called Cool Beans Cafe. And so we take six to eight students at once. The class is about a hundred dollars per student and it's a three hour class. But since the process is a two and a half, three day process, it's a little bit like TV magic. So I started the process two days earlier.

25:25 So I make the dough or I make the detente. I prepare the dough. So when we do croissants, onto class with a dough that's ready to be shaped and proofed and baked. So students will go home with some croissants that they've shaped themselves. A batch from scratch during the class. And I teach them making the stretch and fold.

25:56 making the top, making the bottom layer. And then we go through a couple of stretches and fold. And then we develop and they take home as well, though that they continue on shaping the next day. And then they send me pictures of the croissant they make as a result of the class. And it's amazing. Some of those are absolutely fantastic. And I think everybody's enjoyed the class so far.

26:24 And so that's all the croissant. For the sourdough, it's a little different. So I start the dough a couple of days before, and I shape it so that when we come to class, there's already some loaves that are shaped. So that's where they learn to, the scoring of the bread, they decorate it with the stencils that they bring. But we also start a, I also shape the dough that, so that when I come to class, that dough is to be divided and shaped. So,

26:53 they learned the pre-shaping and shaping process of a boule, a batard, and then a baguette as well. And so the bread that they decorate, we bake, they take that home, and then they have, so in the vannette, it's the baskets where the sourdough is proofed.

27:22 Each of the students go home with one of those baskets. They get an apron, they get a dough scraper, a bench knife, the slats they use to slash the bread. So they go home with quite a bit. And we also start a batch from scratch during that class to learn the gluten development and doing autolyse and doing all those things that I teach.

27:51 But that bread is not done by the time the class is over. So I take it home, I finish it, and I donate that bread to a cafe in Medina that serves free food for people who don't have much. Super cool. This is an aspect also of the bakery that people have actively invested in.

28:18 I donate a lot. I donate back to my community and through donation and charity and people have been reacting very positively to that. I say this to everybody who makes my heart bigger than my chest. I love you. You're doing a fantastic thing. What's the atmosphere like in the classes? Is it like chatting and laughing and giggly and people making mistakes or not making mistakes? How does it go?

28:46 Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. So the classes that I do at Cool Beans, it's a little more, they are paying customers, so they pay a lot of attention, right? So, and they do remarkable work. I'm amazed at the quality of what they do in a very short amount of time. But it's also fun. And I include some stories about my childhood and some of the language bloopers that I did when I first came to the US.

29:16 But then I also do classes in people's home. So if people have like five, six friends, they can book the class and I go to their home. And at that point, usually it's a little more, it has more room for fun. So sometimes it's a breakfast, but they have mimosa or sometimes it's an evening and they have wine and charcuterie. So it's very fun.

29:45 and sometimes they are friends and family. I've done some for birthday parties, a surprise birthday party for a man who did that for his wife. That was a great class. And then we have another one also in, it's called Parlor Farms. I've friended the two owners, Tony and Jamie, and they have a beautiful home, beautiful kitchen, and they invite some friends and family and neighbors, and we do classes there.

30:15 And yeah, so the classes are really fun. It's probably my favorite part of what I do. And I do a few corporates as well. I do some for, there's a restaurant in town that focus on individuals who are recovering from addiction. So they've asked me if I would teach classes there. So it's a charity, it's a nonprofit. So, you know, I...

30:44 I give them a little discount and I teach their cooks their sourdough croissants and baguettes. And I just finished a class last week, a series of three classes with them and I'll do it again because it's rewarding. I didn't go into this retirement job to make money and to be rich.

31:14 matters to me and just the aspect of giving back to my community and connecting with people. I see Bred as a way to connect people together and luckily it's been very successful so far. Awesome. All right. So to recap all of this, the reason I asked you to be on the podcast is because I thought that you had started it as kind of a passion project, a hobby, whatever.

31:45 And I assumed that you were a cottage food producer because I didn't think you had a standalone bakery. And you kind of fit my things that I like to do regarding the podcast. And the reason that you fit is because you are a cottage food producer, but you are doing big things in that title, I guess, that label. So

32:14 People who are interested in baking or making canned goods or whatever, if your state has a cottage food registration, you should be able to take the thing you love making, make it and sell it and make some money from it. And I want people to know that because I didn't know until a few years ago that I could do it. And I've been making granola because it's easy.

32:43 And we sell it, we sell it at the farmer's market and people are paying $12 a bag for like not even a pound of granola. And that's to cover my cost and my time and stuff. And I kind of feel bad about it, but I also feel like not everyone wants the fancy factory made granola from the store. And that's even more expensive than what I make. So yeah.

33:12 Anyone who wants to do this and has the drive and determination to do it can do it. Yeah. So that's why I wanted to talk to you. So in all of this, I really appreciate your time. I'm going to let you go because I'm sure you'd like to go hang out with your family while you're on vacation. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's funny you mentioned something about the price and people

33:40 people tell me you don't charge enough for your bread, you don't charge enough for your croissants. And it might be true, but I see the bread almost as a business card now, because people, when they come and buy the bread, I mentioned that I also teach classes, and the reaction more often than not is, oh, you do? It's like, I could teach you to make exactly this. And then usually they take my card, and very often I hear back from them, and now I'm booked.

34:09 I'm booking already into November and December. Wow. It's been a journey, but it has exceeded mine and my wife's expectation. This is really, it's me, I'm the front of the business, but like I said, I couldn't do it without my wife's support. My kids are getting involved as well now. So now it's been a great ride. I don't read.

34:39 regret having retired at all. But you said something about people, if you wanna do it, start it. I was interviewed a while back and someone, the interviewer asked me, would you have a tip for someone who wants to start something like this? And I said, do it and start it. If you fail, you learn from it. And next time you have another idea, try it again. And that's the advice I would give anybody who's listening.

35:09 Yes, and it goes along with my thing about make the big ask. If there's something you want to know, if there's someone you want to talk to, if you want to learn from someone, ask because the worst you're going to get is no. And if you want to start something like you're starting with this, the worst that's going to happen is it doesn't go anywhere and you try something else. Exactly. Absolutely. So that's how I see it.

35:36 All right. Thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Have a great day. It was great talking to you.