The lovely weekly menu is updated. Have you had about as much of this rain as you can take yet? I have and have resorted to looking through old travel photos!

Enjoy this one –   which is the fountain outside our favorite coffee shop in Rome – Cafe Sant Eustachio. The best coffee in the world if you ask us!

We did manage to catch a small bit of sun this morning as the kids and I went out to the park this morning and it was hot, sweaty, and very nice all at the same time. It’s over at Lake Newnan.

It’s been one soggy week here! We’ve had flooding outside the house and lots of test baking inside (Devil’s food cake with a brown sugar Italian buttercream and rye bread using Thurston Gardens own dried fennel – both were a-m-a-z-i-n-g!). We, as a family, do not usually get but tastes of things here and there, so it was really nice to sit down to a dessert made just for us. Both items are definitely on the Master Menu for private orders.

Anywho… the weekly menu is out there for your reading enjoyment. I’ll see you bright and early on Saturday! Your baker, Amanda

Your baker has been hanging with the beach bums over at Cape San Blas with her adorable boys and her family. This means a slightly-less-than ridiculous amount of baked goods will be offered on Saturday. Head over to the weekly menu to see what I am attempting to get done, somehow, though my mind keeps wandering back to the Gulf.

See you Saturday! Your baker, Amanda

Check out the weekly menu at http://bakerbaker.net/weekly-menu

See you this weekend rain, more rain, or shine! Your baker, Amanda

I am sure, if you’re reading this, that you know– but I want to make sure you know just how important I consider my relationships with my local farms and food producers. I do my best to spend and eat locally, and I think it is my duty to try to encourage as many of my loyal customers to do the same. . .

Last month, I attended a cooking class at Blue Oven Kitchens that was hosted by Stephanie Hamblen of Hoggetown Homegrown. She opened the class with one of the best speeches I have heard on the topic. To really get the full power of Stephanie’s message, I would highly recommend one of her classes (not to mention the fact that she can flat out cook like nobody’s business), but the basic idea of the talk was something like this: the only way we will rebuild our economy, the only way we are ever going to be truly economically healed, is to keep our money in our communities.

We are all busy, and we all want to do the right thing, so we struggle… we all know this stuff. So, to make this long post just a bit shorter and sweeter, here are the businesses that have my enduring support, and what products they are in. I am not advertising here, but I do get asked questions about my ingredients from time to time. These people are my friends, of course. But their products, and the quality those products exhibit,  speak for themselves. I wouldn’t bake with them otherwise.

Cross Creek Honey – used in croissant dough, tea breads, linzer cookies, pecan pie bars, and much more. I use whatever Jennifer, aka “that honey lady”, suggests, but my personal favorite is the Year End Bold. It is at the end of its run now and it is now time to work with something different till the-end-of-the-year …  Jennifer suggested the Wild Flower and after tasting it, I couldn’t agree more.

Tree City Coffee – used in Helga cakes, espresso brownies, and my own caffeination. My preference is the Dark and Stormy- the espresso shots you get from it are the best you’ll taste this side of the Mediterranean.

Archer Market Garden – used in Cheddar, chive, and sprout scones. I survive on these sprouts in salads, on sandwiches, and my cat adores the wheat grass!

The Orange Barn – their citrus and blueberries are in just about everything I bake. I was ecstatic when they told me they had an early blueberry crop this year.

Our Haile Market farmers: Rusty, Swallowtail, Possum Hollow, the strawberry vendors, etc. I scour the market searching for ways to use all the wonderful produce available. I have gotten local jams for using in cupcakes, molasses for cookies, ginger root that I candied for scones, mint from Thurston Farms for pound cake, gorgeous meats from the Florida Fresh Meat Company, and so much more. The carrots from Swallowtail are featured in my Swiss carrot bread because they are, hands down, the sweetest I’ve ever tasted.

You can rest assured that if you buy from me, you are also buying into an intricate web of support that helps everyone else at the market. One purchase may be helping three or four local food suppliers. This type of locavore thinking is, I believe, what creates a sustainable local economy that will shrug off whatever funk the rest of the world throws at it.

And now, for something completely different. . .

I have one more quick thing to share with you: I’ve gotten a lot of questions during the Saturday morning markets about whether or not I do private cake/pastry orders or dessert catering. The answer is most definitely YES! Whether you are coming up on your 10 year wedding anniversary, throwing a special dinner party, in need of a breakfast pastry tray for the office, or your little one is turning two, I’ll make that special pastry or cake that will bring a smile to every face in the room. All I ask is for two days notice- that way I can squeeze it in between everything I make for the market.

Your baker, Amanda

**** warning: this is a long-winded rant*****

I am a baker, selling small little morsels at a farmer’s market… is it really necessary for me to deal with 10 different State and local government agencies?? I spent this morning (not baking – that would make sense), no,  driving to Alachua, Florida to the Department of Revenue office to apply for a business tax certificate – only to be turned away without one. I’ll explain, bear with me though, as it is CONFUSING!

If you run a small bakery in Florida, you are not subject to tax if you sell goods prepackaged for home consumption. There are pages and pages of official documents that will give you “if-then” situations to determine whether or not to charge tax. They go so far as to suggest that you have two separate registers, one for taxable goods and one for non-taxable goods. The gist, as I understand it, is that if the consumer consumes in your sight – you better tax it??? Who on Earth came up with these laws. So, if come up and buy from me at the market, tell me to close my eyes if you want to open it immediately.

Regardless, I am not subject to pay or charge tax on my bakery goods. It took one hour, 3 phone calls, and an email to determine this. Our tax dollars people – hard at work.

The problem is this, large suppliers of food goods require this document(the tax certificate) in order to open an account with them.  They get audited, they are only covering their bums. If I were to buy all my ingredients from a box store, like Publix, I would have to charge you – my dear customer – your first born child. That’s silly. The point of the Cottage Food law was to help entrepreneurs, yours truly, get off their feet with a new business. I can’t do that if all of my sales go to ingredient costs and … you won’t buy it if it costs 3x that of Publix goods.

I’ve gotten around this situation thus far by using something called “will call” at the big suppliers. I drive to Ocala to Cheney Brothers and pick up a case of Plugra butter and 150# of King Arthur flour. There is also a place here in Gainesville called Florida Foods that I use occasionally. I can do will call if I use cash and my VW wagon for transport Not very efficient, but it works.

Remember that I buy all my fresh goods from the market or locally, if possible. Unfortunately, there are no flour mills around!

What has really been the clincher is that now I am branching out into some wonderful European pastries that require large amounts of vanilla, vanilla beans, and other “gourmet” ingredients. I’ve been buying them from an online distributor, but it’s killing me in price and conscience. The only place that carries it in Gainesville is Kitchen and Spice, in 4oz bottles – that’s one week’s worth. Not cost effective at all!

So, we are circling back to buying from these giant food distributors. Thankfully, I’ve found one, The Cristol Group, in south Florida and I think they will be able to work with me. I’ve been working with this nice lady over email who loves her job and has great customer service skills! She, or rather her company, is a direct distributor for Neilsen-Massey. This seems to be the only brand out there with a notion for quality when it comes to extracts.

All this writing is simply to say this – is it really necessary to go through all this paperwork juggling, tax dollars, and headaches just to sell a muffin that I made in my own home? There has to be a better way to do small business because if things do not change, there will be no small businesses – it’s too much hassle.

You know those weeks, the ones you wish you could erase from your life? Well, last week was one for us. I won’t go into details as it’s a little too personal for public consumption – but it involved sickness, disease, and death  Too much for one week.  So, I stayed home from the market and took care of what needed done.

Then, we proceeded with normal life, because that’s what you do when presented with these situations. After dinner while my husband was doing dishes (yes, lucky, I know!) my son was sifting through my new book, “Bake it like you mean it” by Gesine Bullock-Prado. He jokingly said “Ma, you could NEVER make a cake that looked that good” – ouch! Then, the bets proceeded. If I could come close, my husband was judge, my son would have to do the dishes next weekend.

*** I am proud to say that he is doing the dishes next weekend!! ****

I needed distraction, some inspiration, and a little challenge – I now had it. This cake is a crazy, multi-faceted, behemoth that took me all day to do. I loved every minute of it.

I am a professional baker, with a stint as a pastry chef. Being told repeatedly that I am  a talented baker, I feel that I can make that statement  without sounding cocky. However, I am NOT a decorator. When people order cakes from me, I always tell them that it will taste amazing and look “nice”.

It’s always bugged me that I am not a patient, meticulous decorator. Hence, this book made it on my wish list wayyy back when it was announced last year. Having been a Christmas present, it was on order and has just been released. What perfect timing.

I plan on making as many cakes as I can without my waistline expanding too much – watch out neighbors I’ll be knocking on your doors with cake! Practice makes perfect and the harder the challenge – the more I fail – the better I’ll get.

~ Your baker, Amanda

ps. enjoy the photo journal below which documents the fun times. I used Hershey’s cocoa as that is all I had available therefore my cake is lighter in color. I also baked in a convection oven with no problem and used my DLX mixer. For those of you with small mixers, bowls, and pans – beware! This is a mammoth cake with mammoth amounts of batter. It filled everything to the brim. The icing calls for 3 pounds of butter (good gravy Gesine!!) but my buttercream came together at just over 2 pounds, so I stopped there.

Good Afternoon,

This week as been a doosey! Lots of 'stuff' going on at home and with family. So, forgive me this one week that I will only be giving you a vague idea of what I will bring. As always, I will work as hard as possible to bring you the finest pastries - but there is limited time and physical endurance on my part!

I do know that I will have croissant, kringle, scones, morning buns, strudel, and danish for breakfast. I'm working on banana breads and cranberry orange breads as well. Stollen and Gibassier have been started and are slowly rising.

The glaring things that are missing are pecan pie bars and s'more brownies. I am going to try and squeeze them in! They are my favorite too.

Come out and say "hi" to your baker.

*********** Other news **********

In the past week, I have burned out both my oven and my mixer (what luck, I know). The bakery has had to buy both and is now going to have a time of it trying to get back in the black. Rather than put a jar out at the market, I am putting one here. Thank you for your continued support!