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Ciao Bella Breads | Britany

@ciaobellabreads

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Bread that actually nourishes 🌾
Sharing what I learn along the way
Free recipes + sourdough guides ↓
A sourdough microbakery in Ottawa, IL

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The number one question I’ve been getting this month is “how do I get more blisters on my bagels?” It might seem like I have it figured out but honestly I really don’t. I’m still experimenting and trying to understand what specifically influences them.

The number one change I made to start getting more blistering was to stop thinking about bagels as bagels. I’ve been experimenting with pizza (specifically the Blister City pizza from @zachs_cafe). Zach’s process has really challenged the way I think about bagels. It turns out pizza and bagels are actually really similar. I’ve been making adjustment to my bagel process to more mimic the way Zach bakes his pizzas.

Also cold proof time definitely has an impact. This week in my stories I mixed a dough and boiled and baked one bagel each day. Blistering really started to take off around 36 hours. 48 was more evenly-distributed blistering. The difference between this bagel (80 hours) and 48 hours was more so the size of the actual blisters. I’m not convinced it’s really worth taking them past the 48 hour mark. I had to reduce my starter percentage to account for extended time in the fridge. Another change I’ve been experimenting with is adding 2% barley malt to the actual dough. This was suggested by my friend @braun_bread.

I’ve also been adding at least 10% hard red wheat (@heartlandcraftgrains bread flour). I think this has a definite effect on the coloring, adds a lot to the taste, and increases the nutrients. Win, win, win.

@breadbycj has influenced my baking temperatures in the Pico+ and I’ve mainly adopted her baking process. I preheat 280/280 and leave the vent closed for 3 minutes. Blistering begins forming on the surface around the 3 to 3.5 minute mark and I open the vent and reduce the upper temperature to 250 so they can keep baking for at least 12-15 minutes.

I’ll keep experimenting with this because I find it so fascinating but I’m going to slightly shift my focus to incorporating more whole grains into my bagels. I really dream of having a 100% whole grain bagel that is still light!

#sourdough #sourdoughbagels #bagels #holdthebagel #ciaobellabakealong by @ciaobellabreads

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6 months ago

I cannot believe it’s almost been 3 months since my husband quit his job to make bread with me (even though he had never baked a day in his life). It’s been filled with so many ups and downs but we are learning that the biggest part to growing a bakery is being flexible. What you think will work, isn’t always what actually does. Sometimes you just have to not be afraid to try something new and make adjustments from there. Each week definitely doesn’t look the same. Weeks 10 and 11 were a good testament of that. We went from the worst week of profits we’ve ever had, to the most profitable week right after. I really think this happened because we were motivated to sit down and pick apart what EXACTLY didn’t work the week before. Making those intentional changes caused a week that was both profitable and felt less stressful (double win)! We are so excited to see where we can continue to take this bakery and thanks so much for coming along for the ride. We are so grateful!

Also message for our locals: this week will be a regular two day bread drop, but the two following weeks may look a little different. My husband and I have back to back jury duty! So possibly stock up this week. Bread freezes so well.

#sourdough #sourdoughmicrobakery #microbaker #ottawail #sourdoughbread by @ciaobellabreads

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8 days ago

It’s been awhile since we’ve made a post to show you what we’ve been loving to bake lately. So here’s some rye that Gino made this week 😍🌾

#sourdough #ryebread #sourdoughrye #fryeday #ottawail by @ciaobellabreads

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11 days ago

Week nine and doing just fine! I’m taking it as a good sign that these weekly updates are starting to get harder to make. I attribute it mostly to the fact that we are genuinely finding a rhythm that works for us and it’s just starting to feel like another week! We haven’t had to refund any orders the past few weeks and I can’t express how excited that makes me. We went through a couple weeks where it seemed like one menu item failed each week. But also I think we have done a better job at being more intentional at putting out a menu we know we can execute well. Next week sounds like a good week to shake things up and offer some items that will push us a little more. But the steadiness of the bakery this week really allowed me to work on some true passion projects of mine. It’s been a little while since I’ve baked something just for the fun of it. This week we started working on baguettes again. Baguettes will always be something that I strive to perfect. This week, more than ever, I started to see the connection between bagels and baguettes. So I’m excited to keep exploring that! Also if you’ve been here for a while you’ll know that panettone is my magnum opus bread. My husband’s family is half Italian (Bari) and half Sicilian (Palermo). It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to bring the panettone to Christmas dinner at my husband’s aunts house. They buy one from a local bakery each year. This year I started earlier. I’ve been following the “Pasta Madre From Scratch: The Complete 10-Day Guide” from @natashas_baking. It’s already going so much better than last year. So I’m feeling hopeful. We are on about day 14 of of that and we are planning to attempt our first panettone bake of the season this coming week. Here’s to another week of doing what we love most🥂 #sourdough #sourdoughmicrobaker #sourdoughbaker #sourdoughbaguettes taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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22 days ago

It’s crazy to think that it’s been 56 days since my husband quit his job as a process engineer to bake bread with me at home. Just two months ago, I was baking 15 loaves and some sweets every other week for our community. But somehow sitting on a beach in Michigan my husband knew he wanted something different for our lives and looked over at me and said “do you think we can make this bakery thing work?” We decided to give it 90 days to see if we could!

Eight weeks in and the future looks bright! We are having so much fun and learning with every bake. I think the theme of this week was capacity. It was tested on all fronts. We found out the capacity of our mixer is definitely less than 16 sandwich loaves, our mental capacity for bagels is for sure less than 120, and we will probably not be offering two items with different frostings again.

Each week we grow as bakers and learn what does and doesn’t work. But also each week we feel more confident going into the next and I think that’s what it’s all about. Thanks for another week of letting us bake for you and your families. And thanks to all of our internet friends who have been cheering us along each week. We are so grateful for you! 🤍🌾

#sourdoughmicrobaker #sourdough #sourdoughbagels #ottawail #sourdoughbread taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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a month ago

It’s with a heavy heart that we say this will most likely be the last pay-what-you-can stand that we offer. We honestly debated posting this or not, but we are committed to taking you all along on the highs AND LOWS of these first 90 days. It took a few days to share the recap of last week because we needed a few days to collect our thoughts and decide how to move forward.

Last week was our 4th pay-what-you-can stand. We’ve done one once a month, every month since June. When I first decided to offer this, it was with the intention of making fresh bread accessible to everyone. I don’t believe it should be a luxury or something you have to sacrifice in other areas to have access to bread made with local, better for you ingredients. I’ll be honest, when I first rolled out this idea I received messages from several other bakers telling me that it was a bad idea or that they tried similar approaches and it didn’t work out. But deep in my heart I hoped that I could make it work because I wanted it to so badly.

It’s never a fun thing when a handful of people take advantage of a system and take away something that had so much potential for good in the community. We’ve never measured success of these stands as how much profit was made, because it’s definitely not a lot. But truly it was never about that for us. We measured success by knowing that families were fed and bread was SHARED. Unfortunately it didn’t happen that way this week.

We are still committed to getting bread in the hands of those who need it most. We will be brainstorming the best way to accomplish this in a little more structured of a way. Thank you so much to every person who has supported these stands and used them appropriately. We are so grateful for you 🤍

#sourdough #sourdoughbread #sourdoughbaker #sourdoughbakery by @ciaobellabreads

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a month ago

Tomorrow is our monthly pay-what-you-can sourdough bread stand. But it’s a special one because we are having it at @amessofthingsottawail in downtown Ottawa. Gino will be there from 2-4 pm (or until sold out). We hope you’ll stop by. All items are entirely pay what you can. There won’t be any prices, we just ask that you pay whatever you are comfortably able to or pass on a smile to someone else throughout your day. There will be a box for cash or you can pay by card by scanning a QR code that will be on the table. Pre-orders will also be at A Mess of Things if you selected the store as your pickup location. Thank you so much for another week of allowing Gino and I to bake for you and your loved ones 🤍🌾

#sourdough #sourdoughbread #ottawail #sourdoughpaywhatyoucan #breadstand taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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a month ago

We are so excited to announce that we’ve partnered with @amessofthingsottawail to offer a secondary pickup location for our breads + bakes. Going forward you’ll be given the choice of pickup locations when you place your pre-orders: our home on the south side or A Mess of Things in downtown Ottawa.

To kick things off, we are doing our monthly pay what you can bread stand at A Mess of Things this Saturday from 2-4 pm. We will be bringing a bunch of breads, sweet bakes, and our first fall themed cookies of the season. We hope to see you there!

If you want to skip the line, you can also pre-order from a limited menu for Saturday: country loaves, spelt tortillas, soft sandwich bread + chocolate chip cookies. The text for those will be going out at 4 pm today.

#sourdougbread #sourdoughbaker #ottawail #ottawasourdough #sourdoughmicrobakery taken in A Mess of Things by @ciaobellabreads

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a month ago

Another week baking with my husband + another recap: We were coming off of a week with the most preorders we’ve ever had. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that they were a little lower this week. But last week showed us our true capacity and that meant we knew we could bake much more than what was already pre-sold. We decided to take somewhat of a gamble by baking more of just about every item. This is something I learned from my dear friend @sarkasdailybread. We were counting on the fact that sometimes people want last minute, same day breads and bakes. We knew that if anything was leftover we would use it as a marketing opportunity to pass around to neighbors who haven’t tried our breads yet. We’ve gotten several repeat customers from doing this.

We also had another week of having to refund an item off the menu. I really can’t express how different baking a couple of something is versus baking them in bulk. Some processes that we have always used just absolutely crumble under scaling up. But I feel like something totally different is happening with our scones. Sometimes they end up dense and almost look unbaked even after baking the whole time. We are still trying to figure that whole situation out. So expect to see a little break from scones on the menu while we mentally recover.

We also spent the week setting up a bunch of new equipment and creating flyers. Next week is our monthly pay what you can stand except this time it won’t be at our house (more details on that tomorrow). Thank you so much for another week of allowing us to bake for you and your loved ones!

#sourdoughbaker #sourdough #ottawail #sourdoughmicrobaker #sourdoughbread taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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a month ago

Week 5 was a big one for us! We doubled my husband’s old weekly salary from before he quit. But it didn’t come without obstacles to overcome. It will probably be awhile before we attempt muffins again. We mixed the blueberries into the muffin mix and it was okay at first, but after it sat for the first round, the frozen wild blueberries started to bleed into the batter and turned it the most unappealing gray/blue color. The baked muffins did not look good and we ended up refunding $340 worth of muffins. Thankfully everyone was super understanding.

We also listened to feedback from everyone that it’s been hard to get a soft sandwich loaf. We are limited on this loaf to the number of pans that we have to bake them in. This week we invested in 15 additional pans, so it should be a little easier to grab one if you want this week.

The fridge opening downstairs and overproofing all the tortillas really threw us for a loop. We immediately bought a fridge lock. It’s just a device that you add to the outside of your fridge that makes sure the door stays shut. When you have a whole week’s work in the fridge, this extra measure just gives us peace of mind. We were lucky we were able to remake them, but we got 3 hours of sleep because of it.

The best news came when a local downtown business reached out to us about a post we made on Facebook looking for a pickup location. We met with the owner on Saturday and it seriously seems like a dream partnership and we can’t wait to share more information on that soon.

As always, thanks for being here another week and we are so excited to see where we can take this bakery!

#sourdoughmicrobaker #sourdoughbread #sourdough #ottawail #sourdoughbaker taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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2 months ago

This was a big week for Ciao Bella Breads! If you’re new here, thank you for following along. One month ago my husband quit his job as a process engineer to pursue the bakery with me full time. The bakery was definitely not in the place to sustain our family of four for a long time, so we gave ourselves 90 days to see if this would work out for us.

We have seen steady growth each week, but this week was a big one. We had more pre-orders, larger average order volume, and more menu items than we’ve ever offered. We tried to be really intentional about building the menu though. It was important to us that the extra menu items didn’t cause too much extra chaos on bake day. So we focused on adding things we could make ahead: like frozen waffles, pizza dough, and a dry fresh milled flour pancake mix.

We also tested offering frozen plain bagel 3-packs this week. We know you love the bagels so much, but it’s something that we’ve found super hard to scale. Mostly because of limited fridge space on bake day. If we are able to freeze them, then they stay as fresh as possible and it would allow us to make them a couple days ahead of pickups.

We are also so grateful for @cara.annejones for sharing our bakery with a wider, local audience. We can’t wait to bake for you all soon. Thanks for all of your support so far.

#microbaker #ottawail #sourdoughbaker #sourdough #sourdoughmicrobaker by @ciaobellabreads

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2 months ago

Ottawa, IL friends… you NEED to know about this one 👀🥖

@ciaobellabreads is a local sourdough microbakery right here in Ottawa! I’ve been getting stuff from her for over a year now and I HAD to finally share her with you guys because everything is always so good. 😍🥖

If you want to order, make sure you’re following @ciaobellabreads because she posts her upcoming drops! You can also check her website, typically on Sundays, or sign up for text reminders so you know when a new drop goes live. 🤎

I’m such a sucker for a good local find AND sourdough everything 😂 Which one would you try first?!

#OttawaIL #OttawaIllinois #StarvedRockCountry #IllinoisFoodie #microbakery taken in Ottawa, Illinois by @ciaobellabreads

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2 months ago