Portland French Bakery

One of the major reasons we homeschool is so we are free to do interesting field trips!!

Our fantastic homeschool group (based at Holy Rosary in Portland) and my fantastic friend Jennifer M. has made it their goal to offer one field trip a month this year.  We went to September's trip (Oregon Trail Museum, remember that post?) and now January's.  (also...December's field trip to Intel was rescheduled to Feb, and Bunny went with Papa...and Marcus/Bunny/James have plans for Feb's trip to the Portland Youth Philharmonic.  Anyway...)  A homeschool dad works at the Portland French Bakery and was delighted to give us all a tour.

sportin' some stylish hairnets

 The PFBakery is about as large as you can get but still be hand-made.  They are family-owned and work hard to provide good living wages to their employees.  PFBakery supplies all the McMenniman's buns and supplies items many large stores like Costco and Winco.  They also make some of Franz's artisan selections, since Franz is automated I believe.

the 100+ year-old sourdough starter

We learned that the company started about 25 years ago, and they bought 100+ year-old sourdough starter from a SanFran company.  It has been in continuous use.  We got to smell the "sourness" of it and learn how they keep adding flour and water as they take away the dough.  When you use the starter, you only need a few teaspoons of yeast for 100 pounds of flour.  In comparison, when you make a normal artisan (non-sourdough) bread, you need 2 POUNDS of yeast to 100 pounds of flour.

this is the artisan area where the loaves are hand-formed

We were so happy to have grammae come experience the field trip with us!  (And help me with my little 3-year-old sweetie...)

we all got to take home cheese bread
(Tillamook cheese of course)

since we were near the airport...gotta get some meatballs!
(grammae's first trip to Ikea, can you believe it?)