To kick-off WaterWays, we visited with Auspicious Baking Company to learn how City tap water helps create delicious baked goods at this burgeoning local bakery...
Auspicious Baking Company
“To make great bread you have to use great ingredients, and that includes the water,” Mark Ekstrom explained, as he rang up a steady stream of customers visiting Auspicious Baking Company on a Tuesday afternoon.
Mark and fiancé Kaytlin Bryant, both self-taught bakers with extensive experience in the service industry, opened Auspicious at 5224 Skidaway Road two years ago. The business has grown steadily since. Soon Auspicious will be expanding into a new production site, four times the size of their current baking space. The new production site will help them keep up with demand at the Skidaway bakery, as well as supplying their growing list of local wholesale customers, such as Brighter Day Natural Foods.
Some of the best-selling items at Auspicious are the naturally-leavened breads. When we asked about the importance of water as an ingredient in the breads, Mark explained that Auspicious bread is “75% hydration”…which is baker-speak for expressing the weight of the liquids (like awesome tap water) in a bread recipe relative to the weight of flour. Hydration impacts a bread’s flavor profile as well as the crumb. Changing the amount or type of water in a bread will ultimately change the way it tastes and its texture.
Each week, Auspicious uses about sixty pounds of butter, a thousand pounds of flour, and fifty gallons of Savannah tap water in its baking.
“We use unfiltered Savannah tap water in almost everything,” Mark said. “The quality is so important. The quality of the water really impacts the quality of your bread.”
Check them out:
Auspicious Baking Company
5224 Skidaway Road
Savannah, GA 31404
www.auspiciousbakingco.com
Phone: 912.235.2284
Email: auspiciousbread@gmail.com
Hours:
Tuesday 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday 8 a.m. - 2 p.m.
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