02141 Designing a Baking Station

How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? — Julia Child

A baking station has everything you need to bake, conveniently located in one spot. In the training of classical chefs, they know this as “mise en place” which literally means “putting in place.”

If everything you need for baking is already in one place, you eliminate one time-consuming aspect of cooking — finding everything you need. A baking station can be adapted to any cooking situation. In a dorm room inhabited by one or two people, it could be a box in a closet that you get out when you want to make some bread in your crockpot or flatbread on your electric skillet. In a full size kitchen, for a large household, it could be a dedicated place in the kitchen equipped with everything you need.

One way to learn permaculture design on the “lifestyle scale” is to do permaculture design for smaller projects, like this baking station.

Observe. What do you want to achieve with baking? What are your goals? What functions does baking require? What items do you need to bake? That list includes ingredients, cooking equipment, pans, measuring cups and spoons, maybe a food processor or stand mixer. Make a list, including the most common ingredients. Make a needs and benefits list — OK, this step might be considered overkill BUT you need to learn how to make a needs and benefits list anyway, so there is more than one function stacked on this basic project.

What do you do when you bake? What are the motions and tasks of baking? What space does baking require?

Do any of these motions or tasks fall into reasonably discrete categories? (Hint: don’t forget “Clean up when finished.”)

Who does the baking? One person by himself or herself? The whole family? Rotating jobs?

Where do you bake at present? How much does your baking require?

What beneficial connections are there between this activity and other activities/elements of your life and home?

Study and Evaluate. What is the source of the ingredients? Do you have the right equipment? Do you have the necessary skills? Do others need to learn these skills?

Do you have enough space? Need more?

How often do you bake? Do you want to bake more often? What do you like the most about baking? What do you like the least?

Will you design a temporary station, to be set up for each baking session and taken down after clean up? Or will it be a permanent place in your kitchen.

Are additional beneficial connections required or needed? For example . . . a local source for flour . . . a local source for dairy . . . an invisible structure to connect you with local flour and dairy and other ingredients (like a food coop or farmers’ market) . . . people to bake for, etc.

Design. Make your design decisions based on your observation and evaluation.

Start with — if you don’t bake, do you want to learn to bake? What skills and equipment do you need to acquire? If you don’t bake, how will you get your bread?

What beneficial connections are there among the parts of this project?

What beneficial connections link this project and the rest of your lifestyle?

Where does this project live in your dwelling?

When will you do it?

What are the details?

How does this happen?

How can you do this with less fossil fuel?

Can you do this with no fossil fuel?

How will you do this if fossil fuel is not available?

Do you want to make changes to the sources of your ingredients?

Anything you can move down the Local Food Pyramid?

For practice and good design, run your testing questions from 00381 through this project.

Stage your decisions. What comes first when you implement your design decision? Middle? Last? Never mind the fact that this is a small design, put first things first and second things second and third things third. This gives you a feeling of what it is like to organize a set of tasks such as this.

Budget. If any of this will cost money, get some estimates and develop a budget. Decide on a source of funds.

Write the report. Write the report and add it to your permaculture design plan.