the nice folks at novotel siam square agreed to my request for a visit to their bakery. 

i like their walnut-raisin rye and asked the bakery chef for more info on this. well it's a combination of rye + wholemeal + white flour. they use 25gm of instant yeast for 1kg of flour which is a higher ratio than the breads i do. 

but then i have the luxury of time, they don't! they have a strict schedule to meet so they rule out sourdough etc. you can't bake daily, at such volume, with a tight schedule using the sourdough method. 

i was there in the afternoon and they told me they usually knead/bake at 10pm every night. so i missed the kneadng part! but the chef told me there's nothing much to see as they use 2 big kitchenaid mixers to do the job.

so at that time, at 4pm, they were baking pizza doughs. i'm relieved the method i used, learned from kingarthurflour, is the same one they use here. read my other post on pizza. 

so all in all, it was a good trip, though i didn't get to use them knead. my appreciation towards the nice staff in this hotel!

too bad i didn't take any photos. 

i'm still in bangkok on biz trip. so have to forget about bread baking now. 

but this hotel, novotel bangkok on siam square, i'm surprised to find rye bread here. walnut-raisin rye bread. i bake with a lot more ingredients than this but for a commercial bread, how can anyone make money baking the way i do? 

anyway, found this on the net. a humorous critique of what we malaysians already know.