Slow Dough Bread Co., Houston, Texas, is a semi-automated process with many manual transfers and some hand-shaping with equipment enabling volume. Flour is delivered in sacks with two to three deliveries a week. It amounts to 120,000 lbs of flour a week, and Andrew Sanchez, vice president of operations and sales, realizes the time for a silo is now. 

“We’re past ready for a silo and a tunnel oven,” he said. 

The Houston weather and cost has held him back. In Houston, the humidity requires silos to be housed indoors or outdoors with a dehumidifier, which drives up the cost, but it’s on the horizon. 

Ingredients are hand-scaled, and starter is added to every product. Starters are made the night before and stored in a cooler overnight to ferment. The cooler is affectionately called La Madre, or The Mother, referencing the original levain starter that calls the cooler home. 

Ingredients are mixed in one of three VMI mixers that can handle batches of 550 lbs. Two smaller mixers produce doughs for short runs or R&D. Once dough is mixed, it goes to one of five lines: the Backtechnik, a Whole Foods legacy piece; two Koenigs, Rheon or Mecatherm, which were all purchased by Slow Dough. Different teams are assigned to make different products based on the production line. 

The Koenig lines make products that are less than 8 oz. The Backtechnik makes low-hydration products larger than 8 oz. The Rheon divider, purchased in 2019, is designated for high-hydration doughs. Demand for the bakery’s ciabatta is so high that the Rheon divider can spend 9 hours dividing that dough, which is then shaped by hand before resting. The Rheon divider also handles the bakery’s signature 13-oz pretzel dough, which is then also twisted by hand. 

“There is obviously equipment that can twist pretzel dough, but none of them can do our 13-oz pretzel without some significant customization,” Sanchez explained.

The Mecatherm line, purchased in 2020, handles baguettes, moulding them and providing an intermediate proof.

“We make between 4,000 and 7,000 baguettes per day for a sandwich manufacturer, and we bought the Mecatherm in anticipation of that business,” Sanchez said.

A small, separate Koenig divider is operated by one employee for small runs for individual restaurants and test products. 

After makeup, the doughs are manually panned and then either placed into the cooler for further fermentation or the seven-door proofer box. After proofing, breads are baked in either one of 10 Revent rack ovens or one of two Empire Bakery Equipment deck ovens, depending on the product. While a tunnel oven will be necessary eventually for products like burger buns, Sanchez stressed that he’ll never abandon deck or rack ovens completely. 

“The minute you start baking hearth breads in a tunnel oven, you start to move away from what makes that bread special,” he said. 

Once baked, bread is cooled on racks before slicing and packaging. Baguettes are sliced on a Brevetti slicer and four UBE slicers handle the rest. An Ilapak flow wrapper packages individually wrapped products. 

Fresh product is loaded onto one of Slow Dough’s 17 trucks, to be delivered to restaurants around Texas: Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Waco, College Station or Galveston. The bakery runs 14 DSD routes, but the extra trucks deliver product to Austin and San Antonio to cross-dock with local drivers. Restaurant customers ordering fresh product have until 11 a.m. to place or change their orders that will be delivered the next day. 

“We know that we’ll make about 20,000 hamburger buns a day, so we’ll start the day making 12,000, and then once we have the final order in, we’ll fill in the gap,” he said. “With how fast-paced the restaurant world is, we have to be here 24/7 to answer the phone, and we have to offer every product every day.” 

Frozen product is mostly made throughout the morning shifts during the week and case packed and palletized before being stored in the bakery’s three freezers to be picked up by distributors. 

By staying semi-automated, Slow Dough can maintain a nimble and flexible production for both fresh and frozen customers. This allows the company to always meet customer demand, whether for additional orders or new products.

This article is an excerpt from the February 2025 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Slow Dough Bread Co., click here.