Every small bakery has a night like this eventually. Tonight was mine.

I was midway through mixing dough for Classic Liège waffles — the enriched, butter-heavy Belgian dough that's a mainstay of our lineup — when the stand mixer just stopped. No warning, no smoke, no drama. It simply gave up.

For a one-person operation working out of a home kitchen, there's no backup mixer waiting in the wings. So the choice was simple: set the dead mixer aside, roll up my sleeves, and finish the dough by hand.

Why This Dough Is the Hard One to Hand-Mix

Liège dough isn't like a simple sandwich bread. It's a stiff, enriched dough loaded with butter that gets worked in gradually — usually a job the mixer handles through steady, mechanical patience. By hand, that means small butter additions at a time, worked in with a technique called fraisage (or "smearing"): pushing the dough across the counter with the heel of your hand to shear the butter into the gluten strands rather than just folding it into pockets.

It's slower. It's more physical. But it works — bakers did this for centuries before stand mixers existed, and tonight I got a real reminder of that.

What This Means for Friday

Here's the honest answer: I'm not entirely sure yet. Hand-mixing takes real time, and not every recipe on this week's list may make it through by hand before market morning. I'll know more once the dough itself tells me where it stands — this is a check-the-dough, not check-the-clock, kind of process.

What I can tell you is that Classic Liège is fighting to survive tonight, butter smear by butter smear. If it makes it to Friday, you'll know it was worked for by hand, one batch at a time.

Follow along on our socials for the final lineup as market day gets closer — and if you see me at Beats & Bites this Friday with slightly tired arms, now you'll know why.

Beats & Bites Farmers Market Heartwood Preserve | Fridays, 5–8:30 PM, through September 25, 2026

— Jason, Wheat + Rye Nebraska

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