practice, practice, practice....

The 12 week externship is half over. The first 6 weeks have flown by. I still have the occasional issue but I no longer feel like a total klutz with the rolling pin.

The overnight baker said something recently that has had me giggling all week long. One morning, I made 35 baguettes. When they came out of the oven, I was berating myself because they all weren't identical. Many were close to perfect but some were fat on the ends while others were wider in the middle. I asked out loud if I would ever get it right. The baker said "Just remember that you are always 2 steps away from perfection but 1 step away from failure."

How true. Giggle

wine.....

Today was a great day. Everything seemed to click. They are starting to make me do some of "heavy lifting" and I'm starting to fly solo. Today I knocked out 125 pizza crusts for one of the restaurants, 200 slider buns, breakfast banquet trays, croissant dough, danish dough (love that cardamom) and I made some tiramisu desserts. I came home, ran 6 miles and now it's time for a class of wine. Cheers

cardamom...

One of the fringe benefits of baking are the smells. It's kind of strange but two of my favorite smells are ingredients rather than the final product. The smell of the "sour" used in sourdough bread is to die for. Most people hate it but I love the smell of fermenting yeast. My new favorite smell is cardamom. It's an expensive spice that is used in danish dough. We mix danish dough every 3 days and I gladly volunteer for dough duty. The cardamon is bought in pod form and it is ground into a powder. I also volunteer for that duty. I probably appear very eager to take on any task but it's all about the smell...

scrape the bowl then scrape your arm...

One task of interest this week has been the baking of a wedding cake. It was a white cake mixed in my favorite mixer - 20 pounds of dry ingredients and gallons of water and vegetable oil. The batter produced round cakes of 14" (x2), 10", 8" and 6" (x4). Scraping the bowl involves rolling up your sleeve, holding a bowl scraper in your hand and diving in. You only go halfway to your elbow but it's kind of fun. The mixing "paddle" is bigger than your face so there isn't any licking of the beater. Nuts

high anxiety....

First of all, I want to credit the photographer of the dessert pictured to the left. It's a quenelle of Arroz Con Leche ice cream (rice pudding ice cream). It came from a nice blog that I've added to my favorite links section.

There are 2 things that I cannot seem to get a handle on in the kitchen - one is writing on a cake and the other is spooning out quenelles. It's a very special scooping method that is typically used for serving frozen desserts. There is no such thing as close enough when it comes to serving a quenelle.

I was helping out yesterday with the set up of a wedding party banquet. It required a whipped cream quenelle on every plate and it was a disaster. I had an anxiety attack last night over my inability to do this. I'll never get a job if I can't do this, etc, etc. It's not an issue in a bakery but any sort of fine dining requires it. I think I'll be buying a couple of quarts of heavy cream, whipping it and practicing this weekend. Then I'm going to make some Arroz Con Leche ice cream. It sounds great.

it's not a crescent roll....

I guess a croissant is technically a crescent roll but I'm going to be a snob and insist on calling it a croissant.

I was trying to find a picture of a croissant and I stumbled on a blog site call Paris Breakfast Art. The artist has some nice stuff. Do the Googles if are interested in some nice watercolors.

Week 4 will be history tomorrow. It was a very good week. The focus was on puff pastries or laminated doughs. These include breakfast croissants, sandwich croissants, cinnamon buns, chocolate croissants and cream cheese danishes. I've always thought that a croissant looks like a mutation of a lobster with its claws reaching around in front. I rolled, cut and formed about 125 croissants this morning. I've almost got the technique down. Giggle. Making the dough, folding in the butter and cutting the dough is a 3 day process. The production of a croissant is pretty labor intensive. I think they sell for $3.00 which seems like a good deal.

I worked the 2:00am shift again on Thursday. I think I'm going to continue with that for the experience.

a gallon of eggs.....

FYI - if you have a recipe that calls for a gallon of eggs, crack about 72 of them. You'll be close.

It was a good week. I'm starting to feel comfortable in front of the mixers and ovens. I have yet to memorize all of the baking temperatures and times but that will come. The days fly by and I was surprised when Saturday got here. Saturday's are the busiest days of the week. This morning I knocked out 24 loaves of sourdough bread, 300 slider buns, a few hundred breadsticks, a tray of baguettes, a couple dozen buttermilk biscuits, a couple hundred jalapeno biscuits and pecan pie filling requiring 72 eggs. They sell little 3" pecan pies in the cafe and they are quite popular. I haven't mastered the two handed egg crack but I at least keep the presence of egg shells to a minimum. I figure that counts for something.

I did the 2:00am - 10:00am shift on Thursday of this week for the experience. It involved everything I mentioned above as well as all of the muffins, danishes, croissants and artisan bread. Yikes - I came home and took a nap.