So I have given notice at the bakery.
It was an uneventful sequence. My ego might have preferred a little more disappointment in my pending departure, but let's be real. This is the food business: turnover is high; loyalty is scarce; adversity is the norm and employers just can't afford to get attached. My current last day is the 12th of the month. There is some flexibility in that date if my real estate deal slows so that I could work longer. I'm not sure I would really want to stick around anyway, but we will leave that up in the air. I am trying to teach myself to be more relaxed about the future. It will unfold as it is supposed to, regardless of what I do or do not do. You know, the whole Budhist non-attachment concept....
In the meantime I am dreaming about ways to include my varied interests in a somewhat gainful (at least self supporting) endeavor. I am thinking that I need to be more invested in this blog. Looking around at other food blogs I see that there are all sorts of cyber tools and tricks that I am not employing that might get me more readers, and, therefore, perhaps some attention in the publishing world. Not that that is the point of this blog but it would be nice. I have no links, no pictures, no recipes. People seem to like these things. Honestly I would like to be able to direct anyone reading me to sites or articles or whatever that I find interesting. And being a photographer, I would also like to share imagery with my readers. Obviously I need to learn more. Even thinking of upgrading the computer itself. I am currently operating with an Apple ibook from '99. It has been buggy, and I have been lazy about learning about it, since I can possibly remember. I know that the computer world has progressed since this thing was built. Don has told me that if I were to buy a PC he would be my tech guy. He knows how to add all those bells and whistles to a website from a PC. He hates Macs. I have always been a Mac person, coming as I did from the magazine world so I am quite biased. But if he is offering a real service that I myself am loathe to learn, I would be an idiot to decline.
In baking news I made a sponge cake from the Chez Panisse desserts book last week for a dinner with friends. What a delicious recipe, and simple. 6 eggs whipped to a foam with sugar and vanilla, flour whisked in and into the pan it goes. I split it in half and filled it with lemon curd I had made the day before and strawberries. (I Love Lemon Curd, actually I love all curds....) Then I folded some of the curd into whipped cream and topped the cake with that and more berries. YUM. Next time I will put more filling, either curd or whipped cream, or a combo of the two, between the berries and the cake so the structure holds it's integrity. It kinda fell apart when you put fork to slice. But it looked glorious, one of our guests thought it could be a wedding cake. I was very proud. Partly because I had thought the process through more like a pastry cook. I made the curd the day before. I had all of my components (although the cake would have been better made the day before as well) ready to go just before serving. It came together smoothly, looked and tasted beautiful. sigh.
Quick note here, should be given more time but we are going to Maine for 5 days so I am abbreviating. The blondies recipe in the current summer issue of Cook's Illustrated is divine. If you can get your hands on the recipe either in the mag or on their website (which I could link to if I weren't such a Luddite about those things) it is totally worth it. I have had other blondies that were pale approximations of what this baby is. Gooey but not raw, buttery and sweet but with just the right amount of salt. All in all a truly marvelous alternative to the brownie. Happy to have found the recipe which I am adding to my repertoire, as you can always win friends and influence people with either a brownie or a blondie.
As I mention above we are going to Maine for a long weekend. I have this weekend off due to the holiday so we are taking advantage of my new schedule with W-F off to spend five days up North. It is supposed to rain up there too, but at least we will be breathing cleaner air and it's QUIETER!
A bientot,
Samantha
One of the newer tasks I have been given is the making of the chocolate angel food cup cakes. We sell regular and chocolate angel food cupcakes, both swirled with either chocolate or confectioners sugar glaze. They are quite popular, probably because some people think they are low fat. No butter, right? No yolks, right? That's where all the fat is, right? Poor silly fools, they still have sugar which is quickly converted to fat in the body. Since they have no fat they need a lot of sugar to make them palatable. If one was really concerned with calorie intake they would do better to have one really good cookie than a big sugar laden angel food cup cake. But people come up with all sorts of justifications for their sweets, far be it from me to disillusion them.
I have never been a big fan of angel food. I miss the fat. They taste like so much sweetened air to me. Kinda like those bottled waters you can buy that are flavored with some artificial sweetener. They give you the illusion of having eaten something tasty, but the experience is brief and I am often left with a nasty aftertaste in my mouth. Angel food can be tricky to make which may explain the last part of that description. Well, they're not really hard to make but you have to pay attention when making them. The ironic thing is that I really like working with egg whites. When you start with room temp whites, use cream of tartar (for the acid) and add superfine sugar you can make some mean foam. I was reading about them in Cookwise (Shirley Corriher) last night and it's all about unspooling the protein strands in the whites (um) but the result is this mass of fluffy, shiny, ethereal foam. Actually foam isn't the right word, it's more like a really cool, super expensive mousse, but not in the food application, more like in the hair styling product sense. Beaten egg whites in their Italian meringue guise are the basis of a standard buttercream. Meringue is also a lovely topping for pies, and when baked it can make crunchy cookies, Dacquoise for cakes and shells to fill with goodies (fruit and whipped cream come to mind). The incredible egg white.
The angel food approach can go wrong when the dry ingredients are not properly folded into the whites. Then you are left with pockets of dry grit, ugh. Folding is a very organic action that, in my observations, no two people do entirely alike. Folding is when you mix together two substances that are usually mismatched in density. The idea is not to deflate one with the other. So you fold to stir together delicately. And folding is just as it sounds. Best done with a (clean dry) spatula, you fold the lighter substance around the denser one (or vice versa) until they are incorporated. Usually one starts with a small amount of the lighter mixture to lighten the whole, then adding the rest to the bowl to fully incorporate. Things like souffles and mousses and genoise and angel food or other sponge cakes get folded. But then, too, you can fold beated egg whites into a creamed butter/sugar batter, alternating with your flour, to make a lighter version of a cake. We have a coffee cake at the bakery that is mixed by machine until you get to adding the flour. This is done by folding the flour alternately with sour cream into the creamed butter and sugar (and actually, in this case, eggs) to make a lighter coffee cake experience.
But back to the angel food. When I make it at work I am making 24 cupcakes at a time so I start with 55 oz of whites. When fully whipped this creates quite a large volume of meringue. Each time I have done it it has come out slightly differently. With that large an amount you can pretty easily over whip and end up with dry clumpy whites, which I can tell you are not a pretty sight. They cannot be saved and if you fold them into your batter they will deflate immediately and not resurrect in the oven, which some hope for. If you over whip your whites throw them out and start again. Luckily I have not done this at work, that's a lot of eggs at 55 oz. I seem to actually have a tendancy to under whip my whites, I like them slightly slippery. I am loathe to sexualize this topic but there is something very sensual about whites that have been whipped just to soft peak with the proper amount of sugar. They would make interesting body paint...
The sugar, I have discovered through research, is better if it is superfine. The recipe I have been using at work calls for regular sugar but I was dissatisfied with my results. Last night I was reading Corriher and she recommends superfine. I tried it at work today and the difference was real. The whites were silky and it took less time for them to come to soft peak. After you beat your whites you sift in your dry ingredients, in this case cake flour, cocoa and more sugar. This was another place where I thought the recipe was off. Sifting in the heavy sugar was deflating my beautiful whites more than necessary. With the superfine I kept much more of my volume, the cup cakes were quite beautiful today. My manager even remarked on them as they came out of the oven.
In non-food related news I have joined another of Alison's Sockapaloozas. I only mention this because I am assuming someone is reading this blog and scratching their head wondering where the knitting content is. I am mostly a solitary knitter, don't really have any knitting friends, don't belong to any stitch n' bitchs. Do knit in public, mostly on the subway which appears to be a great source of entertainment for my fellow riders. I have recently learned the joy of knitting socks and so have joined the cyber community to knit for someone I have never met. She, luckily for me, does blog about knitting so I am able to glean hints about what sock might ring her bell. I am hoping that the soul knitting for me can see that I am game when it comes to socks and, while I love my hand knitted socks, I do not wear them to work. I will however be quitting my job in the near future, and moving North, so warm socks are always a plus. There is another post back on January 8th with more knitting info about me if someone wanted to read more. I told a friend of mine (male) about the previous sock-a-long I had joined and he actually teared up at the idea of people(knitters) out there in the world knitting socks for people they only know through the internet. I like the idea because it makes the world a little smaller and maybe a little warmer (pun both intended and not).
The rest (?) of you reading who give not a hoot about knitting will remark that I have just said I will be quitting my job soon. We have sold our apartment and are planning on moving to Maine for the time being till we decide where next to put down roots. I have not yet told my employer, want to make sure things are further along in the process before I give notice. Have decided that due to my good fortune in real estate dealings I will be giving myself some time off from the gainful employment model. Toying with such ideas as trying a stage at Chez Panisse, or something in Southern France... Also tossing around the idea of setting myself some sort of writing challenge and coming up with a book idea?! Maybe picking some aspect of the baking canon and exploring it thoroughly in the kitchen and then in print. Don't know, want to find the space to let ideas like this grow and see if I can find a way to stay in baking without killing my feet.
A bientot,
Samantha
I'm not sure where this crankiness is coming from, but I guess it's better to let it out than to hold it all in, right? Could be the heat that's pushing my buttons....
Can a vegan be a pastry cook/baker? More specifically can a vegan be a non-vegan pastry cook/baker? Can you guess my take on the matter? I say it's not a good idea. If you do not eat any dairy or eggs how can you check your custards, your panna cottas, your chantilly cream, or your cakes/cookies/breads/tarts/pies/brownies etc? All these things have dairy and/or eggs in them, integral to their make up. Although I'm sure vegans have replacements for those ingredients (shudder) we do not use them. It would seem to me, in my humble opinion, that vegans should either work in vegan kitchens (places I have NO desire to set foot in) or not cook for hire. I must confess that the whole concept of veganism confounds me, but then I have only ever once been able to actually follow a proscribed 'diet'. I am an omnivore. I like to be able to eat whatever appeals to me, more or less whenever I'd like to consume it. Perhaps that is reflected in the size of my pants, hmmm. Whatever. I just think that cooking, good cooking, is an interactive pursuit, and dietary restrictions are a limitation on that endeavor. I don't think you can be a good cook or baker without tasting your wares.
It is now hot in NYC. Summer has arrived, bringing with it it's cousin, humidity. This is not a good combination for baking. Heat is an integral part of the baking process but within the confines of the oven, not without. In your kitchen heat can wreak havoc on batters and doughs. Butter that you want to stay cool so it maintains it's integrity in a dough, giving you steam when you bake and therefore flakiness, gets soft and sloppy, no flaky. Even the creaming of butter/sugar, a common element of many, many baked items, is affected by the heat and humidity. It happens faster and you need to watch it closely so that the butter does not melt, causing a completely different outcome to your baked goods. You must be extra careful and quick with handling most doughs in this heat. Butter cookies are hazardous. I learned a trick at Craft whereby you fill a sheet tray with ice and slip it under the sheet tray with the dough you wish to cut out. This keeps the dough from warming up too quickly. You have to be extra careful, however, not to splash your dough. It is a useful trick in this weather. I have seen pastry cooks sit in the walk-in to cut out dough in the summer. Not a terrible place to be when the kitchen is 85 degrees.
I am lucky that we have air conditioning (such as it is) at my current job. I have been in other kitchens where there was no such luxury. Also, as we are solely a bakery and therefore without a line, we have no open flames of any sort in the space. Our one range has induction burners. Currently we are unfortunately suffering three out of eight ovens inoperative. Means that there is a certain amount of jockeying for position and stealing of ovens. Also means there is that less heat being produced in the kitchen. Think I would actually prefer the heat with the working ovens.
I must confess here that I know my days at this job are limited. We have a buyer for our apartment, we will be going North soon. I will continue to write, I'm really enjoying this, though there might be a break in the action. So with an end in sight I am trying not to let little things bother me at work. Little things like the broken ovens and the broken scales and the bins for nuts that require you to bend all the way down to the floor. Ideas about designing and maintaining a place to bake click into place bit by bit..... Summer hours begin next week, I will be working only four days and those days will end a couple of hours earlier. Seems a fitting way to go out.
A bientot,
Samantha
ALERT: CRANKY BAKER RANT FOLLOWS.
I like children as much as the next person. Correction, the next person probably likes them much more than I do. Well, who know what the next person thinks, maybe they are ambivalent about the whole concept. Me, I am less than ambivalent, more than irritated, but more or less a wash out. Don't get me wrong, I am not the witch with the gingerbread house who lives in the forest from Hansel & Gretel. I like some kids. I like my friends kids, I like my relatives kids. I have a charming memory of a sprite who came into the magazine office I was working in back in the early 90's. While her mother delivered an illustration job, she and I talked potato chips. Actually I think I did most of the talking but she crunched along merrily and enthusiastically. Her I liked.
The bakery I work in is all tile, not suprisingly, and as I have previously mentioned there is no wall between the bakers and the customers. Every day at some regular hour, that I have not noted on the clock, a swarm of short people come in with their appointed care givers. Many of them are wondrous and wide eyed in a manner I can get behind. All that sugar layed out in front of them would make most rug rats salivate, larger versions too, the smell in there is intoxicating in itself. They become mesmerized and overwhelmed by the choices, although it always seems the cupcakes that win out. They cover their little faces with the buttercream aiming for their mouths, and leave the cake forlornly on the table. Don't worry I am not waxing poetic for long. There is another breed of these heathen who come in ranting and raving, screaming out their Id's needs and generally causing a ruckus. They reach out their germ carrying fingers to touch everything, figuring that if they leave fingerprints they will be satisfied. If, for some horrific reason, their needs are not immediately attended to the sky falls and the howls that ring out would send the most patient person through the roof. The sound bounces around the bakery like nails on a blackboard, like biting into a popsicle stick, like sticking your tongue to an ice cube. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. That I can hear despite my occupational deafness.
I have had to be physically restrained from jumping out from my table to personally throttle the little horrors and teach them the error of their ways. Their parents certainly aren't. When I was a pipsqueak I never, repeat NEVER, had a hissy fit the likes of which I have seen in public. My parents would have tied my tongue in a knot and stuck me in the basement for weeks with only bread and water if I had ever shown inklings of such misbehavior. And the fact of the matter is they never needed, nor would have meted out, any such punishment, because I had internalized from an early age what behavior was and was not appropriate in public. (and yes, I have discussed this concept with my shrink.) These days it seems like parents are afraid of their children. And you know what that means, show a little fear and they walk all over you. I am privy to this phenomenon on a regular basis due to my work. This is an aspect of bakery work I had not anticipated. If I ever have my own place I may need to have rules for children on the premises, posted prominently.
There, do you all hate me now? I have shown my stripes truly......
A bientot,
Samantha
Don't really know if it is caused by my job, but I can tell you that when I am at work I cannot hear. There are 8 convection ovens going all the time and the dishwasher with his pots and pans and timers going off and various pieces of equipment that can make a goodly amount of noise. So I suppose it is not crazy that I cannot hear. There are, however, moments when I feel like I am in my own private universe (not the worst thing in the world), when I know people around me are talking but I have no idea what they are saying. As I have mentioned before some of my co-workers like to talk while they are working. usually they are standing at the same tables and are in close enough range to converse easily. I tend to stand at the other table so when asked a question I often have to crane my neck and say "Huh? wha'd ya say honey?" Only accentuates the old crone feelings I have these days.....