From Out of Nowhere!

Okay people, I'm so sorry for being away for so friggin long! Many of you have commented on my recent lack of posts, and I appreciate your love! The main reason that I stopped posting was that the theme of this blog has been totally blown to smithereens. I quit my job at the inn, so I thought there was no more to write about. But as it turns out, some of you are interested in my new job, and I'm still getting up mad early, so here's the update!

I became the pastry chef at a lil place in Pleasantville called Jackson & Wheeler. I usually end up going in to work somewhere between the hours of 2 am and 5 am, so my new position is even earlier than my last one! Luckily the hours aren't a set schedule, so technically I can go in whenever I want, as long as the product gets made. In another month and a half I'll start getting health care, so I think the job is pretty damn sweet. I'm making all sorts of cool shit, some not cool stuff, and I'm also slow as molasses. This has largely contributed to the fact that I've been spending 12 or 16 hours there at a clip! If the owners of the place had any doubts as to how hard I work when they hired me, they couldn't have any doubts now. I'm always the first person to arrive, and usually one of the first to leave, but after putting in a huge a workday. The chef (one of the three owners, named Greg, and one of the coolest chefs I've ever worked for), actually asked me when I was going to get out of there yesterday like I should leave soon. He said he was wondering if I was going to be the first person in and the last person out. It was very cute.

I spent the first month there training under the most bipolar French man named Jean. He's one of those authentic Frenchies that actually took "Le Bac" and was assigned to baking when he was young. By the time I met him, he'd been doing this for 20 something years, and had been working at J&W for 2 years. The main reason that he was leaving was that he was completely irrational sometimes, and communication with him was exceedingly rough for the owners. (There are 3 owners, so that part of communication can be tough in itself, but I digress.) Jean agreed to stay on for an undefined period of time to show me the basics of what he does, and to give me the low down on baking overall, since the owners knew I was totally green in the field of pro baking. At first, Jean was pleasant, qualifying the experience right off the bat with the statement, "I am not a teacher," and things went pretty smooth. By day 3 he was telling me that I didn't know how to use a spoon! Things were tedious because his accent is so thick that understanding what he says is very hard about 50% of the time. If I asked him to repeat himself more than once, or any question just out of nowhere, he acted as if I had slapped him in the face and said something about his mother. Some days he was great and funny, but I never knew what to expect, so I was always on my best behavior, and kept telling myself it was all worth it because someday he would leave. After two weeks, I was telling myself that someday he would die. I wouldn't have to have a hand in it, but it didn't mean I couldn't still be happy about the event. In the end, he left after a month.

I've now been by myself for two weeks, and while the hours are exceedingly stressful because of my slow speed, I'm loving it! I learn something new every day, and even the most mundane tasks are exciting and challenging for me. My creativity level is getting better every day, and I'm getting really good at taking criticism. I get both positive and negative feedback from all the owners daily, and I've completely lost that defensive mode when someone tells me something didn't work or they received a complaint. At this point when I hear something like that, I see it as a way to make something better. It's fantastic.

So what have I been making you ask? Well, my day starts with bread. Most people probably don't know this, but in this industry one is usually either a baker or a pastry chef. Bread is a totally different world than dessert. I am slated with doing both. While I don't make any doughs that are commonly referred to as laminated doughs (croissants, danish, or puff pastry, think layers of dough and butter) because they are time consuming and difficult to get perfect, and you can get a great frozen version of said doughs, I make bread all the time, and different types of bread! I am responsible for making two types of bread daily for the rolls and loaves the restaurant sells. Jean had previously been making only two types of bread every day. A white and a whole wheat. Very rarely, he would add something interesting to the bread, such as sundried tomatoes or olives, but mostly it was the same. The owners were sad as they had asked him to change it up and he never did. I still don't understand why they kept him on for so long when he didn't do what they wanted. He told me that I shouldn't focus on breads, that the pastries were more important, but I'm very interested in bread and where you can take it, so Jean's advice is totally out the window on that. I've been trying all sorts of different breads and I've also started a sourdough starter. It's like my pet bread. I have to feed it daily, and it takes a little while to get strong enough to really leaven the bread. For those of you unfamiliar in the ways of bread, sourdough bread gets its distinctive taste from using a starter. Instead of using commercially grown yeast, which most people use when they want to make bread or beer at home, sourdough uses the wild yeast that is in the air. Wild yeast is present in most places, such as your home, but you need a whole hell of a lot of it if you are going to use it exclusively to make bread rise. If you bake a lot, there's a lot of wild yeast in the kitchen, I guarantee it. A sourdough starter takes about a month to really get going, even in a bakery! The really neat thing about using a starter though, is that as long as you take care of it, it can basically live forever! Some places in San Francisco have been using the same starter for 150 years! A friend of mine just started working as a tour guide in one those places and he said they keep the starter locked up with heavy security. I think that's so cool. So anyway, I make a lot of bread. I need to find 6 breads though to get into a routine and keep on a rotation. Focaccia is definitely one of them, as is some version of cranberry walnut or apple walnut. Any other favorites out there? I also make bagels on Sundays. They are a very strange bread folks.

Other things I make, in no particular order are: creme brulee in various flavors, cheesecake, brownies, blondies, napoleons, key lime pie, chocolate mousse, strawberry shortcake, blackberry shortcake, flourless chocolate cake, macaroons, cookies of all sorts, from linzer tortes to gingersnaps, chocolate chip to mudslides, plain old sugar cookies, black & whites (who the hell eats black & whites anymore), rugelach, fruit tarts, pound cake, mousse cakes, panna cotta, special ice creams like peanut butter banana, muffins, pie, scones, danish, croissants, challah, truffles, etc. You name it, I make it. I recently came up with an Oreo napoleon. I think it's pretty slammin, and I don't even like napoleons. The really neat thing about this is that I can make almost whatever I want as a dessert. i have total freedom as long as it looks great and tastes great. So, as usual, any favorites you just can't resist?

Also, I do tons of cakes as special orders for wholesale and one time customers. I've had to learn how to write on the cakes and it was pretty rough there for a while. If you fuck up, you usually have to remove the writing substance, resmooth the frosting, and then start over. So the key is to practice practice practice! I'm getting pretty good, and one day I'll go in with my digital camera and take some photos for y'all.

To end this post, I'd like to tell you about a wedding cake that I have to make in about two weeks. It's a hex shaped, four tier cake, and there needs to be enough for 250 people! The couple wants a brownie/blondie swirl cake with a chocolate chip cookie crust and the whole thing to be covered in white chocolate ganache and sugared flowers. I'm so friggin into this cake I can't believe it. I usually hate wedding cake, but this one is just so cool. Wish me luck folks!