tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59560937057334673512024-02-22T15:35:12.764-06:00Yeast of EdenAn amateur baker's journeyCeth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-44836543017930162352013-11-21T23:30:00.000-06:002014-12-16T22:30:34.309-06:00Are you tough enough?When we're healthy, we tend to take it for granted. We forget all the moments we were sick or injured or depressed. We get careless, we stop paying attention, we rush through a critical moment and our health is suddenly in jeopardy. Our bodies are so complex that it doesn't take much to throw them off balance. Our health, our livelihoods can change in a heartbeat.<br />
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You might not think of a chef or baker's job as being especially dangerous, I never really gave it much thought. But once you're in a working kitchen, you realize that the smallest misstep could end in a serious injury. You're surrounded by hot ovens, open flames, scalding hot fry oil, boiling water, sharp knives. And you don't just have to worry about injuring yourself, you have to worry about your coworkers as well. You have to respect the space that you work in, the tools that you work with and you have to continually be aware of your surroundings.<br />
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When Louie was working at the Farmhouse, he would make fart noises constantly. Entertaining? Yes. But the primary reason he did it was to let the other cooks know where he was. On a small crowded line when you're working with hot pans and food, you have to coordinate your movements and be aware of the others around you. His 'farting' was like the horn of a car, letting his companions know he was behind them or next to them. <br />
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Since I had never worked in a professional kitchen before, I wasn't aware of this etiquette at first. I'm sure I startled the line cooks on more than one occasion when I was attempting to get in and out of the ovens on the line. Later, a fellow baker would explain to me, 'When you come around a corner or come up behind someone, you have to let everyone know. The kitchen is loud, they might not hear you coming. And you never know who will be around that corner with a pot of boiling water. So you call out 'Corner!' or 'Behind!' I was really uncomfortable with this practice at first. I'm somewhat of an introvert, so for me to shout out anything is a bit of a stretch. But over time, it became habit. And I realized how much of a necessity it was. It saved me from more than one close call.<br />
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Still, the possibility of injury was high. I am not the most graceful person, and being clumsy in a kitchen is not ideal. I also get careless when I move too quickly or get flustered. This resulted in a number of burns to my hands and arms over time. Javier started to joke that I needed oven mitts up to my armpits. After a while, I learned to take pride in my battle scars. Each one had a story to go along with it - a cautionary tale of sorts. When I rode the train or bus I started recognizing fellow cooks by the similar scars on their arms. It was like I was part of an elite club.<br />
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Til now, most of my burns had been minimal, healed over time and paled in comparison to other injuries I had seen and <a href="http://heavytable.com/battle-wounds-kitchen/" target="_blank">heard about</a>. Once Louie told me about a time he was interviewing for a chef job. The prospects for hiring him didn't look good - they didn't seem to think he was the right fit. Then, in the middle of the interview, they heard screams coming from the line. One of the cooks had cut off a finger while doing some prep work. The executive chef motioned Louie over to the line, "Can you start now?" And just like that, he had a job. Another time, a cook at the Farmhouse was sauteeing some food. He was tossing the food in the pan with the flick of the wrist technique that I've become so envious of, when he jerked his hand a little too hard. Hot oil and food splashed onto his wrist. It was one of the worst burns I'd seen up close, but he just wrapped it in a paper towel and went on cooking.<br />
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There is definitely a tough guy attitude in the industry. Staffing is always tight, so when you're scheduled to work, you work. There is no one to fill in for you and there is usually no paid time off. Many times, this means working through illness and injury alike. And if you do take time off for one or the other, it's likely your coworkers will mock you - either to your face, or behind your back. A professional kitchen is not a place to be if you're feeling sorry for yourself and want others to do the same. Sympathy runs short.<br />
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All the same, I couldn't deny that the kitchen was where I wanted to be. Dessert baking at the Farmhouse was going well. I was still baking apple pies on a regular basis and I had gotten used to working alone in the back prep kitchen. I even grew to like it more than being in the main kitchen. I wasn't battling for counter space or getting tangled up in the line cooks' feet, worrying they might drop a hot pan on my head as I worked with the ovens. I learned to master the use of the new convection ovens - noting the temperatures needed to be significantly lower than conventional ones, cooking times were shorter, cheesecakes had to be covered so the tops wouldn't brown and dry out. It was a process of trial and error, but I was starting to figure out the tricks.<br />
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Then one night, Michael approached me. "Did you hear what happened to Pam?" I had not. "She apparently burned her whole arm and had to be rushed to the hospital yesterday!"<br />
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After asking around for more details, I learned that she was working next to the fryer when it happened. She had bent over toward the floor to do something and the handle of the fryer basket got caught in her shirt. The basket, its contents and scalding hot oil flipped up out of the fryer and onto her. She shielded her face with her hands and arms. Her head and neck were spared, but her whole arm was severely burned. One cook who witnessed the accident described it as though her skin were melting away. I shivered at the thought of it. I could only imagine the shock and the pain she must have felt. I had never really liked Pam - <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/08/differences-of-opinion.html" target="_blank">we had our differences</a>. But I would never have wished this on her. And for a chef to lose the use of their arm? That was significant.<br />
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The burns were so severe that Pam was out of work for a while. She would call in to talk things over with Julius, the sous chef or Tim, the owner, but her presence was missing. All at once, Julius was assuming the chef position in Pam's absence and my position just sort of fell through the cracks. No one was supervising me. The possibilities were endless. The dessert menu was mine to manage (or munge) as I saw fit. I marveled at the thought. Here I was, someone that had literally no experience seven months ago and now I was calling the shots. I would need to remember though, not to take this for granted. As Pam's accident had reminded me, nothing in a working kitchen is permanent - and moments like these are especially fleeting.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-64331598558411339202013-11-11T14:00:00.000-06:002014-07-16T13:41:59.428-05:00Twists of fateEvery day, life presents us with a multitude of choices, some small and some significant. Our decisions in these moments send us down particular paths and build upon each other to create our lives as we know them. Alter one or two of those choices and we might end up completely different individuals in entirely different places.<br />
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When I was a senior in high school, confused and frightened about what my future might hold, I had a chat with an army recruitment officer at my school. He was an excellent salesman and he had an answer to all of my doubts; the army would give me money for a full college education, it would allow me to travel and see the world and explore careers. It would give me the opportunity to challenge myself physically and provide guidance and discipline. And as for war? There was no chance anything like that would come up over the next four years (who knew that the World Trade Center attack would happen two years later?). So I signed on the dotted line. I took the oath to serve and protect my country. It was then that I was told that I couldn't have the career I wanted in journalism. Those jobs went to people with experience and education. I also wouldn't get the full amount of money they had promised for college. And as for seeing the world? My first stop would be Oklahoma. </div>
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It was suddenly very apparent that I had made a mistake. This path was not going to give me the life I had dreamed of. I started to panic. I had several months before my high school graduation and the day I would ship off to bootcamp, so I scrambled to find a way out. After multiple failed attempts, the same weaselly recruitment officer told me to skip town on the day I was supposed to leave for Oklahoma. </div>
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"Just disappear for a couple days, and things will eventually blow over," he told me.</div>
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It seemed too good to be true, but I was desperate. So the day of my ship date, I drove to Canada and spent the night. Things got a little scary after that. Some senior officers contacted my mom, words like AWOL were thrown around. They demanded I come back to town and explain myself. I had visions of army helicopters swooping in, armed men seizing me and carrying me away. Luckily, I never saw the interior of a Black Hawk helicopter. Things eventually blew over, the blame fell on my recruiter and I went on with my life. But even so, the damage was done. By the time I realized I was a free woman, it was too late to enroll in my college of choice, the University of Washington, in the fall. So instead, I found a private arts school in the Midwest that had open enrollment. I got accepted, got a dorm room and a few months later was enrolled in classes.<br />
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Fast forward through a few more decisions after that including a partial move to Hawaii and back to the Midwest again, a career change from PR woman to web developer, the decision to end a six year relationship, a whim to post an ad for a tennis partner, choosing to marry that tennis partner, and poof! I find myself baking desserts in the back kitchen of a homey little diner. Alter any of those decisions, and I might be in Seattle working as a marine biologist or performing in a musical on Broadway. But maybe, just maybe, this is where I was meant to end up all along. </div>
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All of this history was weighing on my mind as I went in for my second shift in the back prep kitchen. <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-lonely-hearts-club.html" target="_blank">The first time</a> I baked there had been an awful experience and I was not looking forward to it. This day was already starting out a little differently since I would be working there during the day. I had taken the day off of my regular job so I could see a concert later that night. I decided to go in early to get my shift out of the way. </div>
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When I arrived, I was greeted enthusiastically by one of my favorite daytime line cooks - he was surprised to see me since I usually worked nights and we rarely worked together. When I stepped into the prep kitchen, Ronaldo and Julius were there. Pam had brought them over from her previous kitchen job to take on some of the management duties and I had really come to like them. They greeted me joyfully and cleared a space for me to work. The kitchen was warm, smelled delicious, and reggae music was playing in the background. The shelves were already looking more organized. Four hours breezed by and I was almost sad to leave when everything was done baking. After my last shift, I had seriously considered quitting. Now I knew there was no way I was giving this up. I wondered though, if I had come in to work my shift that night instead of choosing to come in that day, would things be different?</div>
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That night I went to see the lead singer for the Decemberists perform. A fellow Montanan, I marveled that two people from the same place could have such different lives and yet still cross paths. I never would have expected that I would become a dessert baker back when I was eighteen and the experience of army boot camp loomed ahead of me. But now I know that I wouldn't change any of the decisions I made to get here - I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-51048785671257516332013-11-07T18:00:00.000-06:002014-05-30T19:52:05.226-05:00The lonely hearts club<div dir="ltr">
When Pam started as the head chef at the Farmhouse, she promised big things; more organized storage, better food, a cleaner kitchen and best of all, a new prep kitchen with new ovens. When I heard all of this, I couldn't help but think, "Yeah, we'll see about that." I've seen people start things with the best of intentions, only to be met with the cruel reality of it all. Change is not easy - especially in an establishment like the Farmhouse. But over the course of several weeks, I watched as the back of the restaurant was gutted and baking as I knew it was thrown into complete disarray. </div>
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First, everything that was in the dry storage area was moved into the corridor between the front of the restaurant and the back offices. This included freezers, shelving, food, cookware, buckets, old newspapers, toilets and such, until there was a narrow little path between giant piles of precarious stuff. At night the space was very poorly lit, which made searching for things even more frustrating than it already was. I feared that the bases of the springform pans were lost and gone forever.</div>
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Next, all of the food in the giant walk-in refrigerator was moved into the tiny walk-in at the front of the restaurant. It was so full, you couldn't even get to the back shelf without moving and stacking boxes, crates or buckets. It was like a game of Jenga with much less stable blocks. Once the big walk-in was cleared out, it was leveled, the debris removed (after sitting in a pile on the floor for nearly a week), and finally, a new walk-in freezer and refrigerator were erected. Progress?<br />
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Little by little things changed. A sink was installed in back, then the new ovens were delivered. And then one night I walked in to find all of my baking equipment gone from the main kitchen.</div>
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Jesse, one of the new line cooks greeted me, "Hey, we just got all of your stuff moved back to the prep kitchen today."<br />
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I should have been thrilled. There would be more space for me to work. No more fighting for a few inches of counter space. No more working with the ovens at the feet of the cooks on the line. No more blazing hot, fire of hell oven. No more oven that barely heated enough to melt a stick of butter. No more listening to the terrible open mic performances or the Spanish radio station. But instead of being overjoyed, I felt like a sad, wet blanket. It felt like I was being banished. As insane as it was, I had really loved working in that kitchen. It was my dysfunctional home and I had made it work. </div>
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Since there were no other prep cooks working that night, I was completely on my own in the new kitchen space. It was quiet, dimly lit, and still completely disorganized. The dishwasher didn't know where to take things yet, so most of my baking tools ended up at the front kitchen again. I had to make numerous trips back and forth. I was missing an open flame for boiling water for my cheesecake's water bath and I couldn't boil down the syrup for the apple pie unless I wanted to make the trip through the labyrinth of the back of the restaurant (where random people popped out of doors every now and then) with boiling hot liquid in a scalding hot pan. And I couldn't figure out the ovens. Since they were convection, they were highly more efficient than what I was used to. I couldn't get the temperature right - everything was cooking way too fast. My cheesecake browned in a matter of minutes. My apple pie crust browned, but the filling didn't bubble. I had no idea if my final products were going to be cooked through or raw in the middle.<br />
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There seemed to be one bright spot in the new space - I could listen to whatever music I wanted to. I had spent countless nights next to a boombox playing a radio station that repeated the same ten Spanish songs over and over again. I didn't know what they were singing about, but I sure as heck had the words memorized. So many nights I went home with a song stuck in my head in a language I didn't comprehend. Tonight would be different! I pulled up my Pandora account excited to listen to my choice of tunes. But every artist I chose gave me a mix of utterly dark and depressing music. <br />
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I languished. I felt displaced and alone. I missed being in the warm, brightly lit kitchen with my co-workers. I missed hearing the commotion of the dining room and the sizzle of food on the line. I missed the chatter of the servers and the jingle of the dishwasher. All of the things that had felt like sensory overload when I first started at the cafe had become second nature for me. The silence of this new kitchen was more than I could take. I also missed getting fed at the end of my shift that night. I had been forgotten. I couldn't wait to get out of there.<br />
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That weekend, I found myself dwelling on my new working space. Wasn't the whole point of me getting a job in a kitchen to actually spend time in one? Observing and experiencing and interacting? In this new prep kitchen, all I could observe and experience was myself, my desserts and my shortcomings. And that terrified me a little. I could take Pam's judgement or anyone else's for that matter, but my own? Four to five hours alone with my fears and doubts and criticisms might be more than I could handle. It was ironic. After everything I'd been through in that restaurant; the dysfunctional ovens, the missing and inadequate equipment, the endless renovations and reorganizations, the changes in chefs, the changes in job duties, could this really be the last straw? So I made up my mind. I would give it one more chance. If I left feeling lonely and dejected again, I would call it quits. But if I survived this lonely prep kitchen and my inner critic, then there would be no stopping me.</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-81522261935564425472013-11-04T22:00:00.000-06:002014-05-08T21:14:10.073-05:00ISO: My happy placeYou could say that I'm a little bit of a dreamer. Like most human beings, I am never satisfied, constantly in search of greener pastures; daydreaming of that happy place where there is no stress, no struggle, just bliss. This search is what eventually led me to the Farmhouse. And while the job definitely had moments of hair tearing frustration, it was truly a happy place for me. It was a place where I could wind down from the day, surrounded by my fellow kitchen staff, working with simple ingredients in the hopes that the end result would be something beautiful and delicious. But as more and more shifts passed, inevitably the question of the future began to nibble at the back of my mind. I found myself frequently asking what the purpose of all of this was. Where was this going? What was it leading up to? Or, worst of all, was it just a dead end? Simply a hobby and a source for entertaining stories?<br />
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Originally, the main purpose of my Farmhouse experiment had been to find out if I did, in fact, enjoy working in the restaurant industry. If my time at the cafe was any indication, my hypothesis had been proven correct. I loved it. But I was fully aware that I had eons more to learn. When I had first taken the job, I had hoped to find a mentor in Louie and I think he had truly wanted to be one. In the beginning, he brought me a collection of cookbooks to leaf through in my spare time and tried to share industry tips and tricks every now and then. But it turned out that the Farmhouse had other plans for him. His chefly duties consumed all of his spare time until he finally said enough was enough and got out while he still had some sanity.<br />
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When Pam took over she had shown me a few things, but that quickly dwindled. She was an eight hour shift kind of gal - she put in her time in the morning and got out. She was rarely around when I was there at night. If our paths did happen to cross, she showed little interest in spending any time working with me. So I was on my own trying to make the most of it. After more than six months however, I was starting to realize that I couldn't possibly continue learning from my mistakes or research on the internet. It was taking too much time and wasting too much product. I needed some guidance.<br />
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The thought of culinary classes was increasingly on my mind. I wanted to learn about ingredients and how they worked together, influenced one another. I wanted to learn about ratios and techniques, mass production, supply ordering and menu writing. In terms of schooling, there were plenty of options to choose from in the city, but most were pricey. I'd also heard that many of them gave a lot of empty promises to their hopeful young chefs - leading them to believe they'd get all of the tools they needed to be successful in the industry, only to graduate without a clue where to begin. I was wary. Plus, that nest egg I had been saving up was really meant to go toward a first home or better yet a business - not another education. <br />
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I could also take a leap and get a full-time job baking somewhere if anyone would have me, but the thought of this was more than a little terrifying. It was a well known fact that you wouldn't get rich baking for someone else. The money was crap. Leaving a job where I had good benefits and a nice paycheck for a job with no benefits and a very tiny paycheck seemed more than a little nuts. <br />
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But I was getting restless and I needed something to happen. I felt less and less confident and fulfilled in my work in web development. The industry was constantly changing and I was struggling to keep up with it. Most days left me feeling empty, dissatisfied and insufficient. Recently, the company I worked for had taken on a project for a huge pharmaceutical company that required me to spend hours of my life tweaking code to match a design specification that asked for pixel perfection. I would get vague bug reports from someone in their QA department in China requesting that I move a logo up two pixels and a navigation bar to the left by one pixel, decrease a font size by a point, darken a horizontal rule by one shade. I couldn't make myself believe that this work mattered. How did this make the world a better place? At least with baking I was fulfilling one of the most basic human needs. The result was tangible, something I could touch and feel and taste, something that I knew other people would get enjoyment from.<br />
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As much as I thought things over, I couldn't reach a conclusion. I desperately wanted someone to tell me the answer. Discussions with my husband only led to frustration. He works on something we like to call 'Brian' time. He talks a good game, but when it comes to execution, it takes him a while. It took him four years to propose. It takes him a year to make a dentist appointment, days to take out the garbage, you get the point. I work on Ceth time, which usually equals immediate results. Being stuck in limbo drove me crazy. Brian was also not much of a risk taker. I found that when I would dream out loud to him, I'd be confronted by a dear in headlights look. Something that said, 'I didn't sign on for this.' And it's true, he didn't. When we met I was just a boring corporate girl that wanted to play tennis. Now I was an unstable woman that wanted to throw her professional life down the toilet. This was all my crazy dream, not his. I couldn't expect him to help me find the solution. I would have to do it on my own. <br />
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For now I would just have to be satisfied with dreaming and have faith that eventually something would happen to take me down the right path.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-48091728705939950482013-10-20T13:44:00.000-05:002014-04-22T17:58:23.291-05:00Apple pie up the ying yang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
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I like a good challenge. They say nothing worthwhile in life comes easy, and I am a firm believer in that. You have to fight for happiness and success. And if you don't have to? It's probably only temporary, or you're just a really freaking lucky person and you should be extremely thankful for it. For all the rest of us, life is challenging. But I'm not complaining. I don't want anything handed to me. I want to earn it. Because there is nothing like struggling and falling and getting back up and then finally succeeding. The pure joy of accomplishing what you've set out to do with your own brains and bodily strength is so incredibly satisfying.<br />
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A short while after I had started <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-magic-of-pie.html" target="_blank">baking apple pies at the Farmhouse</a>, I got wind of a pie baking contest in one of the city's neighborhoods. It was a fundraiser for one of the local parks and anyone and everyone was welcome to participate. I knew I had a long way to go before my pie was award-winning, but I really wanted to give it a shot anyway. If I could get an honorable mention? Now that would really be something. It would be a start to making a name for myself in the baking community, affirm that I was on the right path and get me one step closer to having my own bakery or cafe. <br />
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The contest was for apple pies only and had very strict guidelines - no other fruit allowed, double crust only! There were also very specific tasting notes; the pie should have eye appeal, filling consistency, a nice color, definition, spice balance, crust that was flaky, but not too flaky, with uniform thickness completely sealed with no leaking and a flavor that was complimentary to the filling. <br />
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Jesus, these people weren't messing around! I seriously doubted I could meet all the rigorous requirements, but I was damned if I wouldn't try. I completed my application and set to work developing the perfect pie recipe.<br />
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Over the next few weeks, I made pies several times a week with various alterations to the recipe, trying to get the spice, sweetness and consistency of the apples to the right place. I started by tinkering with different kinds of apples. Tim, the owner of the Farmhouse had given me lectures regarding the types of apples I was using for pies and how I should taste them to determine the appropriate sugar level, and not overpower it with additional flavors like lemon juice, and what thickeners were best and so on. He had a secret mix of apples that he always used for pie that consisted of Jonathan, Golden Delicious and a couple other varieties. I personally hate Golden Delicious, so I stayed far away from those and searched for ones with a nice round flavor and tartness. I settled on a mix of Jonathan and Empire. The Empires were tart almost like a Macintosh, but had a firmer texture that would hold up in baking. The Jonathan had great flavor and would break down a little more, resulting in a pie that was neither crunchy nor mush.<br />
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Once the apples were chosen, I played around with crust recipes, working with varying amounts of sugar, butter, shortening and even one that used hard cider instead of water. I also experimented with chilling times and oven temperatures. Sometimes my crust drooped in the oven, sometimes the filling was too tart, most times the crust was not flaky enough. But I kept at it, buying up all the apples I could at local farmer's markets. I even went apple picking in Michigan one weekend. <br />
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Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I was working a normal Thursday shift at the cafe when I got a call from Pam. <br />
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"Tim's harvest party at the apple orchard is this weekend and he wants you to make the pies for it."<br />
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I felt a knot form in my throat and I hesitated to ask the next question, fearing the answer. "How many pies does he need?"<br />
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"As many as you can possibly make."<br />
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Awesome. While I was honored that he thought my pies were good enough for his party guests, I had no idea how many I could possibly bake in the next two days. I decided to whip up crusts for eight pies that night and let them chill until the next day. Then I would come in and power through the peeling, coring and slicing. Up until now, I had been doing all of the apple prep with a small apple corer, a vegetable peeler and a chef's knife. It was tedious. Apples for two pies took me 30-45 minutes. This was not gonna fly if I needed to make more than two pies tomorrow. As if reading my mind, that night my husband surprised me with a combination apple peeler, corer, slicer. It was a brilliant device and cut the prep time down significantly. Not to mention, it saved my hands from hours of pain! <br />
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Apparently Pam had been thinking the same thing. When I walked into the Farmhouse kitchen the next night, there sat the same peeler, slicer, corer my husband had brought me the night before.<br />
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"Have you used one of these things before? It's a life saver!"<br />
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Indeed it was. That night could have been a nightmare, but with that device, it went by without a hitch. Now if I could just get my pies for the contest to come out right...<br />
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The night before the contest, I started my prep for the pies. I had planned everything out. The crust had been made earlier in the day and was thoroughly chilled. I would fill the crust, chill the pie overnight and then bake it off in the morning. I got the filling ready to go, lined a pie plate with crust, filled it and started to seal it. But something was wrong. Juice started oozing all over the place. A quick check of the bottom crust found a gigantic, gaping hole in it. Panic set in. It was already 11 pm. I was going to get up at 6 am the next morning to bake the pies before the contest. I needed to make another crust and it would have to chill at least 1 hour before I could roll it. Looked like it was going to be a long night. I took a deep breath and worked through it. Why on earth had I thought this contest was a good idea?<br />
<br />
The next morning, I baked the pies, but didn't check on them until they were almost done. Apparently my oven was not wide enough to bake two pies on one shelf - the edges of one of the pies nearest to the side had almost burned. It looked like one of the crusts had leaked too. Disaster. But I swallowed my pride and delivered the pies anyway. If nothing else, maybe they could sell them and make some money for the park.<br />
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Several days went by with me obsessively checking the contest's website for the results to be posted. I already knew I hadn't won, but I wasn't giving up hope that maybe I had gotten an honorable mention. On my way to a shift at the Farmhouse, I checked one more time. The results were posted, but my name wasn't on the list. After all of the mishaps I wasn't really surprised, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt anyway. The number of apples I had gone through, the pounds my husband and I gained doing taste tests, the hours of effort I spent. It hurt. With tears in my eyes, I entered the cafe to be greeted by my favorite server, Michael. <br />
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"Ceth!" He exclaimed. "I served some of your pie to this older gentleman today and he said it was the best pie he'd ever had!"<br />
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I wanted to kiss him. After feeling like an utter failure, he had managed to turn my world around. I had lost sight of what was important. All along I thought it was that stupid contest, but it wasn't. It was the people that were eating my desserts on a regular basis at the cafe. They already approved of my work, they didn't need my name on a list to validate it. I hadn't needed the contest to win. I had won months ago when I had accepted the challenge of baking at the Farmhouse. And that was a prize most amateur bakers couldn't add to their list of awards.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-55246156877424694802013-09-19T18:00:00.000-05:002014-04-05T13:42:07.658-05:00The magic of pie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
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I have a slight obsession with pie. There is almost nothing better than a slice of pie still warm from the oven with just the right amount of sweet, just the right amount of spice, and those glorious seasonal ingredients cloaked by a rich and flaky crust. Maybe what I love about pie is that it is so incredibly versatile and seasonal. I mean, you wrap something in buttery pastry crust and it's got to be good right? How could you possibly go wrong? Apple pie in the fall, pumpkin at Thanksgiving, pecan in winter, strawberry rhubarb in spring, cherry in summer, key lime, lemon meringue and french silk in all spots in between - just to name a few. Pure. Heaven.<br />
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Before my husband and I started dating, I was trying to convince him of the glory of rhubarb. This was something I grew up on and my mom and grandmother always made beautiful things with it. Its sharp tang mixed with something sweet and juicy like strawberries is one of the ultimate flavor combinations in my opinion. I couldn't fathom that someone wouldn't like it. So I decided I needed to win him over. And I would do it with the ultimate dessert, pie.<br />
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So I located the rhubarb, I found the perfect strawberries, and when all was said and done, I had made one damn good pie. Now I won't lie, I'm not great at making crusts. They always come out a bit dry and chewy no matter how hard I try. But not this one. This one was flaky, melt in your mouth delicious. There was no way he couldn't like rhubarb after he tasted this. So I sent him a text message, invited him over for a slice of pie. In his version of the story, as soon as he got my text, he biked from downtown up to my neighborhood (a good eight or nine miles) in record time to eat a pie that contained the devil's fruit. He ate the entire slice of pie.<br />
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"Well?" I asked when he finished. I was dying to know what he thought. <br />
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He looked at me, hesitating slightly. I could tell he was trying to choose his words carefully. "It's the best rhubarb pie I've ever had."<br />
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I laughed, understanding completely. "You still hate it don't you?"<br />
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He hung his head and nodded. So I accepted defeat. Some people hate rhubarb because they've never had it prepared correctly. But some people just plain hate it. There would be no convincing him on this one. That night was not a complete failure, however. I learned that this man would bike clear across the city to eat something he hated just to spend some time with me. I call that a pie win!<br />
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Since I had started at the Farmhouse, I had yet to see a pie on the dessert menu even though this seemed like the type of place where you should find one. Pam had told me to make apple crisp a regular dessert item, but I couldn't help but feel that this was a cop out. Apple crisp was what people made when they didn't have the time or kahunas to make a pie. Besides, I was tired of Pam giving me things to do, and then never being around to give me recipes or constructive feedback. So I took matters into my own hands. I decided I was going to put apple pie on the dessert menu.<br />
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Armed with a recipe and an idiot's fearlessness, I went in for my Thursday shift and departed several hours later leaving two warm pies sitting on the counter. Even though <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-apple-crisp-dilemma.html" target="_blank">my apple crisp</a> the week before had been an epic fail, I felt good about this.<br />
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It turns out, the customers felt good about it too. When I came in for my shift the following Monday, there was one piece of pie left.<br />
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Up to that point, staff at the cafe had more or less left me alone. I was only there two nights a week and when I was, I was working pretty steadily. There was no time to chat or get to know anyone. But something changed when those pies came out of the oven. Suddenly people wanted to talk to me and know my story. One server told me the smell of the pies brought a tear of nostalgia to his eyes. A bartender was shocked when I told her this was my first baking job. <br />
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When I told Michael, another server, about being in the kitchen with my grandma when I was little, he said, "She'd be proud of you if she could see you right now."<br />
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Moments like these made me realize that there was something truly magical about pie. It had the capability to bring people closer together, to help a budding romance, to make the worst day a little brighter. Our memories with pie are always good and for some reason we choose to hold onto them and share them with others. I was honored to be creating more of those moments for anyone that visited that cafe. Because let's face it, life is just generally better when there is pie.<br />
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The recipe that was the inspiration for my apple pie at the Farmhouse can be found <a href="http://thekiwicook.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/bbcmed-jpg/" target="_blank">here</a>.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-43089127301658646552013-09-02T18:00:00.000-05:002014-03-23T19:26:48.966-05:00The apple crisp dilemmaFailure is a scary concept for most of us. We all set out to succeed at things in life. We set goals, we compare outcomes, we learn from other's mistakes, we adjust our strategy and we strive to be the best at something. But failure always lingers in the background - it's always a possibility. Many times it even becomes a reality. In fact, I believe it's inevitable - nothing worthwhile in life is easy. We have to fight for it and fall along the way. It's how we react to those falls that defines us and sets us apart. Do we get back up, brush ourselves off and try again? Or do we give up? Do we accept defeat and succumb to the belief that that thing we really wanted is always going to be out of reach?<br />
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For me, being an amateur baker trying to make it the restaurant industry, that fear of failure was always there. I couldn't shake it. I hadn't been baking long enough to know all the tricks and secrets of the trade, all of the dos and do nots. So many times, I had to fail in order to learn. It was really frustrating and extremely humbling. But I had no alternative. There was no one to guide me or teach me at the Farmhouse. It was just me, the dysfunctional kitchen and the hope that I could make something delicious out of a few basic ingredients.<br />
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The summer was coming to a close, there was a chill in the air at night, the days were getting shorter, the kitchen wasn't as unbearably hot anymore and cases of apples started to appear in the walk-in cooler. The owner of the Farmhouse was also the owner of an organic apple orchard in Michigan. And since farm to table was all the rage, apples were definitely going to be a big deal at the cafe that fall. <br />
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Pam approached me one night and informed me that apple crisp was going to be the star of the dessert menu for a while.<br />
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"Also, there's a festival coming up next week that we might be baking crisps for. We're probably going to need 25 pans of it, so whenever you want to get started on those, feel free. I'll get you a recipe for it."<br />
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A recipe never came and neither did any other instructions or guidelines. So on my next shift, I decided to test out a gluten free crisp recipe I had found. The Farmhouse had always been a vegetarian friendly establishment and tried very hard to cater to people with dietary restrictions. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. I'd seen a box of almond flour in storage and contemplated using it many times. Now seemed as good a time as any!<br />
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I was lugging a case of apples up to the kitchen when I ran into Tim, the owner. Since I had started working there, he'd hardly spoken two whole sentences to me. But when he saw me with the apples, his face lit up.<br />
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"Oh, here we go!" He said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. "What're you making with the apples tonight, Ceth?"<br />
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I was a little caught off guard. I honestly didn't think he even knew my name. Stammering a bit, I told him about Pam's plan for the apple crisp and the approaching festival. He had me walk him through everything, including the pans I was going to use. I pointed out the giant sheet cake pans. I'd been using those for cake up til now, so I hadn't assumed it would be any different with the crisps.<br />
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"That's going to take a lot of apples," he said earnestly. He grabbed a couple apples out of the crate, rinsed them lightly and brought them over to my cutting board. "I'm trying to think about how many it takes to make a pie. But this will take considerably more. Do you have an apple peeler?"<br />
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I shook my head and showed him the dull and decrepit vegetable peeler I had planned to use.<br />
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"Well, that's going to take you all night. Don't we have a paring knife you could use here somewhere?"<br />
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He rummaged around the kitchen in search of one. <br />
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"There's got to be a paring knife here. How do we have a kitchen without a paring knife?"<br />
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I stood by and chuckled silently. He apparently knew nothing of the sad state of this kitchen. If only he knew of all the challenges I had faced over the last couple months. But maybe there was hope? Maybe he would see the work that was needed and do something about it.<br />
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He came back to the cutting board with a small chefs knife and started to peel some apples. "Was Pam going to have some of the prep guys help you out with this?"<br />
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I shrugged, "I assumed I might have to come in for a couple extra shifts."<br />
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"Yeah, it shouldn't be taking me this long to peel these. There's no way you're going to be able to make all of that on your own, I don't think. I have an apple peeler at home. I'll bring it in for you the next time I'm here. Have you ever used one of those? They're great. They peel, slice and core all at once."<br />
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He said his goodbyes and left me with a pile of apples and an uneasiness in my stomach. I hadn't really had too many doubts about my process before talking to him. But now I was worried. And as I started to peel the apples, I got even more worried. My hand started to cramp three fourths of the way through. This was not going to be an easy or quick task.<br />
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I eventually managed to fill the pan though and coated the apples with sugar and cinnamon, dotted them with butter and then topped them with my almond flour mixture.<br />
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The smell of apples and spice wafted through the kitchen as it baked. It smelled like fall. As much as I hated the dark cold days that came with winter, I loved the foods it brought. Hot chocolate and pumpkin pie. Roast turkey dinners, hearty soups and stews. And of course, apple desserts of all shapes and sizes.<br />
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As I pulled the pan out of the oven, I knew with certainty I was going to have to make apple crisp at home this weekend. I was dying for a bite. I had had my doubts about the recipe as I was making it - being gluten free, it was definitely a healthy rendition. And the fact that I had to multiply it by about 10 didn't help matters. Would it be what Pam had been looking for? She hadn't given me a recipe, so honestly, what could she expect? The delightful smell was reassuring though, and I tried not to think about it too much.<br />
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To my dismay, my next shift found the apple crisp sitting where I had left it, a few scoops missing. In the walk-in, I found a deep, steam tray pan filled with another apple crisp. My heart sank.<br />
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I garnered the courage to talk to Pam. "So was that crisp I made any good?"<br />
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"I couldn't serve it," she said flatly. "What recipe did you use?"<br />
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"It was a healthier, low sugar, gluten free one I found on the internet."<br />
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"Yeah, it was too healthy."<br />
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Well, that was that. My confidence was shot. Crisps were some of the easiest desserts to make and I had failed. I was ashamed. I could only assume what Pam thought of me. Luckily, the night was not all bad news. It turned out that we hadn't gotten approved for the festival, so I was off the hook for 25 pans of crisp.<br />
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Still, unable to bear the burden of defeat, I went home and made an apple crisp that weekend. I had to prove to myself that I was capable of doing this, even if Pam would never know. I didn't follow a recipe, I just went with my gut. It came out beautifully. If only I had trusted myself when I had made that crisp at the Farmhouse. But there was no going back, I would just have to learn to trust my instincts next time. And though the failure had been painful, I knew it was going to take a lot more than a pan of bad apple crisp to keep me down.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-30147584489348298362013-08-26T13:47:00.000-05:002014-03-01T15:54:18.611-06:00Differences of OpinionI've always struggled with authority. It's not so much that I don't like being told what to do, I'm perfectly fine with taking orders and following directions. I think it might have something to do with <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/07/baking-limbo.html" target="_blank">my desire to control</a> certain situations. And I'll admit, I have a bit of a stubborn streak. I'm pretty easy going and not overly opinionated most of the time, but when I do have an opinion, it's tough to convince me otherwise. If there isn't a logical reason for doing something a certain way, I don't like being forced to do it.<br />
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For instance, when I was the dishwasher and kitchen assistant at a cafeteria in high school, I was told I couldn't wear jeans, I had to wear dressier pants. I balked at the idea of it. First of all, I was tucked away in the kitchen where I was rarely seen by the public. Second of all, it wasn't like my jeans were ragged or indecent. They didn't have holes, weren't sagging below my butt and weren't so tight they left nothing to the imagination. Lastly, I was a dishwasher. I was working with dirty dishes, and sloppy water. I was going to get dirty and wet. Why would I want to wear nice pants that would probably get stained and ruined? I defied the dress code on multiple occasions. And every single time I was reprimanded. <br />
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In Pam's kitchen, my bullheadedness was going to be a problem. She was new to the kitchen and she wanted everyone to know she was there and she was calling the shots. She was making this cafe her own and every aspect of it would be controlled by her. <br />
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On busy nights, she would stand at the head of the line and bark commands. Every time an order came in, she would call out the dishes. She would yell for the status of things, holler when something was running out, send fries back when they were overdone or under-fried, reprimand the cooks when something looked sloppy. I wasn't working the line and it stressed me out. I could only imagine how the cooks felt. But I had to give her some credit. Being the female head chef in a kitchen of men was no easy task. She had to assert herself, or risk not being taken seriously. If she ruled with fear, no one would question her authority. Except maybe me.<br />
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After my unsuccessful attempt to become a French pastry assistant, I had settled into my role as the dessert baker at the Farmhouse. I still wasn't completely sold on the idea, but I couldn't deny that I was comfortable there. I loved my coworkers and I really enjoyed being in that kitchen, even as dysfunctional as it was. It was a place I could go to recharge after a day at the office. Some girls went for spa treatments and pedicures. Me, I baked. The idea that Pam might change all that made me bristle.<br />
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Her first order of business was to get some new things on the dessert menu. The carrot cake wasn't selling as well as it used to, so she had me start making key lime pies. Then she moved on to the cheesecake. Here I immediately took personal insult. I had been making the cheesecakes for a couple months now without any complaints. In fact, quite a few compliments were passed back to me from the servers and there never seemed to be a problem selling it. But Pam wanted to experiment with recipes and find the cheesecake <i>she </i>liked best. <br />
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First she complained that my crusts were too thick and the servers couldn't get it out of the pan. I wanted to suggest that maybe the servers shouldn't be responsible for plating desserts, and that maybe we should get some new nonstick springforms (to replace the rusted misshapen ones I had been using), but I held my tongue and decreased the crust recipe. Then she gave me some completely new recipes to try. Begrudgingly, I tested one out that had a weird pastry-like crust, and wasn't baked in a water bath. It came out cracked, heavy and misshapen. She moved on to Martha Stewart. Now, I have no problems with Ms. Stewart. She's made a name for herself in the culinary and homemaker world and she definitely has some good ideas. But I was damned if I thought her cheesecake was better than mine. I faked the recipe and made my own instead. When I came into the cafe for my next shift, Pam was full of compliments.<br />
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"That cheesecake recipe has always been a favorite of mine," she gloated.<br />
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I chuckled inwardly with the knowledge that it had been my recipe that made her gush. Satisfied with this victory, I accepted her authority and dutifully followed her orders for everything else.<br />
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My next challenge was hot fudge sauce. <br />
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"It's so easy and the taste is to die for," Pam explained to me. "You just add all of the ingredients except the butter and you don't even have to stir it. Then after 18 minutes, when it gets to softball stage, you remove it from the heat and add the butter and you're done!"<br />
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She explained that when it was at softball stage, if you took a glob of it and dropped it into a glass of water, it would form a ball before it hit the bottom of the glass. Sounded easy enough. I saved the recipe for the end of the night, thinking it would only take me 20 minutes to complete and I'd be out of there and headed home early.<br />
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My first concern came when I realized there was milk in the recipe and she had told me not to stir it. Wouldn't it scald the milk if it was just left to boil without stirring? I decided to trust her and give it a shot. Since the recipe was multiplied by 10, it took the full 18 minutes just to bring it to a boil. Then once it was finally boiling it became quickly apparent that it needed to be stirred. It was thickening on the edges and not incorporating into the middle. <br />
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After over 45 minutes of stirring, and not noticing a change to the consistency, a frightening thought occurred to me. If the recipe was multiplied by 10, did that mean the cooking time should be multiplied by 10 too? If that was the case, it would take 180 minutes to finish. Three hours! Horrified, I racked my brain for ideas and decided to move a smaller portion of the sauce to a smaller pot. Even with this method, every time I attempted to put a dollop of the sauce in a glass of water, it dispersed, looking like watery chocolate milk, and in no way formed a ball. I decided it was impossible. So I worked through several smaller batches, thickening it to the best of my ability and called it a night. From start to finish, I had spent over an hour and a half working on the sauce. With much guilt, I delivered the pan to the dishwasher with half an inch of scalded chocolate sauce caked to it. <br />
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"Just let it soak for ages Manuel. I'm so sorry," I hung my head and slunk away.<br />
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When I came in for my next shift, to no surprise, Pam informed me that the sauce hadn't been quite thick enough and that it definitely needed to be stirred the next time I made it to get it to a better consistency. A ball of frustration formed in my throat, but I swallowed, nodded and told her I looked forward to trying it again.<br />
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As the weeks went on, Pam became less and less involved in the details of my dessert baking. Most nights she was gone by the time I got to the kitchen and she stopped leaving things for me to do. At first it was a little terrifying, not having any direct orders. I didn't want to let her down and make too much of something or not enough of another. Then it hit me. She must have seen that I was perfectly capable and had faith that I could work things out. I had proven that there was no need for her to exert her control over me. And so, with a newly discovered confidence I seized the challenge of becoming the owner of the dessert menu at the Farmhouse, answering to no one's authority but my own.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-81997670996573225362013-08-14T09:00:00.000-05:002014-02-03T12:39:47.922-06:00The Stage Part DeuxI've always been a big fan of comfort food. Maybe I'm old fashioned, or maybe it's just nostalgia for my childhood. Growing up in small town Montana, comfort food was the main attraction in the kitchens of my mom and grandmother. There were dishes like pan fried pork chops, or Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, homemade turkey soup or stuffed peppers. Nice Sunday dinners were pot roasts or roast Cornish game hens, weeknight meals were casseroles, or meatloaf or mac and cheese. These were meals that weren't pretentious or overly inventive. They were meals that made you feel warm and happy inside. When you sat down to eat them, you knew you were home and that someone cared about you.<br />
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I think this love of comfort has found its way into my baking. I love a thick slice of creamy cheesecake, or a gooey piece of chocolate cake, warm pie out of the oven or smooth silky custard. I have never been one for dainty desserts with more frill than substance. I want something that feeds my body as well as my soul. Yes, presentation is a necessary part of any type of cooking, but if there is more decoration on my plate than actual food, I'm going to feel seriously misled. Dessert is about indulging. It's about giving in to that craving and satisfying a need that goes beyond hunger. This is not something that can be fulfilled with presentation alone.</div>
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Since <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/07/so-long-louie.html" target="_blank">Louie had left</a>, I had decided to tough it out at the Farmhouse and give dessert baking a shot. But that didn't mean I wasn't keeping my options open. I wasn't completely sold on the idea of working for Pam just yet as I was still feeling pangs of betrayal after she had nixed my bread baking. I had started sending my resume out for various bakery positions and amazingly enough, I was actually getting some responses. There were apparently more people out there that were willing to take chances on amateur cooks with dreams.</div>
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One response was particularly exciting. The position was for a full-time pastry assistant at a French bakery. When I visited their website to learn more, I was greeted by glorious photos of artisan bread, croissants and other beautiful pastries. Here was my chance to really immerse myself in the baking world! </div>
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Before I knew it, I had scheduled a stage with one of the pastry chefs. Then the reality of it all started to sink in. I had done something like this only <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-stage.html" target="_blank">once before</a> when I had gone to the Farmhouse to audition for the role of the bread baker position. Then it had been simple enough; come armed with a recipe and execute it. This time around, I had no idea what they were going to ask me to do. And I had very little experience with pastries. I had never made a croissant before in my life. What would I do if they asked me to make some? I reassured myself that this was an 'assistant' position and they couldn't possibly expect me to be an expert. With the interview less than a week away, there wasn't any way for me to really prepare after all. I couldn't possibly learn to make every pastry under the sun in a few days. So, armed with my hapless enthusiasm, I arrived at my stage, ready for whatever challenges they might throw at me. The worst thing that could happen was that I would fail miserably. Embarrassing as that was to think about, I would still have a job at the Farmhouse to fall back on.</div>
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I was welcomed to the kitchen by two pastry cooks that were at least five to ten years younger than me. They were friendly enough, but it was obvious right away that they had formed a close sisterly bond working together. I felt out of place almost immediately. For my first task, they had me work on some trays of macaroons. The cookies had already been shaped, they just needed to be removed from their sheets and paired up prior to being filled. This task sounded simple enough, but if you've ever eaten a macaroon, you know they are light and delicate as air. It requires a very gentle touch. And these freaking things were sticking to their sheets like nobody's business. I broke a few. Finally one of the girls gave me a dough scraper that helped immensely. I was quietly grateful for her generosity. By the time I got through all the sheets of macaroons, they were too warm to be filled, so we carried them back to the cooler for a brief chill. </div>
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On to the next task. Pastry cream. I definitely had some confidence here. I had made it only once before, but I was pretty familiar with the process. And there was a recipe with basic instructions to follow. There was just one problem. The recipe had been multiplied by at least 10 which meant there were about 50 egg yolks in it. Cracking that many eggs and separating the yolk from the white was going to take me some time. Not to mention, the whites could not be contaminated with yolk since they used these to make the meringue for the macaroons and other desserts. It was delicate, tedious work. I set about separating the eggs the only way I knew how; tossing the yolk back and forth between two halves of shell. After a few of these, one of the chefs stepped in to assist.</div>
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"There's actually an easier and faster way to do that." Demonstrating, she cracked an egg, dumped its contents into her hand and let the whites stream out through her fingers. Brilliant!</div>
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"That's awesome. I appreciate any tips you can give me," I thanked her and went on with my separating. </div>
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A short while later a yolk broke on my hand and some of it got into the whites below. Again the chef was at my side.</div>
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"Here, we can't have any yolk in the whites or it won't whip to stiff peaks for the meringue. Go wash your hands," she guided me to the hand wash station while she dumped out the egg whites. She seemed understanding enough about everything, but I couldn't help feeling like I was failing on all fronts.</div>
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Finally all the yolks had been separated and it was time to move on to the next step of heating the milk, vanilla and sugar. Once that was brought to a simmer, the next step was to temper the eggs. I fumbled for a moment with the bowl of yolks in my hand. I couldn't remember how tempering worked. Did I add some of the yolks to the milk?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"You know that you have to add some of the milk mixture to the egg to temper it, right?" The chef interjected.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Oh yeah, of course," I lied unconvincingly, feeling heat rush into my face.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
"Ok, good. You'd be surprised how many people come in for stages and don't know that."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ugh. This was really not going well. But, she had saved me from ruining the entire effort. And in the end the cream actually turned out beautifully. You couldn't say this was a complete disaster.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As I had been diligently separating eggs, some other employees had made their way through the space to get supplies or stop and chat. I was dismayed to learn that there were different departments for the different types of food the cafe offered. There was a sweet pastry department and a savory pastry department. And somewhere in the depths of the building, there was a separate bread department. My dreams of getting my hands back into bread dough were quickly fading. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When the pastry cream was finished, the chef that had been guiding me thus far asked if I had ever made some kind of French sounding something-er-other. I had to ask her to repeat herself. But it turned out that all the pans were dirty or in use anyway so I was assigned to make some banana muffins instead. I was relieved. Muffins sounded much easier than whatever it was she had wanted me to make.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As I was working my way through a giant bundle of brown bananas, an order came in for some kind of special event and the head chef decided she would make a cake for it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"God, it's been ages since I made a cake. This is kind of nice," she commented.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I suddenly found myself pitying her. Here was a young and talented pastry chef who never got to bake cake. Instead she was surrounded by peaks of egg white and pastry creams. It was immediately clear that this was not where I was meant to be. Besides, I hated macaroons.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As I wrapped things up and prepared to leave, they told me they were interviewing a few others and that they would have a final decision soon since they wanted the new person to start within a week.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I guess we should first ask you if this is somewhere you would want to work."<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
I forced an affirmative answer, but my gut was telling a different story. These were not the desserts I wanted to make. I had nothing against French pastry. They were absolutely beautiful and brilliant. But they weren't for me. They simply wouldn't bring me the satisfaction that baking a good old fashioned cake would. There was no comfort in French pastries for me, only presentation. Even though I knew I hadn't passed the stage with flying colors and I doubted they would offer me the job, I really hoped I would never hear from them again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I headed home smelling of vanilla pastry cream and bananas. I couldn't wait to get back to the kitchen at the Farmhouse where instead I would smell of second hand fry grease. I chuckled to myself, a little surprised at the thought. If someone had told me I would feel this way a week ago, I would never have believed them.</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-1758257346438935382013-07-30T17:29:00.000-05:002014-01-12T21:47:41.438-06:00Baking LimboIt probably goes without stating that I'm a little bit of a control freak. My husband will be happy to vouch for that statement. I just generally like to be in control of my life and the situations I take part in. Before I go out to dinner at a new restaurant, I like to look up the menu online. When the weekend or a vacation is approaching, I put together a very careful plan about all of the activities that need to take place over that period of time. I have two sponges for washing the dishes, one for the first round of scrubbing and another for the actual cleaning part. There is also a very specific way that dishes should be placed in the dishwasher to maximize the space and resulting cleanliness of them.<br />
<br />
While this annoying habit of mine drives many people crazy, I believe that the desire to control goes hand in hand with being a good baker. Let's test this theory by making a comparison between baking and cooking. In cooking, you can take a dollop of that, a pinch of this, a splash of that, never follow a recipe and come up with an amazing dish. It's all about going with what you're feeling. However, if you do that with baking, more often than not, you're going to have a flop on your hands. Baking is a science. It's all about leaveners and how they react with acids and starches and fats. I wish I could be the carefree person that just throws some stuff in a pot and ends up with a miracle. But I am not one of those people. I like to measure and weigh things and follow instructions. I like to have control over the end result.<br />
<br />
This is all great and grand, but at some point, you have to realize that you cannot control everything. If you live life assuming you can alter the outcome of every situation to your liking, sooner or later, you're going to end up with some pretty major disappointments. This is why, when Pam transitioned to head cook at the Farmhouse and I lost my bread baking duties, I had to tell myself to let go a little. This was not my decision to make and nothing I could do would change it. This was not an easy realization for me.<br />
<br />
The day before I left for my vacation, I went back to the Farmhouse to finish the carrot cake I had started on my previous shift. Luckily there was a bag of flour there to greet me. Three hours later, I had made a cheesecake and a couple carrot cakes, hoping that would be sufficient while I was away. I headed home wondering if that had been my last shift.<br />
<br />
I tried my best not to think about the Farmhouse for the next six days while I was on vacation, but it couldn't be helped. When I baked bread and cheesecake for my mom, I was reminded of all of the times I had gone through the same motions at the cafe. When we went out for burgers one night, I couldn't help but think of all the times Javier had made me a burger and been sure to add avocado to it. I couldn't help but think about the staff in the kitchen and wonder if they had the same faulty ovens that I had to work with.<br />
<br />
There was also the question about what to tell my father. I had been working at the cafe for five months and had managed not to speak a word about it to him yet. My parents had been divorced since I was very young, and though we spoke at regular intervals, the conversations between he and I only scratched the surface of deeper topics. Like many dads, he had very high expectations of me. I knew he just wanted the best for me, but I always felt that I let him down somehow. <br />
<br />
When I got my job in web development, we actually had something we could talk and relate about - he had done programming work in the past. It was a good stable job with decent pay and I worked on some projects for clients with national and international reach. There was nothing disappointing about it. But how would my job at the cafe look to him? Would he think I was running away from responsibility? Giving up on a good opportunity? Throwing a good life away? All of these thoughts had built up over time and made it feel impossible to bring up in conversation. But I had resolved to tell him about it on this trip. He deserved to know about my life and the things that I had found to make it worthwhile. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the opportunity never presented itself, or maybe it did and I was just a coward. Because I couldn't control the outcome of the conversation, I was reluctant to start it. I took the easy way out and sent him an email when I was safely on my way back to Chicago. <br />
<br />
A couple weeks later, a cookbook arrived at my doorstep without a recognizable return address and no note. It was written by a chef in San Francisco that had started out in the industry with only a love for good food and no culinary education. She landed a job as a lunch chef when someone took a chance on her. Our stories were so similar! Where had this book come from?<br />
<br />
A call with my dad later revealed that he had sent it. "Her story reminded me of you," he told me. I was touched, humbled and ashamed. All this time I had kept my baking adventures a secret from him, and here he was being so thoughtful and accepting of it!<br />
<br />
Armed with the support of my family and the idea that you shouldn't assume the outcome of any situation, I endured the changes at the Farmhouse; inspired to make the best of the situation, regardless of my lack of control over it.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-15844904272591761432013-07-26T15:00:00.000-05:002013-12-20T17:36:43.091-06:00A bread baker no moreYou could say that I had a love-hate relationship with baking bread at the Farmhouse. There were days that were completely frustrating - when the bread wouldn't rise or it rose too quickly, when it browned too much or had holes in it. There were summer days when the air conditioning didn't work and the sweat beaded on my forehead and the blasts of heat from the ovens almost knocked me over. There were many days that I was so exhausted I could barely make the trip home from the cafe at the end of the night. And there were days when I just wanted to give it all up and quit. But on the other hand, there were moments when I couldn't imagine doing anything else. Feeling the dough in my hands, smelling the loaves when they came hot out of the oven, eating sandwiches made with it, joking around with the line cooks and feeling like part of the team, hearing compliments from the other cafe staff and customers. These were the things that made it all worthwhile and helped me to forget all of the times I had almost given it up.<br />
<br />
The week after Pam took over the head chef job at the Farmhouse, I had planned to take a week-long vacation back home. It was horrible timing, but I had been planning this trip for months - way before I knew Louie would no longer be my boss. I hadn't been home in two years and I was incredibly homesick. There was no way I was calling it off. So I had to suck it up, be brave and tell Pam about it.<br />
<br />
I approached her at the end of my shift one night and filled her in on the situation.<br />
<br />
"I'll be more than happy to work some extra shifts. If there's room in the freezers, I can make a couple big batches and you could store it."<br />
<br />
"Let me think about it," she said brusquely. "I'm cleaning out the freezers right now and I don't know what we have room for. Come in on your next regular shift this week and we'll talk then."<br />
<br />
My next regular shift was a Friday, three days before I was supposed to leave. I didn't see how that could possibly be enough time (unless I worked all weekend), but I had no other choice. I had to trust that she'd have a plan and I'd get through it.<br />
<br />
When I showed up for my next shift, the kitchen was in its usual disarray as they prepped for the dinner theater that night.<br />
<br />
Pam greeted me when I walked in, "Ceth, I need to talk to you. We're not going to bake bread here any more."<br />
<br />
It was funny how easily she said it, how simply it rolled off her tongue without pause - it clearly meant nothing to her. I tried to hide my dismay, for it meant everything to me. <br />
<br />
"The ovens here are complete shit," she continued. "I don't know how you worked with them at all. If we ever get a prep kitchen built in the back with decent ovens, maybe we'll think about baking our own bread again. But for now, we're just going to order the bread from somewhere else."<br />
<br />
I wanted to disagree with her. Tell her that I had been baking decent bread for months in those shit ovens. Tell her she was making the wrong decision. Tell her that store-bought, mass-produced bread was just not the same as homemade. But I held my tongue. She could have fired me on the spot, but she hadn't. She apparently had other things in mind for me.<br />
<br />
"So for today, can you make three or four cheesecakes, a bunch of carrot cake and then there is a puff pastry dessert I want to show you. Sound good?" She dismissed me with a quick nod of her head and went back to her prep work. I was going to have to adjust quickly to her style. Louie had never been around much for guidance, but I always felt like I could lean on him if I needed to and he always treated me like a human being. Pam made me feel like I was just a tool at her disposal.<br />
<br />
I stood there dumbly for a moment, still in shock, taking things in. There was a repair guy on the main prep station working on the meat slicer. My typical work station was in disarray and there was another girl working there making chocolate cake. What the hell? Pam had literally just taken over a few days ago and already she had found someone else to make desserts? I looked around for the small mixing bowls that I used for making the cheesecake batter and found none.<br />
<br />
"Hey Pam, have you seen the mixing bowls for the mixer?"<br />
<br />
"You mean that one?" She pointed behind me with a condescending smirk. It was the industrial sized one I had used for bread baking- currently splattered with chocolate cake batter. Yes, I knew where that one was, thank you. Geez.<br />
<br />
"No, I'm talking about the small ones."<br />
<br />
"Oh, I think they're over at the dinner theater filled with ganache."<br />
<br />
I may have rolled my eyes. Not only was there another girl there baking desserts in <i>my </i>ovens, but all of my equipment was gone or in use too? What exactly did she expect me to accomplish here?<br />
<br />
I gave up the thought of cheesecake for the moment and decided to start on the carrot cake. There were no grated carrots in stock, so I set about grating them by hand on a flimsy box grater. As I begrudgingly grated, I watched the other girl as she helped Pam. She pulled some roasted potatoes out of the middle oven, found that they were not roasting fast enough and plopped them into the raging hot oven on the end. A short while later, she pulled them out overdone.<br />
<br />
"You have GOT to get these ovens calibrated." she protested. I chuckled inwardly, selfishly enjoying her struggles. It was like I had time traveled backwards and was watching my failed attempts with the first batches of bread I had made.<br />
<br />
After the potato fiasco, she pulled some of my bread pans out and looked at them disgustedly. To be honest, they weren't the most attractive things to look at. Louie didn't believe in washing them after the bread baking - it was kind of like seasoning a cast iron pan. You never used soap and water on one so that the flavors were preserved and then added to the next dish you made in it. She flung a pan into the sink, doused it with hot water, scrubbed furiously to get some of the grease off and failed. I hid behind my box grater diligently grating, trying to be as unassuming as possible. <br />
<br />
A sore arm and some orange fingers later, the carrots were grated and I was ready to get the batter going. But when I searched around there was no all purpose flour to be found. I also noted an empty spot on the shelf where my poolish used to live. The smelly, wild apple yeast that had been the pride of Louie and the added flavor for the bread was gone.<br />
<br />
I felt utterly defeated. I was running into dead ends everywhere I went. The joy of bread baking had been taken away from me. The remnants of Louie had been purged. My replacement was apparently already in training.<br />
<br />
Disheartened, I threw together some lumpy cheesecake in the giant Hobart mixer and tossed the cake batter into the cooler. It would have to wait until some flour was delivered. There was nothing left for me to do and there was no way for me to tell Pam since she was in the midst of the dinner theater rush. I couldn't finish the carrot cake, there were no puff pastry instructions, and we needed to order flour. What exactly was I supposed to do? On my way out, I asked Javier to have her call me and left the cafe feeling like a sad dog with its tail between its legs.<br />
<br />
I awaited her call which never came. Maybe she would fire me. Or maybe I would just quit. At this point, I honestly felt like I didn't care anymore. If there was no bread baking and no Louie, there just didn't seem to be any point to working at the Farmhouse any longer.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-11381172072439096402013-07-24T23:00:00.000-05:002013-12-16T13:29:18.368-06:00So long LouieGoodbyes are never easy. They're also never very convenient. They never come at times when you're ready for them. You can prepare all you want for it, but inevitably there will be some heartache, some inconvenience and probably some tears involved. I had prepared myself as much as possible for Louie's departure from the Farmhouse, but of course I was not ready to say goodbye. And unfortunately for Louie, his last week at the Farmhouse was not a smooth one.<br />
<br />
During the summer months, the Farmhouse ran food booths at many of the festivals throughout the city. This meant that a TON of food had to be prepped for these weekend events. Many Fridays I would arrive at the kitchen to find all of the counter space consumed by prep for these events. One weekend it was vegetable lasagna made with eggplant instead of noodles. Another weekend it was fajitas, another it was tamales. During Louie's last week, it happened to be doughnuts.<br />
<br />
Now, the making of doughnuts is simple enough if you have the right equipment and a good chunk of time. Unfortunately for Louie, he had neither. Consumed with the daily tasks at the Farmhouse, he had little extra time. He also had little support from the existing staff - we were shorthanded. He had been trying to hire additional line cooks for the Farmhouse for several months with no luck. And since the fryers were under steady use for the cafe, the doughnuts had to be fried after hours. That meant a late night with some dough, hot oil and Louie's vitality.<br />
<br />
When I saw him the next day, a frazzled Louie informed me that he had spent most of the night in the kitchen, finally worked out a system of shaping, cutting, frying, repeat and then gone to sleep for a couple hours on one of the cold, dirty cement floors in the back office before starting his shift the next morning. I knew doctors pulled those kind of shifts, but chefs? <br />
<br />
Then there were the food deliveries. I had experienced on several occasions, a shortage of something-er-other. Butter, eggs, molasses, carrots... I had learned to make substitutions and work around these things. But unfortunately for the cooks, if we were out of buffalo burger, there was really no substitute for that.<br />
<br />
The last Friday shift I worked with Louie, an important food delivery didn't happen. They were supposed to come before five but their other deliveries ran long. And because of union rules, they would not deliver after 5 o'clock. That meant no food delivery until sometime the next day. No food delivery for the Friday dinner rush and no food delivery for the Saturday brunch rush. We were out of everything from burger, to cucumbers, to tuna. The '86' board was filled with items on the menu that we didn't have. Servers would come in with an order, only to be told, 'We don't have that'. It was chaos.<br />
<br />
And there was Louie, furiously working the line through all of this. I had never seen him so angry. I can only imagine how frustrating it was. He had been the chef there for over a year. And no matter how fed up with everything he was, how ready he was to leave, I know there was still a part of him that was attached to the place. He had been there through the renovation, through the improvements to the space and to the food. It was his baby. In every chef there is a strong desire to excel and make good food. It is fundamentally why we choose this line of work. We want to make people happy through their full bellies. Unfortunately, without the ingredients, that is nearly impossible to achieve.<br />
<br />
Fortunately for Louie, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. In a few days, he was on to a job at a high-class restaurant with better pay, better support, more time off and health insurance. He just had to jump this one last hurdle to get there.<br />
<br />
At the end of the night we said our goodbyes and I thanked him for this incredible opportunity he had given me. Despite my doubts, he assured me that Pam would keep me on board.<br />
<br />
"I told her you're like a sponge and you'll take on anything. She told me she figured she'd keep you on and see how things go. But if anything happens, let me know. I know people in the industry and I'll do what I can to help you find something else. And if an opening ever comes up where I am, I will let you know."<br />
<br />
I wasn't exactly comforted by Pam's idea of 'seeing how things go'. But I was honored that Louie had my back. This may have been goodbye, but a small part of me believed that it wasn't permanent. Maybe our paths would cross again somewhere down the line. One thing was for sure though. I would never forget that he had taken a chance on me and forever changed my life.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-31790969500284976472013-07-19T20:00:00.000-05:002013-11-19T23:14:16.176-06:00A hot, muggy kitchen equals funky bread<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
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One should never get too confident about things. Inevitably it will bite you in the ass. For instance, if you're in the playoffs for the World Series, it's game six and you're up 3-0. Don't get cocky! Some poor fan may just reach out of the stands and grab a fly ball that an outfielder could have caught, one mistake will lead to another and you'll end up kissing the chances of a trip to the World Series goodbye.<br />
<br />
Ok, so maybe baseball is not the best analogy here. I certainly wasn't baking bread for any sort of world championship of dough. But things had gotten comfortable for me at the Farmhouse. I had fallen into a groove. I was working two to three shifts a week and my bread was coming out fairly consistent. I hadn't had any complaints of holes in it in quite a while. Once, a customer even asked one of the servers where we bought our bread because they liked it so much. There were regular customers that would come in every week to buy one or two loaves to take home with them. Louie said the bread was the best it had been since he started working at the Farmhouse. Things were going along swimmingly. Then summer hit.<br />
<br />
Summers in the Midwest can be muggy and very warm. We're talking days of 90 degree temperatures with humidity levels at 70% or higher. These conditions wreak havoc on bread making. I've always heard about adjusting recipes based on climate and altitude, but had never really experienced it first-hand. I had changed almost nothing in my tactics and suddenly my bread was rupturing while it proofed and baked. I was getting loaves that were split down the top and others with a rough craggy look.<br />
<br />
First I assumed it was the rolling pin I was using. The wooden French roller I'd been using had mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen so I was stuck using a huge metal pin that clanged every time I applied pressure to the dough. It sounded like I was a body builder lifting weights. The pin also had rough abrupt edges instead of the smooth tapered ones on the French pin. I had an inkling that this was tearing the dough in places and causing weakened areas that later ruptured.<br />
<br />
Being the over-achiever that I was, I went out and bought my own French rolling pin and began carrying it to and from the cafe on the days that I worked. It stuck out of the canvas tote I used, at the ready to either defend me against a mugger or roll some rogue dough. But alas, my dear rolling pin did not do the trick. The bread was still rupturing.<br />
<br />
My next assumption was that the kitchen was too hot and too muggy for bread baking. There were days when the a/c didn't even work. I had to admit to myself that the recipe would need to be adjusted. But there were so many variables. Less sugar? Less water? Less yeast and/or poolish? More flour?<br />
<br />
As I was struggling through these modifications one night, I noticed a letter to the employees posted on the menu board. I scanned the first paragraph quickly out of curiosity. Suddenly it was hard to swallow. This casually posted letter was to inform us that Louie was leaving! They were hiring someone for his replacement. I stopped reading feeling a panic rush through me. Louie was the whole reason I was here. He had been brave enough to take a chance on me and then let me figure things out on my own through trial and error. A new chef could come in, take one look at me and my (lack of) qualifications and send me on my way. Now was the worst possible time with my bread looking like craters of the moon!<br />
<br />
Earlier that week, I had met with a former colleague of mine from the web development agency where I worked full-time. He was one of the few people from that part of my life that knew about my baking. We got to talking about my experiences at the cafe and he said to me, "It's funny, I don't even know that Ceth. You have this whole other part of your life that I don't know."<br />
<br />
As I thought about what he said, I realized that I loved the idea. It was almost like I was leading a secret life. There was the boring Ceth that sat in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day staring at lines of code. Then there was the Ceth that baked bread and desserts at night in a crazy dysfunctional kitchen. The Ceth that carried a rolling pin around with her, drawing curious looks from passersby. The Ceth that went home smelling of French fries, a grease stain on her right knee. When a coworker asked if she did anything interesting the night before, she would have visions of loaves upon loaves of bread and cheesecake and cream cheese frosting and then she would casually shake her head, smiling inwardly and say, "no, not really."<br />
<br />
I didn't want to give up that secret life and go back to being just plain old programmer Ceth. I tried to reassure myself. Change could be good. Maybe a new chef would come in that would take me under their wing and teach me some things - be a mentor of sorts.<br />
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As my bread was in the last stage of baking, curiosity got the best of me and I went back to read the rest of the letter. The lump in my throat started to return. The new head chef was going to be... Pam. She had been the FOH manager until now and I'd only really worked with her peripherally. From what I had seen, she was a perfectionist and a control freak. I didn't see how this could end well. I needed to step up my game.<br />
<br />
Over the next few weeks, I worked diligently to get my bread back in shape. What I found was that I was rolling the dough too much and too tightly. With minor adjustments to the recipe and a different loaf forming technique, it started to look normal again. I also started baking muffins and scones for the weekends. I was trying to justify my existence and prove that I was capable of more that just bread and cheesecake. I held onto those last few shifts with Louie, knowing that the end might be in sight and I started browsing help wanted ads again just in case Pam decided I was no longer necessary.<br />
<br />
No matter what happened, I knew I couldn't return to the old status quo of a 9-5 desk job and give up on this passion. I had thrown my life a curve ball when I had taken the job at the Farmhouse and there was no turning back. The secret identity of Ceth Jordan would go on one way or another.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-15360328660565778762013-06-13T20:00:00.000-05:002013-11-19T23:19:23.352-06:00The challenge of cheesecake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZDR3nNG7xbbtOurfGyuLpxRj5A0QuUm9sXmCZYAiG6oAuNumSd9yZ-HPq1hd6cburlOoIzyISM3QJhJmI91YBrtninfEhzr2umYk54-amWqgESax86DjKMrhrtSiBVzOeJMGvYbb0MU/s1600/cheesecake.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEZDR3nNG7xbbtOurfGyuLpxRj5A0QuUm9sXmCZYAiG6oAuNumSd9yZ-HPq1hd6cburlOoIzyISM3QJhJmI91YBrtninfEhzr2umYk54-amWqgESax86DjKMrhrtSiBVzOeJMGvYbb0MU/s1600/cheesecake.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>
After offering to make carrot cake that one fateful spring day, I suddenly became the keeper of the cake. Nothing was ever explicitly said, Louie just stopped making it so I stepped in to try to fill his shoes. It worked out pretty well. Those hated moments of twiddling my thumbs while the bread rose could now be spent mixing, baking and frosting carrot cake. I was still trying to figure out the best way to bake it though. Most times it pooched oddly on one side and many times it seemed to dark around the bottom and edges of the pan. Much like the bread, it needed a vigilant hand to turn it every so often. And voila! It started to look pretty darn good.<br />
<br />
As I was going through this process one night, Louie says to me, "I was thinking about making a cheesecake."<br />
<br />
"I bet that would sell really well here actually," I agreed.<br />
<br />
"What's the most interesting cheesecake recipe you've ever made?"<br />
<br />
I didn't really even have to think about it. Over Christmas, one of our Chinese friends had invited us over for a potluck dinner. He was making curry beef and stir fried kale with mushrooms, so I opted to stick with his theme and make wonton soup. I also wanted to bring dessert. But what sort of dessert was special enough for Christmas dinner and still paired well with Asian food? After some thought, I decided upon mango cheesecake. It was made with a mango puree that was cooked and thickened slightly and then served with a mango sauce. To my delight, it was a big hit at the dinner party.<br />
<br />
"I made a mango cheesecake over Christmas once," I volunteered.<br />
<br />
"Very cool. I have some mango in the freezer in back. How do you feel about coming in an extra day this week to make one?"<br />
<br />
I stopped short. I had barely taken on the duties of carrot cake and suddenly here I was making cheesecakes too? Besides, did Louie even think about how difficult it would be to pull off a beautiful, smooth, creamy cheesecake in this kitchen? With those temperamental ovens? But being the dutiful student that I was, I of course agreed.<br />
<br />
So there it was. I was going to make a mango cheesecake for the Farmhouse. That night I went back to review the recipe and tried to come up with my plan of attack over the next few days. It would involve first baking the crust and letting that cool. Next up, I would have to make the mango puree, cook it down and let it cool before it was added to the filling. I would need to mix the filling and boil water so that the cheesecake could be baked in a water bath. This ensured that it cooked evenly and didn't crack. In those ovens, this step would be essential. Otherwise there was no way I could get it to come out right.<br />
<br />
The big night came and I tried to be confident about the whole thing. I even brought a quick-read thermometer from home so I could make sure the cheesecake was the right temperature when I pulled it out of the oven. There would be no cheesecake soup on my watch!<br />
<br />
Aside from consulting the printout of the recipe about a thousand times during the process, the whole thing went off surprisingly well. <br />
<br />
The moment of truth came the following night. As the Friday dinner rush was getting started, Louie pulled my cheesecake out of the dessert cooler. With a quick slip of a knife around the edges, he popped off the springform and swiped his finger around the edge of the pan to get a taste.<br />
<br />
"It's perfect," he said. "You're lucky you're married, or you'd have to deal with me harassing you all the time."<br />
<br />
I felt heat rush into my cheeks. If ever there had been a time I'd wanted to say 'Aw, shucks', now was it. I had always heard that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach. My husband could probably vouch for that. He had put on a fair amount of weight (would you believe 50 pounds?) since we'd met five years ago. The poor guy didn't stand a chance with my weekend baking fests with no shortage of heavy cream and butter. <br />
<br />
When I came in for my shift on Monday, there was no cheesecake to be found. We had a hit on our hands! And so the tradition of two cheesecakes a week began. That's not to say it wasn't without its own challenges. One week there was no mango, so I made peach instead. One week there was no butter, so I had to use oil in the crust. One week there was no aluminum foil to wrap the pan, so I had to do without the water bath (it cracked of course). Once I forgot to butter the sides of the pan, so it stuck a little more than it should have. Sometimes I forgot to tap the pan on the counter to release the air bubbles and it ended up looking like an acne plagued teenager with tiny pockmarks all over the top of it. One very special time, I left out an important ingredient. Nevertheless, customers kept on ordering it and eventually I memorized the recipe, streamlined the process and started making a berry swirl version that became a staple at the cafe throughout the summer months.<br />
<br />
What I was beginning to realize was that nothing was impossible. And in order to make anything worthwhile, you had to take some risks. Against all better judgement, even when your entire being was telling you no, you just had to say yes. Besides, isn't that how I got into this whole crazy, fun mess to begin with?<br />
<br />
<div style="background: #FFFFFF; box-shadow: 1px 1px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); clear: both; padding: 5px 10px;">
<h3>
Mango Cheesecake</h3>
<b>1 1/2 c</b> graham cracker crumbs<br />
<b>3 T </b>sugar<br />
<b>7 T</b> melted butter <br />
<br />
<b>24 oz</b> cream cheese (room temperature)<br />
<b>1 c </b>sugar<br />
<b>1 t </b>salt <br />
<b>1 T </b>vanilla<br />
<b>1 T </b>lime juice<br />
<b>14 oz</b> mango puree <br />
<b>5</b> eggs (room temperature)<br />
<b>1 c </b>heavy cream<br />
<br />
Preheat oven to 325º.<br />
<br />
Combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar and melted butter. Press firmly and evenly into the bottom of a springform pan and bake for 10-15 minutes until starting to brown and fragrant. Remove and allow to cool to room temperature.<br />
<br />
Cook the mango puree until slightly reduced and thickened. Allow to cool to room temperature.<br />
<br />
Before starting on the filling, fill a pan with water and place on the stove to bring to a boil.<br />
<br />
Beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar in three or four batches, incorporating thoroughly each time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add salt, vanilla and lime juice and beat until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, beating only until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl again. Add mango puree followed by cream and mix just until blended.<br />
<br />
Rub the sides of the springform pan with melted butter. Wrap with two sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil. Pour the batter into the pan and tap on the counter to release any air bubbles. Place pan in a larger deep roasting pan. Carefully poor the boiling water into the pan until it reaches about halfway up the side of the springform.<br />
<br />
Bake until the cake reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees - cake will still jiggle slightly in the middle. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the water bath for an additional 45 minutes. Remove from water bath and allow to come to room temperature. Place in the refrigerator and allow to chill at least 2-3 hours before serving. Before serving, run a knife around the edge of the cake to loosen. Serve with mango puree.
</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-28486559355196149482013-05-25T16:00:00.000-05:002013-10-30T15:15:57.781-05:00I scream, you scream, we all scream for... carrot cake?After a rough night at the Farmhouse with two batches of wasted bread, I wasn't thrilled to be headed back for a second round. But I was hopeful that my batch of chilled dough would quicken the process and I would be in and out in a few hours. <br />
<br />
It was Saturday afternoon, and I desperately wanted a night at home with my husband. Our schedules were both extremely full now. I worked Monday nights, he worked Wednesday and Thursday nights, I worked Friday nights, we both worked 9-5 Monday through Friday. That meant that Tuesday night, Saturday and Sunday were OURS. Having been married less than a year, we actually still enjoyed each other's company and we tried to make the most of our time together.<br />
<br />
Louie had promised that he would take the dough out of the walk-in a couple hours before my arrival so that it would be proofed and ready to go into loaf pans. Unfortunately, when I got to the Farmhouse, the bread was still very cold and enjoying its snooze in the refrigerator. Knowing how much Louie had on his plate, this came as no surprise. When he was running the show and working the line six to seven days a week (sometimes open to close), he was bound to forget things. I couldn't hold it against him. I knew he meant well. But since I had never done an overnight chill with the recipe before, I had no
idea if it would turn out. So I took the dough out to warm while I
started on another double batch. I was <i>not </i>coming back again tomorrow
in the event that the chilled dough didn't come out right.<br />
<br />
While the three batches were rising, I sat back to observe. It was an unusually busy night at the cafe. Maybe word had gotten out that there were new bathrooms? I'm sure the customers that had been coming to the restaurant for years were curious to see the updates. This place was somewhat of a staple in the city's diner scene. The food wasn't something that would blow you away and the decor needed a face lift, but the cafe itself was a constant. I think people liked the thought of a place that had been around forever. It was comforting to know that time would inevitably tick on and things would continually change, but the Farmhouse would still be there.<br />
<br />
Since the remodel had closed the kitchen for most of the week and taken up all of Louie's time, there were only a couple sad looking servings of dessert left for the dinner rush. And as people finished their meals, requests for carrot cake started coming in. The servers looked dismayed as they were informed there were no desserts for their customers. Louie was busy working the line, so he couldn't handle doing that <i>and</i> baking a cake. Since I was just waiting on my bread at that point, I quickly volunteered.<br />
<br />
"I'm happy to make some carrot cake if you want - I'm just waiting on the bread to rise."<br />
<br />
Louie gladly spouted off the recipe to me - memorized of course - and I scribbled it down and got to work. Midway through mixing the ingredients, the owner of the Farmhouse came back to the kitchen and started to interrogate Louie as to why there was no carrot cake. He happily pointed to me and said, 'We're on it!' Confrontation averted.<br />
<br />
There was just one problem. The cake was ready to go into the ovens, but the first two ovens were maxed out with three batches of my bread and the pilot light had gone out in the third oven. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to deal with that in the middle of the Saturday dinner rush, so two ovens is what I had to work with. Finally there was space in the blazing hot oven, but Louie wouldn't let me put the cake in that one. So I played the waiting game and time ticked on... so much for my Saturday night.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, Pam had come back to the kitchen in search of vegan chocolate pudding. Of course, we were out of that too.<br />
<br />
Louie jokingly volunteered, "If they want to wait 20 minutes, I can whip some up."<br />
<br />
Unfortunately for him, Pam took him seriously, and the customer agreed to wait. In between his many dishes on the line, he started melting some chocolate and sent me in search of some tofu. Between the three of us (Pam, Louie and I), we scrambled to blend all of the ingredients together and got them into the freezer for a quick chill. <br />
<br />
And of course more orders were coming in for carrot cake. I must have filled the pans too full of batter though, because they were taking much longer to bake than they should have and they had risen into a huge lopsided dome in the oven. After multiple toothpick tests, they were finally ready. We quickly knocked the steaming cakes out of their pans and Louie sawed off the domed tops. Then they were thrown into the fridge to cool while we started on the frosting. If we had been smart, we would have taken out the butter and cream cheese when we started the whole cake making process, but alas, we were not so smart after all. So cold cream cheese and cold butter were tossed into the mixer. It was then that Louie revealed his secret weapon; the blow torch.<br />
<br />
"This is a trick I learned when you're crunched for time," he said firing up the torch and holding the flame up to the mixing bowl while it whipped the ingredients. Then he handed the torch to me and went back to work on the line. My husband would have been the first to warn him about entrusting me with a flaming torch, but lucky for me, he wasn't there. Luckily for everyone else, I did not burn the cafe down that night.<br />
<br />
A few more secret ingredients and the frosting was ready. Even though the cakes had been in refrigeration, it wasn't nearly enough time to cool. But people needed their carrot cake! So we slopped the frosting onto a hot cake and called it done. The servings of cake that night were not their most beautiful with the warm, drippy frosting sliding off the slices onto the plate, but hey, at least it was fresh!<br />
<br />
In the midst of all the commotion, Louie had missed his insulin shot and his blood sugar had crashed. We rushed to get him some soda and finally we could all take a step back and breathe. I cleaned up my station, passed out the butchered cake top to the wait staff and called it a night. Thoroughly defeated, I headed home. It was 10pm - at least two hours later than I had planned. <br />
<br />
After everything that had happened that night, I found myself wondering if I was really cut out for this whole food service thing. Was it time to reconsider? Could I honestly think that I could work a full time job and be a successful baker on the side while still maintaining my marriage and social life? Something eventually had to give, but being the selfish only child that I was, I wasn't willing to give anything up yet. I wanted it all dammit! So I decided to keep pushing things until I found the breaking point. Whichever thing broke first, I guess that would be my decision. I just hoped it wouldn't be my marriage.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-29523002302035992532013-05-24T20:00:00.000-05:002013-10-13T22:59:02.487-05:00The remodelTo say that the kitchen at the Farmhouse needed some work might be an understatement. It was old and outdated. It was poorly laid out. The pipes in the refrigeration units leaked. The ceiling leaked in some places when it rained. The bathrooms were the sort you might see in summer camp or at a rest area. The ovens were impossible with their missing shelves and their unpredictable temperatures. There weren't always the appropriate tools for measuring and mixing. Equipment just sort of disappeared sometimes only to turn up later in some random unexplained location.<br />
<br />
The kitchen was also quite hazardous. The floor could be notoriously slippery if oil or water spilled on it. There was an odd pipe with some kind of lever on it where I worked on my bread and I'd whacked my ankle on it more than once. There was a <i>hill </i>in the floor of the kitchen halfway between the walk-in refrigeration and the line. Yes, a <i>hill</i>. Or rather an incline. Originally the Farmhouse had been two storefronts that eventually merged together. Apparently, they were on two different levels of ground and no one bothered to even it out when they brought the two together. Regardless, any employee that made their way from one side of the kitchen to the other had to make a mental note to pay attention to the floor, or risk making a face plant onto whatever hot food or pans they were carrying.<br />
<br />
One Friday evening after working at the Farmhouse for two months, I arrived and made my way back toward the kitchen as usual. Louie caught up with me half way.<br />
<br />
"I wanted to see your reaction to things."<br />
<br />
As he said this, I paused to take a closer look around me. One wall of the kitchen had been completely removed. Fresh paint had been applied. The bathrooms had been renovated. Everything was moved around to different locations. I felt my stomach sink. I had just gotten comfortable with the set up and figured out where everything was! <br />
<br />
"What do you think?" I could tell he was eagerly awaiting my approval. <br />
<br />
I hid my selfish dismay, "It looks great!" I assured him. And it really did. It felt so much more open and light. <br />
<br />
As I started to prep my station, Louie informed me that the cafe had been closed for several days while the updates were being made. Most of the staff had come in to help through the entire process; painting, cleaning, demolition, you name it. I was sad to know that I hadn't been included in the project, hadn't been there to share the experience with the rest of the staff. Would they judge me for it? I wanted so desperately to be a member of the team.<br />
<br />
Another nice addition to the kitchen was a set of large bins on wheels that had been filled with rice, sugar and a variety of flour. Before this bin system, many of the open flour bags had been poured into large tubs that had previously held things like pickles and peanut butter. Definitely an improvement.<br />
<br />
My first concern of the night was that my oven mitts were missing. I had gotten tired of burning my arms on the scorching hot oven walls when rotating and moving the bread pans with thin dishtowels, so I had gone out and bought a pair of really nice, silicone, hot pink oven mitts. Yes, I looked like a complete dork with them on, but I had not been burned since. Fashion wasn't always everything! I was desperate to find those gloves. I asked one of the prep cooks, but he was in a hurry and didn't have time to help me. Then I approached Javier. He immediately went back to his locker and pulled them out for me. I could have kissed him I was so relieved and grateful. He had cared enough to move them out of the way of the construction and paint and general disarray. I'm sure he had no idea how much that meant to me. Silly girl with her hot pink gloves.<br />
<br />
Armed with my mitts and a whole new confidence, I went back to work on my batch of whole wheat bread. As I loaded it into the mixer, I noticed that the consistency of the dough was drastically different than usual. It was much stickier and darker in color. It wasn't becoming smooth or elastic in the mixer no matter how long I left it there. Something was not right. I ran to the back office to find Louie.<br />
<br />
"What kind of flour was in those bins? My bread dough is completely different tonight. It's really sticky."<br />
<br />
"I loaded the all purpose myself. I'm pretty sure the other one should be wheat. Can you just add more flour to the dough?"<br />
<br />
I shook my head inwardly. Pretty sure it was whole wheat flour? And was he so sure he didn't pour rice flour in instead of all purpose? Also, why on earth wouldn't they have labeled the bins? Who pours random flour into a bin and doesn't label?<br />
<br />
I sullenly went back to the kitchen and tasted the 'all purpose' flour to stem my worries. Blech. I was no expert on tasting plain flour, but I was pretty sure I would know if it was rice. This seemed like good old AP to me. I decided to make my usual two batches and wait it out. Maybe I would get lucky and it would all turn out. I could dream, couldn't I?<br />
<br />
But I should have known better than to be an optimist in that kitchen. When I shaped the loaves, they were dense and heavy and the dough didn't roll out like it usually did. As it proofed in its pans, it started to split down the middle of each loaf. It didn't rise a whole lot during the second proofing.<br />
<br />
When I pulled it out of the oven, the loaves were like dense little bricks. I almost cried. I had baked a double batch of bricks. Louie showed up as I was setting them aside.<br />
<br />
"I'm pretty sure it was rye flour that was in that bin," I informed him.<br />
<br />
"Oh no, really? That's awful. Do you think you could make a couple more batches of regular wheat? We're gonna need it for the weekend rush."<br />
<br />
Ugh. <br />
<br />
At that point, it was already getting pretty late. I didn't want to be there until the wee hours of the morning, so I agreed to come back the next day and try it all over again. Hoping to save a little time, I made another batch of dough before I left and put it in the walk-in. Louie promised to take it out a couple hours before I showed up, so it would be ready to put into loaves when I got to work. I tried to reassure myself. Yes, I was giving up more of my weekend, but it would only be a couple more hours tomorrow. I could get there early and be home in time for dinner with my husband. It was the perfect plan.<br />
<br />
But what was it that they always said about best laid plans?Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-90563147406927366592013-05-13T18:00:00.000-05:002013-09-30T14:46:31.274-05:00The Kitchen Crowd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
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Fitting in is tough. There are so many different types of people with different personalities, different desires, different expectations. I've never really been able to classify myself in one group or another. Growing up in small town, rural Montana, there were very few social groupings for me to fit into. There were the popular and athletic kids, there were the farmer and ranchers' kids, there were the Native American kids, and then there was me. I was a brainy, uncoordinated, shy girl that was the daughter of a fourth grade teacher.<br />
<br />
Up until I was in third grade, my mom taught in a handful of small towns in Alaska. I remember three of them. So when I came to Montana, I had already seen and experienced a lot of things that most kids that age couldn't dream of. Temperatures 75 degrees below zero, snow drifts the height of rooftops, dog sled races, moose, Eskimos, homes without running water, outhouses in the dead of winter, northern lights. It all made me different. Even at that young of an age, those experiences had given me a unique perspective on life. It also gave me the desire to travel and experience new things. I knew there was so much more outside my small home town and I wanted to see it all. <br />
<br />
So for nine years, I dreamed of bigger and better places but made do with where I was. To fit in, I learned to observe people and their habits so that I became a sort of social chameleon. I could adjust my personality to adapt to a variety of different 'clicks', but to my dismay, I never felt like I truly belonged in any of them. The minute I graduated, I jumped ship and moved to Chicago in search of diversity and adventure, but most of all, to find myself and figure out where I fit in.<br />
<br />
When I landed my job with a small IT firm and started feeling at home around computer geeks, I was thrilled. I had found a bunch of people that had probably felt like outcasts during most of their childhoods like I did. They were all quiet, intelligent people that enjoyed working diligently and undisturbed for eight hours a day.<br />
<br />
That worked for me for about seven years. I delighted in my status as a geek and I still do. But it wasn't 100% who I was. I didn't want to go home at night and tinker with code or play video games. I didn't read comic books and I didn't aspire to build the next Facebook or Google. It occurred to me that my job was just a paycheck and that I actually didn't have as much in common with the people I worked with as I thought I did. My status quo had been fractured and I started to feel that same restless, bored, unhappy feeling that I'd grown accustomed to as a child.<br />
<br />
When I started baking at the Farmhouse, I didn't know what to expect from my co-workers. As someone coming in with no real experience and a 'corporate' background, I really didn't think I would fit in at all. To my surprise, I was welcomed without judgement and I quickly grew to love and admire my fellow kitchen mates. In my web development work, I found coworkers with stable, normal lives, fairly devoid of excitement or adversity. In the kitchen, I found a disparate set of people with incredible life experiences.<br />
<br />
There's Michael, the server, who is also an actor and dancer. He has wild and beautiful bushy brown hair and this crazy intensity about him. He calls Alonso 'Mi amor' and sings to the cooks when he picks up his food from the line. I'm pretty sure he's been high on a variety of illegal substances for most of his shifts. He says to me one day, very genuinely, that I'm going to have my own cooking show just like Martha Stewart. That is the last thing on earth that I want, but his faith in me is touching.<br />
<br />
There's Brian, the line cook, who went to a good culinary school and has worked at three and four star restaurants. He says he's 'slumming it' at the Farmhouse to save up for a motorcycle. I don't think he's figured out what he wants to do with life yet. He certainly doesn't seem happy in the kitchen and he talks about becoming a dog walker or bar back. I understand his dilemma and I hope he can find something rewarding, like bread baking is for me.<br />
<br />
There are also the incredibly hard workers like Pedro, the bus boy. He has six children and he works non-stop. He has two jobs and also works at festivals on the weekend. He'll work until 2am at the Farmhouse and then get up at 6 the next morning to work his other job. And yet, on so little sleep and so much work, he has never been unpleasant to me. He always greets me with a smile and says nice things about the bread that I bake. <br />
<br />
There's Javier, the line cook, who always makes sure I get something to eat before my shift is over at the end of the night. He knows I like avocado, so he puts it on everything he makes for me.<br />
<br />
There's Manuel, the dishwasher. I don't even want to think about how little money he's making. Even so, he is one of the most generous people I have met. If he has a bag of candy, or a special juice or soda, he always offers to share it with me. He is trying very hard to teach me Spanish. <br />
<br />
The more time I spend at the Farmhouse, the more I admire the staff that keeps the cafe running. They're such a diverse group of people, and yet, I've never felt like I fit in more in any other place. Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-54262176871251467722013-05-02T20:00:00.000-05:002013-09-23T12:48:01.070-05:00Let them eat cake!It turns out that I can never have too much on my plate - in both food and life. I say this, because no matter how many things I have going on, I always seem to cram one more thing in. In my professional life, this means I have multiple jobs. There's my main 9-5 job in web development five days a week. Then there's the freelance web development that I do after hours and on weekends. And of course, there are my shifts twice a week at the Farmhouse.<br />
<br />
I think what it boils down to, is that I don't like to be idle. What's the saying? Idle hands are the devil's workshop? I don't know that I would be doing the devil's deeds if I were to sit and do nothing for a few minutes. But I feel like my life has more purpose when I'm busy. It's just some crazy notion I picked up along the way somewhere.<br />
<br />
During my bread baking shifts at the Farmhouse, there are definitely moments of being idle. While I'm waiting for the bread to rise or while it's baking in the oven there can be stretches of time anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes long when I'm not really doing much. And I hate it. I have this horrible sense of guilt about it - especially if it's a busy night. The cooks will have several saute pans sizzling away and burgers lined up on the flat top, the wait staff is busy running food to tables and taking orders from angry customers that have been waiting too long, the dishwasher is surrounded by full bins of dirty dishes, hot soapy water flying everywhere. And then there's me, just sorta hanging out. Sometimes someone will ask me to run and grab something from the back stock room or make a side salad, and I'm glad for these brief moments of having something to do. But for the most part, I stand quietly by, hoping no one will notice.<br />
<br />
One busy night, Brian the line cook sees me sheepishly standing around. "You should be making desserts," he tells me. "While you're waiting for the bread, it would be a perfect time."<br />
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Granted, he doesn't like these busy nights, so he might be a little envious that I'm not involved in the madness. But in all honesty, I think he wants to help me out. He knows my background and that I'm there to learn. How can I do that if I'm making the same bread recipes all the time? I love making desserts almost as much as baking bread, so I start to seriously mull it over. <br />
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Then later that weekend, I discover the true sign of spring at our local produce market. Rhubarb! As I say that magical word, I can see my husband shudder with disgust. He hates it and he's not alone. It certainly isn't for everyone. But for me, it is the epitome of spring baking. My mom and grandma both had rhubarb plants when I was growing up and they would make the best sauces and desserts with it. The tart tanginess that rhubarb adds to something sweet is pure heaven. So when I saw those beautiful thick red stalks laying there amongst the other produce, I bought them. I didn't care that they were probably $4/pound. And I didn't care that my husband was standing behind me shaking his head.<br />
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So now that I had this wonderful spring treat, I had to find something to make with it. I passed over the obvious thought of strawberry rhubarb pie (one of my all-time favorites) to try something new - rhubarb upside down cake. The original recipe is here:<br />
<a href="http://thelunacafe.com/rhubarb-cornmeal-upside-down-cake/" target="_blank">http://thelunacafe.com/rhubarb-cornmeal-upside-down-cake/</a><br />
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I made only a couple small modifications to it. I added strawberries to the rhubarb topping, omitted the anise seed (because I forgot to add it!), and served with a whipped and lightly sweetened mascarpone cream. It was delicious. Even the husband ate multiple helpings of it over the course of a few days.<br />
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I immediately decided that this needed to be served at the Farmhouse. So I forwarded the recipe to Louie and offered to come in for an additional shift during the week to make it myself. He enthusiastically agreed to it. Just like that, I had added the title of pastry assistant to my position at the Farmhouse and crammed one more thing into my ever growing list of things to do.<br />
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That Thursday, I arrived to make a batch of pretzels and to work on my rhubarb upside down cake. I also got to try out some new equipment. Since I had to caramelize the rhubarb topping for the cake, I had to borrow a burner on the line for a few minutes. As I stood there stirring my pot of fruit next to the line cooks an odd sense of pride came over me. How many people with zero professional training were trusted with an open flame in a restaurant?<br />
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Next up, I battled with the small standing mixer. The lever that lifted the mixing bowl and locked it into place was broken. Searching around, I found a small box of latex gloves to set under the mixing bowl. It wobbled and rattled around as I cranked up the mixing speed, so I decided the lowest speed would have to work. By now I was well-versed in dealing with these challenges. Baking at the Farmhouse was all about adapting.<br />
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Surprisingly, everything else went smoothly that night and the cake ended up being a pretty big seller over the weekend. But now I was faced with some questions. Did this mean I would be baking desserts on a regular basis? Would I have to work more hours during the week? Could I afford to give up more of my personal time? Maybe I was taking on more than I could handle. I certainly had my doubts. But I wasn't ready to give up anything just yet.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-16953659432495399242013-04-19T20:00:00.000-05:002013-09-20T16:17:15.101-05:00Freaking rye pretzels<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 1em;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5x-GeTAiWYr0dlwjCMriI8ccb9jRP6qf9NKn1HvVJcRonH49KGxCfNahIRrs8P2fwUgjaY3C1kqr5H2GmfYTlNS1Ww49aADpuAeQOofBq6wMwRkck0gS9uGeTAhMYgyTtkbOw35zEm0/s1600/rye-pretzels-baked.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img alt="Rye Pretzels" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib5x-GeTAiWYr0dlwjCMriI8ccb9jRP6qf9NKn1HvVJcRonH49KGxCfNahIRrs8P2fwUgjaY3C1kqr5H2GmfYTlNS1Ww49aADpuAeQOofBq6wMwRkck0gS9uGeTAhMYgyTtkbOw35zEm0/s1600/rye-pretzels-baked.jpg" title="" width="492" /></a></div>
As I struggled and experimented with the bread recipes at the Farmhouse, word of my <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-stage.html" target="_blank">initial bread baking audition</a> spread throughout the cafe staff. I became known as the girl that made the rye anise bread. Honestly, I couldn't have been more thrilled with that reputation. It just made my failures that much harder to swallow. In any case, the Swedish Limpa bread had lingered in people's minds. One evening, Pam, the front of house manager, approached me.<br />
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"When are you going to make that rye bread again? I don't normally eat that much gluten, but the morning after you made that bread, I woke up thinking about it."<br />
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The recipe had become like a granule of yeast planted in people's minds, and over time as memory fed it, it was growing just like the loaves of bread I was toiling over.<br />
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And as it turns out, my audition would not be the last time I made the <a href="http://yeast-of-eden.blogspot.com/2013/03/perfecting-perfect-bread.html" target="_blank">Swedish Limpa</a> at the Farmhouse. Louie and Pam had been scheming - they had big plans for the recipe. The cafe was going to be introducing a new late night bar menu and the Limpa was to be featured in the form of pretzels served with a beer and cheese sauce. I wasn't sure about the whole pretzel idea - I had envisioned it as a dinner roll with a nice hearty stew. Either way, I was happy that something I had introduced to the cafe was going to be on the menu. I was also looking forward to making something that I assumed would turn out without too much effort and experimentation.<br />
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The Monday before the pretzels made their debut on the menu, Louie invited me to come in for an extra shift on a Wednesday night. He would supervise as I made the dough so that he could fill in and make them as needed. But when I got there on Wednesday, it was as if he had completely blanked on the entire idea. There was no rye flour in stock. <br />
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"Ugh, I'm so sorry! If you don't mind, just hang out here for a bit and I will run to the store to grab some."<br />
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At first I was fine with waiting. It wasn't the first time he had left me in the kitchen twiddling my thumbs and it probably wouldn't be the last. I knew he had a lot on his plate and it was understandable that it would have slipped his mind. But as the time ticked on and I stood there with nothing to do, I got more than a little anxious. I didn't want to be here all night with a full 9-5 shift at my main job tomorrow. I chipped in and helped make side salads for the servers when they needed them and got the autolyse started to pass the time. Finally, about two hours later when I was ready to give up, Louie strolled in with a couple small bags of rye flour.<br />
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"I had to drive to several stores before I found it. I thought for sure you'd get angry and leave. Thank you for waiting!" <br />
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He was genuinely sorry and I quickly forgave him. I knew it could be a challenge to find it sometimes. The main grocery stores usually didn't carry it. I got to work and butted up against the next challenge. There was no anise seed. There was star anise, but they were whole - not ground, and I had never used it before. With no spice grinder in house, I decided to toss it in a blender and see what happened.<br />
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Crossing my fingers, I dumped the entire 4 ounce jar of star anise in the blender and flipped the switch. Nothing could have prepared me for the noise that came out of that machine. It was like I had put a pound of rocks in it. One of the servers standing nearby slapped his hands over his ears, a look of fright on his face. As it so happened, there was also an open space in the lid of the blender and bits of powdery anise started to fly out. I quickly placed my hand over the opening, feeling bits of the stuff pelt and sting the skin on my palm. The smell of anise was everywhere. It turns out that that smell lingers for quite a while. Even after I had wiped the entire area down, days afterward I would walk by and get a waft of the licorice smell.<br />
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When I could take the noise of the blender no longer, I poured the contents back into the spice jar and brought it back to incorporate into the dough. When I measured it out, it was definitely not evenly ground. I sorted through it, trying to pull out any larger pieces. Someone was going to break a tooth on this stuff.<br />
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After the dough had been given a good rise, I went to find Louie. I had never shaped pretzels before, so I needed his guidance. After a couple different shaping techniques, he decided that braiding the dough into small rectangles would be the best. This involved measuring out 4 ounces of dough, dividing it into three equal pieces, rolling them each out into a long strand of dough a little over a foot in length and then braiding them together. Louie was much more practiced with his rolling technique. My strands of dough would not lengthen and it was taking me at least twice as long to make one pretzel.<br />
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In awe, I asked him, "How the heck are you doing that?" As I admired his long strands and perfectly shaped pretzels. He demonstrated that it was less of a straight pressure with your hands and more of a movement outward with the use of your upper arms. It was a technique that would definitely take some practice.<br />
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Eventually, what seemed like ages later, we finished shaping and brushed the pretzels with a little egg yolk and sprinkled them with sesame seeds. Into the ovens they went and about 20-30 minutes later, they were ready to come out. <br />
<br />
I leaned down to take the top pan out of the oven and turned to set it on the counter of the line behind me. As I turned back to the oven, I saw the pan sliding out of the corner of my eye. Apparently the counter was slanted. I whipped my body back around and caught the pan in its downward spiral toward the floor. It almost felt like slow motion as I watched one lone pretzel fall out of the pan, linger suspended in the air and and then drop to the ground. A gasp of relief left my lips and I shook my head with disbelief. Almost an entire pan of pretzels wasted. Luckily they had been spared, but the next morning I realized that my back had not. The quick movement I had made to turn and catch the pan had thrown something out of whack. After multiple chiropractic sessions and a couple massages, I was finally back to normal. Who knew kitchen work was so hazardous?<br />
<br />
I started to dread the days that Louie would ask me to make pretzels. It was so time consuming. A double batch of the bread recipe meant two hours of shaping pretzels. Javier would always laugh when he saw me making them - he knew how much I hated the process. But they were a showpiece for the rest of the staff. Everyone ooh'ed and aww'ed when they saw the pans come out of the oven, golden and beautiful. <br />
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One day as I was slogging through the shaping process, one of the waitresses stopped a moment to watch, "That looks so relaxing," she commented.<br />
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Suddenly I realized that I was approaching this all with the wrong mindset. I had gotten this job to get away from the computer screen; to turn my logical, problem solving brain off for a while and work with my hands. These pretzels gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that and there I was inwardly complaining every minute of it.<br />
<br />
From that moment on, I used the time as an escape - to quietly sit there and feel the dough beneath my hands, let my mind wander, observe the workings of the kitchen and enjoy myself. I had taken the work for granted just because I was in a hurry to be off the clock. I had lost sight of the end product and the people that would enjoy it. I vowed that I would never let that happen again.Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-83936457057651868592013-03-22T20:00:00.000-05:002013-09-07T16:06:41.536-05:00Holy Bread<div dir="ltr">
When I went back to the Farmhouse for my next bread baking shift, I was fearing the worst. My first attempt had not been successful by any standards. Most regular chefs <span style="color: black;">at</span> regular cafes would have fired me on the spot. But when I arrived, Louie seemed unconcerned. He just nonchalantly informed me that there had been holes in the whole wheat loaves I had made; a fact that didn't surprise me one bit. What surprised me was his patience and trust in me. How did I get so lucky? I reassured him that I knew where I went wrong. I was ready to try again. So he set me to work on a double batch of whole wheat.</div>
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This time around, I made sure to add plenty of water and it all seemed to come together pretty well. Once the dough was rising, I had some time to just hang out and observe. It was a quiet weeknight at the cafe with Javier working the line by himself, so much more laid back and peaceful than the weekend dinner shift. I learned to like Mondays very quickly. It was easier to get in and out of the ovens without worrying about maneuvering around a line cook who was working with hot grease and food on the burners above my head.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But even with moister dough and a quiet kitchen, the ovens still presented a challenge. This time around, I had allowed for extra time in between each batch so that when it came time for baking, I wouldn't end up with a set of deserted loaves in the fire of hell ovens with nowhere to go. Timing wasn't the issue this time, it was the shelving.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Louie had pointed out that in the blazing hot ovens, the bread needed to be rotated approximately every 10 minutes. The back of the ovens were much hotter than the front. Without rotation, you'd end up with one side of the loaves looking black and evil and the other half perfectly golden if you were lucky. With the tipsy sheet pans serving as the top shelf, rotating became a major challenge. Added on to that was the fact that I was terrified of being burned. I learned all too quickly that fear does not produce the most steady hands.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Halfway through the process of one rotation, the top sheet pan got nudged too far to one side of the oven and down it went. With fiery hot air in my face and flimsy dish towels in my hands, I got flustered. I couldn't budge it. It was lodged in the oven at an awkward angle with the heavy cast iron pan on top and it wouldn't move for me.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Javier was standing at the fryer next to me when this all went down. He watched me struggle for a moment and then leaned over to help me when he saw the look of desperation in my eyes. He was quite a bit shorter and had a smaller build than me, but he taught me quickly that I should never mistake size for weakness. He reached into the oven and sorted things out with a couple quick maneuvers. I was overwhelmingly grateful.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The shelf was fixed for now, but there had been a set of loaves underneath when it had collapsed. When I pulled them out to move them to another oven, sure enough, they had been squashed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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At the end of the night I told Louie about the casualties. Always quick with his wit, he replied, "Well, the good news is, if there were holes in them, there won't be anymore!"</div>
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I was having a hard time looking on the bright side however. I was a perfectionist and I was determined to get this bread right, faulty equipment or not.</div>
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Over the next few weeks, I wracked my brains and experimented tirelessly. I had loaves come out blackened all over, loaves that were blackened on the bottom, loaves that sank in the middle, many many loaves that had holes in them and that split on the top as they were rising and baking.</div>
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Throughout all of this, Louie really said nothing. He just let me do my thing and figure it all out for myself. And I was learning. At night, after a shift, I would plop exhausted into bed smelling of toast and I would scour the internet for tips and answers to my problems. It became an obsession. I would lie there lit up by the screen of my smartphone til all hours of the night while my husband and dog snored in the bed next to me. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I learned that bread that wasn't baked in an oven hot enough, sank in the middle when it reached is peak rise. I learned that holes in bread typically meant a poorly shaped loaf, or one that hadn't been deflated enough after the first rise or that had too much or too little water (so many factors!). A cold kitchen meant longer rise times, a longer shift, and a later bed time.</div>
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<br /></div>
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And then something amazing happened. The bread actually started to look like edible bread. I had finally come up with a system that was working and here's what it was:</div>
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<br /></div>
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One shelf in the middle of each oven. </div>
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One sheet pan overturned on the bottom of each oven.</div>
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One set of loaves on the top shelf of the fires of hell oven for 5 minutes.</div>
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Rotate, 5 more minutes.</div>
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Move to the bottom of the oven on the sheet pan. </div>
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Add the second set of loaves to the top shelf.</div>
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Rotate both after 5 minutes.</div>
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After another 5 minutes, move the bottom loaves to the cooler oven, move the top loaves to the bottom shelf.</div>
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Rotate the bottom loaves after 5 minutes.</div>
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After 5 more minutes move them to the cool oven.</div>
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Add the next set of loaves to the top shelf of the blazing hot oven. Rinse, repeat.</div>
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All this done while there were two cooks on the line, trying to do their jobs. Things definitely got hairy sometimes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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After 25 minutes in the cool oven, I would tap a couple loaves searching for the perfect hollow sound. Javier would always watch when I did this, head cocked to one side. "Anyone home?" he would ask with a quizzical smile.</div>
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Throughout this process, I was also playing with the ingredients. The day I went in to audition for the job, Louie had given me a slice of the whole wheat bread to taste. In all honesty, it was bland and dry and I had a very difficult time finishing it. I love bread - if I could survive by only eating bread, I would. So when I can't finish a piece, it must be pretty bad. I refused to make a bread that I didn't want to eat, so I slowly introduced different things to add flavor - mainly molasses and honey and finally came up with a 50/50 combination that gave the bread a nice brown color and just a hint of sweetness. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Things were looking up. Maybe this whole baker idea wasn't such a crazy idea after all.</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-72590472599843740422013-03-16T17:00:00.000-05:002013-08-29T23:06:39.897-05:00Take Two<p dir="ltr">I've had my fair share of failures in the kitchen. I've over seasoned. I've made dinner rolls that didn't rise and turned out like heavy little rocks. I've had egg whites that wouldn't whip into peaks. I've had pie crusts that were too sticky and crusts that were too dry and crusts that shrank in the oven. But all of these were failures in my own kitchen in which the only people that suffered the end product were myself and a significant other or friend. Now I was baking for hundreds and my failures would be suffered by strangers that were not afraid to post their dismay on the internet.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Cue day two at the Farmhouse. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I arrived mid-afternoon, ready for baking a full recipe of bread. Louie greeted me in the kitchen this time - there was no hunting him down. We were already off to a good start. </p>
<p dir="ltr">He handed me a printout of the recipes - one white bread and one wheat. "How about you try to make one batch of each?" </p>
<p dir="ltr">I quickly realized I wasn't going to have my hand held through this. He obviously didn't have the time and must have had the confidence in me, so I got to work. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Everything was going smoothly until I came to the mixing part. I transferred the dough to the big standing mixer so it could be kneaded with a dough hook for 26 minutes. As I was questioning what sounded like a ridiculously long time for kneading (most recipes I had worked with were 10 to 15 minutes at the most), I was also battling with the mixer. First, I couldn't get the bowl to fit on the stand right. Then it wouldn't turn on - there was a wire cage that fit around the top that had to be locked in place as a safety precaution. </p>
<p dir="ltr">"Because don't you just want to stick your hand in there while it's running?" Brian the line cook joked.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Then the metal cage fell off. Luckily, Brian and Javier were there to help me through all of this and get it put back together.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Finally, with the wheat dough kneading, I started on the white so that by the time the wheat was finished, the white could go in the mixer. Before I knew it, 52 minutes had passed and both doughs were rising nicely. I cleaned up my area and gave the mixer a good scrub down. It was caked with bread dough and other assorted crusty things. And when I wiped the counters down, it left a brownish residue on the dish rags. Ugh! This was definitely a man's kitchen.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It came time to shape the loaves, and I pulled out a hunk of whole wheat dough and started to shape it in my hands. When I tried to pinch the seam together at the bottom of the loaf, it wouldn't hold. The dough was too dry! I realized much later that I had missed a step in the recipe. After mixing all of the ingredients together, there was a very vague line that said, "Add enough water to make a moist dough". Well, this dough was most certainly not moist.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I tried different tactics to get the loaves formed and eventually I decided to roll them out flat, then roll them up like big cinnamon rolls and pinch the seams shut. But alas, the seams would not be pinched. Exasperated, I ran my hands under running water, doused the dough lightly and somewhat closed the seams. This was a disaster. I had never been fired from a job before and suddenly that was a real possibility. This was definitely not how I wanted to start this job.</p>
<p dir="ltr">By the time I finished getting the whole wheat shaped, the white bread dough was overflowing from its bowl. I rushed to get it shaped and into pans. Even though I had missed the extra water step on this batch too, it was not as dry and the loaves shaped much easier. All was not lost completely I hoped.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In the meantime while I had been struggling with dry dough, Brian had left early, Javier had finished his shift and Louie had gone to work the dinner theater. That left Alonso alone on the line. And it had started to get busy. Open tickets lined the counter. The wait staff was coming in at regular intervals to ask him where their food was. I watched from the sidelines wishing I knew how to be a line cook. I could tell Alonso was not happy and I felt incredibly guilty standing by while everyone else was frantically working. </p>
<p dir="ltr">At some point I decided to make myself look useful and get the wheat bread in the ovens. There were three of them on the line to work with. The recipe said to bake the bread for 20 minutes at 450 and then another 25 minutes at 350. I decided to start in the two ovens at the end of the line and then move to a cooler oven in the middle. That way while the wheat was finishing, I could get the white in. It seemed like the perfect plan.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As I carried the pans over to the line, it occurred to me how heavy four 2.5 pound loaves in a heavy cast iron pan were. I had four of these pans to deal with since each batch made approximately eight loaves. And the ovens were blazing hot. Louie had mentioned beforehand that the oven in the middle did not go any lower than 450 degrees. I had a pair of thin dishtowels to maneuver these huge, awkward, incredibly hot pans with. Hadn't anyone there heard of oven mitts? <font color="#000000">T</font>hen there was the factor of missing shelves in the ovens. To make due, they had large metal sheet pans to slide in. But oddly enough, they didn't fit. They were just a hair too small. Bump them the wrong way, and they'd tip and fall. Plus, if the loaves had risen high enough, the trays did not provide enough space between the top of the oven and the top of the loaves. What kind of mad man had decided this was a good kitchen for baking bread?</p>
<p dir="ltr">I started one pan in the oven at the end of the line and the other pan in the second oven that apparently would not turn down lower than 450 degrees. 25 minutes later and I shifted both pans to the third oven, one precariously situated on top of a sheet pan. Then, with the white bread starting to tower out of its pans, I placed each of them in the ovens set to 450. Squatting, lifting, standing, squatting, reaching... Quietly pleading with myself not to touch the sides of the oven. One of the loaves of wheat finished on time so that I could put one of the white loaves in its place. However, the other wheat was taking much longer. I needed the space for the second pan of white bread, but I couldn't take out loaves that weren't finished. Since there was nowhere to move this last pan of white bread, I turned its oven down to 350.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At some point during all of this, Louie had come back to help Alonso on the line. When he saw me turn the oven down, he piped up, "You know, that one doesn't go any lower than 450."</p>
<p dir="ltr">WHAT?? The realization flooded over me. There were two ovens that didn't get any cooler than 450 degrees and the reasonable 350 degree oven was full. That left one pan of white bread in a 450 degree oven with nowhere to go. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I left it in for another five to 10 minutes and then took it out looking blackened and not especially appetizing. I think I hung my head in dismay.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I left that night wondering how much, if any of the bread I had made was even edible. Sunday would be a busy day with the brunch crowd. What would Louie do if he didn't have bread? I knew I had let him down.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I boarded a train home, my stomach churning with nerves. Why did I think I could get a job working in a kitchen baking bread when I had zero experience and training? What kind of fool did something like that? Was this something that I really wanted to do, or was I just being a coward, looking for a way out because I'd gone through some rough times at my regular job recently?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Unfortunately I had no answers and I was plagued by these questions for the next two days until I went back to the Farmhouse. Only time would tell.</p>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-8989258578527208392013-03-15T20:00:00.000-05:002013-08-22T22:33:54.460-05:00New BeginningsFour days after my successful stage at the Farmhouse, my phone rang. It was Louie. My heart leapt and my hands were shaking when I picked up the phone. <br>
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"I wanted to apologize about making you wait so long to hear back about the bread baking position at the Farmhouse. But I had the last interview this morning and I absolutely want you to come bake bread for me."</div>
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<div>If it's possible for a human to experience emotional overload, I'm pretty sure it was me at that moment. Joy, excitement, fear, shock. I think I had them all covered. And there were so many things I wanted to say. How could I even begin to thank him for giving me this opportunity?</div>
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"That's so awesome, thank you!" I decided to keep it short and simple. Hopefully I could show my gratitude by baking some fantastic bread for him.</div>
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"If it wouldn't suck too much, do you want to come in Friday night after 5 and I can walk you through the recipe?"</div>
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I was in - of course! Friday nights out on the town were for single people anyway. It was a rare occasion that my husband and I even went out. Fridays were typically reserved for Indian takeout and curling up on the couch to watch bad scifi tv shows - too exhausted from the week to move. My eighteen year-old self would be disgusted to work on a Friday night, but 30-something me was thrilled. Besides, I had this theory that baking wasn't going to feel like work anyway.</div>
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The next two days flew by and before I knew it I was on the train headed to my new second job, full of nerves and ambition. But when I arrived, Louie was nowhere to be found. I introduced myself to the kitchen staff. Alonso and Brian were both working the line again, there was also Pedro, the bus boy, and Javier, another line cook. Javier took it upon himself to locate Louie. But after wandering around for a bit, he still couldn't find him.</div>
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Pedro told him to go check the dinner theater across the street.</div>
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"No, es fria!" he said reluctantly.</div>
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Before I knew what I was saying, I agreed, "I know, it <i>is </i>cold!"</div>
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He looked at me stunned, "You speak Spanish?" He sounded impressed.</div>
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I shook my head a little embarrassed, "Only a little. Un poco." I was actually surprised that I remembered anything from my two semesters of Spanish class in high school.</div>
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We trudged across the street in a cold March drizzle, but didn't find Louie there either. Finally, back at the Farmhouse, he emerged from the depths of the rear of the restaurant. </div>
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"Oh, Ceth! Glad you're here. One of my cooks hurt his neck and I have to work the dinner theater tonight. I'll be in and out of here for a bit. Do you mind just hanging out for a while? You can go fill out your new employee paperwork, and then hopefully I'll be back and we can get started."</div>
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A little disappointed, I made my way to the back office. I really wanted to get my hands on some dough! But unfortunately, when I returned to the kitchen, there was no Louie to get me started. I hung back out of everyone's way, a little forlorn. After a while Brian approached me.<br>
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"First night?"<br>
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"Yeah. Louie said he'd be right back to show me around, so I'm just hanging out for now."<br>
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"You might as well pull up a chair and get comfortable. My first night here I waited over an hour."<br>
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Ugh. This was not how I had pictured this night going. </div>
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"Do you have the recipe?"<br>
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"I think this is it," I was looking at a stained and crumpled print-out.<br>
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"Why don't you give it a shot? You're here, you might as well do something."<br>
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He was right - did I really need Louie to walk me through everything step by step? I would halve the recipe and follow it as close as I could, making modifications if I couldn't find something.<br>
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A few hours and substitutions later, I had a couple decent loaves. This job was going to be a synch.<br>
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Louie asked me to come back the following day before the dinner rush and we'd do the real deal. I wasn't thrilled about giving up my Saturday afternoon, but I knew going into this that I would have to make a few sacrifices. I knew it would all be worth it some day. Besides, tonight was simple enough. How bad could a full batch of bread be?</div>
Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-362962528013245972013-03-09T19:30:00.000-06:002013-08-15T22:39:03.509-05:00The StageWhen I arrived at the Farmhouse to bake my Swedish Limpa bread, Chef Louie was out working on dinner at another venue. Instead, Pam, the Front of House manager, greeted me wearing a black leather jacket and a skeptical look on her face. <br>
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"So you're here to do a stage?" <br>
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At the time, I didn't know what she meant by stage (pronounced stahj), which is essentially like a job shadow in the kitchen. After making her repeat herself several times, she finally said irritably, “You’re here to make some bread!”<br>
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“Oh, yeah.” I managed to confirm, shaking my head inwardly. Jesus. I had a lot to learn. I decided to pull up the science of bread making on Wikipedia and start my education while I waited for Louie.<br>
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After a short time that felt much longer, Louie arrived and spirited me away to the kitchen where he introduced me to the two line cooks for the night, Brian and Alonso. He pointed out a few things to me, bowls, flour, yeast, a beat up mixer that apparently only sort of worked.<br>
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“I’ve been making all of my bread by hand anyway,” I assured him.<br>
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“Oh, thank God.”<br>
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He pulled out a container of poolish that he’d made the previous fall with organic apples from the restaurant owner’s orchard. “Take a whiff.” He watched for my reaction.<br>
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I inhaled the sour smell of fermenting flour and yeast.<br>
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“Smells like paint thinner, eh?” He seemed thrilled. “Most people think it smells disgusting.”<br>
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“I kind of like it – it makes me want to drink a beer actually.”<br>
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He nodded approvingly. Major points scored.<br>
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I started on the autolyse for my Limpa and let him know that it would have to sit there for a bit. In the meantime, he had hauled out a large tub of bread dough and was working on forming loaves and filling a set of heavy cast iron bread pans. He’d take a hunk of dough, knead it thoroughly and then briefly shape and set in the bread pan. I’d never seen someone knead bread so much before shaping it. He informed me that without this step, the bread would have holes in it. <br>
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As I was waiting for the autolyse, Louie got called back to the other venue. He put me in charge of shaping the loaves. My first test! I finished up a set of four loaves and then went back to my Limpa. I think the autolyse had sat for almost an hour already. I shook off my doubts and went in search of measuring spoons and vegetable oil. I found neither. Venturing cautiously over by the line like a frightened puppy, I asked Brian if he knew where I could find measuring spoons. <br>
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“What size do you need?”<br>
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“A tablespoon or teaspoon.”<br>
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“I don’t think we use anything that small here.” He shrugged.<br>
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Crap. I decided to eyeball the amount of yeast by measuring it out into my palm, hoping with all my might that it would be enough. Then Brian helped me out with the vegetable oil. He took a ladle and scooped some out of a container near the stove, studying it with narrowed eyes.<br>
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“How much do you need?”<br>
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“About a third of a cup.”<br>
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“How many ounces is that?”<br>
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I stared blankly, trying to visualize the side of the measuring cup where ounces sat across from cup measurements. I couldn’t remember. Less than eight, more than two?<br>
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Realizing he wasn’t going to get ounce measurements from me, he ladled a couple spoonfuls of oil into my bowl. I felt like a complete idiot.<br>
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I focused my energy back on making the dough, mustn’t let this throw me off my game. I’d made this bread 5 times in the last week. A few mis-measurements shouldn’t hurt… maybe? I finished adding ingredients and kneaded until I was satisfied with the texture. Now for the hard part, waiting.<br>
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Louie made me feel right at home though. After Brian left for the night, the chef took over his part of the line and helped Alonso with a variety of dishes like stir fries, pasta and fajitas. He motioned for me to come join him near the line and as he cooked, he told me stories about the staff, how he'd ended up at the Farmhouse, and shared some of his industry secrets – like how to make sweet potato fries extra crispy and how you can partially cook pasta and then finish it off quickly before serving. Mind blown. He’d spoon tastes of things onto a small platter and make me test the fries for seasoning. He whipped up a vegan special with ingredients I never would have thought to combine. He decorated plates with a beautiful green basil oil. I was having a blast.<br>
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After 40 minutes or so, I checked my bread. It didn’t seem to be rising. My heart started to sink a little.<br>
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“What do you think?” Louie gave me an honest look of curiosity. <br>
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“It’s not rising very fast.”<br>
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“Here – throw it over above the ovens – that’s my trick for speeding up the process.”<br>
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After 10 or 15 minutes of that, it was definitely risen – maybe even too much. The metal bowl was hot to the touch – I needed a dish rag to get it down. I shaped the loaves and started wait number two. This was the longest interview of my life!<br>
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But Louie didn’t seem to care. He was perfectly at home behind the line, whipping up tasty dishes and joking with Alonso. Finally I decided to get the loaves in the oven. <br>
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After scoring the loaves, they were plopped in the oven and the last bit of waiting crawled by. I’m not an especially religious person, but I’m pretty sure I said a few prayers.<br>
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After a while, Louie opened the oven to take a look. The smell of warm bread and anise escaped out into the kitchen.<br>
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“Alonso, come smell this!” He opened the oven again and wafted the air over toward the seasoned line cook. He nodded - I think he approved. He was a hard one to read.<br>
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After tapping the bread a few times in search of the perfect hollow sound and then waiting some more, I decided to call it. The suspense was killing me, I really couldn't stand waiting any longer. I briefly rubbed the loaves with butter to give them a nice shine. Then a brief rest out of the oven and the moment of judgment was upon me. <br>
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Louie sliced into a hot, steaming loaf, raised a piece to his mouth and breathed in the smell deeply before taking a bite. He groaned with approval and quickly sliced a piece for Alonso. He ate it and said something in Spanish.<br>
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“He just said he loved you.”<br>
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Glory! That was all I ever hoped for. Even if I didn’t have the job, I had made them something that they truly enjoyed. Mission accomplished.<br>
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More slices were passed around to staff and Louie promised to be in touch by mid-week.</div>
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"The interview process should be over now, but I have to give everyone a fair shot," He said as he shook my hand.</div>
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Whatever happened in the coming days, I'd found a home in that kitchen and I knew it was just the beginning of a new chapter in my life.</div>
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Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-60658761924064155152013-03-05T18:00:00.000-06:002013-08-08T10:51:49.119-05:00Perfecting the Perfect BreadI cannot take the credit for this amazing bread recipe. They say give credit where credit is due. So here is a link to the blog where I found it. You will not regret giving it a try. It’s the reason I’m writing this blog post today. Thank you Kelsey for sharing this recipe with the world!<br />
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<a href="http://itsybitsyfoodies.com/limpa-bread/" target="_blank">http://itsybitsyfoodies.com/limpa-bread/</a><br />
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When we first started dating, my husband introduced me to a site called <a href="http://www.foodgawker.com/" target="_blank">Food Gawker</a>. It’s a mosaic of food images from postings on various food blogs and it’s beautiful. Any recipe you could possibly dream of is there and they all look delicious. I have resigned myself to knowing that I will never ever have the time to make all of them, so I try to pick and choose the ones that speak to me. Swedish Limpa bread was one such recipe. <br />
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My husband loves rye bread, so I think I must’ve been looking for something new to try when I found the Limpa recipe. I’m part Swedish, my grandmother was mostly Swedish, and so there was no question about it. It had to be made. I tested it out on Easter Sunday when we had guests over and it was a hit. Crusty, lightly sweet, soft in the middle, with a warm, hearty flavor. My stomach is rumbling as I type this – I think I need to go bake a batch right now.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBDdVmnuYzMTvbZzqUMIghC4HiA0-oJ3qh86_H8IS-6d_ZBEr0gYmNTzPjD7pRvhYPkfGrl8weCx6fVSDAhsKKN1NuGOwsXYD0zl1r9uzl40Cg6EQ0kcxhyphenhyphen-OM7JKjPGFkyNlPbEkKn0/s1600/limpa.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBDdVmnuYzMTvbZzqUMIghC4HiA0-oJ3qh86_H8IS-6d_ZBEr0gYmNTzPjD7pRvhYPkfGrl8weCx6fVSDAhsKKN1NuGOwsXYD0zl1r9uzl40Cg6EQ0kcxhyphenhyphen-OM7JKjPGFkyNlPbEkKn0/s1600/limpa.png" height="320" width="186" /></a></div>
Swedish Limpa is the bread I decided to make for my audition at the Farmhouse. But I would need to practice first. I would need to memorize the recipe and do some tests to see what turned out the best. For my first batch, I followed the recipe exactly but increased the amount of rye flour a bit. I wanted something nice and hearty and my husband had mentioned before that he wanted more rye in it.<br />
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It was great, but heavy – as many rye breads will be. So I decided to work on the ingredients a bit. First it called for ¾ cup of molasses. I personally like the sweetness this gives the bread, but decided to pull back a little and cut it to ½ cup. Next was the shortening. I used vegetable shortening in it originally, which I think keeps the bread moister in the long term, but ultimately gives it a much heavier feel. I swapped that out with vegetable oil. We were getting closer.<br />
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After pouring through many blogs and cookbooks, I came upon a technique in my Test Kitchen cookbook called autolyse. They used this in a recipe for a heavier whole grain bread and they claimed this lightened it up. The process just involves mixing some of the flour with some of the liquid and allowing it to rest for 20 minutes or longer. This allows the flour to become saturated and gluten to form. It is then easier to work with and requires less kneading, prevents oxidation of the dough and also results in the lighter texture. I tested out this theory and also tried a sponge (flour, water and yeast that sat out for 24 hours). The autolyse won. The sponge showed promise. Note to self: must do more experiments on that later.<br />
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I also saw that many artisan bread makers worked with a much wetter dough than I was used to. Growing up, my mom would always say that the dough should feel like an earlobe when you were done kneading it. In many cases, I think this is perfectly fine. But in the case of my rye bread, I decided that this would be too dry. I would have to get used to working with a sticky dough. Fine and dandy if you have a dough hook and standing mixture, a little trickier if you do everything by hand like me.<br />
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I combined all of the above findings complete with scoring the loaves immediately before placing in the oven (my first attempt at this tricky technique). Five batches of bread later, and surprisingly not sick of it yet, and we had an almost perfect loaf.<br />
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However, the perfect loaf wouldn't have been complete without some good advice. My husband’s brother, a chef in San Francisco, urged me to make sure the café had rye flour in stock. A jolt of reality hit me. I was going to assume they had everything I needed! A call to Louie confirmed that they did not. Imagine showing up prepared with the perfect recipe and not being able to make it! I would bring in my own ingredients. Thank goodness for the luck of knowing someone in the industry.<br />
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Armed with the recipe, ingredients and hopeless enthusiasm, I made my way to the Farmhouse to bake my Swedish Limpa bread.<br />
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Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956093705733467351.post-11929383371368098872013-03-04T20:00:00.000-06:002013-08-02T00:20:03.623-05:00Take a Chance on MeAs soon as I’ve made the decision to work in the Food/Beverage/Hospitality industry, I start pouring over job postings. I quickly realize I have no idea what I’m looking for and I’m pretty sure I’m in over my head already. First I have to familiarize myself with all of the industry lingo – Front of House, Back of House, the Line. I know I want to be in the kitchen, but doing what exactly? I start blindly sending my resume for various openings, mostly kitchen prep work. I don’t need experience chopping vegetables, right? <br />
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But just about everything I’m seeing wants at least a year of experience and/or a culinary school background. I have neither. When I was in high school, I had a summer job at a small cafeteria for university students participating in a summer work study program at a biology research station. It was thrilling to me, even though my main job title was dishwasher. The head cook quickly realized that I was good for more than just scrubbing dried egg out of pans and started me on other prep work. I was put in charge of the salad bar and shortly thereafter, desserts. I got to make giant batches of cookies and huge sheet cakes. I even helped out with bread from time to time. I learned about the joys of Pink Floyd, heard my first Tom Waits album and talked politics with the other cook on duty. I loved that job. How many people can say that about a minimum wage high school gig?<br />
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Unfortunately, a few months of work in high school over 10 years ago don’t seem to be cutting it with my job search. I knew I could do the work; I just needed someone to take a chance on me. Then I happened upon a random job posting that I almost passed by. Bread baker. According to my husband, it’s at a café run by hippies. But he calls anyone that recycles and composts a hippy – that’s pretty much everyone these days! The place has been around for ages and is known for good homey food. It’s where I had sweet potato fries for the first time and buffalo is a common item on the menu - something I’ve missed since I moved to the Midwest from Montana. I immediately send them my info. A couple long days go by and I get a callback! Hallelujah, I’m halfway there. I chat with the head chef about my expectations – I want to ease into this. I’m not giving up my full time job just yet. He’s totally cool with it and is willing to be flexible. We schedule an interview for the following week.<br />
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Suddenly it hits me, I might just do this! I feel like I’ve had 15 cups of coffee in five minutes. I’m bouncing off the walls with excitement and planning out my work schedule, seeing myself quit my job two months down the road. But I can’t get ahead of myself. One step at a time. And I have no idea what to expect from this interview. Will I have to bake him something? Is he going to quiz me on gluten development and leaveners? Baking bread is something I truly love, but I really know nothing about the science behind it. Crap.<br />
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Interview day comes and I decide I’ll just wing it. I’m surprised that I’m not as nervous as I thought I would be. I’ve had interviews for other web dev jobs and I’ve sweated profusely, stuttered and lost my ability to speak logical sentences. I feel none of that now. The minute I enter the café, I feel like I’m back in the cafeteria in high school. It smells the same. <br />
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Chef Louie comes out in his whites and apologizes for his appearance. He’s been frying bacon, ripped his pants on some equipment earlier and seems to be dusted in flour. Brilliant. We take a seat at the bar and he tells me a little about himself and the café.<br />
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“Have you ever been on one of those dates where the chemistry just wasn’t there? But you were nice enough to sit it out?”<br />
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“Of course, haven’t we all?”<br />
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“Well, we came to the Farmhouse for breakfast, and I thought to myself, at least I’ll have a good meal. Then the food came and there was a hair in it. This place needed a lot of work when I started – it still does. I want to look back a year from now and think, remember when? We survived that. So here’s an example; when I started, the servers were making the salads. They’d go out back, smoke a cigarette, come back and make a salad without washing their hands. I have the cooks making the salads now and they don’t smell like Marlboroughs anymore.” He was almost beaming with pride.<br />
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Louie ends up doing most of the talking and I love his philosophy. He’s got loads of first-class experience, but he’s working here. He likes what the café stands for and he just wants to make good food and have fun doing it. I’m in awe. Through my haze of admiration, I manage to mumble about my passion and confidence in my abilities. Somehow I make it through this round and onto the next. He invites me to come back over the weekend and bake him some bread.<br />
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It’s funny, I don’t even have to think about what I will bake. The answer is just there. It will be Swedish Limpa bread.<br />
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Ceth Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12699756097587546182noreply@blogger.com0