FlourPower

Personally, I like peanut butter and our new baker (a true gift from God) makes these lemon almond biscotti that should come with a complimentary cigarette they're so good. I'm around our stuff so much that most of it usually doesn't sound good, but I couldn't keep away from those. I've never been much of a biscotti guy -- too often they're baked so long they're more like croutons -- but his are the absolute best. Just the right crispness. You don't even need coffee to dunk them in. Sales-wise, chocolate chip, peanut butter, sugar and linzer are our best sellers. In that order.

We use dried year-round in oatmeal cranberry cookies and apple-cranberry muffins. We use fresh ones in apple cranberry pies (big at Thanksgiving, obviously) and in orange/cranberry scones. We stop using the fresh ones around January.

We don't start getting requests for pumpkin items until we've had a week of jacket-type weather. We had a warm fall this year, so even though the leaves were turning people could still wear shorts. Now that it's 60 degrees or cooler, pumpkin stuff sells like crazy. It usually tapers off in December, though. Maybe that's because people overdo the pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving. Sweet potato and hazelnut are two other flavors that are do well in the fall. Generally speaking, the colder the weather, the richer the desserts. Cheesecakes, chocolate tortes, etc, seem to do better when it's cold. Does any of this help?

You want stats? Here you go: Stats up the wazoo.

We're in Omaha. We've been open about a year and a half. Oh, the stories. The stories. As far as piggybacking goes, there's a pastry chef in town who recently partnered with a restaurant. I don't know her, but from my understanding she does their desserts and also does wedding cakes and other custom desserts. That might be an option for you. As for me, there's not enough heroin in the world to deal with brides on a daily basis.

The good news: we're getting it free. My wife's dad runs a salvage business so we're getting that and a new freezer just in time for the holidays. The bad news: we have to move it ourselves. I'm counting on six guys and a pallet jack. And lots of beer afterwards. Thanks for the tips!

With the help of a few friends and a pallet jack, we were able to move our ovens and other assorted equipment into our bakery when we opened. This weekend we'll be getting a 60 quart mixer and I'm not looking forward to moving that thing in. Does anyone have any tips for the move from the truck to the business? We only have a single door in back, so it'll be a tight squeeze. I'm sure we can figure something out but am hoping someone who's been through this before has stumbled upon some brilliant method they'd be willing to share.

This year I wanted to give advice, but my wife said no. So we'll be handing out full-size Snickers bars.

I realize that there's "nothing new under the sun" so to speak, and there are only so many ways to make a chocolate cake, but do any of you have employees sign a noncompete type of contract when they start work?

I've never heard of maconade and haven't been able to find a recipe. Would you be willing to share yours?

Yeah, we've tried that. They don't want to talk about it. Hell, I can sympathize, so it's not like it would fall on deaf ears. I don't know if this is all because Mommy and Daddy gave them a shitload of cash and it's not "fun" anymore or if it is a legitimate business issue. But if business is slow they can always decrease their order. They just upped it a month ago. Their big bill is due tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. I don't want to play the asshole card but I will. Up to and including picketing in front of their damn business. I will get my money.

It's pretty much the same with us. I don't know if it's an age thing (they're in their mid 20s) but whenever we ask them about paying their damn bills they fuss and pout and stomp out. With arms full of baked goods, of course. They've never been more than a month late but I can't tell the electric company or one of our suppliers that I'll get them next week, you know?

We've got two wholesale accounts. One of them is great: a funky wine bistro that's totally cool with whatever we want to do. Tarts, ice cream, creme brulee, etc. They're happy with everything and pay on time. As a result they get a different and inventive dessert every week. Then there's the other one. A coffee shop that gets a lot of stuff twice a week. They asked to be billed monthly which was fine. For two months. Long story short we're now billing them weekly and we're still having issues. We haven't been stiffed but they're regularly late. It's been great exposure but we need to get paid. I'm about ready to go to "pay upon pickup." What policies have worked for some of the other bakers here?

Mel - we get the same complaints every now and then. "How come cookies are a nickel at Wal Mart?" We then explain the whole premade/crap food story to them. Sometimes they understand, sometimes they don't. We're going to put up a bulletin board with clippings from Baking Buyer and other trade mags so people can see that shitty shortening and sugar concoction that some call frosting as well as other craptastic items that are used to help sell muffins for a quarter across town. A little education is in order.

WHOA! Hold on, everybody. This has gotten blown way out of proportion. I should have been more clear. First, we don't have 24 rules. Not sure where that came from. Second, I have nothing against the poor. I'm poor. Our bakery's in a neighborhood with a huge income range -- everything from $10,000 a year to $300,000. We really, really try to have something for all price levels. We give people discounts and/or free items if they need it or are regulars. We're not greedy or stingy. If you come in and you're cool, we'll work something out nine times out of ten. Believe me, we're not in this for the money. As for this woman being cheap, past experience with her has borne this out. If you've got a dozen kids to feed, go to Wal Mart of one of the grocery chains and get a dozen cookies for $3. There's a huge grocery store within two minutes of our place, so it's not as if we're the only place with baked goods in town. If you have to have homemade stuff, make it yourself. We can't compete with the big places on price. Our customers know that. They come to us because our stuff tastes better and is made like your grandma makes it. I'll work with you to give you what you want, but it ain't gonna be for a nickel. Maybe a quarter, but not a nickel. HOWEVER. We are a mom and pop shop and quite frankly don't have time to shoot the shit with every person who comes in. We have an open kitchen, which is a good/bad thing. Good in that people can see you working. Bad in that they all want to be acknowledged. We try to be friendly and answer their questions, but it reaches a point where it impacts production. Everyone wants to talk to the owner. Everyone wants to know what time you get up. We know this and deal with it the best we can. Having someone up front to run interference helps a great deal. As for the customer deserving exemplary customer service, I'm right there with you. I will go the extra mile for people. We've delivered cakes in blizzards, and we don't normally offer delivery. We've stayed late, ran for special ingredients and sold things at a loss to keep people happy. I fully understand the give and take of customer service. We bend over backwards for our customers. But if the person's making insane demands and/or acting like a two year old, then it's another matter. I won't put up with it. Maybe that makes me an asshole or someone "suited for another line of work." But just because I'm behind the counter doesn't give a customer the right to treat me like an idiot or an indentured servant. Yeah, I'm there to serve them, but I'm not there to take their abuse. I don't like to disappoint customers. I don't like to make people cry. The reason we started this was to make people happy. When someone bites into a danish or a cinnamon roll and their eyes light up, that makes it all worthwhile. The customer in question in this instance reacted in a way I'd never seen before and took things personal when they weren't intended that way. I tried to tell her that and I really tried to show her my sympathy. I didn't want to ruin her day or anything. Literally everyone else who's been in and seen our list and gets a kick out of it. They understand where we're coming from.

I made someone cry on Saturday because of this. Ever since we opened, we get one or two requests per week to cut items into smaller pieces. Doesn't matter if it's a brownie, slice of poundcake or a scone, they ask if we can cut it smaller. I did not start this business to cut people's food. Break the damn thing in half. This and other issues, like people placing special orders at the very last possible minute, have led us to create a list of house rules. They're pretty straightforward: be nice or leave, special orders require 24 hour notice, etc. #5 on the list reads: "We do not cut items into smaller pieces. If you're old enough to read this you're old enough to cut your own food." We have PLENTY of plastic knives for those so inclined. Saturday this woman came in and read the list. "I don't think #5 is very nice," she began. Then she read it back to me. "Well, we get a couple requests a week for a cinnamon roll cut in half, or a slice of poundcake cut into fourths. First, we don't have time to cut people's food. Second, it's insulting. You don't go to a steakhouse and ask them to cut your meat for you, do you?" That's when I remembered her: she'd asked for some scones to be cut into quarters. She was feeding a bunch of kids and was being cheap. She wound up buying a dozen day old muffins instead. But she wouldn't let it go. I didn't really know what I was supposed to say, so I reiterated our rule and pointed out that it wasn't about her. It was the cumulative effect of many requests for this, and that we feel it's out of line. She left in tears. Am I out of line here? If I took the time to indulge every person who bought one item (and 90% of the time the person's buying ONE thing, not a sheet of brownies) we wouldn't get anything done. Should I get some Zoloft and OCD medication and throw it in a candy dish for these people?

Not really a foreign object, but I've been served raw chicken a couple times. Once at a local place and once on top of a Caesar salad from Chili's. We've also gotten a couple rocks on pizzas over the years. Still not sure how that happened.

My two cents: lots of hot and sour soup.

I'd say glaze, but don't pour it on. I've never understood the three-inch-thick-glaze rule. Another alternative would be melting some white chocolate and zig-zagging it over the tarts. Forgive me if I don't know the proper French term for that.

I realize that for a lot of people, the frozen mini eclairs and mini quiches from Sam's are must-haves for get togethers. That's fine. But why the need to have everything else mini? Because they're cute? Because you can then eat thirty instead of five? We get a couple requests a week for mini cinnamon rolls (shudder), mini scones and the like every week. Our stuff's not huge. Our scones are not basketball-sized, and our cinnamon rolls are not the size of a baby's head. What's the deal?

Please PM me for Omaha suggestions.

I don't think the food's all that bad, especially when you consider the other (largely microwaved) options from other chains. My biggest beef with Macaroni Grill is their inconsistency. When I go there I find myself placing a wish instead of an order. Rarely do they get it right. We've gotten wrong items, cold sauces, wrong ingredients, etc.

No. I've seen a few issues and wasn't all that impressed -- by either the content or the price tag. We specialize in down home type of items. Pies, cinnamon rolls, and so on, so that's a little out of our league. That said, I'm still curious about the Professional Pastry Chef book as many of the techniques and recipes for items like custards, frostings and so on will still carry over. We make everything from scratch, so we're always looking for new frosting ideas.

I think my earlier post was misinterpreted. We own a bakery. We run it. We're always looking for new recipes and I thought these might be worthwhile.

Oh, I've been down that path before. We have a neighborhood bakery, though, and we're always looking for new recipes. It also seemed like a good deal on the Professional Pastry Chef book, which I think is $65 in stores.