chefpeon

FYI-my "baking job" is my day job. I do my specialty cakes "on the side" as my own business...that's what "Cake-o-Rama" is. The one perk my bosses give me is the use of their kitchen to do my cakes and I only have to pay them 10 percent of what I charge my clients. The sad part is that once I quit the baking day job, my kitchen will go away also, and I won't be able to do cakes til I find another commercial kitchen space. So that's that story.

So I've made the decision that I really need to leave my current job. Don't want to bore you with the gory details, but my frustration level with the bosses has reached a point where it's destroying me and I can't deal with it anymore. I have communicated my frustrations to them and they know I'm not happy, but more than anything, it has to do with personalities, and everyone knows you can't change personalities. In a nutshell, it comes down to me being from the background of a trained professional in urban kitchens, and I'm dealing with small-town folks who only run their kitchen as a business and have no particular care or pride in the product they are producing. My job satisfaction comes from making beautiful tasty things I can be proud of.....it's not about the cheesy paycheck. Whether it's a beautiful wedding cake or a simple cookie, I want to be proud enough of it to say "I made that." Since I got hired there (as the only baker, I might add), business has more than quadrupled. I would hope to say that it had a lot to do with my attention to detail and quality. It finally got to the point to where I couldn't handle it all by myself anymore, and I needed help. Well, this being a small town and all, there isn't a huge job pool to choose from....especially in foodservice....basically you take what you can get. I have two assistants now.....neither are bakers, and I've had to try to train them from the ground up....and I mean THE BASICS. Of course, I'm given very little time to train them, and have had to resort to leaving them long descriptive notes of what I need done before I'm shoved out the door by the boss because now he's all paranoid about having to pay three people. The quality of the product has gone straight into the toilet (by my standards) and this distresses me to no end. Everyone else there just wants to get the product out, regardless of how it looks, whether it's overbaked, underbaked, the wrong size, or just done incorrectly. The boss tries to pass anything off and as long as he gets no complaints, that's all well and good. Well, there HAVE been complaints, and he does replace products that have gotten the complaints at no charge. Of course, that's good customer service, but in my eyes, if it's done right in the first place, there will be NO COMPLAINTS, and you don't lose money by having to replace items at no charge. So. I can't change the mindset. I can't make people care. I gotta go. The dilemma? I have offered up many items out of my personal recipe collection. Stuff that I have collected and tweaked over the years to make my own. Many of these items have become best sellers there. I'm upset and angry at my employers and I just want to take all these recipes back so they can't sell them any more. They haven't been savvy enough to make their own copies or anything, so once they are out of the recipe book, they're gone. I know this is my emotional side talking. Is taking back my recipes ethical? Is there some sort of law that says once I've produced them for that business, that they now "own" the recipes? Will I just be creating trouble for myself? Anyone else been in a similar situation?

In my experience, the "tighter" the kitchen, the more apt I am to burn myself. In my current job, the kitchen design isn't the greatest, and I have my cooling racks off to the side of my convection ovens, instead of directly across from them. I am always pulling out hot sheet pans and as I go to put them on the cooling rack, the oven doors always want to swing back at me, turning the sheet pan in my hands so that it catches my arms. I have so many "burn stripes" and burn stripe scars on my arms that I look like a zebra. A red and pink zebra. I always burn my palms when I accidentally grab the handle of a saucepan that has sat over the gas pilot on the stove too. The thing about burns, especially when you first get them, is that they always look worse than they really are. I have fair skin and red hair, so it probably looks even worse on me. The pan will only touch me for a microsecond, but I'm left with this big red inflamed "thing" for days. Then it takes forever to heal too. My co-workers say I should wear long sleeves, but no freakin' way. It's too hot in there....I'll deal with the burns. As to whether they are a badge of honor or source of shame, I don't know. I just think they are a nuisance. At least no one can doubt what I do for a living.

Go here for a great online conversion tool. First, break down your recipe to a manageable size, then convert it over. This particular tool is very accurate.

Really, unless you've, like, messed up your pastry cream, there's no need to pass it through a strainer at all. To smooth the cream out after chilling, just run it on the mixer with a paddle, like aidensnd said, and it will smooth right out. In regard to using a strainer, I use it to strain the eggs through to get rid of the chalazae.

Hey K8...... I've never tried mixing fondant and modeling chocolate together before (I assume modeling chocolate is what you are referring to, when you say "candy clay"?). You wouldn't want to share your recipe or methodology, would you?

Wow.....not as I imagined it! Too bad we can't see one cut open! It's probably the Luobo shi-bing, like alamoana said.....but I'll be darned if I can find a recipe (in English) on the internet.......!

I've done the same as jsmeeker.....give it it's first rise, then divide into balls and freeze. However, I have noticed that the dough doesn't rise as nice when thawed. Maybe I'll try your method next time and freeze it right off the mixer.

Yay!!!! Once again, patience pays off! Can't wait to see your pics......!

Chocolate plastique or modeling chocolate as it's also called, MIGHT taste better. It all depends on who you ask. The best way to describe the taste of chocolate plastique is to compare it to a white tootsie roll......chewy white chocolate, is basically what it is. It's a feasible alternative if the bakery she chose uses it. Some bakeries don't because they choose not to, or don't know how, or don't even know about it. Also, most of the time, modeling chocolate will cost more. I charge my brides top dollar for that particular finish.

If your dough has come together into a ball, and feels somewhat elastic, you have not overdeveloped the dough. It's pretty hard to overdevelop a dough, and 11 mins on a KA is nowhere near overdeveloping. Besides that's not your problem. Your problem is that you have no problem. You need to wait. The Portuguese Sweet Bread recipe that I am familiar with calls for an overnight rise....so you're just barely into it with 2 hours. If your dough is as sweet and rich as my dough and you've used a starter.....it's gonna take a LOOONG time. Sit tight. It'll be fine.

Expanding on the valuable info that alanamoana gave you, I found a link to the first recipe she referred to, the Luobo gao. Also found that the word Luobo, translated, simply refers to the chinese word for the daikon radish. Luobo, in and of itself, is not a pastry.

I don't freeze unwhipped cream, but I do freeze cream that's been whipped. After it thaws you need to re-whip it, and it whips up nicely.

Man, I hate this thread! Whether it's linguistic, or culinary, it's still snobbery at it's best, and I just detest it. You know as we sit here joyfully typing about food, how we refer to it, how we eat it, how we prepare it, and when we like to partake of it, there are people out there wondering IF they will eat. How's that for a little perspective? I'm sure they could care less whether you call the dead rat that they eat out of desperation and little choice "din-din" or "brekkie". Ok, you "mouthfeel" detesters, I challenge you to come up with a better term. I will gladly use it too. Like I mentioned upthread "mouthfeel" may have the "ewww" factor to it, but it's an important term when you work in food.....the way something feels in a client's mouth is just as important as how it tastes.

Must say, the word "frosting" is a particular peeve of mine too. I don't hate the word, I just refrain from using it. Somewhere along the line in my professional career as a PC I got the idea that you should never say "frosting"...you should say "icing". Don't know where I got that, or if someone specifically told me. But whenever I hear the word "frosting" I automatically assume that the person saying it is amateur and not a pro. Even funnier, is that I'm usually right. For some reason, pros don't use the word "frosting".

And, hey, if anyone can recommend reasonably priced costing software for MACINTOSH, that would be REALLY cool.

Perhaps it's the aesthetics of the term you don't like? Feel free to come up with another word.....but to me, it's a really important term. The way something feels in your mouth has a lot to do with the pleasure (or lack of) one experiences when eating something. As a pastry chef, I am concerned with mouthfeel. When combining components to make a great dessert, "mouthfeel" is at least 50% of it. It's a wonderful, useful description. Helps me in my efforts. Truly, I must say, this thread is pretentious, and trivial. It's like, "how can we elevate food snobbery to yet another level"?

No, I'm sure RLB doesn't use Fluid Flex, and has probably never used Fluid Flex. Perhaps I'm "blasphemous" for even saying it makes a moist tender cake. But it does. But you know, home bakers are constantly wondering why they can't make a cake like the "bakery" does. Well, I'll tell ya, that's one of the "secrets".

POOO!!!! /wins the thread

Regarding EVOO........ I thought I was the dumbest foodie (oops! bad word!) on the planet when I could NOT for the life of me figure out what that abbreviation stood for! When I finally figured out it meant "extra virgin olive oil", I too, said to myself, "why not just olive oil"? My answer, because people want you to know that they're not just using plain ol' olive oil!!! No sir! They're using the extra virgin kind! And well, EVOO, is much shorter than typing "extra virgin olive oil". My theory, anyway. At first when I read that, I thought, "How can a sauce be voluptuous?" So I looked it up in the dictionary. First definition: "of, relating to, or characterized by luxury or sensual pleasure". So I guess a sauce CAN be voluptuous......but in my general use of the word, I would be more apt to say, "This cream sauce can make you voluptuous". Really though, as far as I'm concerned, baby words and colloquialisms don't bother me at all. It's the misuse of food words or poor terminology that bothers me.

Yeah, count on the BBQ, but not the bluebonnets.....that's an April kinda thing. I went on a Hill Country BBQ tour with a friend from Austin a couple years ago. Don't know if you want to add to your itinerary, but no BBQ tour is complete without a stop at Harry's in Willow. Especially if you're looking for anecdotes.

'K. Here's my best. I've told this one quite a while ago, so here it is in "re-run". I worked in a deli/bakery/cake shop a few years ago, and I was the pastry chef in charge of the high end desserts, cakes, and wedding cakes. We made our cake layers with a specialty bakers hi-ratio shortening called "Fluid Flex". The stuff LOOKS and FEELS just like Vaseline. I marveled at this. Then I had a great idea, just before I hired an assistant to help me in the busy season. They were coming right out of pastry school, and I was pretty sure this trick would work. I tore the labels off one of the Fluid Flex buckets, and, washed the outside well. Since working with Photoshop is one of my hobbies, I created a brand new label that said, "Baker's Vaseline" with the whole Vaseline font and logo. I added stuff in like, "not for sale to the general public" and "petroleum.....baker's friend since 1919"......etc. The label looked totally authentic. Then I re-typed the sponge cake recipes, and replaced the words "Fluid Flex" with "Baker's Vaseline". A few days after my assistant had worked in the shop and was fairly well oriented, I asked her to make me a big batch of sponge cakes. I showed her the recipe book and flipped to the correct page. She went about scaling her ingredients, and we all were watching her face very closely. She got to the part about the Baker's Vaseline. She kind of did a double take and then, with book in hand, came up to ask me, "Where is, uh, the "Baker's VASELINE?!?!?", So I said, "Right over here!" and pointed out the bucket. She was pretty intimidated, this being her first real bakery job and all, so she took the bucket, with a very strange look and scaled it out. You could see her growing disgust as she handled it and also read the entire label. When she was putting the cakes in the oven, she managed to say, "I never learned about using petroleum products in school.......is this a new thing?? I mean, it's really............edible?" I said, "No, it's not new....been using it for years....never had a complaint! Maybe your chef just didn't keep up to date with the industry....." We led her on for a few days. When it came time for her to split, fill and ice up some of the cakes she had baked, we cut into one, just to "make sure" she'd done it right. We all gobbled into a piece and offered her some....of course, she said "No thanks...." That's when I let her in on the secret of "Fluid Flex". Dragged out a bucket with the real label. The look of relief was priceless!

If your butter cake is wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated a few days it does dry a bit, but not a LOT. Depends how well you wrap it. If your butter cake is in the fridge under a layer of buttercream and fondant, you don't have to worry about drying at all. That layer of fat (buttercream), seals in moisture unbelievably. This is my theory about cakes drying out. It isn't so much that the cake dries out in the fridge, it's the fact that the cake was dry in the FIRST PLACE. You don't realize it when it's warm. Another fact: butter cakes TASTE dry when they are refrigerated. I am constantly telling my clients that cakes taste BEST at room temperature. I drive this point home when I consult with brides and give them samples. I tell them to note that the cake is room temperature, and that's how it should be served.

Thanks Mr. du bois, I should have done a search, but has anyone noticed that the search function isn't all that great? I hesitate to use it for that reason....but I digress. At least it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one who seems to realize that this whole food allergy thing is something that didn't seem to exist before, and now it's like every third person I meet has some sort of "food problem". For the most part, I must say, truthfully, that it annoys the heck out of me. I mean, if I were a person with a TRUE food allergy, I wouldn't be trying to make it someone else's problem. By that I mean, say, I had a peanut allergy. I wouldn't go into a bakery ranting and raving that they couldn't guarantee any of their products had ever come into contact with a peanut product and raise holy hell. I have found a lot of these "special diet" people perhaps feel deprived and angry about their condition and become demanding and unpleasant because of this. They wonder why I just can't "pull a rabbit out of a hat". Well, I can, but it will cost them. Then they get mad about THAT. That's the annoying part of it. I think this is a different issue. E. coli, and salmonella are preventable illnesses and only make their ugly appearance when foods are handled improperly and not cooked fully. Food allergies are not "preventable illnesses" stemming from poor sanitation. They already exist in the person that is "allergic", it's not the restaurant's problem if they have a certain condition. The restaurant's only responsibility is to be able to inform their patrons exactly what every dish contains. That's the kind of world we live in now.

Here's an interesting article. This is a quote from it: Interesting. I stopped buying all that "antibacterial" stuff a long time ago by the way. I totally believe the use of that stuff just encourages the formations of harder-to-fight strains. We're going to sterilize ourselves out of existence. I'm at a strange point in my professional life as how to deal with this "new trend". I've gotten enough requests from clients for "special diet" needs that it's captured my attention, but I don't get enough requests to justify buying in all the special (and expensive) ingredients to accomodate a still "too small" niche in the market. Besides, I'm so accustomed to making high end pastries and cakes using the finest ingredients, when I try to make something "wheat free" or "sugar free" or "egg free" or "dairy free", it just doesn't taste that good to me. Oh, I know, it's not about "me"....and I'm sure the customers who have the allergies would appreciate anything they could get. BUT......they are still unwilling to pay the higher price I would have to charge them. One person actually accused me of "penalizing" them for having an allergy. Good god. Right now, I just refer clients elsewhere......there's a Food Co-op in town that specializes in all sorts of weird diet requests. There's also a wholesale bakery in Seattle called "The Flying Apron". And there's this place too.