pastrygirl

The GM just asked me about making candied ginger to keep in the guest cars on the curvy mountain roads (there are literally only a few km of straight roads in Bhutan), so I had to immediately search for this thread. I'm curious as to what the 7-up does for the ginger slices? Can a little simple syrup and lemon juice be substituted? Also, to make hard candies from the leftover syrup, I'm trying to think of something that wouldn't involve a mold but would still be individual pieces i.e. not broken-up brittle. Spooning bits on a silpat comes to mind but sounds tedious. I did just get a bunch of cheap pvc chocolate molds, could those be used for hard candy or are they not heat proof enough? I imagine they would need a thin coat of oil to get eh candy to release? Or we could use the syrup for soda or tea. Any other ideas?

And if instant espresso will dissolve in Kahlua, we might be on to something!

OK, I'll play. I'm doing some R&D today, and tried the deMayo chocolate cake and the honey cake. Results may have been affected by ingredients and altitude, but I did adjust the leavening for altitude. The chocolate cake tasted a little flat, probably due to the less than amazing cocoa powder I have here. I have a RLB chocolate cake that I like better, not as simple to mix up, but I'll probably stick with the one I already have and like better than trying to tweak this one. I have a cupcake recipe that is pretty similar except the cocoa is mixed with boiling water first, I think that may help with getting a fuller cocoa flavor (the RLB cake also does the cocoa + boiling H2O). The honey cake was a bit more than half full in the loaf pan (and I also opened the oven door a few times to bake other things, yes, I read the directions saying it needs to be less than half and don't open the door, I just ignored them). It rose very high, then eventually collapsed on a tunneled center. I don't think Sangay overmixed, I watched her fold the flour in by hand. On the other hand, I have witnessed some very poor measuring skills by her in the past few days, so baker error is not impossible. Texture came out weird, you know how good bread gets that kind of translucent crumb? Like that. Second batch, I added a little more flour, used baking powder instead of soda, added a little lime zest and baked in 2" ring molds (thinking about buffets once we get the party room open). Texture came out better. Honey flavor was good, but this is a pretty sweet cake, I would probably put a lime glaze on it if it ends up in the repertoire, which it might because local honey is one of the ingredients we like to show off. In all, not amazing, not terrible, might have been better at sea level....and recipes where you can't open the door are OK at home when you have the time, but not suitable for pro kitchens where you need to bake multiple things at once.

????? How old is too old for management? What else do you do when you get too old besides go into management?

Justin, you recommend some unusual temperatures. Most sources recommend melting to 120F, and a working temperature from 85 to 90F depending on the chocolate. Any chocolate I've worked with becomes noticeably thicker as it approaches 80F. Please explain.

To a certain extent, I think you can choose between bread and sweets as a specialty, just as some choose chocolate as a specialty, and if you hate decorating cakes, there are jobs that involve few or no wedding cakes. You know, you have your cupcake bakeries (hopefully soon to go the way of bagel bakeries), your bagel bakeries (well if it were still the 90's), your artisan bread shops, your cake shops. Some do a little of everything, but some are more specialized. But yeah, more skills are generally a good thing if you want to make a career of it and not be too limited in your job options. The industry is small enough already. I might not be in Bhutan if there were more than about 5 decent pastry chef jobs in my hometown, having already had two of them.

I'm a little confused as to where you want this ladder to lead, what the greater thing is. To having your OWN mom & pop bakery where you 'dabble in actual baking' but this will be $$ and otherwise satisfying because it is yours? I have a friend who opened a bakery in Seattle about 7 or 8 years ago now, started out working his ass off. He is incredibly talented and gifted and the bakery has become very popular, weekends there can be a line out the door all day long. So he is still working his ass off, maybe making enough money to support himself & wife (also a baker there). All this time, I have been hoping he would show the rest of us how easy it is, have some simple secret to success, but it still doesn't look easy, and that is one of the main things that terrifies me about opening a place. If someone so talented works so hard for so long, how can I ever expect to be successful? That, and at one job being the one to call the chef in the mornings when I'd open up and find something wrong - the new oven is broken again; the ice machine is not working; the dishwasher drain backed up and there is brown water all over; the reach-in chillers on the line were warm and everything inside is spoiled. There is always something, and it is often expensive. So in your fantasy bakery you'll buy all new equipment so nothing breaks down? Might help, but that'll add another several $K to your opening costs. Baking jobs don't pay enough? How much will you be able to pay when you are the owner? Labor is a huge, huge portion of your cost, one reason why my friend does most of the baking himself. Still, see if you can find a job, give it a year, and go from there. If it really is love, you'll know.

This is one of those books that I feel like I should like more than I do. She is obviously incredibly experienced and talented, but not much really jumps out at me as 'gotta make it'. The cakes all look great, but I don't make a lot of cakes for work. Maybe I will try the chocolate and honey cakes next time I'm playing around with new recipes. Maybe it just needs more pictures The seed in the color photo of the chocolate orange fondant ovals drives me nuts. There's a seed! take it out! not ready for service! I wish all the B&W pics of random tools and ingredients were pics of desserts - I don't care if it's not color, if you can put all those pictures in, why not make them of the food? I could start a thread on 'tiny ways various cookbooks annoy me' but probably no one else cares.

Wait, you mean there's more to it than hanging out eating cookies all day? Bah! Love the diatribe. I had an extern who told me he went to pastry school because although he had been thinking about computer science, he thought there would be less homework in the pastry program. He also admitted to failing cake decorating - I wasn't surprised. One of those who really helped prove the theory that free help is not always worth it. Maybe I was too hard on him. Maybe. Is that a ham and cheese pastry from Besalu in your pic? James is my pastry Jesus, whatever that means. Sometimes I do miss home

Abooja, it sounds like you just need to go for it, you're not going to know what you want until you try it out. Apply for any reasonably interesting pastry/bakery job and see if you can win them over with your enthusiasm. In the meanwhile, visit all of the local places, hang out and have tea and a cookie and watch what really goes on (if you can see into the kitchen at all) and consider if it excites you.

A few cents.... You don't need a whole lot of experience to work in your average bakery, there are a lot of baking jobs that are pretty much entry level. Still, someone with some experience is probably going to get the job over someone with zero. To prove your skill level, consider dropping off some samples of your bread/pastries along with your resume. Also, a portfolio of pictures of what you have made at home can be a good way to show your skill. I too have seen entirely too many people who think it would be fun to be a baker, their kids love their cookies, blah blah blah, but are not prepared for the amount of work, can't multi-task, don't have a high gear, can't follow directions, or otherwise aren't prepared for kitchen reality. I think pastry attracts these people more than savory food, people seem to think that pastry is easier. In ways it is, but the professional environment is still very very different from baking at home. If you really want to do bread, it seems like a waste of everybody's time for you to try to learn cake decorating, get a decorating job, then leave after not that long because it is not your passion. It sounds like you need to focus a little, unfortunately it might take a little 'staging' here and there to find out what feels good. There are still some chefs who appreciate free labor, anywhere from a few weeks to a few months would be reasonable. Letters and phone calls about how much you love their food and want to learn from them help. This is probably more likely to work in a restaurant than a retail bakery. I'd say most restaurants buy their bread wholesale, and of those who bake in house it is a duty of the pastry chef/staff, not a separate position - unless the place is huge and busy. I remember applying for a job at a touristy place once where the entire job was making focaccia all day. Booo-ring, did not inquire further. As for room for advancement, again that kind of depends on where you eventually decide your focus will be. In a bakery, you might hope to get promoted to a position with more creative input or managerial duties, but a lot of bakeries never change their menus, so it's a lot of the same thing every day, maybe something special for valentine's/mothers' day/Christmas/etc. Think of the artisan bakeries in your area - how often do their product choices rotate? You haven't mentioned how strong your creative side is, so that may or may not be important. Do you want to be the manager? Owner? What is your ultimate goal? I started working at a bakery in college making muffins (boss was a creep, that was short lived) then again after college got a job in a coffee shop that made all of their muffins/scones/pies/etc in-house. After a few years of coffee shop baking, I got bored with pies and cookies and took a class on plated desserts at CIA Greystone. I think the chef who hired me for my first restaurant job may have thought that said class was longer than five days, but it gave me the confidence to start putting together my own desserts (the memory of some still make me cringe - there is a learning curve with being self-taught) and get me into the restaurant biz. It's been ten years now and I'm working at a luxury hotel with a staff of 10. So there are ways to grow. And good luck finding a $20/hr job. If you are the bakery manager or pastry chef, maybe, otherwise you're looking at the lower end of the spectrum.

The tricky part is that if you are used to using the seed method to temper, you can't do it because your seed chocolate needs to be in temper, so you need to temper it by another method. I had many kg of Callebaut that spent a few weeks too long in transit through India that I tried to re-temper - it turned out OK but not perfect, but I think that says more about my tempering skills than anything else. Good luck!

And Seattle is a bit more humid than some places

I had worked for a french cafe for awhile and we would keep pans of frozen choux dough mixed with herbes de provence and bring them out when needed. There are a couple of things to note if doing this that I had discovered. -They have to come directly from the freezer to the oven-- no thawing. ← With regular (cheese-less) choux, I have piped, frozen, thawed, then baked successfully. What did you find happened when you thawed that makes you recommend going directly from the freezer to the oven?

Yeah, I was going to check it out too. ← I downloaded it, maybe I could mail it to you? PM me with your address and I'll forward it.

Looking forward to my first trip to Australia in a few weeks, and would welcome any suggestions for restaurants with FABULOUS desserts, and great high-end pastry or chocolate shops in Sydney and Melbourne. In MEL I'll be staying in Carlton & relying on public transport/taxi, haven't booked for SYD yet. I'm a pastry chef looking for inspiration, surprises, delights - of course I'll have to try a traditional pavlova or two, but am more interested in what the best & brightest & wackiest & fanciest pastry chefs in Australia are doing right now. Thanks!

Bhutanese is definitely a contender for hottest. The national dish is ema datse, green chilies cooked with cheese. Eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or all three. Hot chilies are used as a vegetable, not a mere small flavoring component. Depending on the heat of the particular chili, it ranges from very very hot to face-melting. Ema datse can also be made with torn up dried red chilies, or sometimes mushrooms, green beans, tomatoes, or other vegetables are added, but it is still always at least half chilies. Meat dished often have a generous portion of chilies added, and momo dumplings are usually eaten with a spicy ezay, or condiment of chilies, and usually tomato, onion, and garlic. People also eat ezay as a bar snack. They also use tinge, or szechuan pepper in some dishes. It can be difficult to get a local restaurant to cook dishes with anywhere near the full amount of chili if you are foreign, a lot of places presume that we only want french fries. I like spicy food and can usually take the heat, but can eat only some of the food that the staff makes, sometimes it is just to painful, no matter how much rice you have to go along with it. A few Bhutanese have expressed to me that they would love to try to go work in the US, but are worried that we don't have chilies there and they wouldn't have anything to eat. I assure them that chilies and rice are widely available in many varieties, but I think they don't believe me.

Just be careful with how strong your vacuum is - I vac packed some at work, and the vacuum was a little too strong and cracked them. Oooooops!

Well, I'd subscribe just to support them, because I want to support any good publication that has to do with pastry and my industry. Not only that, if I downloaded and printed out back issues, I'd probably spend the same amount in printer ink than if I just subscribed in the first place! ← Good point, and if I were at home, I'd look forward to getting it in the mail. I was in more of a 'I could subscribe and have Mom mail it to me in three months and hope it doesn't get lost on the way or wait 7 month until I get home or I could download it now' frame of mind. I opted for now.

This was in San Francisco three years ago, so I can't blame the Himalayas this time. The chocolate discs were tempered chocolate, if it had been a cookie it probably would have soaked into the cookie instead of weeping onto the sheet pan. Could have been condensation, or maybe my recipe was off - if I recall I added extra whole egg to make it a little firmer so it would stand up. Also everything in that restaurant was broken and we had a serious moisture problem in that reach-in & had to clean out standing water from the bottom on a regular basis...wow, I don't really want to recall too much more of that particular nightmare...but yeah maybe there were other factors.

I've done it and did get weeping. I had a chocolate 4 ways on a menu, with one of the item being a creme brulee baked in a fleximold, frozen, unmolded, placed on a chocolate disc and allowed to thaw. There was always a little juice on the sheet pan after they had thawed. So what is the secret?

At a glance, it looks like only the regional showcases are different and the main feature articles are the same in the different versions. I gave up on Pastry A&D a few years ago when I got tired of their top 10 pastry chefs in the US being French all the time and have been relying on the occasional dessert in Art Culinaire for my pastry porn, but now this....I'm off in search of a color printer to print as many pages as I can! (Or maybe I'll subscribe.) Soooo, if you can download it, why subscribe? If you go to the online editions and select print all pages, you then download it as a PDF and you can print from the PDF. Maybe they aren't going to have all editions online? Free pastry porn?

I bet you could add peanut butter to your favorite french buttercream recipe, maybe as a replacement for some of the butter in the recipe. If you can add chocolate or lemon curd, why not peanut butter?

Hard to say much without knowing exactly how much you can see. A few years ago I had an assistant who, due to albinism, had severely degenerated eyesight. He was hired as a line cook but it freaked the sous chefs out to watch him hold things 5 inches in front of his face to look at them, so he got sent to pastry. (he would say, 'I just can't see things far away' but far away appeared to be anything more than 6 inches.) Ironically, even though he was a line cook at heart and hated pastry, he did a way better job than my other assistant, who claimed to really want to be in pastry, but was really slow and not as talented overall. I guess my point is that desire to make it happen and desire to make good food can be more important than sight. You're in Bellingham, did you ever hear about the restaurant in Seattle run entirely by blind and/or visually or hearing impaired people? It's closed now, but it was the Ragin' Cajun restaurant in the Pike Place Market. It can be done. It seems like organizing things so they are always in the same place would help a lot, so you don't have to look to see them, and if you could have a really easily cleanable kitchen that you could just hose down. Your ability to see small details will also determine what kind of food you are making. Braised lamb shanks on polenta are going to be easier to deal with than napoleons with fillo dough and micro greens. Is school an option to fill in the gaps in your knowledge?

Regular rice flour seems to get hard instead of sticky or soft.