pastrygirl

Katie, don't take this the wrong way, but it is sort of nice to hear the truth about what a server actually makes and that it is not necessarily all that much. What I mean is, I think so much animosity forms between the front & back due to the type of server who brags about pocketing $200 after a six hour shift, while the cooks have been sweating their nuts off since they came in at 2 and still have a couple more hours of cleanup to go, and will make about half that much. There is also sometimes...maybe a sense of entitlement or superiority that can be really off-putting. Everyone who works hard wants to be rewarded with something besides repetetive motion injuries for their efforts, and the suggestion by some that FOH are somehow more deserving than BOH, well we BOH are a sensitive bunch (beneath all of the alcohol, tattoos, and personality disorders) and don't like to be told that our work towards the same goal - successful restaurant, happy customers - is less important, less valuable. Why exactly is it that you (not you) are better than me? Because my talents are different? Let's try separate but equal and see how that feels. I think cooks and servers have both historically not gotten a lot of respect in the US, that is changing somewhat (probably more for chefs) now with celebrity chefs and the current cult of the restaurant. I really applaud Thomas Keller for instituting the service charge at his restaurants and trying to equalize the front and back, but we have a really long way to go and we probably do need to change the system so that we can all get along, customers don't feel railroaded, and nobody feels ripped off at the end of the day. But until we can get a new system figured out, I'd have to say I'm against both chasing down poor tippers AND skinny little ho's who get way overtipped based on flaunting a perky pair.

I do. And so do they. ← I think we are all aware that servers believe they should make cash hand over fist and not have to declare it to the IRS. Yes, plates are heavy, people can be jerks, some nights are totally dead and you get cut early. Every job in every industry is going to have its pluses and minuses. Each person needs to consider those in relation to the average pay and decide if it is worth it. Hard work unfortunately does not always pay better. FOH and BOH are two halves of a whole. Yes they are different skill sets but equally important to the success of the operation. True, a lot of dishwashers don't speak English fluently and a lot of cooks have personality disorders. And a lot of servers can't bake a genoise, make buttercream, filet a fish, brunoise a carrot, etc. A lot of servers know shockingly little about food (I guess if they were into food they'd be in the kitchen instead). True, some jobs just pay better and some skill sets are just worth more in the market. So what happens if bringing people their dinner and explaining what sauvignon blanc tastes like turns out to be not quite as valuable as originally hoped? If serving actually pays less than everyone seems to think or hope it should, maybe it is time for a few people to suck it up and accept reality, maybe consider a job change when jobs become available again. If you want $40k a year but are only making $25, what do you do? Do you look for another job, or stay in the one you have and cry about how much more you deserve? Doesn't everyone always want more? People at every income think they would be happier if they made more money, but when they make more, the happiness does not increase (maybe temporarily) and they want more again. It would be great if there were no working poor, if no body had to struggle. From what I hear, a lot of Americans are struggling right now, not just servers.

Katie, I appreciate your honesty. Understandably in these times you're probably going to have more bad nights than good nights, and that is hard. It is hard to not have a great income, it is hard to want to work but there is no business, hard when you are at the grocery store trying to find the cheapest food you possibly can and your old junker car just broke down again and you really don't have $600 to fix it. I spent entirely too much of my 20's living that way, and it really sucked, but in truth I was also irresponsible with my spending - when you make $9 an hour, you really can't afford to go out to dinner that often, a fact I was in denial about. But still, I understand the frustration of living paycheck to paycheck and having debt. But I think why people get so fired up over this, is that a lot of servers seem to think they 'deserve' to have a good night every night. They brag about how much they made on a busy Saturday and whine and moan on a slow Tuesday. Every night is not Saturday night, so each person has to decide for his or herself if the average wage ends up being worth it. If people think they should be averaging $20 an hour but in truth they only average $14, they need to examine whether they still want to do that job for that wage, instead of demanding that now everyone has to tip 25% instead of 15. Like someone said above, servers tend to resist the service charges when restaurants try to implement them, choosing instead to take the gamble. If serving was truly a hellacious, underpaid job, there would be unions, organizations, strikes, etc. But it seems to work for a lot of people, at least in good times. Now that we are in bad times, pretty much everyone is struggling or know someone who is, not just servers and restaurants. Talk to someone in Detroit who lost their job after 30 years at GM and whose 401K is shot and doesn't have a whole lot of job options at the age of 50. Talk to a car salesman who works on commission and used to sell 50 cars a month but now sells 6. You sound very capable and like (in better times) you could easily get a job at a place with a higher check average and make more money. You say you love your job and there must be reasons why you have stayed there instead of moving to a more expensive place. Maybe it's a convenient location, the owners are friendly and flexible, you have creative input, whatever, we all make choices based on what is important to us. At the end of the day, is it worth it? We all have to take ownership of the choices we make.

I generally try to stay out of tipping threads but I have a question for Katie and other servers. I don't want to pry, but you keep disputing Jackal's math without giving your own numbers. So, how much do you take home on a good night? On a bad night? What does that work out to as an hourly income (including your $2.83 wage paid by the restaurant)? Sure, sometimes you have a long slow shift, sometimes you have a short busy shift. What is the range? What is the average? If there was no tipping at all, illegal, a banned practice, and servers were paid hourly, how much should a server at various places be paid as an hourly rate....at IHOP? At the neighborhood bistro? At the special occasion steak house? At the five star destination restaurant? For diners, what do you think a fair hourly wage would be based on the level of service you prefer? 10? 15? 20? 25? more? For servers, what hourly wage would make doing the job still worth doing, whether you love it or not? 10? 15? 20? 25? more? The cooks are probably paid around 10 to 15 an hour DOE, and I don't see any reason why servers should expect more than that. It takes both sides to make a restaurant successful. If everyone in the whole restaurant can make more, that would be fabulous. Right now, in many states, servers rely on the customer to provide most of their income. Is it happening and people just want more, or is it not happening to the degree that people want to chase down the customer and demand more? If servers are getting less than $10 to 15 an hour (or whatever a similarly experienced cook at that particular restaurant makes) averaged over the year, then they have a valid argument about everyone tipping better. Sure the chef, sous chef, and pastry chef are all probably salaried, but when you break it down into hours worked and overtime not earned, those salaries start looking pretty pathetic. Katie, you can do that math when you get a management position. The sous chef at a nice place might make $50k if he's lucky, but working 70 hours a week, it's the same hourly rate as the line cooks, or less. There is a trade off for everything.

But would the heath dept consider it potentially hazardous over the months that it takes to dry & get the water content down that low? In the beginning, it is fresh meat with a little salt and stuff, I can picture them not understanding the concept that in a year it will be really delicious and totally safe prosciutto, it just looks like raw meat hanging in the storeroom for now.

Here are a few of my current favorites: Sourdough crackers - don't recall where I got this 1 c sourdough starter 1/4 c olive oil about 1/2 c AP flour (depending on how stiff your starter is) 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking soda Combine to make a stiff dough, rest at least 15 minutes, roll thin, transfer dough to a sheet pan, brush with more olive oil and sprinkle with salt, prick all over with a fork and cut shapes, bake @ 350F until golden brown. They do puff up a little from bubbles in the dough, but they are nice and crisp and good flavor. Keep about a week. Sesame Soy Crackers - a bastardization of a Charlie Trotter recipe - super easy, thin and fragile this is the 'batter' type recipe I mentioned upthread, I tried it and liked it, even made a gluten free version with rice and corn flours. The original uses all wine and paprika (no sesame/soy), but I wanted a few different versions, and I get yelled at if I use too much expensive imported wine 135 g AP flour (1 cup) 1/2 tsp black pepper 40 g (about 2 TB + 2 tsp) butter, melted 2 TB soy sauce 1/4 c white wine 1/4 c water 1 TB black sesame seeds 2 TB white sesame seeds Mix flour and pepper. Whisk wet ingredients, then stir into dry. Batter will be a little thin, thinner than tuile paste, should be easily spreadable. Add water or wine if needed. Oil two half sheet pans generously, then spread the batter in a thin even layer - small offset icing spatula is good for this. Sprinkle with mixed sesame seeds and bake at 350F until golden. Sometimes they stick to the pan, but when they don't they are really nice and light, suitable for inhaling. These don't keep well. Multigrain Crackers 150 g AP flour (about 1 c + 1 TB) 50 g buckwheat flour (scant 1/3 c) 50 g rye flour (scant 1/3 c) 1 TB black onion seed 1-1/2 tsp cumin seed 2 tsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking soda 80 g cold butter (3 oz/6TB) 1/2 c yogurt or buttermilk Mix dry, cut in butter until crumbly, add yogurt to make the dough, chill before rolling. Roll dough, brush with olive oil & sprinkle with salt, cut shapes, bake at 325F until golden. Keep about a week. Good with cheese, if you don't have black onion seed I'm sure you could substitute something else or just leave it out. Enjoy! Andrea

If they're what I think they are, then they will deform even with just really hot water. ← There is a way to use them, but it's some trouble. Put some water in a cookie sheet and put the mold into the water. The water should not over run the mold. Put the cookie sheet into the freezer until the mold is frozen into it. Then use it with the hot syrup. It works! (I tried it once.) ← That sounds like more trouble than it would be worth. What type of plastic are lollipop molds made out of?

So if you put a pain au chocolat sign they think it's going to hurt?

People..why can't we smack them all over the head with a 2 x 4? I had a partner in restaurant I worked for tell me my desserts were 'too fancy', that people didn't want the trio of small creme brulees (a great seller, btw), they just wanted one big one. Luckily one of the other partners was on my side, said desserts should be a little bit fancy. True, sometimes simple and rustic hits the spot for a lot of people, but this is kind of disturbing. Why would people think you had a big pile of fake croissants mixed in with the other pastry? Why are people afraid of fancy? it doesn't seem like it is a money issue, if the croissants are similarly priced with other pastry and if they sell when they are more 'rustic'. Is it some sort of guilt, like they don't think they deserve a perfect pastry? Is it less indulgent if the same $ is spent on something less pretty?

Flotch, if the cookbook selection in Dubai is poor, you should know that Amazon does ship internationally and the rates aren't too bad - about $5 per order plus $4 or 5 per book for their standard international (takes a few weeks), so if you order 4 books it's around $20-25 in shipping, not bad. At least that is for Amazon US, UK or other Amazon locations might charge differently. On the other hand, I am still waiting for 2 orders from them and wish the standard international shipment was trackable. Hey, maybe they are in Dubai, they could be anywhere

Have you tried longer classes that include lunch and a glass of wine? 90 minutes might be all the time you have, and I'm sure people already are eating what they are cooking in class, and maybe people who are learning to cook because they can't afford to go out anymore don't want to spend that much, but say you had a 3 hour class with some extras, could you charge $75? Even if you don't use that much more product, the sitting down to eat and chatting with the chef (you) might make it seem like a lot more. I used to work for a chef that did these cooking classes that the housewives just loved, they'd make a few signature dishes from the restaurant and drink a little - but those were different times and bored housewives have other concerns these days I am sure. Here, things are pretty bad, no matter how isolated from the rest of the world we are. Somehow not a lot of people are wanting to spend $10k a week to visit the beautiful mystical mountains of Bhutan right now. Too bad, the weather is beautiful. Our only hope is up-selling wine (food and house beverages are included, but premium wines and liquors are not) and spa services, otherwise we'll have to take away some of the management dining privileges and cut either the workweek or a few positions.

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?