sugarseattle

It sounds like your plan should be both trying to get experience from the real world, and taking any classes you can squeeze in. Then of course to continue your practice baking at home. We offer an intership at my bakery here in Seattle, and we usually expect about 20 hours/week for a duration of about 3 months. We get a lot of people who are "home cooks" applying for the position, and while I think it is a great way to learn, we are looking for candidates with a little more experience. The position is intended for people who have knowledge about pastry to refine their skills so they can be marketable and pursue their goals. We just don't have time to teach as we are very small. So we are cautious when we interview candidates and tell them that this is not cooking school. I usually respond best to candidates when they are able to tell me about their goals, like why they are considering the position. I also ask what they know how to bake, and what they LOVE to bake. I think it would be good if you approached bakeries and tried to set up an appointment to discuss your idea. Tell them a little about yourself, and really since you haven't gone to cooking school, you're going to have to speak with confidence and honesty about your skills. If you've only made puff pastry once, that's not a skill. So after the appointment, try to get them to try you out for a few hours in the kitchen. That way they can see how you work and asses how much of an asset or liability you will be to the team. Also, think of this as very valuable knowledge. One way isyou could think about how much cooking school would be and then figure out how much you'd be earning in the internship that you don't have to pay for cooking school. Good luck! PS I was 36 when I started and I'm 41 now. You can never be too old

Of course practice is the best way to learn. I have found the following books very helpful in the understanding of baking chemistry: Baking Illustrated (by the cook's illustrated people) Understanding Baking by Joseph Amendola Both are great ways to understand the whys and hows of all categories of baking, and if you practice recipes every day, you'll be well on your way to mastering baking. Works good if you have a good audience to feed your test batches.

i love peanut butter mousse! OMG

I agree about the popsicle sticks...better surface area. You might also try like 3" chunks of bananas. I think the freezer is going to be your best tool. if you could get the caramel to stick to the bananas just long enough to freeze, THEN dip in the chocolate and roll in peanuts, that would probably work. You might also try freezing the banana chunks on the sticks. another thing is maybe dip the bananas in chocolate, then caramel, then chocolate and peanuts.

I usually make Martha's yeasted parmesan rosemary cracker with the pasta maker, but it's a lot of work and I have to work on the dinner table because my pasta maker doesn't clamp onto my counter so it's a little hard with a weird work space. One of the things that's cool is that if I get tired of making crackers with the dough, I can just make some rolls because it's basically bread.

I am sure you can lightly melt it and then transfer it to the ice cream maker. I think the recipe is probably very rich with a high percentage of chocolate, which at cold temperatures is of course solid. I am sure you will be able to convince your "custard" to become ice cream, although, as you say, it will be quite rich.

I'm thinking the filling might be like a coconut macaroon so you might start from there. maybe reduce the sugar by like 20% And then you've got your favorite pie crust. ANd then boil the cherries and add sugar if needed. Make a slurry with cornstarch and water and add as much as you need until it is clear and thick enough to your liking. add a splash of lemon juice or brandy. assemble unbaked crust, cherry fill, and coconut macaroon "batter" with top crust. Cut a few slits and then bake until golden. just be careful to taste your cherries with your coconut so it's not too sweet...

Beggars actually are choosy...I never carry cash, mostly because I don't have any...I'm a bakery owner in our first year you know! ANyway, I often bring a couple of cookies home for me and my hubby, and sometimes when I see a begger, I offer him the cookies instead and get a flat NO! I tell them I"m hardly making a salary and that at least I get cookies and I really don't need the extra calories and they still say no. We do put them in the freezer and try to get them to a charity once a week, but still it's this pain. The charity we usually try to give them too is like 4 blocks away and they won't pick them up, and only accept the pastries at 1pm. we have 2 baristas until 12:30pm so that leaves me or my baker to drop them off...so it's like this minor pain in the butt.

I just wish it was easier to give to charity...that's why I'm considering other options. we've tried having charities pick up, but they flake out on us. other charities that want drop offs only have specific times they accept drop offs. a lot of times we're busy at that time so we can't make the drop off and then our bag of pastries in the freezer continues to grow. i just hate throwing pastries away. How I was planning on doing the discount was something like having my baristas decide...let's say at 4pm we have more than 12 pastries, then they just put a sign out at that time about the discount. so it would be more sporadic and unpredictable.

We've been considering offering our pastries for 1/2 price after 4pm to minimize waste. Right now, we give our spares to a charity, but it's kind of a pain to have to drop them off all the time and we want to avoid that job. We're actually pretty good at predicting and maybe waste about 12 pastries or so per day, but it would be great to reduce that. It's mostly the breakfast pastries we're concerned with. Cookies are ok for 24-36 hours. Anybody do this?

i think the simpler the better...bring samples of like 1-2 types of your best selling flavors that best represent you, and provide menus and such for other flavors. Also, you may find it useful to bring along a few prepared gift boxes that are ready to sell for those impulse purchases. Think of the sales as financing your advertising costs. Best of luck and have fun...remember you are passionate about your business and make it shine!

I've had trouble with that recipe, and jelly rolls in general. It's more of a technique issue, and baking time seems to be ultra critical...over bake and it cracks when you roll it, under bake and it falls apart when you roll it. You could do like a sheet of regular old chocolate cake and make a thin many layer cake with a bunch of mousse (like a loaf cake size)...you know, like a square "roll"

we just signed up for the handy dandy weekly produce delivery truck and last week we got a super beautiful sugar pie pumpkin, and with Thanksgiving on the horizon, I'm super excited to make something with it. Sure I could make pumpkin pie, or even pumpkin soup, but how about a pumpkin tarte tatin. I know I might not be the first one to do it, but it's my first time. So here's my plan...with a really good peeler, I'm going to peel and segment some pumpkin wedges, about the same size as apples would be, and follow the same procedure, perhaps adding a little cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and clove to my sugar. Then plop that sucker in the oven with a puff pastry top. The one thing I'm thinking is ratio of sugar...I know apples so well, but don't know how much additional sugar for pumpkin? Also, I'm thinking a little custard poured over the carmelized pumpkin wedges might not be a bad idea? Thoughts?

one thing to note is remember that you can taste the filling before you bake the pie and adjust seasonings to your liking. I like orange zest with sweet potatoes too...

is it a butter cake or a sponge/genoise? I think you'd have better luck with butter cakes.

I suppose ultimately you have to decide why you are in the chocolate business. Ultimately you have to assign a value to why you are making chocolates and stick with it. Essentially, lowering your price as a means of getting into a certain store is a form of advertising. Even though your product itself is probably the best form of advertising out there, you are still devaluing your product by offering it at a lower cost than it is worth. Getting your name out there in the form of increased sales is one way to increase profitability. Decreasing your costs (overhead, packaging, etc.) is another way. There certainly is a sweet spot with how much you need to produce with your overhead to make a profit. Many of those business groups are expensive I agree, but maybe there's one out there that may help with the networking that is often necessary to make it in your industry.

Buttermilk

It does seem best that you should tell your customers that pumpkin pie is just not available because it has a short shelf life. Then offer them plan B. I guess it's just a question of whether you want money now at the risk of losing business later or you want to not get the money and build a relationship for the future. It's a question of how you want to represent yourself and your business. I personally have turned away many a dessert order if there were parameters that would hurt the quality of the dessert I was making. For me, it's just not worth it.

i tried making these and had a little problem with the caramel leeking out of the chocolate after I dipped them. I did chill the caramel/marshmallow squares to cut them, then re-chilled them once they were cut. I am thinking the leaking might be because of the temperature difference of cold inside and warm outside. It could also have been the coating chocolate, but not sure. I also tried double dipping them, but the caramel kept oozing out!. I hope some day to be able to temper couverture...it tastes so much better!

where's the pic?

we just spray our croissants and brioche loaves with water and then wrap. works great and you don't have to worry about pam getting all up in your grill flavorwise.

I find it brings out the flavor of stone fruits like peaches and apricots. when i plump up dried apricots, i add a little orange flower water to the cooled puree and it makes them taste like fresh apricots. yum!

I say just run it like a seasonal business. people don't neseccarily have to LOOK at the chocolates to make a decision. They could just LOOK at a generic photo of your chocolates. We have a "menu" of our most popular items, but for the most part, we switch up flavors based on whim and availability of certain ingredients. So you just train your customers that you don't have a set menu, that TODAY we are featuring blah blah blah. Turn it into an asset. If they want a particular flavor, then yes, have them order in advance... You could accomplish your marketing either by a generic flyer that you could include with their orders, or perhaps a web site as well that you could list your daily flavors. You might consider a few flavors that you usually have in stock, but then also enforce that to guarantee a certain flavor, you have to place an order in advance. It's a nice way to position yourself as the authority in chocolate. They are buying what YOU think is the best thing which is why you got into chocolate in the first place.

I agree about listening to your gut. Look inside and think about your vision...does it include a partner. Will a partner complement you and help you achieve your vision, or are you just feeling a little scared about your abilities to accomplish your vision alone? Perhaps take a drive and spend some time alone and really THINK about what you want. As long as you're sure about what you want, then it doesn't matter whether you do it alone or with a partner...knowing what you want is the best insurance that you will get it.

I think Herme would be proud since he emulates his own flavor combinations into many iterations. while you probably wouldn't necessarily credit your source for a baguette, I think it's gracious to credit other chefs when you're either emulating (as you have) or even if you're directly copying their specific creations. However, if you want to be a purist, you might find that the source of that specific flavor combination may not be its originator. That's what's sort of fun about the arts, music, food, etc. We're all sort of borrowing ideas from each other to express our own unique vision.