My "First Pastry Job" Blog

[jeniac42]

Hello. By now probably most eGulleteers have forgotten me. My life has been in a state of upheaval for about a year now, and the Internet activity has been kept to a minimum. Things seem to be evening out a bit, so I'll probably be participating more.

In case you don't remember, at this time last year I was still working in the computer industry. In July, I made the switch to line work at a new restaurant in Columbus. I opened the place, and ended up kind-of-sort-of taking over the desserts when the chef and his sister (who did our dessert work) left. Alas, it was the sort of place where the owners were just as happy to buy frozen cheesecakes and premade pies (in their defense, the clientele didn't seem to care). Once I realized I wasn't going to learn anything else there, I decided to move on.

Thanks to a chocolatier friend of mine here, I managed to land a job at an Austrian bakery; I would consider it the best bakery in town, and I feel very lucky to have gotten the job. I do pastry work in the afternoon and work the line for them at night (they serve a limited lunch/dinner menu). I make less money than ever (woo!) and work harder than I ever have.

The experience has been amazing so far, and all I've done is marzipan peaches (white cake, raspberry jam, peach buttercream, wrapped in marzipan, airbrushed to look like a peach and rolled in sugar) and a few cookies (filling and dipping in chocolate). It's crazy for me to see the level of production every day, all the cakes and cookies and bread and pastries. Everyone there works really, really hard, which is a great environment for me.

I just thought I would post this update, and I'm going to try to participate more regularly. I think pastry is the area I'd like to work in, and this job is confirming that, so far. I'll probably be moving to Portland within a year and a half, and hopefully it will stand me in good stead there.

[tan319]

Hey, good on ya!

I just started doing part time work in a French Bakery operation here, in addition to my regular pastry chef gig, and it's ass busting work, huh?

I worked there for maybe a month and a half back in early 2001, my first gig in ABQ, before I got my PC gig and ,suffice to say, this time I'm a bit better prepared.

Everything I make dough wise = about 100# all together, crossiant dough, quiche dough, you get the picture.

Making tons of Danish, tart shells,totally different to my regular gig, whichis fine.

Bit of a challenge , cool French guys, but exacting, of course.

Best of luck to you, Jeniac, nice to see you again!

[Pan]

Hello. By now probably most eGulleteers have forgotten me.

I remember you. Thanks for checking in and informing us of your progress. Good luck in the future!

[JustKay]

Hello jeniac42. I'm kinda new here. Just wanted to say Hi!

[jeniac42]

I'm amazed people remembered me! Thanks

Today I made 11 Key lime pies and 144 minis. I don't get to do a whole lot of pastry work yet, since I switch to the line after four hours and I'm pretty slow, so I can't be given a whole big list of stuff to do. No peaches today, though (someone else took care of them)!

It took me quite a while to do the graham cracker crusts. First, I put too much butter in the mixture, so I had to add a bunch more crumbs. Since I don't really like graham cracker crusts, I never make them at home, and it took a few pans to figure out the best way to do it. (I started with the sides and then did the bottom - any suggestions for best technique on this?) I also ended up covered in sweetened condensed milk. I'm not used to being all sticky all the time yet... uck.

So far one of the coolest things has been using the dough sheeter. That thing is crazy. It's so fast! And so neat! The hardest part has been not eating all the marzipan for the peaches.

[jeniac42]

Oh, and man, the big Hobart bowls are crazy. I'm not sure about the capacity, maybe 80 or 100 quarts? But there are metal wheelie things just to move them around, and the Hobart raises the bowl itself (hydraulically?). I haven't made anything in those yet, but damn they're big.

[tan319]

It took me quite a while to do the graham cracker crusts. First, I put too much butter in the mixture, so I had to add a bunch more crumbs. Since I don't really like graham cracker crusts, I never make them at home, and it took a few pans to figure out the best way to do it. (I started with the sides and then did the bottom - any suggestions for best technique on this?)

I add a bit of butter at a time to the G.C, maybe you have a minimum amt of butter, check the mix by compressing a bit to see it is starting to hold.

Can't remember where you're located but sometime crumbs will be dryer then others.

Also, if you end up with too much wet, you can add more crumbs?

Went thru my own trip at the bakery the other day with the crust for the Key Lime.

You're spot on about sides 1st too.

[herbacidal]

I'll probably be moving to Portland within a year and a half, and hopefully it will stand me in good stead there.

Do make sure you check out Melmck's opening a bakery thread.

It may help you down the line.

[Wendy DeBord]

I remember you too, welcome back! I'm glad your enjoying this career, it's crazy but heck-I love it- it always feels like fun to me.

I press the sides first also. Dealing with sweetend condensed milk can get messy, but so can folding gallons on mousse (all up your arms). I like cans of s.c.milk, sometimes I get bags and you wind up not being able to get all of it out of the bag. This time around chef got me a bucket of it....I'm dreading that-not sure how I'm going to use it with-out making a mess. I've heard alot of people from the hot side complain that they hate pastry because it's messy and they can't stand sticky hands.........I don't notice that anyone-but I bet I wash my hands 3 or 4 dozen times aday with-out thinking. The bakerys I've worked at didn't have as nearly as many sinks as restaurant kitchens so washing wasn't as convient.

[jeniac42]

Yeah, there's only really one hand-washing sink there and it's inconveniently located back in the corner. I usually have to negotiate several speed racks full of baked goods to get to it. I've been coping by keeping a wet towel on the counter so I can at least wipe my hands off a little bit.

The five-gallon buckets of raspberry filling give me issues. When I have to scrape out the last little bit I end up with raspberry all over my arms. Plus I'm not too good at loading up piping bags yet, and I tend to get stuff all over my hands in the process (though I have improved).

I'm definitely following melmck's thread!

Today I made another 16 key lime pies. I put the crust in 8 of them before I realized I'd forgotten to grease the pans so I had to start all over but all in all it took me a whole hour less today to do the whole process. Plus I used a better can opener and getting out the s.c. milk went much less stickily.

I was reprimanded by several people for having cut the biscotti unevenly, but hey. Lesson learned; next time I'll measure them out with the knife.

I also did about 200 chocolate truffles, in between cooking orders on the line (lots of schnitzel tonight). I ended up all covered in chocolate. Heh.

[jeniac42]

Oh, and I'm sure you know this, sinclair, but it was a new trick to me. To get everything back out of the pastry bags, we lay them flat on a counter and use the plastic bench scrapers to push everything to the end. That might help with the s.c. milk bags?

[Wendy DeBord]

Thanks for the tip, but I'm just a spend thrift on those pouches...they drive me too crazy to fight to get 3 more oz. out of the thing.

I don't grease/spray my pans when I have a graham cracker crust. It's not needed. I do prebake my crusts and that does make a little difference.

Yeah, that is a hard thing to get used to in bakeries, not have a bunch of sinks handy. I typically feel like I'm working much slower in a bakery setting-but then maybe it's because it's someone elses lay-out and when I work alone as a pc I move everything around so it works for me.

The covered in chocolate issue, I wear a black jacket because of it. Sure all the flour shows on it, but I can wash that out easier then getting chocolate out or a white jacket.

[jeniac42]

Yeah, I am soooo too anal-retentive to spend all my time covered in chocolate. I tell myself it's just because everything is a new task, and I can't do it neatly yet. I'm one of Those People who likes to keep my uniform looking clean, and I wipe down my counters every 30 seconds, etc.

Hopefully one day I'll figure it out. Meantime maybe I'll buy some black chef jackets... they don't provide them at this job (gasp! horror!) so may as well. Plus I'll probably look so stylin' with the jackets and the houndstooth clown pants....

[jeniac42]

This week was a good week for learning. I tried dipping the chocolate petits fours (that didn't go so well), cut the nut petits fours and decorated the tops (with a piping bag! I'm getting better at piping, anyway!).

Alas, today I woke up very, very ill. The kind where you spend all your time either unconcsious or in the bathroom. Could've been the hot dogs I ate last night, could've been some kind of virus, who can tell? Point being that I had to call off. Now, when I worked in an office, I called off all the time because it didn't matter. But in my restaurant employment history I have called off twice in three years, once because we had to put our dog to sleep and once because I was similarly GI-tract afflicted.

So now, I don't work again until Tuesday, and I get to sit around and fret about the fact that, because of me, someone else probably had to do twice the work and stay a lot longer to get things done. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

[Wendy DeBord]

OH yeah, you feel the guilt, no way out of that. In my case no one else does the work when I'm gone so I just face a fuller day when I return........I won't call in sick unless I can't move. But on the bright side, it makes you never procrastinate, always work hard and fast so you never get swamped. I had days when I relaxed cause I had everything under control, feeling good so I can sit back alittle....then the manager walks in with a funeral for 500 for the next am day. Get burned enough like that and it does turn you into a good worker.

Anyway, I hope your feeling better now.

I will admit I'm a disaster clothing wise in the kitchen. Yes, I work neat and clean. BUT soooo often I use my whole body to pick something up, hold something in place (I do that alot with my stomach) etc... so I just can't be bothered with a splash of this or that on my jacket.

[jeniac42]

Wendy, I do the same thing (holding everything against my body) but I do try as hard as I can to stay clean. I'm better than I was but some days are just hopeless (see the picture above!).

Today I made 85 of the peaches. It was supposed to be 150 but there's a lot of non-baking work to be done right now due to some weird circumstances. I feel, of course, terrible. I am slow! But the marzipan was really dry and hard to work with, so everything was slower than it should've been. Ugh. Frustrating.

[Wendy DeBord]

Can you post a photo of your marzipan peaches....I'd love to see them?

[nightscotsman]

Ah yes - faster, faster, faster. That was one of the demoralizing things when I started my job. It seemed like I was working in a complete panic and literally running all over the kitchen to get my stuff done, while people who had been there for several years worked at a calm pace, walking sloooowly to get this or that tool or ingredient, but getting more done in less time than me. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY, I'M ON A SCHEDULE! I'm getting much better (and my back has stopped hurting, thanks very much), but I'm still not as fast as I should be. A little better every day.

And I sooo miss our school uniforms! We had vinyl bib aprons that you could just wipe off with a damp cloth. Even during chocolate classes I could go for 2 or 3 days without changing my jacket. The traditional cloth aprons that basically just cover your pants seem kind of pointless to me. And our jackets were short sleeve - none of that silly rolling up the sleeves thing - with snaps instead of cloth "buttons" that don't stay buttoned. Thank God I can just dump my dirty jacket off at Uniform Services at the end of the day and pick up a clean and pressed one the next morning.

[jeniac42]

I'll keep updating this thread blog-style. Steve Klc said folks might be interested, and heaven knows I like to run my mouth, so.

Yesterday, I went in and finished the peaches I hadn't gotten to the previous day. I got to use a new can of marzipan so they turned out a lot nicer and the work went quite a bit faster. I love making the peaches, because I can just totally zone out and five hours is gone before I know it. I learned the trick of keeping the cake spheres in the freezer and only bringing out 20-30 at a time; that way the cake doesn't get soft and it's a lot easier to cover them in marzipan without smashing the cake all to bits. Here is a picture; I wanted to take a photo of the whole sheet tray because I'm still impressed by the sheer quantity of stuff we make there. Unfortunately we ended up using over half of them today so it wouldn't have been that cool, anyhow.

Also yesterday, I peeled and cut about 12 kilos of apples. That's got to be my least favorite job there. I use the apple peeling device, and it sucks (but not as much as the peelers there; I have to remember to bring mine in). There's a wingnut on it that sticks up and chews into the apples that are too big. Then I have to core them, which I just can't seem to do right. I always punch through diagonally and have to try two or three times to get all the seeds out. Then clean up the peeling job, since there's always peel left, and then cut them into chunks. My life would be so much easier if I could use the corer on the apple peeler, but it spirals the apples and the resulting slices are too thin for the strudel. Argh! I've been doing this nearly every day and I've gotten a little faster but it's just as frustrating because I'm terrible at it. Any helpful hints would be appreciated.

I also put together a few pastry boxes, which isn't too hard; I just gather all the petits fours and pipe some whipped cream onto the mini key lime pies and put the stuff in a box.

After that, I just ran the line for dinner and helped clean up and reorganize.

Today I made 11 large key lime pies and 144 minis, again. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to make the crust, get it in the pans, and bake it. Then another two hours to make the filling, get it in the pans, and get them in the oven. I've managed to shave a good hour and a half off my time on that task, though. When I put the minis away, I have to flip them out of the muffin tins and onto a sheet tray. I was really nervous about just upending them, but it's much faster and I only mangled three out of the 144.

AND... another 4 kilos of apples. Shoot me, please.

Things are crazy there right now; they're basically doing a major overhaul of the kitchen, moving sinks around and storing everything in new places. Nobody can find anything so it takes 10 times as long to get anything done.

I found out that the big Hobart is a 140-quart model. Yipes.

I also hate the way my feet hurt progressively more each day that I work. By Saturday I'll be unable to move. You'd think after two years of restaurant work I'd be used to all the standing (and I am; I sat down for a total of about four minutes in my 9 1/2 hour shift) but ouch.

[KarenS]

I never have a problem getting chocolate off my jackets. I use Tide with bleach- it really is the best. I take my jackets home to wash- the commercial laundry uses stuff that irritates my skin. I do also always use a cloth bib apron.

I retire my jackets after I can't get the black grease marks off my right shoulder (from carrying sheet pans).

It takes time to learn how to multi task in baking; eventually you will be able to have sugar cooking, chocolate melting, whites whipping, fruit cooking, and tuiles baking- while you are making scones and separating eggs! When you are only doing one thing at a time- well, of course you end up racing around.

My new cook was given the letters "PMS" (easy to remember). It stands for

PANS

mis en place

start

It was driving me crazy to see her put things in the mixer before she had all of her ingredients together- then leave cake batter sitting while she went to get her pans! Working with others helps teach this "hey I need the mixer- are you almost finished?"

[Ganache]

Jeniac, You remind me of myself when I was working. I also got melted chocolate on me while spreading it on sheet pans (to make fans) I started wearing a plastic dishwasher bib apron & then for service my jacket was pretty clean. They are pretty cheap & disposable of you can get washable ones.

[tan319]

Jeniac!!!

Your peaches look amazing!

Well done.

Don't let that speed thing get you down.

At my restaurant, where I'm pastry chef, I can do 5 things at a time, bust out ice creams and sorbets, bake stuff, at a pretty fast pace.

At my EARLY morning French bakery gig, I feel like I'm as slow as molasses.

These two French guys bust stuff out so fast, it's like I'm in slo-mo!

I can get stuff like a 100 #s of crossiant dough done fast but rolling out quiche dough for tarts makes me feel like a slow ass.

These guys have been doing it for 12 and 24 years, that will make you fast.

One is 27, the other 39.

From the look of those peaches, you're doing great.

Edited May 21, 2004 by tan319 (log)

[KarenS]

Jeniac, My method for coring apples is to use a melon baller (Parisian scoop). Get a good one though (I've had mine for ten years). The cheap ones will just break. I am not fond of those apple peeling gadgets. I just use my peeler. I peel over a sheetpan and drop the apples into a bucket on the floor.

[jeniac42]

How do you use the melon baller? Cut the apples in half first and just take out the very middle?

[Steve Klc]

Your peaches look amazing! Well done.

Well said, Ted.

More pictures please (though only as long as it doesn't interfere with your work!)