Post 4 - Sushi

So, I wanted to show off what my work station at the sushi bar looked like. I worked on the right table and my chef Jack worked on the left. In the larger photo, you can see the bucket where the sushi rice was kept. The ginger and wasabi were between us, and we could see most of the restaurant from where we worked. The only thing not visible was the bar.

In the smaller photo were my tools of the trade. Of course, gloves were needed for sanitation and for keeping the rice from sticking to my hands. The knife was a special sushi knife loaned to me. Oddly enough, my chef choose to use a vegetable knife for cutting his rolls. Also pictured is the plastic wrapped bamboo mat.

Finally, we had our white clothes used to wipe down the work surface. When working with sushi, it's very important to have a damp work surface otherwise the nori or rice would stick to the board and snag when trying to cut it. The only exception would be if you had to cut a sheet of nori in half for when people ordered smaller roll sizes. Unless you do it on a dry surface it won't cut right and will snag and rip.

Pastry 3

The bakery is getting busier! Recently the owner has been putting more effort into advertisement and the bakery has been covered by several news stations. Here's a video of the Papa Ganache's owner talking about the bakery a bit: http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/07/lisa_at_papa_ganache_keyport.html
I was not there that day~
We're also trying to branch out and put our products in more places. For example, tomorrow there will be a big event where we were contracted to send $1000 worth of merchandise to the site. No, $1000 isn't a typo! Five of us, including Derrick, worked on all of the goodies for that today.
So many tarts crisps, muffins and other things I couldn't even keep track of were made today as well. It made me realize that one really needs to keep organized both physically and in their mind in order to handle high volume. Even as the intern I felt a bit overwhelmed and was glad that I wasn't in charge. There's no way I could have pulled it off as well as Sue, Jordan, and the newest hired baker, Jessica.

Also, I've come to accept my position as the resident cookie person and am still producing a high volume of cookies. The other day I made six batches of cookies in one day and scooped about five hundred cookies. It's cookie madness, I swear. Today we experimented with a somewhat new idea of just baking off the chocolate chip cookie dough sans chocolate chips. I wasn't there to see the result but I'm sure they'll be amazing.

We're also going to start shipping orders online and our new website is in the works last I heard. I'm actually really looking forward to that.

Pastry 2

I am really enjoying my time at the bakery. Baking is just incredibly fun to me so that even if I'm exhausted at the end of the day I'm still not complaining. Working at the bakery has also increased the time I bake outside of work. Within the past week alone I've made carrot cake cupcakes and peanut-butter banana chocolate cupcakes at home (next up - oreo cream cupcakes)! I'm really not sure why I want to work at a bakery baking for however many odd hours and then coming home and baking some more...but I do!

My chef, Sue, has told me some important considerations about vegan baking. She feels that a lot of the time, many vegan recipes are created by people who are primarily vegans with no culinary/pastry backgrounds. She's noticed that a lot of the time, vegan recipes will have ingredients that aren't really required. From this, I've gathered that my non-vegan knowledge will be essential if I were to continue making vegan goods or making my own vegan baking recipes. Baking is very much a science and it's important to truly know the purposes of ingredients before you go substituting them.

It's also nice to see what replacements are available. For eggs, you could just use egg replacer, but for structure considerations things like applesauce or bananas can be substituted. Our "butter" is non-hydrogenated oils and is extremely similar looking to shortening, but a bit yellower and even softer than butter. Sugar, by the way, is not typically vegan. The pure white color comes from being bleaches with animal bone char. I have no idea why that bleaching is done but there you go. Our sugar is an off-white color but otherwise functions the same way and I don't think it affects the flavor at all (at least not negatively).

That's all for now~ I look forward to work again tomorrow!

Battle Scars - Pastry 1

Finally secure with an internship at a vegan bakery, I can start my journey into becoming a professional baker! Not the exact type of work I was hoping to do, but as long as I'm having fun and learning in a bakeshop, I'm as happy as a clam.
So I've put a few days in at the bakery so far and it's been just lovely! Everyone's quite nice, the recipes are understandable,and the goods are delicious!

It's a very small bakery but I'm used to working in confined locations so it doesn't bother me too much. Things are nicely labeled and organized which I most definitely appreciate. I'm getting the hang of where most things can be found, and if I don't know, I can just ask.

For a long time now, I've worried about working in a professional environment of my dream career. Messing up here would be such an incredible blow to my self esteem. Luckily, I'm actually pretty happy with what I've been doing so far. I've made a ton of cookies, some doughs, and cupcakes. Everything's been turning out pretty well. Also, though I know it has more to do with the weather than my own skills, the extremely temperamental chocolate chip cookie recipe has been producing very high yields when I've been making it!
I am seeing times when I could have been more productive, though. I need to start looking ahead more so that a ton of work doesn't pile on at once. I'm sure I'll learn though.

Oh, and why do I have the title of this post as "Battle Scars?" Quite simple really. My long-time fear of burning myself on an oven has finally been realized. I have two lovely burn marks on my right hand and wrist. Awesome. I guess that this is just part of the territory for a (clumsy) baker, haha~
I'm actually really looking forward to going back again, though.