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!
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