Pastry 5

So today I'm going to share a few photos of some of the items I've been making at the bakery, followed by some thoughts I've had about my performance.

 The items are, in order: Lemon Blueberry Muffins, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Macademia Cookies, Chocolate Chocolate Cookies, Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Almond-Anise Biscotti.

As for my thoughts, I just can't help feeling concerned about my organization. That was a goal of mine over my internships but I honestly don't feel like I've improved much in that area at all.
I'm having serious trouble remembering what I've done and how I did it. It seems like I can't even remember enough of it to write notes, or I feel like I'll remember what I've done and then don't. This applies no matter how many times I do something. Which is manageable when a plan is in place and there's someone there to help me. However, if I'm to excel and not merely output some product, I need to figure a way around my blocks. I imagine that my first step is to just force myself to write down the procedures I take and how recipes look at different stages so that I can refer to them later.
Also, I need to keep track of what is needed in the shop's case so that when orders come in I can judge how much of what we need to make to meet quota.
Finally, I should keep track of all of our products' decorations so that I can do that too. Maybe drawing sketches or at least taking photos would be a good idea for the future.

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.