Vacation #5: Take your mother to work

My day began at 2:45am when I got up to get ready to go to work with Becca.  Becca provided me with a uniform so I was dressed like a professional.  

This was a day I won't soon forget.  After we donned our hairnets and aprons with hand towels tucked into our waist ties, we started what is for Becca a normal workday. 

We began with the cookie bake.  Becca handed me some pans of scones to brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.  The scones had been put on pans the day before.  While I did that, she began working with the cookies that had been scooped the day before.  We mixed up blueberry muffins and peach muffins and scooped them into tins.  While I finished up the muffins Becca continued to put in and take out cookies and other items from the oven large enough to walk in and out of.  Of course they don't walk in and out when it is hot because their shoes would melt, but the carts of pans ready for baking are taller than I am and they roll right into that oven.  (edit 9-10-2011: Becca told me yesterday that they DO walk into the hot ovens to get the carts in and out, but they don't stand around in there!)

As soon as the cookie bake was finished (an hour after we arrived), we moved to the bread end where Sharon was mixing and shaping breads.  It is hard to describe the day that followed.  The breads I remember working on were French loaves, baguettes, ciabatta in three sizes, pizza, and some whole grain loaves that I don't remember the names of.  I know there was more than that, but the day was a whirlwind.

Sharon's job for the day was primarily to mix and shape loaves.  Becca's job was primarily to bake, and to help Sharon with any and all extra time she had around keeping the ovens full.  

There are two mixers that stand on the floor with mixing bowls that come up almost to just my waistline.  This picture is from a trip a couple of years ago because I didn't have time to take pictures while we worked. 

To the far left is a digital scale and Becca's hand is on the mixer.  On the shelves behind Becca are balance scales.

All ingredients are weighed to the gram.  It is a science as well as an art.  Water temperature for the dough is dependent on room temperature, because dough needs to rise predictably so that ovens can be kept full.  The baker needs to know the math.  It is definitely a science as well as an art.

Many of the doughs are started the night before.  A pre-ferment is mixed, which is some water, some flour, and a tiny bit of yeast.  Becca could tell you exactly what this does.  My sense is that the gluten develops differently with this overnight rising process.  Then in the morning the rest of the ingredients are added and the dough goes into a warm place (temperature controlled room) to rise again.  If dough is rising too fast, the temperature in the special room can be set cooler than the bakery to slow it down.

All loaves of the same kind of bread must be pretty much exactly the same.  Toward that end, large amounts of dough are carefully weighed before being set to rise.  Then after that first rising, there is this nifty machine that you can program to cut the dough into exactly equal sized pieces.  It can cut into very small pieces, as for the three sizes of ciabatta.  It can cut into quite large pieces, as for the French market loaves.

Any bread that isn't divided in that machine is weighed out so that every loaf is exactly the same weight and size.  There are balance scales on a shelf for that purpose and I did some of that weighing out with some dough that wasn't going to go through the cutting machine.

After the dough is cut it is set aside to rise again.  Ciabattas go directly on to pans from the cutter.  All the others are rounded and set aside to rest before shaping.  Each type of loaf has a desired shape and Becca was careful to teach me exactly how to push, fold, pinch, and roll the dough into the different shapes.  Then it would be set aside to rise again.

After that last rise, it was time to bake.  There is a long oven loader positioned just to the side of the oven.  I didn't take a picture this year but  here is one of Becca in front of the ovens a few years ago.

Becca in front of the breads oven.  Note the six oven doors.  Behind Becca is the white loader.  Behind that is the door to the temperature controlled room where bread is set to rise.

The above oven is divided into six sections.  Each section can hold 18 baguettes or an equivalent amount of other breads or rolls or foccacia, etc.  Becca can fill all six ovens, rush over to help Sharon with shaping loaves, teach me gently the art of shaping each of the different loaves, and, without using a timer, get each type of bread out of the oven without under or over baking.  I can't do that at home with one oven that only has two loaves at a time in it.

If you look closely at that oven, right at the divide between the copper area and the brick is a little tool stuck with a magnet to the oven.  That little tool is a double edged razor on a tiny stick.  With that razor, and with a similar one that is bent into a curve, all the artistic cuts are made in the tops of French loaves and baguettes.  It was a steep learning curve to get those cuts exactly right so that they would open artistically as the bread baked.  Becca is a great teacher, though, and I don't think they had to throw out any loaves because of my poor cutting skills.

As fast as Becca pulled breads out of the oven and placed them on the giant cooling racks, they disappeared, as the delivery drivers assembled the orders and took them away.  At one point in the morning I saw a large clean laundry basket full of baguettes in a giant bouquet being carried out to the delivery vehicle.  That particular day the three of us rolled a total of 180 baguettes.

At this bakery, there is not a break time.  We were on our feet working as quickly as we could from 3:30am until our lunch time at 9am.  Lunch was outdoors at a picnic table due to the mild weather.  At lunch we got to sample some empanadas that may be offered at the bakery store in the future.  There were four flavors and they were quite amazing.  

After lunch was finishing the baking and cleaning the bakery.  This included scraping the bits of dough off all the work surfaces, including all the dozens of wooden boards where loaves were set to rise throughout the morning.  We swept and wiped down and carried pans and dishes to the dish-washing station.  When we were finished we checked in with the pastry chef to see if they needed any help finishing up.

They were layering the butter into the croissant dough when we got there, which was one process I'd wanted to see.  Dough that had been weighed and let rise was now ready to roll out.  We rolled it into a large square and placed a square slab of butter on it turned so that the corners of the slab of butter were between the corners of the dough like a diamond on a square.  Then the corners of the dough were pulled up over the butter to completely hide the butter slab.  It was a giant square pillow.  Then we would take a rolling pin and beat that square pillow down until it was flat enough to roll into a long rectangle.  That would be folded in half or in thirds and taken to the machine that finished the job.

In front of me is dough ready to be rolled into a square to receive a slab of butter.  In front of Becca is dough that has been folded around a slab of butter and then rolled into a rectangle.  Directly behind Becca to the right are folded rectangles ready for the rolling machine.  To the left is the rolling machine with dough on the tray.

The rolling machine (that is not what it is called but I can't remember the name) can be set to different thicknesses.  The dough goes through multiple times, getting thinner, getting folded, getting thinner, getting folded again, to achieve the flaky texture of croissants.  

After cleaning the wooden table from the croissant dough, our work for the day was done and Becca went to the computer to make notes for the bakers for the next day, and to log out.

This is enough for one post, so I'll tell you about the rest of the day tomorrow, or whenever I get to it.