smoke inhalation

Another Friday night in the books. Just about now, the night staff is startin' to wonder how many more weeks of farmer's markets do we have. Sorry to say, not really, I'm really glad about it, they've extended the Aville market to end on October 7th.

Ya know, life in the bakery never gets dull. When we bake our sheets of puff pastry for napoleons, we sandwich the raw puff pastry sheets between sheet pans. That way they bake nice and flat/smooth without any monster blisters. We use a sheet pan, a piece of pan paper, the dough, pan paper and another sheet pan. This pan paper I'm speaking of is what we bake, pretty much, everything on. It is treated with silicon, so baked foods don't stick. It is available in different grades or thickness. We buy a "Middle of the road" one. We manage to use them two or three times, as long as the stay dry. When we bake these sheets, we bake them for twenty five minutes and then pull the top pan and paper off. We continue to bake them for another ten minutes or until the sheet has a nice amber colour. I prefer to bake them in our rotating/reel/carousel/paddle wheel oven. A big insulated box with eight shelves that rotate. Inside the oven, down at the bottom, is a huge burner, the full width of the oven.


Yesterday, while baking napoleon sheets, the timer went off after the first twenty five minutes, and someone, took the top pan off of each sheet, but didn't pull the paper off. A couple more points. We bake them three at a time. It takes three sheets of pastry to make one sheet of napoleons. Second point, whoever did it, doesn't even work here, because nobody knew nothin'. The afternoon continued, I was in the office. The sheets for the napoleons were baked as they should be. Knock at the office door, Marc says "You better come up stairs, there is a fire in the oven". Sure enough, there was a small flame in the bottom of the oven. I think what happened, the circulating fan in the oven blew the paper sheets off the pastry sheets, into the bottom of the oven, and they caught fire. Once the oven door was opened there was ample oxygen and the fire just roared. Then my son fessed up, that he dropped two loaves of cracked wheat bread in the oven, the day before. It's an eerie feeling to see flames in your oven, as tall as the oven door. We poured some water on it, and it eventually went out. We had the oven near full of fruit galettes. Jennifer was fighting the smoke for the entire bake. We opened the damper, which leads directly outside, thru the roof. I've spoke about our exhaust fan that blows out onto the sidewalk. Most days it fills the neighborhood with tempting aromas, butter and cinnamon. Today, not so much. Made the intersection here look like Pittsburgh or Gary.

Gotta get upstairs and make some coffee cake dough. Tomorrow we will make, what will be the last of the fresh blueberry coffee cakes, for the summer. Kinda sad.