Wednesday, August 5, 2009

wonder what other sales I've missed

I was correct in my belief that yesterday was a busy day, in our store. Sometimes it seems busy and I look at the numbers and I'm disappointed. Lots of traffic yesterday. Seemed like every twenty, thirty minutes, a store person brought back a cake, to be written on. It was a beautiful day. I guess a little on the warm side. Even I sat outside yesterday and ate my lunch. I never sit down for lunch, let alone outside. Damn bugs always find me.

A very pleasing moment, this morning. Cornell Gorham, one of our night farmers market/holiday/vacation/as we need him, guys, came to me and ask "when the new crop flour would be in"? Comforting to know, he's interested and cares enough to notice. He said "things felt different last night". We had a couple pallets delivered with a mill date of May 29th. I don't try to keep it all separated like a lot of places. We just don't have the room. Hard to tell exactly what flour ended up in the bin, that went into whatever he was working on. He also, reversed the weights of baking soda and baking powder, in a large batch of scones, last night. He came to me and we got that straightened out. We have dry scone mix for the next few weeks.

We baked the raspberry brioche that I spoke of yesterday. It was incredibly aromatic when it came out of the oven. It was almost fake, it was so strong. Anxious to hear what customer have to say.

It's good to have Arturo back. So many things we just didn't get to, while he was gone. He's responsible for things like smiley face cookies, black and whites, all the large and small cookies. He makes all the fillings and icings, we use for cakes and pastries. The list goes on and on.

One of things that Arturo makes is our "kugelhupf". Nowhere near, what I would call "authentic kugelhupf", but equally as tasty. We make an all butter, sour creme, pound cake, and bake it in a babka, or turkshead shape. Simple, sugar, butter, eggs, sour creme, organic vanilla bean, cake flour and baking powder. Delicious. We also use it in a number of our wedding cakes. Years ago, we used to make a lot of it. One of those things we would have in our store all the time. For one reason or another, we got away from it. Sorry to say, there was a time when I really focused on making big batches of things, and loading our freezer. Looking back, I'm very comfortable it was damaging to our business. John Roeser pointed out to me, a long time ago, "nothing gets better in the freezer". Since my introduction to the BBGA and the NBC, and my relationship with Paris, I've learned a lot. When you go into a bakery in Europe, they are tiny. Nowhere to hold a lot of product. They make it and sell it. I've said before that the goods there aren't any better than here, but they are fresh. While Arturo was away, I made a batch of kugelhupf for a wedding cake. The recipe also made an extra five, six pounds of batter. I baked it into our retail size loaves. I went in our store for something and I heard a customer ask for kugelhupf. Sue's reply was "no, I'm sorry we don't have that. I'll check to see if we have any in our freezer". Customer explained that she came all the way from Batavia, she used to live in Evanston. Customer said, word for word "I don't care for those that come out of your freezer, because they taste like the freezer". We would run them thru our wrapping machine, so they were very well sealed. Right away I told Sue that I just took some from the oven and told her where they were. I said "I have five ready". Woman said "I'll take them all".

Of course now I wonder how many sales I miss like that.

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