subdivision after subdivision
Christmas, or I guess aromas anytime of year, in the bakery are simply tantalizing. I just crossed thirty feet of path upstairs, I passed the main bench, where Arturo V. and Camillo are making cinnamon bread. We roll out a rich yeasted dough, brush it with melted butter, and cover it with a cinnamon sugar blend and they also shake straight cinnamon on it. A few feet further and Filemon was pulling a rack of gingerbread men from the oven. On the table by the back door, Joe is covering his Konig Aman pastries with vanilla sugar. Very aromatic stuff. It's really pretty incredible how much flavour and aroma we can get out of a vanilla pod. Truthfully, the pods that we use for vanilla sugar, have been scraped, and cooked, rinsed and added to the bucket. Once the ratio of pods to sugar is right, we add a bunch of sugar and run it thru our food processor. We sift out the pod pieces and use the sugar. When we are finished using the sugar, the pods get added back to the sugar and stored away until needed again.
Work is piling up. Real estate business is good. We have seventy four houses going out tomorrow, and another hundred next Saturday. These are, of course, on top of the store orders, which are running well ahead of last year. Six here, thirteen there, it's been a great house year. Hate to beat a dead horse, but anyayou bakers makin' lots of houses, it'd pay to talk to the guys at Practical Baker about a machine to produce the house sheets. Arturo O. ran forty six sheets yesterday, nine minutes. He "fit them in before he left". Years ago, that'd been a few days work.
Yesterday, we finished our stollen. I really mean, found the finish, we needed. Patti found the perfect pine bow decorations, I was looking for. The green paired with our red ribbon, really makes a nice finish. I sought what we have for many, many years. Next year, printed stollen boxes.
Well gotta get this day started, kinda funny, I've been here four hours already. Better said, gotta get the day work started. We're packin' cookies again tomorrow. Gonna have a long day today, home for a nap, back to bake thru the nite, pack cookies tomorrow, employee Christmas party Sunday afternoon. Cristmas song on the radio says "The most wonderful time of the year". Bet the song writer didn't grow up in a bakery. If he did, he'd be writing "Secretary's Day" songs.
Work is piling up. Real estate business is good. We have seventy four houses going out tomorrow, and another hundred next Saturday. These are, of course, on top of the store orders, which are running well ahead of last year. Six here, thirteen there, it's been a great house year. Hate to beat a dead horse, but anyayou bakers makin' lots of houses, it'd pay to talk to the guys at Practical Baker about a machine to produce the house sheets. Arturo O. ran forty six sheets yesterday, nine minutes. He "fit them in before he left". Years ago, that'd been a few days work.
Yesterday, we finished our stollen. I really mean, found the finish, we needed. Patti found the perfect pine bow decorations, I was looking for. The green paired with our red ribbon, really makes a nice finish. I sought what we have for many, many years. Next year, printed stollen boxes.
Well gotta get this day started, kinda funny, I've been here four hours already. Better said, gotta get the day work started. We're packin' cookies again tomorrow. Gonna have a long day today, home for a nap, back to bake thru the nite, pack cookies tomorrow, employee Christmas party Sunday afternoon. Cristmas song on the radio says "The most wonderful time of the year". Bet the song writer didn't grow up in a bakery. If he did, he'd be writing "Secretary's Day" songs.
posted by Jory Downer at
5:33 AM
1 Comments:
You know how I feel about Christmas music. I was walking down the street yesterday and some guy was pushing his little kid in a stroller and whistling that song. I had to restrain myself from grabbing him and saying, "Stop. Whistling. Right. Now."
But what I really wanted to tell you was about this store on Lincoln, just south of Lawrence (Western is at that intersection, too, if that helps): the guy has sausages and sides of animals hanging in the window, and I think they make their own sausage. They're Polish immigrants, I think. But it's the New Hip Neighborhood, and I bet they'd love to have some good bread to sell w/ their sausages. (They have bread but I haven't been in to check it out yet. And it'll suck, anyway, unless you already do their bread.)
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