printed midget tissue

We started something new for this market season. Every Wednesday, one of us guys, involved with the production of the bread that gets sent to the market, will be at GCM from 7am to 10am. We are working on putting it on our website, titling it "Talk to the baker". People that shop at that market are very "Food savvy", they have loads of questions that can only be answered by someone who knows the production methods we use. A few times yesterday, folks asked "What do you have that is whole grain". simple as it sounds, it's a tough question to answer. All the product we make, is made from grain. Any bread with visible seeds has whole grain in it. I'm assuming they mean "What do make without white flour"? Of course that varies from market to market, day to day. We always try to have our cracked wheat bread on the table.

Another reason I went to the market, is to line up suppliers for ingredients we purchase, from the market. Yesterday, I bought some beautiful rhubarb. We will be cooking it into strawberry rhubarb jam, for our GCM danish filling, that we will fill pastries with, for the next few weeks. The strawberries we will use, have been in our freezer since last July, that we also bought at the market. Strawberry rhubarb is one of my favorite flavour combination's. We did a strawberry rhubarb brioche in Paris for the Coupe. my year. It was the only flavour combination that I used from the onset of my road to the Coupe. I used it in regionals and nationals. Of course, it evolved over the process, but the flavour combo remained the same. This weekend we will be making a diamond shaped pastry with the filling we cook. Jenifer will be making them. She does a great job with her lamination work. I'm sure the pastries will be breathtaking. Weather will be nice, she better roll up her sleeves.

Yesterday, at the market we unveiled our new "Midget tissue". Midget tissue is what every bakery uses, in their retail store to pick up product, at the time of sale. The new stuff, is covered with our logo. Our retail kids use it to pick up pastries or line small boxes, when weighing cookies. John Roeser taught me the importance of having your packaging stuff printed. EVERYTHING we use, has our logo on it. Took us years to get it done. We did our boxes first, then bags, then moved on to our coffee cups. Now finally, our midget tissue. I had to buy a two year supply. But it only make sense to me. More customers walk here, than drive. The world has become more "Green" conscious. Many, many customers will say "I don't need a bag". So they would walk down the street, holding an eclair in a plain white tissue. Now when they are riding the train, eating our pastry, drinking brand X coffee, people will still see our name. Same with folks walkin' around the markets, eating a croissant. I was a little embarrassed yesterday. The tissue is packed in little square boxes. Turned out the boxes we took to the market were from the first case of boxes we opened, when the tissue was delivered. The boxes had my tear stains on them. This tissue is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Gotta get upstairs, macaron case is empty. Sold a boat load yesterday. I didn't make any yesterday, so I'm way behind. I need to make two mixes a day, to keep up. Means, I need to make four mixes today, to catch up. Plan for today is chocolate, lemon, caramel and strawberry. How much fun is that? I love makin' macarons.

Pourin' here, gonna be tough to keep a crust on the baguettes today.