Bennison's Bakery

my poor fridge

2010-07-16T04:57:00.003-05:00

Man it's hot in Chi town! Gets to the point, the bakers are gasping for air, near the oven. I left last night, our walk in fridge had to be sixty degrees. We are very unfair to it. Jeremy Gouduas, member of Baking Team USA 2010, was here the middle of June. It was late, late, Saturday afternoon. He was here doing a practice run at Kendall College. He came to the bakery here, directly from the airport, to mix a few dough's for Sunday's practice run. He opened our walk-in, and said "That redefines a full walk in". At the last few minutes of the day yesterday, the day crew pushed about five racks of shaped sour doughs' in there, awaiting the oven, for Friday morning. The cooling capacity of that fridge, which is on the roof, was out matched. I was in San Fransisco last weekend. The baking team was practicing there. SFBI, San Fransisco Baking Institute, is a lot of things. It is a school, as well as home to TMB Baking Company. TMB is an equipment supplier. They also bake for their own retail store in the mission district of the city. I was very impressed, they sent a lot of stuff to that store, stacks and stacks of product. Nice product, very nice. Anyway, I'm talking to Michel there, about building a retarder, to hold our product for the next days bake. It will have the ability to have different temperatures, at different times, switching automatically. Sourdough is best, held at fifty two to fifty five degrees Fahrenheit. We could set the retarder to be cold, maybe thirty eight, at 5pm. Forty two, at 10pm, fifty two at 5am, etc. Bread handled that way is awesome! Flavour, texture, crust colour, crust consistency, it's the real deal. I'm gonna make it happen. Just gotta push around a piece of equipment, or two.

In spite of the heat, we're holdin' our own here, business wise. Gonna be a busy, farmer's market weekend. Forecast is hot, but dry. Dry is all that matters. I was looking thru orders for the weekend, seems we have a lot of large celebration cakes this weekend. Not necessarily, in great numbers, but a lot of big ones. Oh well, won't be long now, pumpkin face cookies are just around the corner. Very comfortable outside this morning. 'Bout sixty six, at 4am. I drove here with the van windows open. Bein' right here on the lake helps loads. I pulled up and outside I could smell toasty wheat, as they were unloading baguettes from the oven. Residual flour burns quickly, on the hearth. It's an unmistakable, unmatched, aroma. Only smells like that a few times a day. Same when they are fryin' donuts, or baking cinnamon rolls.

We took in a lot of fresh blueberries yesterday. We are making fresh blueberry croissants for the markets this weekend. We will fill them with cream cheese filling, and top 'em with fresh blueberries, prior to the bake. The ones we made for Wednesday's markets, were really pretty. Got big plans 'bout fresh blueberry coffee cakes, as well. We'll see how the day goes. They might get pushed until tomorrow. Everyday starts with good intentions. Quoting Vince Lombardi "Fatigue makes cowards of us all".

Well, gotta get started upstairs. A lady is comin' from Oak Park, to pick up goods for a memorial service. Can't disappoint her. She claims "You're may favorite bakery". She's "Comin' early to beat the traffic". I answered the phone, when she called. I was just talking to one of the opening retail kids here, about her order. I mentioned to them that "I could tell, she was an older lady". I just realized, she's probably my age.

what a day, weather wise

2010-07-01T04:15:00.005-05:00

Didn't get much sleep last night, turns out yesterday, we committed to being the lone bread bakery, participating in a "Green market" at Lollapalooza, in August. It will be us, Seedling fruit and Brunkow cheese, at a minimum, from the GCM. It's concerning, it's gonna be a lot of stuff. We're figuring on a lot of smaller bread items that people can eat with wine and cheese. The single reason we decided to do it, is because we have our Koenig machine that will divide and round three thousand pieces per hour.

Needless to say, the markets yesterday, did very well. Truthfully the nicest day we've had this market season. It was perfect. We ran out a little early at both markets. I'm sure it's because I have forgotten how much can be sold when the weather cooperates. We have battled the weather more this market season, than any other, in the past. Hopefully the rain is behind us. Forecast for this weekend is in our favor, as well.

I posted a picture of a cherry flan. Every trip to France, I can't get enough of the flan, all the boulangerie offer there. The funniest thing, no matter how many books I look at, it's difficult to find any info on the flan I'm speaking of. I've spoken to a number of French bakers, they are willing to talk about it, but I can't find anything in print, or on the internet. Seems every version I find is similar to our custard pie or bread pudding. Which I don't care for, it's to "Eggy". This flan is simply cooked pastry creme, spread into a pie pastry crust and baked in a hot oven to get that deep brown skin. We cool it overnight and glaze it with apricot glace the next morning and cut it. It has been doing very well. We use milk, sugar, custard powder, a blend of egg yolks and eggs, both organic vanilla bean and vanilla extract and butter. This is the first one we've done with fruit in it. Not sure how well you can see, it but it has pitted Washington state cherries in it. I'm glad to see it worked out. Opens the door to trying many other things. Next is gonna be lemon flavoured custard with fresh blueberries. Oh, by the way, delicious! I'm runnin' out of reasons to travel to France.

Gotta get upstairs, and get to it. Should be a good weekend, Fourth of July sales, have been doing better, year after year. Last year it fell on a Saturday, we were open. Probably should've opened Sunday and closed Monday this year. Next Tuesday morning, we'll see if I made a good call or not.

ya never don't know where the customers come from

2010-06-28T10:48:00.002-05:00

It has been nearly a month since my last post. We started the Glenwood Sunday market, June 6th and it has been non-stop since. The first day we were out of goods at 10:20. Second Sunday we made it to a little after 11. The third Sunday, 12:20. Yesterday we loaded up, and there was a sunami at 9am. Same starting time as the market. It rained for about thirty minutes, hard. Sideways rain. Like Forest Gump said "Rained so hard, it was rainin' up". I've spoke before of the issues that crusty bread has with the rain, not a pretty sight. We still sold over half of what we sent there. We sent our first truck in the morning, and it was my duty to take the second truck around 10am. I headed that way, knowing that they really weren't going to need the goods I had with me. The market was pretty much empty, 'cept a few die hards. One lady said "I finally get to taste your goods, there isn't any line this week". Last Monday I was in our store fetching a cup of coffee. A fellow was waiting for his turn and he was holding a little girl, maybe two years old. He asked me "Do you have any California bread today". I said "We typically don't put that in our store on Monday's". He explained that he bought one at the Glenwood Sunday market. Him and his wife finished it in one day, and he had to have more. I replied "Sorry, we can have it for you tomorrow". He placed an order and off he went. Upon my return to the office, I saw a loaf of day old raisin fennel and flax seed rye, in the day old pile. I grabbed 'em and I pretty much chased him down the street. Turned out he was carrying a six pack of cupcakes. He was very pleased with what I offered him. I assured him the loaves were day old, and "I was hoping they would get him thru the night". I doubt that would happen at a supermarket bakery. I don't know if he was a "First timer", here at the bakery. The fact that he found his way here, really left me with a good feeling. The Glenwood market has been doing incredible. The lady who runs the market told me "There hasn't been a bakery in this neighborhood for thirty years. Davidson's used to have a store on Morse ave". More support of my belief, the world is starving for quality bakery goods.

Since Father's day, things have slowed down considerably, in our store. The campus is empty, and it was miserably hot/humid last week. Father's day weekend was very, very busy. It was NU graduation, so the town was full. Restaurants and hotels were full. Bat 17 and Bistro Bordeaux were doubling their orders, for four days straight. Speaking of Bistro Bordeaux, I had a chance to eat there. Really nice, nice menu, delicious food. They buy our bread and then they serve it in a brown paper bag, stamped with the name of a bakery in Bordeaux. Upset me at first. I asked "Is this bread really from Bordeaux"? The waitress fessed up with the truth, "No, it comes from Bennison's".

We purchased whatever it is we need to make Italian sodas. We have a gadget that turns tap water into seltzer water, we add Torani flavoured syrup, and pour over ice. I gotta say, it's pretty tasty stuff. I guess we will start offering French sodas, as well. They are the same thing only with some form of dairy added.

Hey gotta get back to it. I have jam on the stove. We pitted a load of sweet cherries, added fresh blackberries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. The stuff smells amazing. Gonna have to wait until Wednesday to taste it. We are planning on using it to top our danish pastries that go to market that day.

ya gotta be kiddin' me

2010-06-03T04:57:00.010-05:00

Been chasin' since my return from California. I came in Monday,Memorial Day, we were closed. Phones rang all morning. We should have been open. I mixed for nearly three hours, used five bags of flour. I had to make all the dough's that sit overnight, feed the levains, and set all the soakers, that were needed for market production on Tuesday. I also missed three days macaron production, so I'm startin' to feel that now. We had a killer macaron day yesterday, sales wise.

I drove to work on Wednesday morning, needing the wipers, to get here. We loaded the trucks in the rain, but by time the market opened, it had stopped. In fact, it was pretty nice, sun was out. Last Saturday morning I got a text message from the GCM. "We're out of brioche, pretzel rolls, rhubarb danish, croissants and scones". It was 10:15 or so. Got another one at 11:20, "We're out". Yesterday morning, we went to load the truck, opened one of the metal boxes we use to transport sheet pans, and there were five pans of danish, still in there from Saturday. These boxes I speak of, are pretty big. they hold maybe eight sheet pans. When they are full of product, they are difficult to handle by onesself. So what that means is, Saturday morning, the truck was loaded, driven to the market. The boxes were taken off the truck. Four market kids walked around the boxes all morning. They told customers over and over, "Sorry we're sold out of Danish pastries". The boxes were put back in the truck, driven back to Evanston, put back in the basement. Taken out of the basement, put back in the truck. The box was opened, four days later, discovered and emptied. Neglect, carelessness, stupidity? How do those things happen? I'm comfortable it happens to every business, regardless of industry. I haven't told my dad. If my mother were alive, that would have killed her. I learned and have resolved to a simple belief, "If I'm not willing to accept what goes on here while I'm away, then I shouldn't leave". I think about what it cost the bakery, finding this ridiculous mistake, my daughter's graduation was worth it. In spite of this gaff, we've been struggling to get enough product to this market. Tuesday night we bought a new van. We've been using two, but the older one has two hundred thousand miles on it, can't be long for this world. With a third vehicle, we're gonna find out just how much we can sell at GCM on Saturday's.

That new, nananutterchoco loaf, came out nice. Really tasty stuff. May have been a little salty. Stands to reason that some peanut butter will be saltier than others. It's no secret, producers around the world want to sell as much salt as possible. We sold it all. I baked it last Thursday, we sold it all over the weekend. Plan on making more today. Nananutter, pound cake and lemon poppy seed loaf, all today.As well as a few mixes of macarons.

Gotta get upstairs, I'd like to get home before the street lights come on. Not only are the Evanston/Wilmette/GCM markets rollin', we start the Glenwood/Rogers Park market on Sunday.

meetin' the person who......

2010-05-27T06:26:00.005-05:00

The weather is on our side, currently. Yesterday was very nice, Saturday is looking even better. Yesterday, I had to take Patti to Midway airport, down on the south side of the city. On my way back north, I stopped at the GCM, they were doing well. They had a constant stream of customers. I stopped to pick up, baker at the market, Joe. He was there to face his, laminated product followers, and it pleased him very much. Upon a customer asking for a croissant or monkey bun, the market kids would introduce Joe as, "The guy who makes them". People were genuinely glad to see his face, they really had a chance to "Meet the producer". Next week, I think Jennifer Park is going. Folks who buy the danish pastries, flaxseed rye, sunflower rye or honey oatmeal bread, will be in luck.

Today we're gonna make a new quickbread loaf. Banana bread with peanut butter and chocolate chunks. We're callin' it, "Nananutterchoco loaf". There's a baking site on facebook, probably not how you say that, but it's "Baking 101". The site is run by my very philosophical baker buddy, Dan Klecko. He posted the formula. I ran down the proper size chocolate chunks, last week. We've been doin' more with these tea bread/quickbread, type loaves. We've gone to a disposable baking mold, a nice crisp looking cellophane bag and a bow tied with Bennison ribbon. It's a sharp looking package, suitable for a small gift. We have them in various spots in the store and near both registers. Keeping with seasonal trends, we made zucchini bread this week. Blueberries are next, lemon poppy seed bread with blueberries and then peaches.

This weekend, my daughter graduates from college in California. We are all going so we've decided to forgo the Wilmette farmer's market, this weekend. We will still be at GCM and Evanston. Those of you looking for flaxseed rye, we will have it this weekend at GCM. In fact, I think we are going to start having that loaf at every GCM. I think we will go to alternating sunflower rye and honey oatmeal. It's no surprise, people know what's good. Our flax rye has incredible flavour, and stays moist for a good while. We soak the flax seed in three times it's weight in water. It's really kinda creepy. It gets like aspic, or clear jello with flax seed. They really don't swell, the omit jelling properties. If they aren't soaked before they are added to the dough, the seeds will draw the moisture from the crumb of the loaf, resulting in a very dry loaf. I sometimes think we should reduce some of the rye flour that is "soured", and just add it to the final dough, 'cause man it can get pretty sour, 'specially in the summer. The sour should be held around 55'f, but we only have a small fridge that we hold at that temperature. The sour sits at room temperature, 'round 80'f I'm guessin', and it really gets going. Someday we'll have a grown up bakery.

Gotta get goin' here, gotta get ahead on macaroons for the weekend. Yesterday it was lavender and vanilla. Today pistachio and red velvet.

monday morning

2010-05-24T04:57:00.006-05:00

We increased the goods sent to the Saturday GCM by thirty five percent over the previous week. We made it until 11:10. The store was very busy Saturday. My buddy Chef Coppidge was here Saturday. The baker guys came and found me and said "A guy named Rich is at the back door". I went to the door and there he was. He said "I couldn't get in the store, they are lined up outside". We didn't do quite as well yesterday. I think the heat has chased everyone to the beach. I was in Hartigan's ice cream shop last night, they were busy.

The rhubarb danish in the picture, is what we sent to the GCM, Saturday. We made a change to it. In the center, we piped a little cream cheese filling, under the streussel. I didn't taste them, but they sure look great. Next to pretzel rolls, I think danish was the second thing we sold out of. People know what's good.

Matt got our farmer's market listings on our web page last Friday. Our plan is to list our offerings at each market. We're hoping this reduces any confusion/disappointment. This morning I will put up the list for the Wednesday GCM. Starters and soakers need to be prepared, starting this afternoon. Brioche, Danish and croissant doughs, will all be mixed this afternoon, laminated and/or shaped tomorrow, and baked early Wednesday morning. All the other breads, with the exception of baguette and ciabatta, will be shaped tomorrow and baked sometime Tuesday night. We use a spreadsheet that will be taped up on the proofer, this afternoon. Matt has been talking about going to a large, large monitor, instead of what we are doing. Interfacing it, with God knows what. I act like I understand him when he speaks. I struggle with makin' sure there is salt in every dough we mix. We are talking about using it for our nightly production list, as well. Can't tell you how many times a night you'll hear "Donde esta la $**# papel", means "Where is the freakin' list". The donut icer takes it to finish icing the donuts, the guy at the oven takes it to sort out the bread, the bench guy needs it to determine how many more baguettes to scale, and somebody will have it at the sink, tryin' to save it from a spilled cup of coffee.

Oven timer is goin' off. I have an apple frangipan tart for 6am. I also have an overwhelming amount of office work for today. Seems I don't do any for two, three days, and I end up, a week behind.

why be stingy

2010-05-21T06:24:00.004-05:00

It's Friday morning, don't have a lot of time, but every once in a while, something catches my eye. Something that must be shared with those, less fortunate than the ones who find their way here to shop. I'm not boasting, because I didn't make the croissants in the photo. Joe Falcinelli laminated the dough and a herd of others shaped 'em. Filemon baked 'em. To those in the middle of the country, they might say "They're to dark". To me, carmelized perfection. Toasty wheat notes, slightly sweet, and the need for a vacuum once you're finished eating. Philippe LeCorre told me once "In France, we don't eat croissants, we wear them". The every so slightly present crunch, as your teeth break thru several thin crispy layers on the outside, and an explosion of butter flavour on the inside. For the sake of knowing, we started laminating our croissant with Plugra butter, about four months ago. Makes all the difference in the world. If I had the ability to put more than one photo in a posting at a time, I would cut one open and show you, what I'm sure is incredible open structure, just like a spider web.

Gotta get upstairs. We have an overwhelming amount of work today, weather will be nice tomorrow, markets will be cranked up. We also have loads of cakes for weekend parties. It appears graduation has begun. I need to take a break tomorrow around noon. Rich Coppidge, the bread instructor at the CIA, is in town for the restaurant show. I'm gonna treat him to oneadem Bat 17 sandwiches tomorrow. Noble Masi, the Noble Masi will be here Monday.

finally, chocolate macarons

2010-05-20T09:10:00.010-05:00

It's Thursday morning, busy Wednesday market yesterday. The weather was perfect. As you can see in the photo, we had some beautiful strawberry/rhubarb danish. Needless to say we sold all of the danish and all of everything else. The market kids told me loads of folks came looking for our new sweet city loaf, I was glad to hear that. As unique as our bread is, nothing we offer at the market is as unique as that loaf. Carrots, onions, honey, flax, filberts and a hint of coriander, really tasty stuff. When Marc mixes it, he really pushes the hydration. I was helping the gang shape it on Tuesday afternoon, it was almost like shaping foam. It was really spongy. It had great structure after it was baked.

I finally made some chocolate macaroons that I'm really proud of. It has taken me, literally, a good year. There was a Northwestern journalism student here yesterday, she is working on a story about macarons. She plans on making them herself. She watched me make a batch, and once they were out of the oven she said "Everyone speaks of how difficult they are to make, that was easy". I was really taken back. I explained to her that I've made hundreds of batches, Countless were unusable. Two or three of our culinary school graduates warned her, but she was unfazed. I'm expecting a call after the weekend.

We ended up with a "Short" loaf of miche, from yesterday's bake. We sliced it this morning, if I must say myself, it is truly, very special stuff. We have been struggling with it. As I said before, organic flour is not balanced at the mill. One takes what one is given. Hydration rates and falling numbers, are all over the board. We are blending two different, high extraction flours, to create our loaf. we are down to fifty or sixty bags, won't be long and we will have to learn all over again. That's what keeps this business interesting. That, plus the fact that Hans picked up eight quarters of sliced miche yesterday, to satisfy his delivery route between here and the upper peninsula of Michigan. He has miche and rye bread stops along the way, and more importantly, one on the way back. On the way back he stops at some German butcher, north of Milwaukee. He brings back, absolutely the world's best summer sausage. He also gets landjaeger, little smoked sausages, that are joined at one end, and sold in pairs. He's coming back on Tuesday. I have just enough sausage left, to get thru the weekend.

Funny thing happened yesterday. I was on my way home, in one of the delivery vans. They are pretty well covered with our name. I was sitting at a red light, second in line. I was in the center lane because there was a Metra bus in the right lane. The bus was stopped, and I looked to my right, thru the passenger side window, there was a young woman holding up a Bennison's bag, looking back at me. I waved, the light changed to green, and I still wonder what was in that bag. She looked like a cheese danish or sugar twist, type girl.

Gotta get upstairs, I have pound cake in the oven and I can hear the oven timer ringing.

my first picture here

2010-05-17T07:22:00.009-05:00

The first call came from my son at GCM at 8:30, Saturday morning. The folks at the crepe stand needed more batter. Makin' it is easy, gettin' it down there, not so much. Fortunately I kinda had my wife on call Saturday. It was our first Saturday running three markets, I assumed we would need something run somewhere. I found her, and she came and got two more buckets of batter and off she went. She must have left here around 9:15. My son called again at 10:35, and they were done. The market was still goin', but we were done. When my wife came back, she said she never saw the market that crowded, except during the chef's bbq. They have expanded it to fifty four vendors. It is massive. A long way from what it used to be. On top of what we sold at the market, we sell the buns to Sunday dinner, that they use for their burgers they are grillin', we also had two hundred brioche buns for chef Stephanie Izard, who was grilling something at the market. The Evanston market had two loaves of bread left and we got back eighteen donuts and eight loaves of bread from the Wilmette market. Put that stuff in our store and it vaporized. It was a good day at the markets. No, a great day. Weather for Wednesday is most promising.

Here in the store, we are brunin' thru macarons. I've been making two, three mixes a day. we're to the point, I think we can stop freezing them and start keeping them under refrigeration. We are turning them over that fast. I gotta say, they are really nice. It's one of those things, they are really nice, because the are being turned over. And they are being turned over because they are really nice. Thank you, Chicago magazine. I spoke to baker buddy/coupe teammate, chef William Leaman, Bakery Nouveau, Seattle, about caramel. We are making caramel macarons, really tasty stuff, however the caramel could be firmer. William suggested twenty percent milk chocolate, added to the caramel. while it's still warm. Viola! Sharp guy he is. Caramel, what could be better. Sugar, creme, butter and a little milk chocolate. We caramelize the sugar, add hot creme and melted butter, and a little chocolate at the end, my, my. It's somewhere between butterscotch candy, caramel corn and butterscotch ice cream topping. Reminds me of the days at the Dolton, Fourth of July carnival.

While I was on the phone with William, he said I need to add pictures to my postings. Today is my first try. If you get a photo of Christmas morning at my house, or an eighth grade graduation, I apologize. I will get it figured out. Friday we took a picture of our maple bacon long johns, being held in a Bennison's midget tissue. That is the picture I am intending on posting. Figured I would cover a few things I've been talkin' 'bout.

Gotta get started here. Actually been here for a few hours, sortin' thru the rubble. I have a conference call at 10:30, then it's off to the donut fryer for my final day. Don't know if I mentioned it, but we've had a night baker on vacation for the last two weeks. We've been limping along. Arturo returns Tuesday evening for the Wednesday bake. Jenny is in Philly, returns tomorrow. Vacations are done. I try to avoid anyone taking vacation time between Mother's day and Halloween, aka market season.

Oh, Jenny's rhubarb danish Saturday, stellar. Be at GCM Wednesday morning. see for yourself.

printed midget tissue

2010-05-13T04:44:00.004-05:00

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.

bat 17 sandwich story

2010-05-10T07:03:00.004-05:00

A new high, and low. Yesterday being Mother's Day, turned out to be more than I remember. I made some good notes for next year. We got pasted. I've been in bakeries that were being auctioned off, that had more product in them, than we did, yesterday at closing. What is purchased here today, will be fresh, guaranteed! The low side is how long people had to wait in line.

Our bakery occupies two store fronts. We are on the southwest corner of the intersection. We also occupy the space to the west of the corner. In the store window of that space, is where we do all the cake decorating. There is a set of steps there for kids to stand on and watch. We also have a security system monitor in there so the cake folks can find someone they need to speak to, inside the bakery. A few of the cameras are located in our store. Around 8:15 yesterday, I was in there decorating a cake. I happened to catch a glimpse of the monitor, and I noticed loads of customers in the store. I stepped back and noticed the store door was being held open by the line. I leaned forward over the decorating table, which is in the window, and looked east. I could see the end of the line, well outside the building. It was a very overwhelming experience. This was the fourth time I've seen people waiting outside. Two of the four were on a Fat Tuesday, and once on a more recent Saturday morning. But never as long of a line, as yesterday.

There is a relatively new program on Sunday nights, on WGN TV. It is called "Chicago's best". Every week, the show has a title and/or theme. Last night they previewed three sandwich spots in the Chicago area. One of them was Bat 17, here in Evanston. Matt has put up a link to the story on our website, on the bread page. Turns out that Bat 17 is a customer of ours. They have bough their bread from us, since they opened. They really do make incredible sandwiches. They are not inexpensive, but worth every cent. They made reference to our bread three times during the four minute spot. Jim and Jim, really take care of their business. One of them is always there. They deserve all the praise they get. To bad they didn't mention their burgers, they are the real highpoint of the menu. A ten ounce patty on a high crown brioche bun, badass, straight up.

The power of advertising is unmeasurable. Since the story about our macarons broke in Chicago magazine, it's been nonstop. We make 'em everyday. I made several mixes last Thursday and Friday, so I wouldn't have to make any Saturday or Sunday. I got by today as well, but I won't be so lucky tomorrow.

We just put together our alleged production list for tomorrow. opening day at GCM is Wednesday. Should go out and yuck it up tonight, winter break is over. Tomorrow we start working like men again.

maple bacon donuts

2010-05-08T15:01:00.006-05:00

It's Saturday afternoon, and as typical I must wait until 4pm, so i can deliver our only wedding cake this weekend. Been a crazy, crazy day. Incredibly busy, I think we filled our macaron case three times today, and it's only 3pm. Markets didn't do so well today. It was bitter cold and windy. Funny enough both the Wilmette and the Evanston market are maybe five blocks from the lake. Close enough to catch breezes off the lake. The Green City Market is right on the lake in Lincoln Park. Hopefully by Wednesday things warm up. Poor Colleen came back to the bakery at noon today, her hands were beet red.

Last weekend in Minneapolis, over baker's, dinner conversation, a new donut idea came up, Maple, bacon, donuts. What? Jeremy from Seattle said they make 'em at Voodoo Donuts in Portland, Oregon. So, this week, we gave it a shot. We took yeasted long johns, iced them with maple donut icing. While the icing was still tacky, we laid a strip of crisp cooked bacon, on top. Kinda strange lookin' at first, but really delicious. We made a dozen on Wednesday, sold 'em all. The city of Evanston guys, that are here everyday,bought a couple. They came back on Thursday lookin' for more. We explained to 'em that we needed to pull the bacon out of our freezer a day ahead of time, so we didn't make any Thursday. We made another two dozen on Saturday morning, gone immediately. "Bout the middle of the week we're gonna start again. Oh, another thing I learned at Turtle Bread in Minneapolis, instead of "Store girl" or "Store personnel", we're going to start using "Retail kids". The retail kids asked once or twice, "How many bacon long johns did you make"?, Mark replied "Two dozen". All we heard was "Gotta double it next week". One trick we discovered, by dumb luck, we cook our bacon in the oven on a drip screen. So it's nice and dry of bacon drippings. Really adheres to the donut well. We've been roasting our bacon for our egg sandwiches on the weekend. As my dad would say "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while".

Day is done, it's time to load up this cake and get on the road. We're gonna start pretty early tonite, got alot of stuff for tomorrow. We'll be busy in the store, and a few country clubs we bake for, want mini breakfast pastry items for their Mother's Day brunch.

We have one night baker coming off vacation this Sunday, and another going to be off for a week. it's important that we get our guys vacation time off, finished before the market season really heats up.

Happy Mother's Day.

them little things

2010-05-04T05:12:00.008-05:00

I made it back to the bakery Sunday night around 10pm. Things look like they do, after a busy weekend. Things were hectic here on Saturday, Wilmette market did well, lots of communion cakes. The Wilmette market sold out of pastries, as usual, had some bread left. Sold loads and loads of macarons, here in the store. French macarons are always best after they set in a fridge overnight and then frozen. I had made a lot, before I left, we're empty. Gonna hit it hard today.

Over the weekend, I received word that both Jennifer Park and Joe Falcinelli passed the Certified Journey Baker exam. They took it here a few weeks ago. Jennifer and Joe are both journey bakers here. The title "CJB", is the first step to becoming a CMB. After a few years more experience, they will test for the "Certified Baker" level, the second level on the way to master. The CJB level involves a study guide and written test, not really a big deal. But it is a big deal, to me the thing that it exposes is a persons' desire to improve their knowledge and ability. It tells me that the bakery where certified people are employed, is concerned about the quality of their wares and perception of their business. We flaunt it here at Bennison's, I make it known to our customers that folks here preparing our goods, are certified to the highest standards as the American baking industry dictates.

This past weekend in Minneapolis. we made some real progress in the viennoiserie category. I learned a lot myself. At this point I learn small things, endless small things. I heard Jeff Hamelman tell his class, on their first day "In the next five days I will teach one hundred big things about baking. Should you choose, you'll spend the entire rest of your life learning the little things". In Minneapolis we made brioche a tete, a very traditional French thing. Takes loads of time, so nobody really does it, in a profit seeking situation. I've had limited experience with this shape. So we tried a few different ways of creating the round ball with the smaller ball on top. Awesome, just freakin' awesome. Some of the nicest brioche a tete I've ever seen. I was so excited. We are also working on two other laminated pastries and one non laminated. Takes a long time, pick out the shape, get a mold made, balance the flavours, get it done in eight hours and schedule it in the oven around the artistic baker. For the LeSaffre Cup, the pastry guy has to do seven products. This competition stuff, is for the young.

Gotta get upstairs. got o couple of those little things to learn today, regarding chocolate macaroons. Thank God it never stops.

bread, pizza and fine dining

2010-05-01T06:39:00.004-05:00

Saturday morning, sitting in the Culinary Centre here at GM. The windows of the kitchen face east, and the sky is perfect blue, and we are watching the sun rise up over the distant downtown skyline, very cool. I understand it's warm and dry back home, great for the farmer's market. I also understand that we have a lot of cakes for this weekend, sure to create a lot of tension this afternoon.

Yesterday's practice was very good. Folks who haven't been thru getting ready for the Coupe, really don't understand this is a long, long, hard process. Every year it gets harder and harder to do things that haven't been done before. It's tough to create products that bake nice in a unit that weighs under one hundred grams and the same shape piece to bake nice, in a three hundred gram unit. On top of that you need to do five different doughs, create seven different products, finish in eight hours, meet your weights and keep clean. Very stressful. Jeremy did a great job yesterday, it's only his second practice. He had two pieces I thought tasted great. One large piece of criteria. He didn't do much finishing of his pieces, but that's ok. All in time, I don't want him to get discouraged. Many have walked before him, we weren't any further along than he is, at this point. Folks walk in here, at the end of his day, and say "This is it? This is what there is after eight hours?". Be there in September, in Vegas, pass judgment on what is presented at that moment. Take a look at what the judges see at the end of his eight hour bake there. That is what really matters.

Last night Harvey McLain hosted a huge party for the guild at his bakery, Turtle Bread. Helluva nice guy, always very giving to the guild, a great supporter of the NBC, in it's day. Harvey is not a baker, he's a corporate guy. He has Solveig Tofte running his bakery. Solveig was the bread baker on the 2008 team. Right now she is very active with the team that we are getting ready, she also sits on the board of the guild. Nice bakery, nice product. In the same building. they have a fine dining restaurant plus a wood fired pizza oven, with seating. Quite an operation. Lots of baker friends turned out, lots of GM folks. Bakers exercise unmatched fellowship. We all know what each other goes thru. It's really tough being a producer and a retailer, especially dealing with a hand made product that relies on the elements of nature, and has a limited shelf life. We are very unique.

Gotta check on Jeremy, make sure he's on task. I see he's rounding brioche dough. He has to produce twenty, traditional brioche au tete, plus twenty braided brioche. They all must weight between forty and a hundred grams. But, whatever one weighs, they all have to weigh. Godspeed.

last trip for a while

2010-04-30T07:37:00.004-05:00

I'm sitting in the "Culinary Centre", at the General Mills headquarters, in Minneapolis. Once again, being treated like royalty. I'm here working with Jeremy Goduas. Jeremy is doing the viennoiserie portion of the next US baking team that will compete in Las Vegas in September. Currently, the bread guys, the sculptors, and the pastry guys are practicing separately, once the final three are chosen, they will begin choreographing their work together. I mentioned before that they need to share the equipment in a bake shop together and get their day done in eight hours. Lots of issues to get worked out.

Turns out Jeremy is the only viennoiserie candidate. left standing. The other two guys dropped out, not sure if permanently, or if they plan on coming back. Bottom line, they're not here now. We all arrived here yesterday. Peter Yuen and I drove up from Chicago. Jeremy, flew in from Seattle, and this afternoon, John Kraus and Philippe LeCorre will be here to critique Jeremy's work. We'll make some decisions and suggestions, and do it again tomorrow. Wednesday before we left, the US received the rules from France, regarding the upcoming LeSaffre Cup. No shocking changes, Jeremy wil have do a traditional croissant, chocolate croissant, traditional brioche in a fluted cup and braided brioche. Plus three other pastries of his choice, one being a "Variety from our country". They do that element every competition. Turns out you can justify anything, the US is a big place. We're making everything somewhere. They also have to down play this competition, because there are a lot of countries that compete, that aren't that familiar with an "Artisan" style of baking. There will be four of these LeSaffre Cup competitions, worldwide. They need to determine nine winners to round out the field to twelve teams for the World Cup in 2012. So many rice cultures and flat bread cultures, it's tough for them to compete in a "Long fermented" bakery world. We see it at every competition, the influence of "Flatter" breads done by the Moroccan team. The South American countries, always have very bland looking product, because that is in their "Culture". It goes back centuries, places that grow inferior wheat, are going to bake "Inferior" bread, by our standards.

Things at the bakery have been good. Burnin' thru macarons. The power of advertising is unmeasurable. Like my buddy John Roeser says "The more you make(of something) the better they will be, and the faster you be at makin' 'em". Sharp fellow, that Roeser guy. I'm very proud of our macarons and they way we get them done. I've been making all the shells, but preparing the fillings and putting them together has been a team effort. I think the biggest improvement has been in the caramel ones, really cool. Been makin' 'em everyday, couple mixes.

Joe has made huge strides in our pretzel production. We've been at it for a few months now, but now they are really spot-on. Near perfect. Next week, Matt plans on doing a page on our site about them. It is really an interesting process. Joe has determined that making them one day, and freezing them overnight is the ticket. It's all a balance between freezer temperature and percentage of prefermented flour. Very few items we do, are as consistent. After saying this, the next time I walk into the bakery, there will be a pile of lousy pretzels, but that is the chance I take.

First outdoor farmer's market tomorrow. Early in the week forecast wasn't very promising, but I guess that changed, supposed to be sunny and warm in the morning. That's good. we'll be ready. Next Saturday, we'll have both Wilmette and Evanston, here we go.

when ya hang with royalty.....

2010-04-26T13:20:00.005-05:00

I’m currently in flight between Albany, New York and Chicago. I’ve spent the weekend as lead judge for a Master Baker practical exam. The exam was held at the Culinary Institute of America, down in Hyde Park. If you ever get a chance, and you are at all interested in food, ya gotta make a trip to see that place. I have been there several times, and every time I go, there is a new building to see. They graduate a culinary class and a baking and pastry class every three weeks. Consequently, they start a new two year program every three weeks. It is set on the bank of the Hudson river. A big river, creating the big Hudson Valley, surrounded by mountains, incredible. I guess in the scheme of the world, they are really big hills. Growin’ up in Chicago, the tallest thing we see besides skyscrapers is the hill over the railroad tracks on south Western Avenue. You step out of the front door of the school and you look out over the river, magnificent.

My hosts this past weekend were dean of the Baking Pastry school, Tom Vaccaro, CMB, and Chef Rich Coppedge, CMB. My fellow judges were Christophe Gaumet, CMB and Noble Masi, CMB. Noble is the godfather of the entire Baking & Pastry department there, he moved with ‘em from New Haven. He is also the figurehead of the whole RBA certification process. I took over as certification board chair, from Noble. He was a judge when I took my exam in 2001. Great guy, great, great story teller. Think of the experience he has had. Thousands of students he has taught. He has traveled the globe as ambassador of the school and the American baking community. Everywhere I go with Noble, he knows the chef. I’ve been to all three CIA campus’s with Noble. When he enters the school, trumpets sound. At the Hyde Park campus, they have several fine dining restaurants. As figured, a French one, Italian, Green, American, etc. Each one is a classroom. Working “The front of the house”, in one of these restaurants, is the swan song before graduation, for each student. This past exam, kinda got scheduled late. Part of the deal is, the judges have dinner together on the first night of the exam. Noble would’ve had to force the school to cancel a reservation, in one of the fine dining spots, to fit us in. He could have done it, one phone call, done, but he didn’t. Instead, the school opened the closed, Apple Pie café, for us. The Apple Pie café, is the “Front of the house” classroom for Baking and Pastry students. It is located right inside the front door of the school. They don’t serve students, they serve the tour buses that stop there on their way to the Vanderbilt Mansion or the FDR library. The café is open two hundred twenty days a year, they do over two million in sales. You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it. Folks lined up down the hallway, out the school door. Typical day, they close at 5pm, unless Noble needs the place. They staffed it and each fine dining spot, sent over course after course of, Nobleworthy, food. Each if the chefs came over and apologized for forcing Nobleesque folks to eat in the café. Even the wine instructor came and asked Noble about the wine choices. Then each bowed, as they left, I didn’t catch any of them kissing his ring? Surprisingly.

The candidates did well, instructors Lee Ann Adams, Hans Welker, Staphane Weber, a cereal chemist from Cargill, Tim Christensen, and Jim Clohessy, who works for Wolfgang Puck in Atlanta. Peter Jacobs from the LeSaffre yeast company, in Montreal, came to make up one segment, that he failed at the test in Chicago, last August. The instructors had several students there watching. The labs were closed, but the students can watch thru the windows. The made posters for each of their instructors, and tapped them on the windows, cheering on their teachers. “Go chef Adams, Good Luck chef Welker, and Bon Chance chef Weber”. I would guess Stephane Weber is the favorite of the young girls. He is a very fit, bicycling Frenchman. They all did well, not sure yet if any passed. Noble doesn’t allow any discussion between the judges. Sure we make our comments, but no grades are discussed. We send the score sheets to RBA headquarters, and they are tallied there. We will know before the candidates, but we will hear the same way they do.

I’m leaving the exam weekend with a good feeling. Not sure who passed and who failed. I have my own ideas. One thing for sure, the baking world is better because of the process, because the exam exists. Each of the five candidates tried something they never tried before, baking in a different surrounding, working under close observation by their peers. Being graded on how much flour they get on the floor, or how heavy the string ice a breakfast pastry, how they score a baguette, or how long it takes to ice and decorate a sheet cake. Rest assured American pastry purchasing public, our offerings just got a little better.

macarons

2010-04-20T05:57:00.006-05:00

I found the macaron article in the April issue of Chicago magazine. Matt has it on our website, as well as all over the bakery. Needless to say, macaron sales have gone thru the roof. It is a single page story, nice picture of macarons from Vanille, a pastry shop in Chicago. It also mentions the restaurants Ria and Nomi. It mentions Sarah's Candies, as well as Vanille. But it also says, "The best we've found so far, are at Bennison's, where they dissolve upon contact with your tounge". Ours was the only address given. Puts us in some pretty tall company. Not sure who is doing the work at either restaurant. But I know Dimitri at Vanille, very talented guy. He was a member of the United States team that won the world pastry championship in 2008. He also teaches at the French pastry School, here in Chicago. It was quite a feeling when I read that. Not quite winning the Coupe, but close.

This weekend I'm off to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. I'm the lead judge for a Master Baker exam weekend. I think we have five candidates for CMB and two for CB. Four of our production folks here, took their written test, last week. Zach, Jennifer and Joe tested for their Certified Journey Baker and Marc tested for Certified Baker. Marc already passed the practical exam last summer at Kendall College. I'm looking forward to returning to the school. Hyde Park is where I did, my practical exam. I've been there a handful of times since then. Rich Coppidge is the lead bread instructor there. I met Rich, my first trip to the National Baking Centre in 97'. We tried out for the baking team together. He has since written a book about gluten free baking. Heck of a nice guy, great instructor.I spoke with Tom Vocarro, the dean of the pastry school, last week. He told me they have an eighteen month waiting list. More impressive is the fact they graduate every three months. Not sure of the enrollment, I'll clarify that this weekend. It's really quite a place. It's also my favorite place to do an exam because of the food. We have some amazing dinners there.

Gotta get upstairs. Got a lot of macrons to get ready for this weekend. Bat 17 also has us working nights. They have a huge party Friday. No wonder, if you've ever tasted their sandwiches.

Just got an email from my buddy Laurent le Daniel, in Rennes, France. He sent me his vanilla macoron filling recipe. The ones I had this past trip to France were better than what we have been making. I just wanna keep makin' things taste better.

eierschecke

2010-04-16T06:59:00.005-05:00

Our second find during last Saturday's Green City Market was a pastry idea I saw in Nice. Very simple, sixty grams of brioche dough, rounded up and elongated, placed in the fridge overnite. Saturday morning we took it out and "Creased" it pretty deep with a dowel rod. So the two outside edges were very thick and the middle was paper thin. We egg washed 'em and placed twelve on a sheet pan. We used our pastry creme, flavoured with a little orange flower water, and piped quite a bit down the center of the crease. We proofed 'em and baked 'em. Once they cooled a little we brushed 'em with melted butter and dipped 'em in vanilla sugar. Done. As Kim Montello would say "Deeeeelicious". We only sent twenty three to the market, so it was the first thing we ran out of. We baked our second run of sweet city loaf, carrots, onions, flax & honey. Really, really nice.

I also mentioned about cocoa powders, natural or dutch. Dutch cocoa is treated with alkaline, to neutralize some of the natural acids in the cocoa. In doing so the colour changes as well as the flavour. Ice cream manufacturers use natural cocoa in ice cream, because it imparts better chocolate flavour. It is also the choice of powdered hot cocoa mix producers. As bakers, typical devil's food cake is made with buttermilk. Not because of flavour profile, but because it is rather acidic. We also add a high percentage of baking soda. The soda reacts with already alkalized cocoa and produces richer colour, by enhancing the Maillard reaction. The acidic buttermilk is needed to counteract the excess baking soda, otherwise the cake would taste very "Soapy". It's all cause and effect. Kinda like the song "I know an old woman, who swallowed a spider, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly.........".

Thursday morning I woke up at 2:30am. Within a minute, I had an idea for a new macaroon flavour, red velvet. I had to be thinking about it while I was asleep. Yesterday, I tried it, very cool. I filled them with a cream cheese ganache, made with white chocolate. I'm told there is an article about our macaroons in Chicago magazine, but I haven't found it yet. We are really burning thru macaroons lately, so it must be true. Macaroons and sandwiches. We've sold out of sandwiches three days in a row. I guess it makes sense, nice days, folks can sit outside and eat lunch.

Yesterday we made a pastry that we haven't made in years. "Eierschecke", is an old German pastry, that we haven't made in twenty years. There's a fellow that works down the street at the locksmith shop. I don't see him very often, but every time I see him in the store, he asks me about it. We start with a thin layer of yeast dough. We make cheese filling, not to sweet, spread that on and sprinkle on raisins, toasted, sliced almonds and streussel. We then make a topping that starts with pastry creme, we lighten it by adding soft butter and egg yolks. We whip the egg whites with sugar and make a soft meringue, and fold in the custard part. We spread that mixture on the sheet and bake it. We're gonna cut it to today, it's Friday. We have enough folks cross our threshold on Fridays, we'll sell the whole sheet today. Less the piece that my dad eats, two or three the store folks will eat, can't ask them to sell it until they taste it. I gotta take a few down the street to the locksmith shop.

Anybody been shoppin' here as long as he has, deserves it.

natural cocoa

2010-04-13T04:47:00.007-05:00

Interesting end to the week, last week. The first two days after Easter weren't much. But the end of the week was very good. We had that huge order for chocolate brioche and "Beer bread", as we called it. The market went well Saturday, sold out by 11:45. Market was open until 1pm. The theme was cheese. They had six or eight small, artisan cheese makers there, drew quite crowd.

We made this "Beer bread", for the Sheraton hotel. It was pretty nice. We started with the formula that Craig Ponsford used in 1996, for the Coupe, in Paris. He used spent grains,from a brewery, that he ground thru a meat grinder and roasted. We were given some dry, malty, grain blend that was rather sweet. It was obviously hops and malt, blended with some other grains, maybe barley? The bread had better aromas than flavour. They were using the bread for the charcuterie course, so I'm comfortable it worked out fine.

We had two real "Finds" last week. The chocolate brioche is really cool. We made our typical brioche dough, took out part of the butter and added our own "Fudge base", along with semi-sweet chocolate chips. This summer we are gonna bake it for our markets, in a round "Crimp" pan. The end result will be a round slice of brioche. Will make the most bad ass French toast. "Fudge base", is something we make in house, for two reasons. Of course us bakers can buy it, from our suppliers. The problem is, when you read their label, it has everything but chocolate. It has soybean oil, cocoa and lecithin. So, it makes things a nice chocolate colour, but no flavour. There isn't any cocoa butter. You can't capture true chocolate flavour, unless there is cocoa butter present. When we make our chocolate base, we use natural process cocoa, vegetable shortening, melted chocolate liquor and vegetable oil. It's so much better than anything we can purchase, because it has real chocolate in it. The chocolate liquor, bitter chocolate, is a blend of cocoa butter and cocoa, and it has incredible flavour. It is also very expensive. So few bakers use it anymore, that you can't even get it from the local supply houses. We buy all of our everyday chocolate from Blommer chocolate, here in Chicago. By everyday chocolate, I mean chips, cocoa, liquor and pokies(easily mistaken for M&M's). They sell semi sweet slabs, which we use for mousse, but I'm not a fan. I prefer imported chocolate for mousse. The second reason we make this stuff in house, is the cost. In 1970, my dad figured every time we made fudge base, we saved a $100. Forty years ago, $100, can't imagine the difference these days.

The down side is, it's kind of a pain to do. When little Arturo is done, he looks like a coal miner, or like he's been workin' on an oil rig. We make it in large batches, in a 140qt mixer. It's almost like we have to take turns holdin' his ankles when he scrapes to the bottom of the mixing bowl.

But our customers are worth it. Tomorrow I'll tell ya 'bout our second find last week and give ya the poop on "Natural" cocoa.

Oh, we use melted chocolate liquor to chocolatize our brownies. No cocoa powder here. Go ahead mention that to the girl behind the counter of your local grocery store bakery. Our brownie formula is one of four that we haven't changed since my dad bought the bakery in '67.

Stupid us, we even put honey in our brownies. Yeah, real honey.

Another one of those ridiculous Downer beliefs.

aville market, you're in for a treat

2010-04-09T05:09:00.007-05:00

Just ate a plain cake donut, a fresh one. Spectacular. We routinely filter the oil, in our donut fryer, three times a week. A few years ago, we bought a new fryer. Our old one was old, a long time ago. It was also way oversized, so we didn't get the proper turnover of frying oil. For all practical purposes, donut fryers come in three sizes, small, medium or large. The larger the fryer the more oil it will hold. The more oil, the larger the filtering unit one needs. A pretty simple process, hot oil is drained into the filter tank, that is fitted with a paper filter. The hot oil is then drawn thru the filter paper, via a pump, that pumps the oil back into the fryer tank. Once the oil is drained into the tank, diamatcious(not sure of spelling, neither is Bill Gates apparently, I'm still getting that red line)(ed. note - Diatomaceous, thanks for the emails everyone) earth, is added to the oil. This fluffy powdery substance, I'm told, is ground up seashells. Don't know if it's true, if I can't get the proper spelling, I certainly can't look it up on Google. Anyway, this magical powder draws all the discoloration and strong donuty smells out of the oil. Since our old fryer was so big, we had a big, big filter. Very difficult to manipulate thru our crowded bakery. Consequently, we didn't filter as often as we should have. When we bought the new fryer, a more proper size to our production, I demanded a fryer with a built in filter system. The thing works great, no more rolling around a picnic table size filter, just open the drain and start pumping. It made an incredible difference in our donuts. The week before Easter, the switch on the pump went out. Matt, our in house I.T. department, can fix anything, website host, network guy, had time to fix it, but we couldn't find the room for him to work. During the day we push racks/mixing bowls, in front of the fryer. So for him to work on the fryer we would have to find a place for whatever we bury it with, during the day. We had to wait until after Easter to repair the pump switch. So Monday, he changed into his mechanics clothes, brought up the tool bag, drop light and air hose. Everything in the bakery has flour on it, so the first thing any repair guy needs to do is blow the flour out of the way. He found a "Soft" breaker, in the fryer. A small circuit breaker that he couldn't get to stay in the "On" position. It kept springing back to the "Off" position. The pump switch seemed fine. He started blowing flour of the pipes and burners, opened up a few small panels and started checking continuity, etc. Turns out, enough flour had worked it's way down into that small circuit breaker, that it wouldn't allow the arm to go far enough into the on position, for it to stay there. How do those things happen? How can a few grains of flour work their way down into a switch, to the point that it is inoperable?

We've filtered the oil, twice since Matt fixed the pump. Donuts are much better. No greasiness whatsoever. They don't have that strong "Fried" taste, either. A few years back, we would filter once a month. Never bothered me, until I learned what a difference it makes. Same thing with our neon sign, on the corner of the building. It has two rows of vertical, chasing lights, like an old movie theater. For thirty years it didn't light. Didn't even have power to it. It has "Bennison's" horizontal, across the top. "Bakeries", vertical, down the middle, and a double row of chasing bulbs on each side of the "Bakeries". Once we got it fixed, I realized what an incredibly beautiful, valuable piece of our advertising it is. When we first got it working, I used to circle the block, at night, just to look at it. So now I keep count, when there are five or six bulbs burned out, in the chasers, I dash for the ladder. When a section of one the words, is out, I don't sleep.

Moral of the story, things that gradually deteriorate, are un-noticeable, until you realize how good they can really be.

Gotta get upstairs. There's a few hundred pounds of chocolate brioche screamin' to get in the oven. By the way, the idea of chocolate brioche worked out really well. You folks that shop at the Aville market are in for a real treat. We are gonna bake chocolate brioche in a round crimp pan. You all can slice it real thick, make the most bad-ass French toast on the planet. June 23rd, gotta wait until then.

chocolate brioche

2010-04-07T05:48:00.006-05:00

Well the Easter/Passover dust has settled. I've taken it kinda easy the last two days. The Sox opener, NCAA final game, the Cubs gettin' shelled, it was all part of the crazy holiday weekend.

Got our pan washer motor back on Friday. mid-day. Works great, much quieter than the old motor. we had stuff piled up all over waitin' to get washed. Don't tell the health department. We had stacks of lamb molds, but they got soaked over the weekend and now they look great. We never did find our large egg cake molds. We had to run over to Tag's bakery and borrow theirs. I'm figurin' ours got buried in the basement, last fall, behind stacks of farmer's market tents/tables. We'll find 'em just in time for Mother's Day.

Markets start May 8th, Evanston. May 12th, Green City, and others, mid June. The gang is gettin' stoked, to start workin' like men again. They have lots of plans,i.e. new bread and pastry varieties they want to try out. I have one new idea I saw in France, a very simple brioche pastry filled with pastry creme. They made a chocolate brioche yesterday. Looks really cool, it's proofing as I type. Actually got a call yesterday from a French chef friend of mine, turns out there is some huge beer/brewers party at the Sheraton Chicago this weekend. He wanted this chocolate brioche. They are making some type of bread pudding with chocolate brioche and caramelized brewers malt? It's apparently a really big deal, they have flown the kitchen staff here from Belgium to prepare this meal. They need to do a hundred twenty five hotel pans of this bread pudding. They also have some guarded bread formula, they managed to smuggle out of Belgium. I'm supposed to hear about that today. Made with some special malted hops or somethin'.

So we unloaded our holiday goods very well. We had one or two large egg cakes, one or two lamb cakes, five or six pans of chic/bunny cookies and maybe twenty four loaves of our coloured Easter bread. Based on all we sold, that ain't much. Sold all our Passover stuff. Tossed one sponge ring, and two macaroon sponge cakes. Business overall, was very good. Our traffic was up, I look at the holiday as a whole. I checked Good Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Yes, we're open Easter Sunday. We were up about sixty customer's for the three days. Sales dollars were up, proportionally more. We didn't raise any holiday prices, they were the same as 2009. Tells me that folks ate closer to home this Easter. Although the few country clubs we deal with ordered the same as last Easter.

Tables went out on the sidewalk last Thursday. Funny thing, I know of four phone calls for sure, that inquired about seating in the bakery, in the last week. On nice days, the tables are full, 'specially around lunch. I guess we need to start takin' notice if our sandwich sales are stronger on nicer days.

Gotta run, head upstairs, check on the chocolate brioche

multiple things always happen at once

2010-03-30T05:12:00.002-05:00

We had a great day, retail wise yesterday. It was Passover, so we should be busy. We started the day by needing more macaroons, banana loaves, and sponge rings. We also finished our first Easter cookies, the large bunny and chick cookies. Dipped our first little egg cakes as well. I feel a little relieved to get that stuff started. Today we will do the little chocolate eggs, and finish our first lamb cakes.

It's a good thing business is good, because yesterday the pump motor on our pan washer went out. The thing just seized up. It was about 5pm yesterday, when we finally got the motor off of the machine. It's one heavy son-of-a-gun. Today we'll take it to the motor shop, with a box of morning pastries and we'll see what happens. Funny how that box of pastries opens a lot of doors. When my son was little, maybe eight or nine years old, he played hockey. Still plays actually, but skate sharpening is an on going battle, in a hockey players life, hockey players parents' life, as well. Skate sharpening is almost a craft. The Wilmette Bike Shop used to be the best around. I assume they still are. When you'd go in the back door to drop off skates, there was just a "Sea of skates" there to be done. Didn't matter what time of day you went in there, you could always hear the machine running. The unmistakable sound if metal against a grinding stone. I learned that if I went there mid morning, with a box of pastries, I never waited. Never got charged either. Larry would say "Just wait right there". I'd stand there and watch him do his thing, and off I would go. I'm sure we'll get the same treatment at the motor shop today. They aren't going to repair a ten horse motor, for a box of danish, but I bet they get on it quicker.

On top of the pan washer goin' down, we took a truck in for a "Wheel hub replacement", to the dealer. It was under warranty. I love that, it was under warranty, so was the water pump and the door hinges, on the side door. So when we pick it up this afternoon, it's only gonna cost us, just over a thousand dollars. I told them to go ahead with the "Recommended radiator flush, transmission flush, brake fluid flush, power steering flush, and fuel injector flush". Damn truck will be clean when we get it back. I don't know enough about things that run on gasoline, to make good decisions about them. Besides, we needed macaroons in the store, I had chocolate on the stove melting to dip the eggs, we had a new intern yesterday, I was tryin' to remove the motor from the panwashing machine, had to place my flour order by noon, we had a big breakfast delivery on the campus at 10am, that involved brewed coffee, and I was trying to teach Zack how to decorate the Easter cookies. So. I probably agreed to some unnecessary flushes, yesterday.

I've said it before, "Some days you're the statue, some days you're the pigeon".

high near 70

2010-03-27T05:13:00.002-05:00

Saturday morning, tomorrow is Palm Sunday. I should be all worked up, seeing how Easter is one week away. If it was eight days before Christmas, I would be so wound up. 1976 was first, full time, Easter here at Bennison's. We baked and baked, for two weeks, gettin' ready for the day. I was working nights then, I started at 10pm. I came in early on Good Friday, we had a heavy night, of course. I got here around 8pm, by the time we opened on Saturday morning, there was an inch of ice on everything in God's world. Back then we were closed Easter Sunday, so on Monday morning when we came in, it was all here. Lamb cakes, bunny's, basket cakes, cookies, egg cakes, awful, just awful. It tarnished me for life. Unfortunate really, Easter can be a very busy time for bakers, but I just don't get into it. I'd rather make a hundred gingerbread houses, than ten lamb cakes.

Today, down at GCM, we are selling a new variety of bread. Sweet City Loaf, it's a crusty white loaf, laced with carrots, onions, hazelnuts, flax seed and honey. It was a very good first try, next time will be better. It seemed short on "Stuff". We need to kick up the carrots, and onions, and we are going to add a little ground cumin. I got the idea from Dan Klecko, baker buddy up in Minneapolis.

Looks like we'll be going back to the Wilmette French market this summer. We'd like to anyway. I've requested an application. the thing that I'm always hesitant about is, "Who will staff it"? My daughter graduates from college in late May, her and a group of friends, so we have a new crop of "Staff". Making the product is the least of our concerns. Even getting it there, is not much of an issue. But who's gonna sell it, and bring it all back? Those are the real concerns.

Gotta get upstairs, get started on our lamb cakes, as much as I'm not looking forward too it, it's gotta be done. Predicted high "Near 70", next Friday. Gotta see it to believe it. I was next door at the hardware store, day before yesterday, I picked up a fifteen pound bag of ice melter.

a sunday market?

2010-03-24T07:27:00.003-05:00

We found some fresh raspberries and blueberries, that were tart suitable. I know this is America, I know we can get all fruits all year 'round. But that doesn't mean the stuff tastes good. We got some strawberries in, early this week, sour as a cornichon. Huge, red, shiny, taste like hell. They sat for two days in the fridge, and finally got some sweetness so we made strawberry tarts, yesterday. Sold 'em within a few hours. Jennifer also made some fresh raspberry tarts, really bad ass! We make our tarts shells with an all butter dough, that has a hint of almond flour. The almond flour, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't do much for the flavour of the crust, but it gives it such a nice nutty brown colour as it bakes. I learned this from Laurent le Daniel, he has a few incredible pastry shops in Reims, France. He also taught me to bake tart shells in a cooler oven. The shells get a nicer, deeper carmel colour all over. The real consequence is the tart shells get much stronger if you bake them long enough to caramelize the sugar in the crust, they also develop much more flavour. She filled the raspberry tarts with chocolate cremeux, French term. It means, "Absolutely the best, over the top, chocolate pudding, ever"! She boils whipping creme, adds sugar and egg yolks, and cooks it to thicken. She pours that over semi sweet Belgian chocolate, and smooths it out with an immersion blender. Pout it in the shells and let it cool. She topped them with fresh raspberries, really did a good job with them.

For the blueberry tarts, she used the same tart dough, but filled them raw, and baked the whole deal together. She used almond creme, lemon curd and folded in a few blueberries. After baking she topped them with a pile of fresh blueberries, and a light dusting of confectioner's sugar. Really pretty, she did an equally good with these. Her and Tracy do a great job with our tarts and galettes.

We are contemplating adding another farmer's market to our list. We got an email from a group in Roger's Park that is doing a sustainable market on Sunday's. Easy hours, 9 to 1. I'm all for it, but it needs to go before the board for approval, if ya know what I mean. We have been approved for the Evanston market, that starts May 8th, and Andersonville starts June 23rd, I think. They have extended the hours at Aville, gonna start at 3pm til 8 pm, until a certain point in the year. Probably when the clocks get set back, they'll wrap it up at 7pm. still waiting to hear about Green City.

Well, gotta get upstairs, gotta get this whole Passover thing started.

cornstarch, who knew?

2010-03-22T05:09:00.007-05:00

Monday morning, off to a sluggish start. Head cold to boot! Big week, this week. Startin' the Passover bake tomorrow. Coconut macaroons, sponge cake, honey cake, florentines and flourless chocolate cake, by the truckload. I worked at Konopov's bakery on Devon avenue, in Chicago, in 1976. Briefly, maybe three months. But it was the right three months. Right thru Passover. I learned a lot. We made a lot more Passover variety, than we're making here, but the bakery was right at the corner of Devon and California. Chicagoans know what that means. This place rocked. Bagels and bialys, and the hallah, man. I didn't know you could make as many different sizes and shapes from one dough. Racks and racks of product. Friday nights, they set the oven at 500'. They had a huge rotating oven. When the stuff got brown, out it came, baked or not. They had no time to be concerned. Three or four of the items, we make here, are recipes that I got there. We follow all the rules, no flour or dairy, as they did. They weren't kosher, in fact the place was sold to an Italian guy named Tony, lasted, maybe eighteen months.

Kinda funny, way back, I started makin' the coconut macaroon cookies that we made there on Devon avenue. We package them so they don't dry out. We use a clamshell dome, I think in ten ounce units. So we packaged them, wrote a product label with the ingredients. The recipe called for cornstarch, not much. Mrs. Freid was a customer and my son's, maybe second grade teacher, at the grade school next to our house. She set me straight, "Can't use cornstarch. Corn is a legume. No flour, dairy or legumes are acceptable". Mrs. Fried bought our hallah bread, every Friday, for as long as I can remember. So we took the cornstarch out of the macaroons.

I've also learned that in France, bakers/pastry guys, can buy powdered sugar without cornstarch. Here at home, it's not available to us, on a commercial level. All of our powdered sugar has cornstarch in it "To prevent caking". The Frenchy's also believe that, it's one reason that it's difficult to make macarons here. I've never found it to be an issue. Maybe I, just don't know. So this time of year, we stock up on, one pound boxes of powdered sugar, that is "Acceptable for holiday baking". We buy it in a retail size pack. No, we don't use it for our Passover goods, we save it for the French macarons. Not sure how we addressed that issue, there on Devon avenue, but then after all, we were putting cornstarch in their cookies.

Not sure how many, if any, Jewish bakeries, there are left on Devon avenue. Used to be one every other store front. Gitel's, Faber's, Konopov's, Tel Aviv, Levinson's, Devon Avenue Bake Shop(for us goys), Ackerman's, I'm turning into my father, I can't remember the rest. I think most of their customer's have been transplanted. Most of the bakeries have closed. The neighborhood has completely changed. There is a Russian bakery on Devon, baking in a tandori oven.

I mentioned before, I like being a part of a family's "Holiday celebration". I'm very comfortable that the younger folks, buy our goods and run the Bennison's boxes out to the alley, to be hauled away, before the grand parents arrive for Seder. The ones I find funny are the orders we get for a pound of coconut macaroons, a honey cake, a chocolate lamb cake, a loaf of seeded rye, sliced, and a long poppy seed hallah. What??? That's Mrs. Clark's order, every Easter. See, that means something to me, that I know that. She shops here year 'round. I see her and we speak, I know the names of her grand kids. Maybe I should introduce her to Mrs. Freid.

black specks

2010-03-20T10:17:00.003-05:00

Friday, March 19th was St. Joseph's Day. Not really a big holiday here in Evanston, but we do our part to please all religious groups. Not sure of the significance of the day, but I know it's an Italian thing. It is celebrated with "Zeppoli". We use our cruellers, split them in half, and fill them with a ring of pastry creme/custard or cannoli creme. On top of the custard ones we put a whole, glazed strawberry and on the cannoli filled ones we use a red cherry. The red colour is important. We did well with them yesterday, I think we made about fourteen dozen. Italian bakeries sell them all day long, I was happy with what we did. We also made St. Joseph loaf, a hearth bread, round in shape that we use two strings, of the same dough, to form a cross on the top. With our computerized register system, we can tell how often people order from us. Yes, there are people that only show up on holidays. I'm fine with that as long as they keep coming. St. Joseph's loaf is a good example. We only made twelve loaves, but it is an important part of someone's celebration. Just like the lady who gets a poppy seed coffee cake for her daughter every Christmas eve. Yes, it is a pain in the neck, but after years and years, how could I tell someone "No". I like the idea that we are a part of someone's "Family tradition", even if it does create my family tradition of sleeping thru every major holiday. Seems we have disappointed a person or two, by not having any Zeppoli yesterday afternoon. We have a few orders for today yet. Something did happen yesterday afternoon, that I'll never forget. It was just about 4:30 yesterday afternoon and a lady called to complain about "The black specks in the pastry creme filling in her Zeppoli". I'm comfortable that she is someone who was never here before. I'm assuming it was someone who grew up on Twinkies and Dunkin Donuts. Give anything to know what she thought after she ate it.

We did very well with our Irish Soda bread this year. I think the count is around a hundred eight five, or so. Much better than we ever did in the past. We were out early on the 17th. We also had orders for yesterday and today as well. I'm not surprised, i mention it before, stuff is really tasty, moist and sweet. sold a lot of shamrock cookies as well. We didn't do anything different with those cookies. I'm thinking maybe the weather had somethin' to do with it.

Have a good weekend.

two things 'bout home

2010-03-17T04:31:00.004-05:00

As if you couldn't tell, the last five or six postings were written while I was away. Internet time in France, of course does exist, but very expensive. Ten Euros an hour, about $13.50. I wrote when I could.

Wednesday morning we were off to Orly to catch a flight to Nice. I was in the air when they announced the winners of the competition. As soon as I was able to turn on my cell phone, I called Craig. He immediately sent me a text, "No news yet". Within five minutes "Taiwan won bread". Two minutes later "France won pastry". Another two minutes, "Holland", won showpiece. I was disappointed Dara didn't win. I felt bad for Peter. If it hadn't been for that brioche. Although it is not possible for them to allow someone to win, that finishes late. Just can't happen.

We spent the next six days driving from Nice back to Paris. Spent one night in a really neat mountain chalet type place, 1250m up. It was between Geneve, Switzerland and Strasbourg. One night in Strasbourg. I came across a pastry shop in Strasbourg that was owned by Thierry Mulhaupt. Thierry taught a one week chocolate class, the French Pastry school in Chicago. Beautiful product, place was busy.

We returned to Paris, Sunday afternoon. We planned to stay at the airport Sunday night, to avoid the rush of returning a car etc. We had enough time we hopped the RER back into Paris, spent the late afternoon on the Champs de Elysee, had some lunch, decided we'd do pastry and coffee at Laduree, down the street. Couldn't get close. They have two doors, one handles the two story cafe, and the other is for their retail trade. There were at least twenty five people, in each line, on the sidewalk. I was able to peek in the retail side, incredible. Gotta be the busiest bakery on the planet. I thought Porto's in California was it, but I've changed my mind. Stuff is not inexpensive, but it is perfect, every piece. The packaging, is the best part. Clerks in tuxedos, both male and female. Every baker should see this place, it's beyond words.

Glad to be home, I love being in France, but I love home more. After eight or ten days, I need some flour in my lungs. Thank God it had a chance to bake up there in Lille. Once I left Paris, bread and breakfast pastry, became very lame. Most of it was purchased frozen, just like here. Up in Lille at the LeSaffre research lab, they put a lot of effort into parbaked, frozen product. They were working on different additives, chemicals etc. Gotta say, product was pretty nice. It was handled by people in lab coats, in a perfect environment. Get out here in the real world, stuff can get "Mishandled". Anybody in the food biz, will understand what I mean.

I'm here in the office, just brought down a sixteen ounce cup of coffee and a chunk of a fresh baguette, that got broken by the oven loader. The two things I missed most, a real coffee cup and good bread.

dara's day

2010-03-17T04:28:00.002-05:00

Tuesday morning I caught the 6:15am bus. Dara had started at 4:20am. As expected she was well on her way. She had come to France thinking that she had to do a two meter structure. She practiced it that way, up in Lille as well as at home. Once we got to Paris, she realized that the two meters included her twenty inch high platform. She was relieved. I can say it now, she had issues up in Lille, getting’ that thing to stand up. As she said “The universe takes care of itself”. She chose to cut down the “Wobbly” portion of her design, to a sensible eight inches, instead of twenty. The convention hall was of course empty. Doors open at 9am. I had a good chance to view the efforts of the Monday bakers. Peter was there and offered that the croissants done by the French baker, were “Black on the bottom”. Peter’s chances improved. I asked “Did he finish on time”? Peter said “Yes, he did”. I knew his chances just got slimmer.

The Monday bread bake was done by Morocco and Holland. No issues, nothing special. The artistic work was done by Slovakia and Uruguay. Again, nothing special. One note, I really question if the bread plaques were done by the same person who baked for Slovakia on Monday. The detail displayed in the plaques was absent on the showpiece. The showpiece was large, very large. It was full, but without detail. She even did a lot of raw, “Dead dough”, completely within the rules. France and Costa Rica, did the pastry portion. France’s pastry was nice. Nice brioche, very nice. He did a border on one of his pieces that didn’t fit the category, from where I stood. Viennoiserie, to me, as I was taught by Didier Rosada “Needs to be done in form that would be done in a bakery, and can be picked up with a tissue and placed into a paper bag, carried home and remain in the same form. No sugar spikes, chocolate curls or flower petals”. This piece had a joconde biscuit frame. Something that belongs around a cake, not a breakfast pastry. The Costa Rican pastry was flat and bland looking. As an example, he did one piece that looked like a violin or fiddle. Shape was nice, but there wasn’t any filling on the neck or the things you turn to tighten the strings. What if a judge got a piece of that? Here it’s not so much an issue, but in the Coupe, there are eleven judges. No way you can cut one of those into eleven pieces and not disappoint one of the judges.

Dara’s pulled it off, the last minute change, that is. The base was shorter and it made things much more stable. She was cruisin’. A component was uncle Sam’s hat. Red and white with a blue band, with white stars. She did that and her waving American flag’s better than she did in Lille. She looked good, on time, confident. Another component she did was a big, abstract star. Five points, none equal. She baked it/on a mold she had made. It was about twenty four inches long, sixteen inches wide. Curved/bowed, concaved. The points hit the oven deck, not the middle of the star. She bordered this with dead dough, than made a lace curtain type look, with laminated dough. Her minimum requirement was twenty five percent “Live dough”, dough with yeast. This was a good way to deal with that issue. She added a duplicate border of dead dough and baked it. It was very cool, a big part of her piece. Her plan was to create the base, then build the top half, and at the end set them together. Everything went as planned until she set the top on the base. The lacey star piece wasn’t secured and it hit the floor, from about two feet up. She picked it up with a dust pan. The hearts dropped of all those who saw it. In unison, a hundred gasping mouths. Twenty five minutes to go. All she had left to do was set it together and clean up. I hollered at her “Make it over, take the penalty of going over on time”. She came near the ropes, Craig and I were there, we again told her make it over, she asked about missing the live dough volume, hey, desperate times call for……… She made a star using only the dead dough border and finished, maybe seven, eight minutes late. It looked great. To bad it was missing that lacey part. When the piece was viewed, finished, it really made it complete. Now it was missing something, seemed rather hollow. Of all the artistic work, Dara’s piece said United States more than other carried across the intended message. Theme was the fourth of July. She did it well. Created fireworks coming out of the inverted hat, resting on two, duplicate waving flags. The artistic baker from Spain said “Ella es un ganador seguro”, “She’ll win for sure”. We’ll see. She did a great job.

Tonight it’s off to dinner with Tim Foley, his wife Pat and their daughter Lauren. Reservation was made by Jean Joho at a place called Chez Michel. Should be good, Tim doesn’t spend much time eating at Denny’s while in France.

Tomorrow we are leaving Paris around 8am. I won’t be there when the winners are announced. As soon as we land in Nice, I’ll be on the phone with Craig. I’m anxious to hear, not nearly as anxious as Peter and Dara.

i walked where lionel walked

2010-03-16T11:28:00.004-05:00

It's late Monday afternoon, here in Paris. I didn't go to the convention today, I needed a day break. Spent the day walking around Paris, my favorite thing to do here. Hop on the Metro, with a specific destination in mind, and start walking back. When we get tired, hop on the Metro to get back. Today we were in St. Germain, home of Le Bon Marche, incredible store. It's a department store that has a separate building that houses the food department. Bakery, meat, pastry, chocolate, butcher, cheese, hot food, cold food, even a butter department. Fabulous! Extreme quality and respect for what they do. We stepped out of Le Bon Marche, down the street a few blocks and into a cafe for lunch. We were sitting there and after a few minutes I looked up and we were on the corner of Rue de Severes and Rue Cherch Midi. Cherch Midi, the Cherch Midi. I asked the waiter, "How close is Poilane"? He said “Cinq cents mètres”. I was five hundred meters from hallowed ground. Any bread bakers reading this know, eight Rue de Cherch Midi is Poilane bakery. Lionel Poilane died seven or eight years ago in a helicopter crash, his helicopter, flying out to his island. Poilane bakery bakes two percent of the bread consumed in Paris. That’s a lot of bread. Organic flour, wood fired oven, great bread. He has a unique shop, offers a few different items, a few different loaves, a loaf cake or two, and loads of Poilane paraphernalia. Genius, total genius. The bakery is now run by his two daughters, Apolonia and Athena. Both Harvard business school grads. The shop is very unpretentious. The walls are lined with his offerings. There aren’t any display cases as you might expect. There was one saleslady that answers questions and packages goods and then you move to the counter where another sales associate will take the money. I overheard another rookie ask about baguettes, saleslady replied “Ne baguette pas, seulment tranches”. “No baguettes only slices of miche”. I think the coolest thing I saw was a miche house/cutting board. It had glass sides and a canvas top. It was designed to store your miche half cut side down and then there was space in the glass sides so you could slice the bread as you needed it. Two hundred forty euros, around three hundred U.S. Ya gotta eat a lot of miche to support that.

Tonight it’s off to dinner with Dennis and Melanie, from Swedish bakery in Chicago. Dinner at the Maison Alsace on the Champs de Elysee. We’ve had dinner with them, every time we’ve been to Paris, for Europain. Kinda funny, we live five miles apart, but we have to travel forty two hundred miles to have dinner together. I see Dennis, once a month at our Baker’s dozen meeting.

Jusqu'à demain.

tough startin' with frozen dough

2010-03-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning I got on the 8:15am bus, got me to the convention centre around 9am. Peter was well on his way. He started his bake at 6:20am. Roger immediately told me that he forgot his brioche in the blast freezer overnight. He arrived in the morning, dough frozen like a stone. Roger and I walked back and forth in front of the six bakeshops, two for each category. France and Sweden baking bread, Hungary and U.S. doing pastry, and Netherlands and France doing showpieces. Day went well, for the most part. When the bell rang, Frances’ bread was beautiful, Sweden’s’, not so much. Both showpieces were spectacular. France did a music theme, and the Netherlands chose Valentine’s Day. The assignment was to use an event or religious holiday that depicts your country. Evidently, there is a day in France, nationwide, that celebrates music, national holiday type thing. Never did get a reason Pay-Bas chose Valentine’s Day. The Hungarian pastry was what one might expect. Rather well done, but a couple pieces were very plain. His name was Robert, and at the end of your bake, you get asked a few questions by the jury. He openly admitted that the croissants they make back home in Hungary, are made with margarine. Admitted he struggled with using butter. Not sure if I mentioned it, but it was mandated that each pastry candidate produce a plain croissant, a pain aux chocolate, chocolate croissant and a brioche aux tete, brioche with a head. Peter’s laminated products were beautiful, as expected. He does a terrific job on laminated dough. Peter finished about twenty minutes late and his brioche was unacceptable. They judged it none the less. The penalty for not having one of the products is far more severe than having a poorly done item. The penalty for being late is very difficult to overcome. At this point, we can only hope that the Monday baking, French pastry baker stumbles as well.

Sunday night it was off to dinner at a place called Astier. Very old classic French place in the tenth, at Place de Republic. We had an upstairs room. Dinner was hosted by the BBGA. We had about twenty five folks there. Craig, guild chair, Dara and Peter, and an assortment of other guild members. One person in attendance was James Maguire. Another baking legend. He had a restaurant/bakery in Montreal. Fluent in French, knew Julia Child, who knew Raymond Calvel. When it came time to translate one of Calvel’s books into English, Calvel found Child, and child found James. He knew the lady, who knew the man. Dinner was very good, cheese course was better. Dessert was bad. Peter was gassed. Gassed to the point of delirious. I understand, been there. Not only is it exhausting, the mental strain, but part of the whole experience is dining and drinking with the entire competition body, until 1am, nightly. And I’m sure it is not a good showing if you don’t take part. We did it, out late, and on the early bus, “To support all the competitors”. It’s tough, really tough.

During the day Sunday, I got to see, what the late finishing bakers did on Saturday. The North Korean bread looked very “Clumsy”. Again, due to the rice culture. The Spanish pastry looked very “Spanish”. Kinda plain, very typical. I think places like Spain and Portugal, do better with plated desserts. The Polish artistic piece was pretty much the same one he did for the last Coupe. It was clearly short of the “1.8 meter, height minimum”. Not sure what he was thinking.

I guess we’ll see what “Frenchy” does tomorrow.

time to get started

2010-03-16T11:06:00.002-05:00

Late Saturday afternoon, I started the day running out to the airport to meet up with Patti. That went well. She was in pretty much on time. Back into Paris with her, she went right to bed and I headed off to the convention. Got to the show around 1pm, Peter was heading off to nap. Somewhere behind the bakeshops. Roger and I set off to see some of the show. Peter was due to do his “Secret ingredient “ selection at 3pm. We returned to the competition area around 2:50, Roger went to get Peter. He appeared from the back, with a headset and sunglasses. Looked like an astronaut. Headphones were for quiet and the glasses for darkness. Japan/bread, Holland/viennoserie and Spain/artistic had the 5am start this day, they were finished. North Korea /bread, Spain/viennoiserie and Poland/artistic, were still at work. They had a late start so they were due to finish at 3:15. I never really heard what Peter drew in the lottery. He seemed pleased. He headed into the back to gather up his tools. He spread everything out in his bakeshop, over his two tables and the head judge came to inspect. He has a checklist of ingredients/tools that Peter had to submit back in early February. Mario, head of the jury, baker in Montreal, had to be sure that everything was on the up and up. No prescaled ingredients, or unapproved contraband. He was comfortable peter was playing by the rules and off he went to Robert, the Hungarian pastry baker. Both candidates in one category, started their two prep together, but they had staggered starts for the eight hour bake. I was off to view the work done that day, that by now was on display.

The Japanese bread baker had practiced at the Lille facility with, I was somewhat familiar with his product, No surprises there. Bread was o.k. He did a roasted onion loaf that had enough black pepper in it to totally numb any judges palatte. Not a good idea. Strange thing, and I don’t know why, but the competition only offered type 65 and type 45 flour. Candidates had their choice of with or without ascorbic acid, but no typical, type 55 flour. French flours are rated by their ash content, that is what the number means. Both the Japanese, and the Tawaiian baker had issues with the type 65 flour back in Lille. This flour seemed much “Whiter” than what I saw in Lille. These baguettes were much nicer than what he did up in Lille. Asian bakers prefer to do a four hour straight dough, no preferment. They are not fans of fermentation flavor. Centuries of white pan bread and rice, caused this. The Holland pastry was fair. It appeared he ran out of time. I learned later that his father had passed away four weeks earlier. Nice guy, very personable. Fluent in English. The Spanish artistic piece was done very well. His plaques around the base of his display were really nice. He did a guitar, a bulls head, a toreador's cape, and a Spanish style hat all centered around a near life size chair.

They started judging the goods done by the bakers that had the 7am start, and I headed back into Paris. It was Mediterranean food to go that night for dinner, in our room, split a bottle of wine, a little CNN, and off to bed. I know I’ll sleep better than Peter will.

delivery to the convention centre

2010-03-16T10:58:00.001-05:00

Friday night, finally made it to Paris. Yesterday, Roger and I baked three different baguettes and a load of croissants. Baguettes were amazing! I mixed a poolish baguette, and Roger mixed two baguettes. Both heavy on water, long fermented. All three mixes were really nice. We agreed that the flour has that extra hint of extensibility, that really makes some nice bread. Beautiful open structure. The flour is very forgiving. I had great results with the croissants, as well. Again the extensible nature of the flour really allows for some outrageous oven spring. And the butter, like laminating velvet.

On Thursday, Dara finished her plaques. As the artistic candidate, she had to produce twelve plaques, don’t remember the dimensions. They are about twelve inches by sixteen inches. Twelve inches at the base. They must be labeled for the twelve months of the year, and display Americanism. She did a great job, on them, countless hours of work. She started them months ago. They are all made from “Pate mort” or dead dough as we know it. Boiled sugar syrup, rye flour and buckwheat flour. Nothing you could ever eat. But they hold up for long periods of time. Dara spent $$$ to get these shipped here, she had to use a “Fine arts” shipper. Pretty impressive the boxes he made for each of them. She had to do some slight repairs on five of the plaques, and then spray them with edible varnish. Today we dropped her and her plaques off at the convention centre. I got an early glimpse at the display stands that were made for each competitor.. They are about four feet in diameter, sixteen inches tall. The top horizontal surface is about three feet in diameter, so these twelve plaques will go all the way around the base and lean in slightly. She will have eight hours to produce a showpiece to set on this surface I’m speaking of. She bakes Tuesday.

Peter, will do his two hour prep on Saturday afternoon, and bake on Sunday. This afternoon, after Roger and I dropped Dara and her plaques off at the convention centre, we went on to return the car to the airport. No need to have a car in Paris, that would be an absolute curse. Plan was for Roger and I to drop off Dara, drop off the car and pick up Peter’s suitcase from British Air, and take the RER train to Gare du Nord and then the metro to our hotel. Turns out, it wasn’t a suitcase. It was a fifty pound crate, no handles! Peter had taped it and strapped it, so we managed, but if you ever ridden the Paris metro, you’d understand. There are times when you get on and off that train whether you want to or not. We wrestled that box back to the hotel, Peter opened and voila, it was all there. We were all relieved.

So tomorrow, it’s back to the airport to pick up Patti, bring her to the hotel, and then back out to the convention centre. After the episode with Peter’s treasure chest, I’m looking forward to today’s travels.

A bientot.

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2010-03-08T13:01:00.001-06:00

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the games begin

2010-03-08T11:12:00.001-06:00

Friday night, finally made it to Paris. Yesterday, Roger and I baked three different baguettes and a load of croissants. Baguettes were amazing! I mixed a poolish baguette, and Roger mixed two baguettes. Both heavy on water, long fermented. All three mixes were really nice. We agreed that the flour has that extra hint of extensibility, that really makes some nice bread. Beautiful open structure. The flour is very forgiving. I had great results with the croissants, as well. Again the extensible nature of the flour really allows for some outrageous oven spring. And the butter, like laminating velvet.

On Thursday, Dara finished her plaques. As the artistic candidate, she had to produce twelve plaques, don’t remember the dimensions. They are about twelve inches by sixteen inches. Twelve at the base. They must be labeled for the twelve months of the year, and display Americanism. She did a great job, on them, countless hours of work. She started them months ago. They are all made from “Pate mort” or dead dough as we know it. Boiled sugar syrup, rye flour and buckwheat flour. Nothing you could ever eat. But they hold up for long periods of time. Dara spent $$$ to get these shipped here, she had to use a “Fine arts” shipper. Pretty impressive the boxes he made for each of them. She had to do some slight repairs on five of the plaques, and then spray them with edible varnish. Today we dropped her and her plaques off at the convention centre. I got an early glimpse at the display stands that were made for each competitor.. They are about four feet in diameter, sixteen inches tall. The top horizontal surface is about three feet in diameter, so these twelve plaques will go all the way around the base and lean in slightly. She will have eight hours to produce a showpiece to set on this surface I’m speaking of. She bakes Tuesday.

Peter, will do his two hour prep on Saturday afternoon, and bake on Sunday. This afternoon, after Roger and I dropped Dara and her plaques off at the convention centre, we went on to return the car to the airport. No need to have a car in Paris, that would be an absolute curse. Plan was for Roger and I to drop off Dara, drop off the car and pick up Peter’s suitcase from British Air, and take the RER train to Gare du Nord and then the metro to our hotel. Turns out, it wasn’t a suitcase. It was a fifty pound crate, no handles! Peter had taped it and strapped it, so we managed, but if you ever ridden the Paris metro, you’d understand. There are times when you get on and off that train whether you want to or not. We wrestled that box back to the hotel, peter opened and voila, it was all there. We were all relieved.

So tomorrow, it’s back to the airport to pick up Patti, bring her to the hotel, and then back out to the convention centre. After the episode with Peter’s treasure chest, I’m looking forward to today’s travels.

A bientot.

still no bag

2010-03-04T03:39:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, Roger left for the airport around 10am. Returned to the hotel at 10:30pm. Flight after flight, no sign of peter's missing bag/box. Eight flights from Heatherow to Paris, didn't get on one of 'em. Every phone call found a different person and a different answer. Late night, we got a promise that they would change the luggage tag, and hopefully that would do the trick. This morning we spoke to British Air at Heathrow, they claimed it was on the first flight out. Checked on-line, no luck. Not that it wasn't there, the web site took us nowhere. Roger is searching for a phone number into British Airways baggage service here in the Paris airport. Needless to say, Peter and Dara are getting stressed out. Dara needs the brown rice flour, that Peter added to his box, and Peter needs all the irreplaceable hand tools, even more.

My time in the bakery yesterday, was AWESOME!!! Here by myself, shapin', bakin' baguettes. Baguettes came out nice. French flour is very forgiving. It doesn't have that strong elastic property that North American flour has. The elastic side of the protein is much milder. Very timely, our transplanted British host Nigel just stepped in the office here asking me how "My" bake went yesterday. We started talking about the differences in the wheat from North America to here. He made a good point, "Used to be that wheat fields use to wave in the wind. No more wheat is designed to grow a foot shorter than before with a very sturdy stalk. That way there isn't nearly as much wind damage as there used to be". In the states we have a song that has a line about "Amber waves of grain". So much for boasting about using non genetically modified wheat!

Just overheard Roger say that the phone number he has is the right one, but the office doesn't open until 2pm.

Well, I had so much fun yesterday, I made another baguette dough for today, only this time I planned ahead and made a poolish for the baguette. I also made a good size piece of croissant dough. I'll letcha know how it goes. The dough is laminated with 26.5% Montague butter, 85% butter fat. Butter is created just for lamination.

Can't wait. Baguette is screamin' to be divided.

au revoir, ayez un beau jour

why not? great fun for me

2010-03-03T04:34:00.004-06:00

Wednesday morning in Lille. Dara Reimers, the American artistic category competitor, felt ill and headed back to the hotel to get some rest. I think she completed her piece yesterday, to her satisfaction. Last night I headed back into Paris, to pick up Peter Yuen, the American competitor in the viennoiserie category. When I left yesterday, Dara was just beginning to assemble her piece. Height requirements state that the piece must be six feet tall. I dropped her off this morning, at the baking centre. By the time I parked the car and got to the bakeshop, she had bumped the table, and the structure became twelve feet wide. Crashed into quite a mess. So all I saw as pictures.

Peter arrived in Paris around 6pm, last night. British Air lost two of his bags. They said they would be on the next flight. We sourced out something to eat and waited. Peter is traveling with Roger Gural. More about Roger later. The next flight turned up with one of the two bags. Charles de Gaulle airport is about two hours from Lille. By the time Peter got everything sorted out, we left the airport around 9:30pm. It was a bad situation. At that point, they both had been awake for near twenty four hours. Plan was for Roger to return to the airport in the morning. If the airlines delivered it, it would get here Thursday. Peter is only going to get one full run of practice on Thursday, as it is. We returned to our hotel just short of midnight.

Roger has a lot of baking experience here in France. Paris, Toulouse and Nice. He is currently a bread instructor at The French Culinary Institute in New york City. He was the American competitor in the Mondial du Pain, competition in Lyon. It's a different type of competition from the Coupe du Monde. Here in France, I guess worldwide, the Coupe will always be the "Grand Daddy of 'em all", as says ABC's Keith Jackson. Every trade show, in every country has a competition now. The SIPA cup in Italy, the IBA cup in Germany, and at the MOBAC show in Japan, they have one as well. None like the Coupe, not yet anyway. All others will always be compared to the Coupe, the Coupe has set the bar. Roger is also one of the three American bread competitors, preparing for the LeSaffre Cup in Las Vegas.

So Dara is resting, Roger is on his way to Paris, and Peter is busy tormenting the Taiwanese bakers. I'm in a bakeshop, in France, got an oven, a mixer, flour, water, salt and yeast. So, I'm gonna bake some baguettes. On his way out the door, Roger spewed off a formula he'd like me to mix for him, and I'll make one of my own. His is a rather wet dough, sixty eight percent water, only .4 percent yeast. He wants it just brought together, under developed and fermented for four hours, a fold after thirty minutes, one hour, two hours and three hours. I made a straight dough mix for myself, sixty five percent water, .8 percent yeast. I mixed it a little further and plan on one fold after two hours. So we'll see. Tomorrow we will re construct the formulas and see what we get. Maybe a preferment or two for tomorrow. American bakers are very intrigued by French flour. What better opportunity? I can already say, it's slightly drier than our flour, and the ash particles in the flour are more amber than ours, and their seems to be more ash.

Let ya know tomorrow what turns up, once out of the oven. Timers' goin' off. Gotta give the dough a fold.

here in Lille, finally

2010-03-02T01:56:00.004-06:00

Boy, been a while, I see that my last post was February 17th. Not surprised, that whole Valentine's day/Fat Tuesday thing was the most whirlwinded situation I've ever been in. Right now, I'm in Lille, France, heading towards Europain 2010, in Paris. I am here representing the Bread Bakers Guild of America, acting as a manager type person for the American bakers practicing for the Maîtres de Boulangerie, Masters of Baking competition. The trip got off to a bad start when my flight could not land in Paris and we got sent to Frankfurt. Strong winds prevented us from landing. I was to meet Dara Riemers at the airport in Paris. She was arriving an hour after myself. That got twisted up, and on top of that, her flight landed. So we were set back a day. Once I found her, we got the car loaded and off to Lille, we went. Lille is about an hour and a half drive north of Paris, very close to Belgium. We are being hosted by the LeSaffre yeast company. We are working in a test kitchen in the LeSaffre baking centre. Incredible place, incredible people. Our host is a very jolly Brit named Nigel Saunders. When I competed in 2005, Nigel was our host then, as well. They take good care of us here, anything we need, they jump to accommodate us. We are complete guests of LeSaffre, so any bakers reading this, you need to be using Red Star/LeSaffre yeast.

Very impressive, the attitude and the attempt that these French folks are making towards the baking industry. We drove by a yeast plant, a mile or so from here, enormous. Nigel was telling me that they have two yeast plants in France, one in Maisons-Alfort and this one in Lille. They also have on just over the Belgium border in Gant. They produce dry yeast in one, compressed in another and cream yeast in the third. Yesterday, they were test baking baguettes, all I know is, there were baskets of baguettes by the door, for anyone to take on their way out. Each baguette was clearly marked 1,2 & 3. I tasted 'em all. Couldn't tell much difference between 'em. They all tasted fine, very industrious. Fine tight crumb, nice, nice crust, not much in the way of fermentation flavour. Beautiful colour, and scoring marks. Not surprised, it appears they were made by Francois, not sure of his last name. He heads up the team of bakers that does the baking in the LeSaffre booth at Europain.

The LeSaffre yeast company sponsors both the Coupe du Monde and the Maîtres de Boulangerie. When I competed in 2005, we rehearsed at the Maisons-Alfort facility. The countries that compete in the Coupe du Monde, go thru a preliminary competition to earn a spot. Those early rounds of competition are referred to as the "Louis LeSaffre Cup". they house, fly & feed, all the competeing teams and their coaches. Quite an undertaking. Later this year there will be a Louis LeSaffre cup competition during the IBIE show in Las Vegas, in September. Something all bakers should be looking forward to.

Hey, for once I gotta run, but not upstairs. I gotta check on Dara, see how she is doing. Had a great croissant at the hotel breakfast this morning, reminded me of home.

a baker can't get a break

2010-02-17T05:49:00.007-06:00

It's that eerie calm and quiet that I haven't heard in over a week. We've been through an incredible weekend. Our paczki eating contest Saturday, Valentine's day, Sunday, and Fat Tuesday yesterday. I'm sitting in the office and there isn't that sound of racks rolling overhead, or the air compressor starting, or the elevator going up or down, just mild, lothargic rumblings.

The paczki eating contest went well, a few "Behind the scenes" blunders. We raised over $2000 for the Red Cross, got a lot of press. Next year we will do it a little different. Had quite a crowd out on the corner, traffic was slowing as it was going by. Winners Dan Furjanic and (not sure of the other fellow's name), ate 14 in 5 minutes. I heard the inside tip was to bite, not chew, and swallow with water.

It was unfair to have these holidays so close together. We couldn't really focus on one of them. Fat Tuesday won. We can only produce so many goods. We did well with Valentine's day stuff, but bein' on a Sunday, I kinda chose Fat Tuesday.

Yesterday, we were out of paczki around 1:30, king cakes about the same. Once the doors opened at 6am, after an hour or so, I told Marc, "We're a hundred dozen paczki short and a hundred king cakes short". If we'd a had 'em, we'd a sold 'em. Next year.

Some exciting news, we are closing in on the space next door. We have a key, working out some lease details. We used the space yesterday to box and stage our king cakes. It was like layin' on the beach. OMG, to have space to spread them out, in stacks, by flavour. Lookin' forward to Easter.

Fresh strawberry, whip creme paczki, clear favorites yesterday. Last night when my son left, his hand was scarlet red from handling strawberries. This is Chicago, ya gotta mix the strawberries in "Thickener", to hold 'em together. The berries we had were very nice, we bought quite a few planning on dipping 'em in chocolate, last Saturday and Sunday, never happened. I'm sure I spoke of it, we are using straight, high butter fat whipping creme, no vegetable based non-dairy toppings, in our "Whipped creme" products. We've been using straight creme in our paczki for the last three, four years. Makes all the difference in the world. Needless to say, never been one in the stale pile, so I've never eatin' one. Had a bite of one, my wife was eatin' yesterday, gotta say, pretty special stuff. What could be bad? Fresh paczki shell, sweetened whip creme, starwberries and powdered sugar. 'Nother thing I learned, best part of bein' in the bakery, I NEVER STOP LEARNIN'. I found that dusting these items with straight confectioner's sugar, they taste so much better. There is a product available to us bakers called "Donut sugar". It is a blend of fat encapsulated sugar, titanium dioxide, vanillan, corn starch,etc. Stuff doesn't melt under refrigeration, or get absorbed in a donut, the way powdered sugar does. At Armageddon, or after Armageddon, all that will be left on earth, will be cockroaches and donut sugar. We've been dustin' stuff with it for years. Now we are starting to use a blend of the two sugars.

More exciting news, I heard last night that Pierre Zimmerman is joining the faculty at the French pastry School, here in Chicago. Huge, huge opportunity for American bakers. Pierre grew up in a family bakery in Alsace. He was the Viennoiserie guy on the '96 team, and coached the French tean that won in 2008. I've met him a few times. In fact I designed by business card after his, after winning the coupe. The "Vainquer de la Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie 2005", came from his business card, only his says "1996". I still have it. First time I met him, was at the coupe, in 2005, between the time we competed, and before it was announced we won. He gave me his business card, I read it, put it in my pocket, thought "This might come in handy". Just maybe.....

a couple o' finds

2010-02-09T04:30:00.004-06:00

Sunday turned out to be the busiest Sunday we've ever had. I base all of my views on the number of transactions we make. It has nothing to do with sales dollars. Well, that's not true either, everything has to do with sales dollars. I compare the overall month, to previous months, based on sales $$ for the month. But to compare day to day, Super Bowl Sunday to last Super Bowl Sunday, I look at the count. Again, with our register setup, I'm very secure with it's reporting properties.

I also found a new favorite item here at the bakery. Our lemon tart. One had gotten damaged, either Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Again, back to eatin' outta the stale pile. The tart knocked me out! Can't imagine how good it would be, when it's fresh. I may have mentioned we don't cook the lemon filling with starch, only egg yolks. Being starch free, it doesn't get gummy or chewy. I've seen so many, what bakers call "Starch based fillngs", that after a few days will vulcanize. Kinda like a gummy bear, get chewy like your nevermind. So many times lemon pie will get soggy, not this tart. Crust was crisp, filling was firm but yielding, rather tart. Not sure if I mentioned it, we use double strength, lemon puree. We buy it frozen, from an outfit in California. I buy it, keep it in my freezer, and sell it to a few Chicago baker friends. Rather a pain, cause I gotta buy a pallet at a time to make it affordable. Our customers are worth it. Ties up a lot of room in our freezer, but there is nothing like it. It is the single reason our lemon bars are so popular. We also use "Sugar cured lemon and orange zest". Stuff is awesome! You don't get any bitterness at all, like you would from fresh lemon zest. Although, we still use fresh zest, and fresh lemon juice in some products.

Another discovery, the theory that our new cream whipper, will yield cream with more volume, proved true. For the last twenty years we've been whipping twenty ounces of creme with 2.5 ounces of sugar, to fill twenty four, strawberry paczki. That's one display pan full. Last week, I whipped the creme, the way we always have, in a stand mixer. I filled the paczki, as always. Yesterday, I whipped the creme in our new machine, I had a hard time gettin' it all in them. They were very, very full. Very cool!

Gotta get upstairs, gotta go do some snowblowing. It's startin' to pile up. Forecast for the weekend is good. Sunny, Saturday and Sunday. Just waitin' to hear about next Tuesday.

there ain't no stinkin' leak

2010-02-06T05:50:00.003-06:00

Huge day yesterday. I spent a part of the morning waiting on customers, and better part of the afternoon answering the phone. Highlights of my day, morning customer, not sure of the situation. We have those customers that shop every once-in-a-while, whenever they're in Evanston, maybe used to live or work here, buy up loads and keep it in their freezer. This fella coulda been one of them. He just kept orderin'. I wasn't taking care of him, but I kept hearing,"six of those, two coffee cakes",etc. When he asked for eighteen large heart cookies, I offered to help box them. Then he asked me for four of each flavour macaron. He said "My wife loves those things, and they're every bit as good as the ones we pay four dollars a piece for, at the Galleries Lafayette, in Paris". I know that LaDuree has a counter in that store. For someone to compare our macarons to LaDuree. My feet didn't touch the ground the rest of the day.

Another thing, yesterday, as I was answering the phone, I took six calls in a row. Five of them were first time callers. I know that because neither their name or their phone number was in our database. And calling from a distance, Schiller Park, forty two hundred north, in Chicago, thirteen hundred west Fulton, and so on. The one caller, that was previously entered asked who I was, and I told her. She had nothing but good things to say about the bakery, and how things have improved since she was child. Again, things that pleased me very much.

But ya know, every now and then, the powers that be, do things that keep life on even keel. Yesterday morning, one of the cleanup guys came to me and said there was a leak in the basement. Being a busy Friday, and the fact that he wasn't the least bit wet, I figured I would get to it soon. These guys have come to me in the past, about a leak, and water is dripping from the bill of their hat. Then, I know we have a leak. About thirty minutes later, I asked Matt if he noticed a leak, in the basement. He replied "No". I didn't think anymore about it. An hour later I went downstairs for some corn meal, and I noticed it. A little trickle, from under a skid of flour, that was against the basement wall. Hunh, where could that be coming from? I got a drop light and looked under the skid, and it was running from the base of the wall, where it meets the floor. Behind that wall, solid earth, that God hasn't seen for a century. I felt the wall, and the water was coming right thru the stone wall. About four feet above the floor, to the floor, sixteen feet left to right, soaked. Oh my God, I was sure at any moment, it was gonna be like a T.V. sitcom. Water was gonna blow thru the wall and press me up against a stack of sugar bags. I went and mentioned to Matt, that I found the leak they were talking about. Matt never says much, other than, "Woa, that's bad", or the comforting "Not good". He grabbed the light and held it close to the wall, and like an archeologist, moved it left to right, near the wall, "Not good". He went to the corner of the basement, raised the light, and said "I see it. Real bad. Look". I looked and about six feet back in the crawl space, gallons of water were running over the I-beam. Like a mountain creek. We measured and decided it was coming from where the two sink drains came together, inside a wall. I called my dad over, and he said "I think it more than we can handle. Better call someone". It's Friday afternoon, 2pm. I'm sure we would get typical plumbers response "I'll be right there". He'll show up on Tuesday morning. We need this fixed NOW. We can't work without water. We/I/my family, are fortunate for a lot of things in life. But being next door to a hardware store is invaluable. Matt opened up the wall, and we found the leak, leak hell, the two inch galvanized pipe was gone. Literally, gone.It was a vertical pipe, sixteen inches tall, that forty percent of the circumference was gone, the entire length. Matt went to cut it out with a sawzall, the the pipe just collapsed. He put it all back together and inside of two hours we were back in business. We are gonna let it dry out for a few days, and we'll close up the wall. Matt, thanks, you saved the day(again).

Gotta get upstairs, once again, cupboards are bare. That's why we make it, right? Got that guy comin' all the way from Schiller Park. Gotta make sure his stuff is ready when he gets here.

had to start sooner or later

2010-02-05T03:16:00.005-06:00

I've caved. Couldn't take the question anymore. "When are we gonna start paczki"? We started yesterday. All varieties in the store starting today. As Southwest Airlines says "It's on".

Got a call yesterday from the folks at the Andersonville Farmer's Market, wonderin' if we would prefer starting at 3pm the entire market season, instead of switching to that start time, in the fall like last year. Last year we started at 4pm until the days started getting shorter. Tehn we started at 3pm. It would be uncomfortable, but we could do it. It's rough gettin' the truck back from the GCM, and turnin' it around in minutes. It forces us to be like an Indy pit crew. Truck pulls up and a herd of guys rush out and get it loaded. Can't wait, really. Remind me I said that come July 4th.

King cakes heatin' up, here as well. We have multilples scheduled for delivery every day. We have 20 or so, goin' to 1 Illinois Centre this morning. Tomorrow a load goin' somewhere in the western suburbs.

Bistro Bordeaux got a nice review in "Time Out" magazine, this week. Félicitations, bonnes pour vous. Slightly mentioned "Foie gras, on a crusty baguette, with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar". The Prairie Grass folks, George and Sarah, are opening a second location in the west loop. 215 N. Clinton, opening night, tonight. Good luck guys. I'm sure you'll do well.

Probably should mention, we started all our Valentine's day stuff as well. I'm not to excited about it this year, bein' on a Sunday and all. I think the whole Fat Tuesday thing is goin' overshadow it.

Gotta get upstiars and get'er goin'. Gonna be a big day today.

worth the wait

2010-02-02T04:46:00.006-06:00

Picked up the pretzel dipper on Friday, put it to use on Saturday afternoon. Like layin' on the beach! Thing worked great! Just like I planned. No more mess. No more covering the table with paper and plastic. Just great! Now that we can get 'em done, we'll be selling them at our farmer's markets, this summer. We've been selling pretzel rolls at the winter market, they've been doing very well.

I just got my weekly update from "Yelp". If you're not familiar with that, it's a review kinda thing that allow people to rate their experience at any particular business. We had sixty looks, last week. Things said there, weigh on my mind. One of the more recent comments talked about inadequate customer service. Last night we had a store personnel meeting, talking about this very thing. We've had a recent change in store management, that we hope has an impact on this issue. According to the review I'm speaking of, we really got knocked because said customer had to wait while our counter staff was busy socializing. Said the "Sandwich was o.k. Not worth the wait". I know better.

Yesterday we made some really cool marble cake, We baked it in a ring mold, and poured it with a chocolate icing. The cake mix is all butter, very nice flavour. We are going to sell it in half rings. In Germany, they call it "Marmour kuchen", marble cake. When I worked for Karl Kleinert, in the late seventies, he made it. I've been tryin' to recreate that for thirty years. I like that kind of stuff. Kinda plain. Basic flavours, butter, eggs, sugar, chocolate and vanilla. Wisest bakery type statement ever, "The best baked foods have the fewest ingredients". Right? Best bread?. Flour, water, salt and some form of yeast. I got this cake formula from baker buddy, Ken Slove, Lovin' Oven Cakery. The real deal, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, milk, salt, baking powder and vanilla.

Gotta get upstairs, fortunately, cupboards are bare. Busy day yesterday. Today should be busier, election day and all. People don't pick up donuts and danish, to take to the polls, the way they used to. There are more affordable options these days. Not better value, just more affordable. But if those folks took the time to find out what's in that stuff. Always, always, refer to the statement,"The best baked foods........."

Be sure and vote! To bad the guy who said that thing 'bout the fewest ingredients, isn't on the ballot.

last year of the lousy pretzel???

2010-01-29T05:16:00.004-06:00

It's finally here!! Our pretzel dipper. Very close family friend, who I grew up with, as well as my cousin, both became grandmothers' this week. Both baby girls. Sorry, babies aren't as pretty as our pretzel dipper. This thing is the real deal. I'm sure I mentioned, it was shipped, from Germany, in two pieces. So off to the welding shop it went. They did a great job in Germany, marking the way it should go together. I'll make it a point to post a picture of it, here. I promised the folks in Germany, pictures, also. Right after Paczki Day, I'm gonna start looking into, next years' Christkindlmarkt, in the loop. I can't allow you folks of Chicago, to be subjected to those alleged pretzels, another year. You'll thank me later.

Cold kinda chased 'em away yesterday. We did well with sandwiches, and hot chocolate, but otherwise, kinda quiet. Looking forward to warmer days, we made lemon macarons yesterday. Don't matter how far, you've got to come, they're worth the drive. We added blue poppy seeds to the shells, and cooked the a fore mentioned, lemon cremeux, and added it to white chocolate ganache, for the filling. Really pretty. We made strawberry as well.

I happened to catch "Chicago Tonite" on WTTW, last night. Host Phil Ponce had three food bloggers as his guest. They mentioned this will be the year of the macaron. Most interesting, is their mention of how difficult they are to produce. Not so difficult as tricky. I'm gonna email all three of them. Every trip to France, I see more and more. I get the monthly "Cafe-Sweets", magazine from Japan. It's their pastry/chocolate/coffee publication, for professionals. More and more in every issue, macarons. Kinda funny, they profile bakeries and pastry shops in France, Italy, Germany, L.A. and New York. I can't read a lick, other than numbers, and a few address's, once in a while. But, oh the pictures. It's a big, thick issue, all colour photos. I think it's up to $24 an issue, but if I catch one idea, even a small idea, worth every cent. In one issue, they profiled at least fifty macaron shops in Paris. Interesting how different they all are. They also profiled the more prominent macaron shops in Japan. Gonna be big here, soon.

Gotta run, I forgot all about Mr. Christy. I apologized to him in an email. Gotta get started on some more strudel. Goin' out Monday, scouts honor.

busy times

2010-01-25T07:14:00.010-06:00

Well, White Sale week is done. We were very pleased with the turn out we had. Our customer count was up 6.94% over the previous week, and for the week, we were up 12.64%, over last years' White Sale week. With all our wonderful, computer generated reports that tell me how many of this and how many of that, I don't keep good records of the weather. Last week was great, no snow! It seems last year, we had awful weather in December, buy January was good to us. Baker buddy, Mike Weber keeps good track of the weather. If I wanna know, I can call him. I'm not so good with keepin' notes. Even when I save it in a computer, I never can remember which one I used.

A lady called me last week, this is another example of my office skills, one of those, "Been comin' to the bakery for years. I knew your mom". If it's true I would recognize her, I'm sure. Said her husband "Really likes the tart au citron, they eat in Paris. It's his birthday and I'd like two for Sunday". No problem, I always wanted to make that. My buddy William, out in Seattle, makes loads of it. I have a great formula for lemon filling, so, let's give it a shot. Straight up, sorry, in a word, bada_s! I used an all butter tart dough that Jennifer uses for her fruit tarts. Lined a few tart rings, and baked em'. I cooked a "Lemon creameaux" filling. French for "Super creamy, like never before, lemon pie filling". No water, lemon juice, eggs, sugar, butter, loads o' butter, vanilla bean, and a pinch of gelatin. You cook the eggs, sugar and lemon juice over boiling water, to 80c. Allow it to cool to 60c. You add cubed butter with an immersion blender, so it gets really smooth. Pour the filling in the baked tart shells, and allow it to set overnight.This recipe has it all,cloudy from the butter, intense yellow from the eggs, specks of black gold(vanilla seeds), crunchy almond infused tart shell, under toasted meringue. I talked to Jennifer, we're gonna start makin' four inch versions for the store. Oh, as for my office skills. I never wrote down her name, just relied on my memory to have them ready for yesterday.I assume she came in. All the tarts are gone. Dey some lucky folk!

Gotta get upstairs and get this thing started. Got cleaned out, over the weekend. Or as my dad would say "We took a severe beating about the head and shoulders".

I've seen the light

2010-01-22T05:23:00.002-06:00

I just ate a glazed donut, a fresh glazed donut. I don't know if I ever talked about it here, but growing up, I never ate the fresh stuff. Never, never, ever, ate anything that we could sell, wasn't allowed. To this day, there are items we make, that I've never eaten, fresh. I've always been confused about pumpkin pie. We sell boat loads of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. I never sat down at a Thanksgiving dinner and ate pumpkin pie. We always had lemon meringue pie, that the meringue had slid off. Every morning I eat out of the stale pile. I am my mother's son, she died in 1987. Funny how that stuff stays with you. Anyway, a fresh glazed donut, MY GOD! No wonder none of them ever make it to the stale pile. Soft, shiny, crunchy sweetness, not a trace of grease. Artuo, you da man.

My favorites out of the stale pile, are our cinnamon rolls. No actually, cheese danish is my favorite. I gotta better chance of winnin' the big ball game in the Illinois lottery, than gettin' a cheese danish. Two, three times a week there is a cinnamon roll, usually the ones that get torn when the store folks break them apart to sell them. We bake them so they bake together, the result is a roll that has no crust, soft all the way around. I like to dunk 'em in milk, whole milk, not the stuff we use at home, until they are mushy, just to the point of needing a spoon.

Since we got our new creme whipping machine, and started using 100% pure creme, I do break a cupcake in half and just stand above fifteen liters of sweetened, heavy creme, fluffy like shaving creme. I've found that one is never enough, cause ya always leave crumbs from the first one. Ya need that second one to chase away the crumbs from the first. If only we could sell that experience!

It kills me when my one of my daughters, comes thru the front door of the bakery, instead of the back door. They always enter the shop looking for me, eating a fresh, Bennison's sandwich and drinking a bottle of orange juice. What? I've never eaten a fresh sandwich. Once in a while I'll eat a day old Monaco(turkey) sandwich, on a Sunday morning. Oh, the guilt.

That glazed donut won't do it for me today. Won't make til' lunch. Since we were busy yesterday, slim pickins in the stale pile. Gotta get upstairs and find an reason for Franky to get some creme whipped early.

ya never know who's watching

2010-01-21T04:59:00.005-06:00

I mentioned yesterday, that I would post the letter I got from Hermann Ried. Mr. Ried builds a full line of pretzel producing equipment, donut fryers and grease filters. He also has a written a book about homemade jams. Not sure how the two are related but....
He is a baker and konditor as well. Here is the post that I mentioned:

Dear Jory,

the parcel together with your friendly message has arrived recently. Cordially thanks for that !

I would like to respond in detail to the parcel´s content. You may know, that we as Germans are not so convinced on both US food and the habits of eating in your country. We also know about strange combinations of flavors in the US, at least we think it is.

According to all that we were very skeptic to what you´ve sent us.

Never before we found ourselves so surprised ! Beside the wonderful FLORENTINER your STOLLEN: a real masterpiece ! For years I had never been eating such a stollen. And believe me, this compliment is meant just honest.

I know what to talk about, because I am master (Handwerksmeister) in both as baker and confectioner and still like to consume cookies and sweets.

Unfortunately here Stollen is going to become gradually worsening in quality and taste, a mass product during the season. Our bakers should try the American Stollen …

Again, many thanks (and when your pretzels taste like your stollen, it would be a good advise to rent a booth at the Munich Octoberfest !)

----------------------------------------
Kind reagrds from Germany,

ried-Nahrungstechnik

Hermann Ried
Hochvogelweg 18
Probstried
D-87463 Dietmannsried

I took this an ultimate compliment. I also heard from Yvonne, our pretzel dipper smuggler, and she told me that he contacted her, and wanted me to know that his comments were not to be taken lightly. I also sent the women that did all the work getting our stollen forms/moulds thru customs. I think English was an issue for her, her "Thank you" response, to me, was funny, and cute, at the same time. We had a call last week from a customer that wanted stollen, only four. Had it been twelve, I'd a made it. Make twelve for her and another six or eight for myself, get me thru til' Thanksgiving.

Yesterday. Matt ordered a new monitor to be used in our store. We've been running various recordings, Raymond Calvel instructional video's and footage from past Coupe competitions, on a regular video recorder,dvd player/television. A few months ago, we bought an upscale video camera. Matt has been shooting, whatever is going on behind the scenes. He will put together a really cool video, that we will run all day long. Something about our new server having more capacity. We plan to do holiday ones as well. Nothing can catch someone's eye, better than the construction of a gingerbread house. Hope to have it all running by the first of February.

Mr. George Christy called me yesterday, from Pasadena, California. Said "I've been following your blog. Can you send me a few things"? He wants apfelstrudel. I told him "Doesn't travel well". He said "Doesn't matter just wrap it up and send it". I told him "It's goin' out Monday". He doesn't know how jazzed I can get over a call like that.

Gotta get upstairs, got some apples to peel.

paczki eating contest

2010-01-20T07:27:00.004-06:00

Man, been a while! I feel we are returning to a more "Normal" schedule after the holidays. I've remembered how we spend our days, without focusing on things that are only red and green. It is a welcome thing, this month of January. It's a nice change of pace, getting home before the streetlights are on. Although we are running a good bit ahead of last January.

Last Saturday, the 16th, we had our first "Winter market". The theme was "For love of the game". They had a lot of game producers there and a nice menu of chef demos. We had a great spot, right inside the door, on the first floor. The market occupied three floors of the Notebart Nature Museum. We were sold out at 10:30. We'll be better prepared on February 13th.

This is the third day of our "White sale". Been going well. I made the first batch of "White" pound cake, on Saturday. I wanted it cooled well enough to cut, and wrap, Sunday. Came out really nice. Old school, Chicago pound cake formula. Made with hi-ratio shortening, no butter. I tried making the second batch, replacing part of the shortening with butter. Not such a good idea. The loaves lost a lot of volume in the oven. So much for trying to improve things! Scratch cake mixes need to be in balance, very important. To make cakes sweet enough for American palette, they must contain more sugar than flour. To dissolve the high amount of sugar, it takes more liquid. There are emulsifiers added to the "Cake" shortening we use, to allow better adhesion between the liquid and the fat. There are limited amounts of lecithin in butter, as well as egg yolks, but trace amounts. So by replacing emulsified shortening with butter, the mix started to almost separate.

The biggest news is our upcoming Paczki Eating contest. We are going to do it on Saturday the 13th of February. We are planning on eight, two man teams. We are holding it as a fundraiser for Hatian relief, thru the Red Cross. We've got one team secured. Info is going to the sororities and fraternities on the Northwestern campus today.

Oh, almost forgot, our pretzel dipper has been shipped from Germany! Coolest news is the response I got from the goods that we sent to them. I sent a stollen, some florentine and some springele to both the folks that made the dipper and the young lady that acted as our pretzel dipper trafficker. The fellow that builds pretzel dippers is a baker. He had wonderful things to say about our stollen. I will post his letter tomorrow.

Gotta run, got "White sale" goods to bake.

not sure where they come from

2010-01-07T05:31:00.003-06:00

Had a great day yesterday. Don't know if folks were runnin' out before the snow, or it was the Epiphany thing. We sold more than king cakes and pithiver. The hispanic bakeries really cranked yesterday, sellin' their "Roscas". My buddy John Roeser(Roeser's Bakery) did very well, down near Humboldt Park. Not typically thought of the go-to-place for a Hispanic king cake, he sold a lot. He does it right, buys the quince and guava paste, buys the proper boxes. He deserves to sell 'em.

We have the store decorated for our "White Sale". Passed out a lot of fliers already. If the weather is fair that week, we will do well. The dates are the 18th to the 24th. We've ordered all the proper packaging/ingredients, etc. Last year, we saw an increase in store traffic, that week, by 449 people. That was compared to the previous week. Don't know if it was the White Sale, or the fact that we were a week further from New Year's diet resolutions, or could've been the weather. Who knows?

We don't seem to be getting the "Rush week" orders we are accustomed to. I feel it's next week, but not so much on the books yet. We've always done pretty well with that. Sororities order a lot of baked goods for that week, well used to, anyway. Baked foods at these events, could have gone by the way of the "Corporate Christmas party". Second Christmas in a row here, nothin'. We used to do large, large Christmas parties, for offices and business's here in town. We had more country club work this holiday season, but small to medium size places, nothin'!

I came in a couple hours ago. It was startin' to snow. I gotta get some salt spread, out on the sidewalk. Hollertacha later.

little ol' lady made my day

2010-01-05T04:54:00.003-06:00

Well, we installed our new server yesterday. Boxes arrived from Newegg and within a couple hours it was up and running. Sixteen computers in the bakery now. Of course, with any upgrade or addition, there is always a computer somewhere that someone needs in the middle of the night that didn't receive the proper "IP address" or the network wasn't set up properly. I got here this morning and there was an error message about "Accepting the newest change", or something. So I acted like any other night baker, and started clicking away. I got lucky, at least it seems. Our "IT guy", Matt will be here soon. He really is amazing. I'm one generation late for all this technology stuff. But, I'm learning.

We have plans to decorate the store today for our "White Sale". We are gonna do that the week of the 18th. It did well the last couple of years. The store really looks good, when we get the clotheslines up. Sorry to see the Christmas stuff come down. Christmas is when our store looks it's best.

Yesterday afternoon, Matt and I were in the office here, and a call came in on the office number and the answering machine picked up. An elderly women's voice, a little apprehensive about speaking to our machine, said "Just before Christmas, I purchased a stollen. I have to tell you, it's been years since I enjoyed stollen that much. It was very nice. Thank you. That's all", click. No name or phone number. Made my day. Made my week. My dad and I have been eating a stollen, thin slices for the last week. It's almost gone(I just sniffled). Kinda like frosty the snowman, "I'll be back again someday". Eating that stollen, I find myself staring at the crumb, how nice and light, the colour is. I eat it and I think, "We made this, How did we do this"? Excellent crumb, terrific flavour. Yeah, I know it's just stollen, but it's perfect. Oh well, next November.

Hey, time to get back to it. White sale comin' up, lots of king cakes, paczki, hell, that magical spring day will be here soon. "Pitchers and catchers report".

the coffee here has great power

2010-01-02T08:08:00.003-06:00

I think the colour has come back in my face. It was an incredibly successful Christmas season. The weather played out perfect. December '08, the weather wasn't so kind. So the increase we felt, was a little false. But none the less.

Not much left. A couple of house kits, twelve to fifteen pounds of cookies that never got packed. Pretty much, whatever we had left, was left because it got lost. The bakery was so full of stuff, I can understand how it happens.

First time we ever baked stollen for New Year's. Sold it all. All but the one we cut. Gotta say, pretty incredible stuff. No wonder we sold so much of it. I plan on baking more. I think we will sell it thru the Epiphany. New Years' Eve was very busy as well. We could've sold another fifty baguettes and a boat load of ciabatta. Sold a lot of cakes, as well. French silk pies, chocolate leaf tortes, and of course, red velvet cakes.

So, it wasn't all pristine here either. On the night of the 18th, I had a fever, like never before. No chance to take any sleep aiding drugs. Working the twenty on and four off schedule, it's tough to beat a virus. I coughed, and my chest rattled for eight days. It went thru the bakery, bad. My wife and son were very, very sick. But we played hurt. Lots of tea, Sudafed, and Z-Pac. We were closed for two days, the 25th and 26th. I woke up on the 26th, my back was killing me. I couldn't stand up straight. I came down to the bakery to get things mixed for that night, rememeber the artisan process thing? Levains' need to be fed. poolish and ciabatta need to be mixed. I made a pot of coffee, carried a couple of bags of flour up the stairs, and instantly felt better. Guess I needed some flour in my lungs.

The morning of the 24th, about 6:15am, pos computers crashed. Matt was here, got 'em back right away, except he had to "Relocate the server". We've been getting by. We're having to retrieve data in a roundabout way. New server will be here on Monday. I guess we are going to a remote server. One that there will be no access to. I just try to make sure there is salt and yeast in all of our doughs'.

Well, gonna get upstairs. Last week I told Patti, "I can't remember how we spend our days here, if we are not making Christmas goods". Gonna take a few days before I remember. Our 2010 farmer's market application is due, here in Evanston, on Monday.

Happy New Year.

twenty five hours til we close

2009-12-23T15:14:00.002-06:00

every once ina while my wife says "It's been a rough day at sea". Thinking of her now. Also thinking of Tom Hanks character "John Miller" in "Saving Private Ryan". If your a fan you'll know what I'm referring to, every time the phone rings I feel further from home.

To my baker buds, Godspeed, we're almost home.

we'll see

2009-12-18T15:38:00.001-06:00

My gang is starting to find their way out of here for the day. I told them all, get to bed early. Tomorrow we will find out just how much we can get done here, in a day. I guess people who have a life, attend things like Christmas parties. Evidently there are a lot of 'em.

thinkin' 'bout what's next

2009-12-16T04:18:00.007-06:00

Just waiting. Lots of large orders forthcoming, and we kinda need to get them out of here before we can go forward. We finished packing cookies yesterday. We did lot more than last year. Hope the snow Gods are with us. Eight more days. I think we are all getting tired of looking at, and producing the same stuff, over and over. I got an email yesterday, turns out the Green City Market application is available on line, and due by February 25th. The older I get, the faster it goes.

We ordered our king cake boxes yesterday. That whole episode begins on January 6th. We will do loads of Pithivier, for that day. We had lady call from New Jersey, she ordered six to be delivered on the 5th of January. Lots of folks ask me about the significance of January 6th. I guess with benefit from the bakery life, I understand the "Tweleve days of Christmas". The sixth of January is the twelfth day after Christmas. The day the wise men arrived in Bethelhem. They saw the star, and their camels only had one speed. Evidently, Amtrack didn't run between wherever they were, and Bethlehem. Wonderin', were they together when they saw the star? Why would three kings be together in the first place? Pitihivier, is the king cake, sold in France. The Celebration of the Epiphany, is much larger is other cultures. In France each Pithivier has the "Feve"(bean) in it. They are all sold with a gold paper crown as well. Whomever gets the piece with the feve, is the "Roi"(king), and earns the crown.
Pithivier is a very delicious puff pastry cake filled with a thick layer of almond cream. I have a baker buddy, Laurent LeDaniel, has a bakery in Reims, already got a freezer full of 'em. He makes chocolate ones as well.

We will be doing our January "White Sale" the week of the 17th. We will offer white bread, white pound cake, coconut macaroons, cheese coffee cake, etc at very reduced prices. We will also start hot cross buns at the same time. Soon after that, Paczki.

First things first, got a load of macaroons to get out for an order today. Gingerbread macaroons, very tasty. We flavour the shells with a little spice, and molasses, and fill 'em with a blend of white chocolate gancahe, cream cheese and a little more spice. Probably wouldn't go over in France.

subdivision after subdivision

2009-12-12T05:33:00.002-06:00

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.

the four try rule

2009-12-09T04:45:00.006-06:00

We produced enough yesterday, I gotta spend some time in the office today. Days are gonna start runnin' into nights, very soon here.

Last week I found some clear, soft plastic, candy "Tubes". Today we are going to pack four macaroons, in a tube. Gonna make a smokin' hot, affordable, delicious gift. We will be selling them for $5.29. One each gingerbread, chocolate, strawberry and pistachio macaroon, is how we will be filling them. The dilemma is how to finish 'em. They need a bow, or something. I'm sure the girls will come up with something.

We are baking a batch of stollen everyday now. I mentioned it before, but now, this stollen is "Spot on". We got 'er figured out. It took us four tries. Wise baker friend John Roeser learnt me that long ago. "When you start something new, it takes a minimum of four tries before you get it dialed in". He was "Spot on", as well. On our first try, I looked at our new stollen molds, small ones rated at 500g, and large 1 kilo. I said "No way will that much mass fill these molds". My bad, I questioned German molds makers, as to how much stollen dough will fill their pans. Funny, they were right. We scaled 'em to heavy. They baked up over the edge of the mold. Second try, we reduced the weight, and baked them a little to dark. We baked them in our rotating oven, just setting the mold on the oven shelf. Third try, we baked them by setting the stollen mold on a sheet pan, trying to protect the bottom. I under baked 'em. Fourth try, on sheet pans, longer, hotter bake time. Yahtzee! We cut one yesterday. Aged folk will remember, the Imperial margarine commercial, on black and white television. A guy spreads Imperial margarine on a slice of toast and trumpets sound, and a crown appears on his head. "Flavour fit for a king"! Very appropriate.

Late yesterday afternoon, myself, my dad and my son finished some more gingerbread houses. One of them Christmas moments in the bakery, you'll never forget.

First time, I don't have to get upstairs. I gotta get to the other office where the checkbook is. The checkbook, flour bills, gas and phone bills and a couple of bank statements to balance.

just another event

2009-12-07T05:58:00.004-06:00

What a weekend! I guess it all started Friday, when we were to deliver 1500 brat buns and 500 hot dog buns to the Christkindl Markt on Lincoln avenue, in Chicago. We got that done. Chef Martin called late Friday and wanted another 500 brat buns for Saturday, no problem. Friday afternoon, Patti and I went down to the new "French market", in the Ogilvie train station. We sell to Pastoral Artisan Cheese shops, they have a beautiful spot in the market. They ask that we go and do a tasting kinda thing. We took a loaf of miche and ten or twelve loaves of bread. Plan was to sample bread and talk about it from 3:30 to 5:30, right during the Friday afternoon rush. The market opened on Thursday, Pastoral sold out of bread in an hour or two. They tripled their order for Friday. For Friday, I think they got around a hundred fifty or sixty loaves. They were down to a handful of loaves when Patti and I got there. They were gone within thirty minutes of our arrival. So we were sampling bread, but had nothing to sell. We ended up selling a few of the loaves we brought with us. They called over to their Broadway store and made arrangements for more bread to be sent over. It showed up around 5pm. Patti and I were bagging and another person was on the register. The bread vaporized. Customers acted like it was free. Another event to support my beliefs, the world is starving for baked goods. Real baked goods.

I hopped in the van Saturday morning around 2:30, powered up my cell phone. I had a message, it was night baker Cornell,"Some Martin guy called from some grindel market, says he needs another 1500 hot dog buns". Wow, didn't expect that. I knew he would need them by noon. Kudos to my night guys, they stayed and ran two big bun doughs. We finished with another half batch. We delivered by noon. Gotta say, pretty cool, we divide our buns on a 2pocket, "Roll divider". It is a hopper fed machine. Large chunks of dough get dropped in the top and they come out round dough balls at the bottom. We were scaling the pieces at 70g. The batch made 588 pieces. In just under thirteen minutes they had the dough divided and rounded. Typical scenario would be to divide the dough into 2500g pieces, round them into a big ball and put them into a divider that would cut that piece into 36, 70g pieces. Without the machine we have, we'd still be here dividing and rounding.

It was not all roses on Saturday though. Just the kinda stuff they don't show you on the Food Network. I baked a sheet of pumpkin slices, and a few pumpkin pies. Didn't quite look right comin' from the oven. It cooled, we tasted it, sure enough, sugar free. Once again, folks never come in looking for the sugar free items when we have them. Kinda like the mini donut customers. I'm often asked "Do you make mini donuts"?, I reply, "Sometimes, but never when you're looking for 'em". I tried a new stollen formula on Saturday, failed. I ran out of time, rushed it to the oven. A young baker person, related to me, dropped six beautifully glazed chocolate mousse cakes on Saturday. So, goes to show ya, not every day can be a good day.

In light of all that, it was an incredible weekend business wise. We are running way ahead of the first six days of last December. Don't know if it's weather related. We sold a lot of cookies Saturday and Sunday. Got lots of gingerbread houses on order.

Gotta run, the basement office is just about under the store door. I can hear 'em comin' in now, stompin' the snow off their feet. In my mind, Christmas really begins today, December 7th. Gonna start workin' like men for the next 18 days. Night and day.

My dad says sixty eight years ago today, he was playing sandlot football. Somebody told him Pearl Harbor was attacked, he said "Where the hell is Pearl Harbor"? He hasn't forgotten that moment, neither should we.

wonderin' why it takes so long

2009-12-02T05:31:00.004-06:00

Well we got the oven to turn off. Turns out the switch is a little "Soft". Probably need to replace that soon. Seems that portion of the bakery is back in order.

Things seem to be moving along with our plans to take over part of the old print shop next door. I heard a long time ago, "If the rest of the world operated like the bakery business, the world would be a better place". people call the bakery at 3pm Tuesday and order a birthday cake to be picked up Wednesday at 9am. They come in, it's ready. I drop off a motor at the motor repair shop, 3pm Tuesday. The guy says "I'll get on it right away. Give me a call at the end of the week". WHAT???? My dad worked for Standard Brands for twenty five years, before he bought the bakery. He sold ingredients to bakeries and restaurants. In 1967, Chicago experienced a record setting snow storm. I remember he got home late that night. In the morning the car was half in the driveway. He couldn't pull it all the way in. Anyway, the city was shut down. No freight in or out of the city for days. When things started to loosen up, Standard Brands, sent a salesman to Joliet, Illinois with a brief case full of yeast. The guy grabbed a cab and spent the day, going from bakery to bakery, dropping off yeast.

I guess I'm telling you this because, the city of Evanston is emptying out. More and more business leaving every week. Mostly on the east side of the tracks. I've been trying to get things worked out with the property management people for months, on the space next door. I call them, they get back to me right away, a week later. If only they worked like bakers.........

This afternoon I'm attending a monthly bakers meeting. It'll be back to the bakery Thursday morning and off to the races for the next twenty two days. Orders are piling up, gonna be a big weekend. We're baking for a few ethnic Christmas type events. This weekend, the Swedes and the Germans.

I told Mark I'd help with a big dough he has on the table. I told him I'd be there right away. That was twenty minutes ago.

long day, lots of miles

2009-12-01T04:42:00.004-06:00

It was 12:30am when I stepped thru my back door, into the kitchen at home, this morning. Oven was firing. Acting like it should. The down side, as of right now, we can't switch the fan motor off. I'll figure that out today. As I told Patti last night, "We didn't bake much Monday, gonna be a long time before we need to turn it off anyway". It doesn't have much down time as it is. Most days, we turn off the oven between 4 and 6pm. It really never cools down, bricks stay hot a long time.

My son Guy left for Cleveland, Twinsburg actually, around 8:15, Monday morning. We were here waiting last night, around 8:30 for his return. Kinda cool, like a herd of doctors waiting for a donated kidney. I think he said it was just shy of seven hundred miles. I left late afternoon yesterday and he called me when he hit the skyway. I arrived back at the bakery around 8pm. Made coffee and waited. As soon as he arrived, Ken and I, started twistin' wrenches. About 11:15, we turned it on. What a beautiful sound. Like summer sunrise and birds chirpin'. As soon as the temperature started to climb, Arturo started the mixer.

Another thing happened yesterday. We opened a bag of pretzel salt. Since we started making pretzels, we've been using coarse, kosher salt. Salesman was in a few weeks back and I spotted pretzel salt in his sales book. I ordered one. A hundred pounds of pretzel salt. What a difference! The stuff is white, white, not clearish like kosher salt. It really stands out on the darker skin of a pretzel. Looks just like the pretzels in Germany. I never researched it because I assumed salt like that, wasn't available here. Who knew?

Gotta get upstairs. We're a day behind. We'll never make it up. I've been here since 3am. No need to worry about repairin' that "Off" switch on the oven. My baby's gonna be tired. Just so she doesn't get cranky. In twenty four days and we'll shut'r off.

my baby's sick

2009-11-30T04:38:00.003-06:00

I spent yesterday afternoon walking around the Christkindl market, downtown Chicago. Gotta say, a little disappointed. Dinkels bakery from Chicago had excellent merchandise. Stollen was delicious. We bought an apple and cheese strudel that was also very good. Hot chocolate, in a cute little ceramic boot, store bought marshmallows, real whip creme, not as good as Bennison's.

Now, the pretzels, not Dinkels, I think "Pitiful", is a compliment. I was all excited, when I heard there was going to be a pretzel vendor there. What a let down! Frozen dough nonsense, allegedly from Germany. Don't think so. I think you'll spend a lot of time, walking the streets of Darmstadt, before you'll find a jalapeno pretzel. Loads of lebkuchen, assorted gingerbread, all mass produced. You know, the stuff with no personality. Maybe next year.....maybe next year.

Came back to the bakery last night, to find, our deck oven wouldn't start. Pulled out lot's of volt meters, and testers, determined that we have a direct short in the circulating fan motor. We baked all of our bread in our rack oven last night. I was here walking the floors until almost 9pm. At which point I gave up. I'll start again this morning. There's a new motor in Cleveland. Might involve a lot of driving today. I got a great story explaining why I would bother to do that.

Cornell Gorham, works here at night. Not a baker, a very good bakers helper. Thru the summer, he sorts and packs all the bread that goes to the farmer's markets. He can load an unload the oven, mix scones, run the divider,etc. He works on Sunday nights. I explained to him how to bake bread using a rack oven, on perforated screens. I got here this morning, didn't sleep all night, you know how it is with a sick child. I knew what I would find, supermarket looking bread. Pale, squishy, bumps on the bottom. Gotta say, what's here, better than I expected. Cornell says, word for word "That brick stove makes that much difference? Bread looks like the bread at Jewel". A defining moment.

Gotta get upstairs, get the day started. Gonna be lots of fighting for oven space this morning. It's difficult to understand how guys with years of experience, don't realize that yeasted product has the right of way to the oven. Oh well. Gonna gather up my screwdrivers and wrenches. No, I don't trust any local serviceman to work on my baby, ever. Although, this is the first time it's ever been sick for this long.

the dust has settled

2009-11-28T05:40:00.003-06:00

Saturday morning, a little unlike the scene forty eight, or seventy two hours ago. Quiet, tranquil, refreshing. Although, we're gearin' up again. We have an order for ninety five, gingerbread house kits for Evanston Golf Club, Sunday. Needless to say, we didn't/couldn't get anything done before the holiday for that. Yesterday, Arturo ran close to eighty sheet pans of gingerbread. Today we will cut them and put them together. I can remember, when my dad first bought he bakery. To roll the gingerbread sheets we would roll them by hand on a cloth flour sack. Roll the dough up on a broom handle and unroll it on the sheet pan. To do eighty sheets would have taken days. Yesterday, we filled our spiral mixer twice with gingerbread dough. Hundred pounds of flour and five gallons of honey per batch. We run the sheets thru our cookie machine. We can set it up so it deposits a continuous strip of dough, as wide as a sheet pan. It doesn't stop and start as the end of the pan, so they need to be trimmed, by hand as they come off the machine. We ran each batch in less than ten minutes. Ten minutes. Now, it took a little longer to get them all trimmed, and yes it took five guys, but....in a matter of a couple hours they were all mixed, baked and they had started cutting them. Anybody tells me about the good ol' days, can kiss.....

Next week is the Christkindlmarket in Lincoln Park. Chef Martin is preparing brats and hot dogs. He owns a an artisan style sausage company here in Chicago. Martin and I go far back. He is from Krefeld, outside Dusseldorf. I met him when he first came to the states. He worked for Wolfgang Puck, here in Chicago. He has ordered two hundred fifty dozen brat buns and hundred fifty dozen "Wiener buns" as he calls them. There's really no end in sight here. My mother used to say "It'll keep ya outta the tavern".

Oh, Thanksgiving was spectacular. We well out did last year, customer count and product. The best news, we only had two orders that weren't picked up. Only bakers can relate to that. This was our second Thanksgiving, using our computerized, retail order system. It kept us very well organized(loose term), and it kept us from duplicating orders, etc. Back when we were rollin' those honey house sheets by hand, the day after Thanksgiving, we would have fifteen or twenty orders left.

Gotta get upstairs, once again, got a lot to do.

eye of the storm

2009-11-25T03:47:00.003-06:00

Upstairs, it's kinda indescribable, there is a hint of unsettling calm, before the doors open, then it will be up for grabs. A lot like riding "Shockwave", up at Six Flags. I'm gonna keep my eyes closed and hold on real, real tight, until it comes to a stop. We're an hour and forty minutes from opening.

I wish all bakers, everywhere, best of luck today. There isn't another group of professionals that is more deserving of their success, than us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

damn home gmes

2009-11-23T08:06:00.002-06:00

I think they outta outlaw Northwestern Home football games, om critical holiday weekends. In fact I'm insisting on it! There were so many damn people around here over the weekend, we got nothin' started for Thanksgiving week. They played Wisconsin, who's idea was that. It's like a swarm of locust came thru here. They p[layed Penn State here, on Halloween. On a brighter note, we packed around seven hundred pounds of Christmas cookies, yesterday. Packing folks did a great job. First real chance to use our newly designed Bennison's ribbon.

Gotta get upstairs, it's off to the races. Pies and dinner rolls, pies and dinner rolls. Wednesday and Thursday, this week, will be somethin' to see.

In case I don't get a chance to write again before the holiday, Happy Thanksgiving to all. We'll be open from 8am to 3 pm Thanksgiving day.

gotta mention this honey

2009-11-21T04:49:00.003-06:00

A few months back, baker friend, Ken Slove, Lovin' Oven Cakery in Round Lake Beach, mentioned he was selling honey in his store. Jars and bear shaped plastic containers. Said he was doing well with it. We always bought honey from a local honey farmer, Wallanches farm, over in a forgotten part of Illinois. They packed it in years ago, urban sprawl proved more financially advantageous, than spending your day getting stung by bees. He used to tell me "You get used to the stinging". What? Guess it's like gettin' used to oven burns. Anyway, they had nice honey. So I contacted this local farmer that Ken mentioned. His name is Robert Gaylor. He brought it a few hundred pounds of bulk honey, in five gallon pails. It's the most incredible honey I have ever seen. It is the colour of the apricot pancake syrup I used to see in an International House of Pancakes. And the flavour, just wonderful. The buckets come in marked "Gaylor honey". It's a little pricey, but worth every penny.

I gotta say, this year, we've had nicer pumpkin pies, than ever. Most bakers have issues with their pumpkin pies cracking. I can honestly say, in thirty five years, I haven't seen six cracked pies. But this year, they hold their shine longer than ever, they don't shrink at all. It's gotta be the honey. We baked pfeffernuss on Tuesday. Same thing, softer than ever. We baked them, cooled them overnight, coated them the next day, they are soft as cake. From our pfeffernuss dough we also make "Spitzkuchen". We roll the dough into long strings, bake 'em, and cool them overnight. The next day we cut them into trapezoids, and run them thru our chocolate enrober. One of my favorite Christmas cookies. C'mon, honey dough pieces, covered in chocolate. What could be better? Oh, our stollen.

Former queen of the Bennison croissant throne, Carla Hess, took a few of our new stollen to New Jersey, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Interested to hear what she has to say.

Gotta get upstairs, long day ahead of us. Gonna be non-stop from now until Thursday afternoon, 3pm.

Although, got some huge orders for next weekend. Loads o' gingerbread houses. Oh well, we are closed Christmas day and the 26th. We'll get a break then.

game on

2009-11-19T05:40:00.003-06:00

The holiday bake officially began yesterday. We baked our first fruit cake yesterday, and Arturo made Christmas cookies all day long. He'll be at it for the next three days and on Sunday, a herd of folks will be in to pack them. We'll put up one pound boxes, and two and three pound trays. During the year, one can purchase "loose" tea cookies, by however many you'd like. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, all of our cookies are packed. If we allowed customers to pick out their cookies, one by one, we'd need another store person,or two, and another scale. I remember the first year we did that(only offered packed cookies), my mother had a fit, "They want to pick out their cookies", she said. She got over it quick. I think around Halloween the next year she was asking "When do start packing cookies"? We sell a lot more as well. There are more people that can't wait for cookies to be weighed, than those who want to pick out their cookies. Plus they look nice, all the trays get tied with Bennison's ribbon.

Yesterday we baked fruitcake. Something new this year. We baked them in beautiful, bakeable, wooden forms, from France. They really look nice. I must say, this batch was really done well. Baked nice, not to dark.

I had a remarkable experience yesterday. We baked our second batch of stollen. While I was in Germany, I bought molds, specially made for stollen. You can't get them in this country. I didn't think I would get them this soon. They arrived on Tuesday. I bought two different sizes. They size them by stollen weight. I bought molds for 500g and one kilo stollen. The smaller mold has six in a frame and the larger one, four. Yesterday we guessed at the weight on dough, we felt was needed to fill these molds. We tried to outsmart 'em. We scaled the dough heavier than they suggested. I dropped 500g of dough in a mold and I was sure, it was to light, so we kicked it up to 560g. We scaled the larger mold at 1020g. So we shaped, proofed and baked 'em. I was pleased with them when I took them from the oven. They actually bake upside down, in a unique shaped mold with a lid. The colour was nice. Turns out, we scaled them to heavy. I guess we should have taken into account the marzipan we put inside each stollen. Ya gotta understand, I've been wanting these molds for years and years. I allowed them to cool to the point that we could handle them without hotpads. I carried one over to the table, grabbed a clean sheet pan, and in one motion I flipped the mold over. The stollen fell out. When I lifted the mold off, angels sang. Everybody is the shop was watching. In unison, they all gasped. You know that little drawn breath you make thru your mouth. They are gorgeous. A little tear formed in my right eye. The sixth most beautiful thing I ever seen, holding each of my three kids for the first time, seeing my baking team picture on the cover of the French bakers magazine,(holding the World cup), seeing the Stanley cup, live, in '92, now Bennison's stollen. They are a minimum three inches tall. Symmetrically shaped, no burned raisins, perfect. Besides, baking them in a mold, they don't loose much moisture in the oven. Jennifer smothered 'em in melted butter, and covered them with vanilla sugar. This morning we cut one, I'm struggling here, I guess, moist yellow cake, loaded with white raisins, orange peel, whole almonds and a nice layer of rum flavoued marzipan. Beyond words.

Gotta get upstairs, today is the first day of a very long string of seven days. Gonna be night and day, until 3 pm, next Thursday. Not complaining. I guess the easiest way to avoid it, is to stop looking for ways to improve our goods.

damn Schwabians

2009-11-10T05:35:00.008-06:00

So much has happened since the last time I posted. We received our cream whipping machine from Germany. Really cool, we've whipped a few batches of cream in it, still learning. Cream is delicious, as expected.

Marc Levy,CB, asked his father, Dan, to build us a pretzel rack to use in our store. He dropped it off on Saturday. Awsesome, just awesome. He did an amazing job. It looks like an American girl doll coat rack. It works too. We sold all of our pretzels, sehr schnell. Whole batch Saturday afternoon. We plan to build a three sided Plexiglas wall around it and set it on top of our counter. Evanston, get ready.

The trouble with makin' pretzels is dipping 'em in the caustic soda bath. I may have mentioned that, when I was in Germany, I went there lookin' for three things. One being a pretzel dipping apparatus. At the IBA trade fair, I found two companies that sell such a thing. One is Reid and the other is Riehle. Reid had just what I wanted, the one from Riehle would get me by, but would be my second choice. Downside, Reid doesn't sell to the states or Canada at all. Riehle, sells here, but only big industrial types units. So back to Reid. I pleaded and pleaded. They told me that if I found a German baker to purchase the unit, he could ship it to me. Awhile back I mentioned Hans, the guy who likes his rye bread "Mit der bugs", caraway seed. Funny thing, he has a sister that lives in Germany. She has daughter, Yvonne, Han's niece. She knows a baker there, he can order the unit for me. The unit is about $800US. FedEx is the only one they could find to ship the unit, another $800US. So the folks at Reid suggested that they send the unit in two pieces and we have a welder here, put it together. That is where it stands now. I'm not to familiar with German geography, but one of the last comments by Hans was "Damn Schwabians". I said "What"? He said "Dem German hillbillies". Not sure what all that meant.

Our Thanksgiving website went up yesterday. Brochures are going in the store today. Here we go. I just mentioned to the guys upstairs, "Won't be long, we'll be working like men again". Lots of dirty looks. Not sure how much busier we can get. We've been very fortunate here. We are running well ahead of last year, with no end in sight. This week we are going to start making stollen and gingerbread houses. My favorite time of year in the bakery. Come the 24th of December, I'll be damn near death, but I wouldn't trade it for love or money. Bakery smells so nice this time of year.

I also ordered Christstollen forms from Germany. There, they bake their stollen in a mold, with a cover. They are baked upside down. They loose very little moisture during the bake. Now after thirty four years, I finally got 'em. They leave Germany this week. Gonna be straight up, bad ass.

another simple idea

2009-10-29T10:34:00.003-05:00

Turns out all the folks who assured us they would buy pretzels if we made them on a regular basis, didn't shop here yesterday. Win some, loose some. We're still tryin'. Made 'em again today. Funny, different set of store personnel today, already sold a bunch. They were quick to point out, that yesterday we had them in the wrong spot in the store. They moved them today, and voila!! Sold out by eleven.

Just now, on my way to the office, my son Guy was rolling caramel apples in Halloween sprinkles. We buy caramel apples from Andrews in Chicago. Couple of reasons. First, theirs are the best. A reputable bakery supply house sells "Taffy Apple Fudge", in a pail. Theory is, just heat it up and dip your apples. Stuff is really not good. The caramel from Andrews is the real deal. The second reason is, their tricky to do. It's tricky to keep the caramel from sliding off the apple. Strange where ideas come from. Daniel is a part-time bakers assistant. The other day he had an idea to roll, plain caramel apple in Halloween sprinkles. Turns out, they've become our number one seller behind plain and peanut. Everyone used to discount Daniel, but no more. Daniel is young man that found us thru a high school program. He is, not sure how you say this, but he has slight "Special needs". Does a terrific job finishing and stacking cookies. Stacks 'em like German soldiers. We sell so many more cookies because of what he does. Our cookie case never looked nicer.

We're gettin' ready for a big weekend here. Found out last night that this is parent's weekend at Northwestern. Downtown Evanston is gonna be a madhouse.

been a while

2009-10-28T08:01:00.003-05:00

It seems like forever since I've posted anything. Being busy is a double edged sword. October has been a very big month for the bakery. Our Oktoberfest promotion brought in two hundred twenty more folks than the same week last year. I'm callin' that, worth it. Pretzels were the clear favorite of our offerings. Apflestrudel came in second. Incidentally, Matt put up a cool page on our website devoted to apflestrudel. We really are selling a lot of it. One of them things you can't get in many places. In fact, while I was in Dusseldorf, we ate a place called "Schumachers Golden Kessel". Awesome, awesome food and better beer. Lousy strudel, not lousy, but not like I'm accustomed to.

We've succumbed to the pressure. We are planning on making pretzels a few times a week. We had a group of customers that threatened a petition. Martha and Sam designed a new t-shirt. "I, heart shaped pretzel, pretzels", we should have them(the shirts) by the end of next week.

We've located a nice package for our florentines, for this Christmas season. It's a shiny gold box, with a large window. The box has an insert that has a six well insert. Will easily hold a pound of florentines. Gonna look very snappy with a strip of Bennison's ribbon around it.

Gotta get upstairs and get started. Big orders today for Allison hall, over on the campus, and the Lincoln Park Co-op. We're happy to get 'em, the weather has not been kind to the pumpkin farm this Halloween seson.

one inexpensive, valuable idea

2009-10-14T13:52:00.005-05:00

Had two really cool experiences at the trade fair in Germany. Well maybe more than two, but two stick out in my mind.

I'm sure I've mentioned Raymond Calvel, here before. He is regarded as the new age, patriarch of French bread baking. Mr. Calvel died in 2006. I never met him. Wish I had. Any real bread baker, anywhere in the world, knows his name. He has written books, that have been translated into many languages. The BBGA published a three video tape set of Mr. Calvel working at the CIA campus in Hyde Park, New York. He is really held in the highest regard in Japan. Shortly after his death, a fellow by the name Hubert Chiron, started the "Amicale Calvel", the Raymond Calvel Society. Mr. Chiron has written a book of his own. Without question, the most in depth, science of baking book, I've ever seen. Only in French, although Hubert speaks pretty good English. Hubert is a very soft spoken, humble man. I am a member of the Amicale Calvel. As far as I know, there are two members here in the states, myself and Jeff Hamelman. The society prints two newsletters a year, and they get together in France for a few bakery related excursions annually. The most recent email I got from the group announced a meeting of the group at a certain place, at a certain time, during the trade fair. Tuesday morning, October 6th, 10 am , at the Merand booth. I wanted to go, so I could pay my dues, and see other members. Merand is a French equipment manufacturer. I arrived at the booth, and Hubert was there. There were maybe a dozen or so folks, half Japanese and half French. I spoke to Hubert and offered my dues. He passed the money across the table to anther member, and they marked me as paid. I started talking to Hubert, we spoke of each others families, and the state of bread baking in each of our countries. Hubert and I agreed that the bread at the trade fair, that all the respective companies were displaying/baking/sampling, was all very "Flat". Lacked flavour, and/or character. He brought up a point, the very point that defined the place in the world for the Calvel society. Hubert said "Why can't they just use less yeast and ferment longer"? There it is, spoken from a man, who was very close to the man. A slight, humble, quiet man, who respects the proper, bread baking process. He was standing within earshot of millions and millions of Euros worth of equipment, all designed to sidestep our beliefs. I found it very ironic.

The second coolest thing I found, a German "Sahneblaeser". If I had to make a list of my reasons for traveling to IBA, this would be top on the list. It's a machine that, whips creme. It does it by blowing refrigerated air into liquid creme while a big screen spins and breaks up the air bubbles. It whips far more stable cream, with a lot more volume, in about 20% of the time. It also allows us to use more real cream. We use a blend of non-dairy topping and real cream. Without this type of whipping apparatus, whipping straight, real cream, creates cream that is far to unstable to apply to cakes. So, here in a few weeks, we will be using real cream, flavoured with pure Mexican vanilla. I can't wait. Not sure why I'm so excited. I don't shop here. Guess I'm excited for our customers. Lucky dogs, you.

home sweet home

2009-10-13T05:20:00.003-05:00

Started sorting thru eight days of mail yesterday. It's tough coming back after a week away. The show in Germany was a terrific expereience. Went with my son, we saw lots of new things. I think most importantly, my son Guy got an invite to go work in
France for three months. A type of exchange program has been offered. I would send my son there and they would send a young Frenchman here. We also found a six week program in Germany, that is taught in English. There is a chain of baking schools in Germany, similar to the Cordon Bleu schools here in the states. Same school, campuses in all the big cities. Terrific opportunities for him.

Very discouraged by the bakery situation in Germany and Belgium. I was there for eight days. I saw maximum of ten bakeries. Don't think I wasn't lookin'. Hell, I'm always on the lookout for a bakery. In Dusseldorf, we stayed outside the city. Rode the train back and forth to the city twice a day. In the morning to attend the trade fair, and back in at night for dinner. Between Nuess and Dusseldorf, on the S7 line there are two bakeries. TWO BAKERIES! I was there in 1980, there were two bakeries at every intersection. In the altstadt(old city), in Dusseldorf, they are gone. Used to be one every one hundred yards.

Went to Belgium, spent two nights in Brussels. One day we took a train over to Brugge. I think Brugge is the second largest city in Belgium. Big tourist place. A little like Venice. Canals thru the streets. Not sure how many square blocks, the city market is, but it's at least double Evanston's downtown district. Two bakeries, two macaroon shops, one pastry shop and several "Tea rooms". Sign says "Tea Room & Patisserie". Sign should say "Beer and Eclairs here". They are more focused on the beer. Great, great beer in Belgium. Lots of chocolate shops in Belgium. It appears that some are better than others, but I was very surprised at the quality of the workmanship. Lots of molded chocolates that were not handled well. The chocolates all tasted great, but the majority of the few bakery goods, I saw, were crooked. Bread was bland. Stuff had no character.

We were back in Chicago, Sunday afternoon. I came to the bakery right away, just to look things over. I returned Monday morning around 4am. I was walking up the street, approaching the bakery, half a block away, and it hit me. The aroma that is released when the oven is full of baguettes. Unmistakable, under appreciated, unforgettable, unmatchable. Fermentation, is king. We have our shortcomings here at Bennison's. We are far to busy for our square footage. We are baking round the clock, 24/7. The place never gets shutdown. We're over crowded, and there is flour everywhere. As soon as a spot gets cleaned up, there is someone standing there waiting, because he or she needs to work there. But the aromas here, oh, the aromas. I walked into that international convention. Thousands, and thousands of bakers, from every corner of the world. Places that I never heard of. Nine buildings, machines that would stick out each end of our bakery. Demos of these stainless steel giants, running non stop. Racks of rolls, pretzels, baguettes being baked all day long. Everything designed to produce it faster and cheaper. The place had no aroma. The bread had no soul. It was all pretty, nice uniform stuff. All no time doughs, no fermentation. Chemicals designed to speed up the process. It bothered me until 4am Monday morning.

More tomorrow. I'm not done ranting.

not missing home yet

2009-10-07T10:36:00.003-05:00

Robotics!! Freakin' robotics in the bakery. Incredible, here at the trade fair in Germany there is amazing stuff. Roll machines running hundreds of rolls a minute, automatically panning them, and robotic arms placing the tray in a rack. Very little manual involvement.

Seems pretzel type items are very popular here. I believe they will be the next big thing back home. We get several calls weekly, people looking for pretzel rolls and buns. Just before I left we made a load of "Lauger pretzels". We needed a picture for our website. We are doing Oktoberfest in our store the week of the 19th of October. Matt put together our opening page announcing that. We made the pretzels on a Wedenesday, and we sold them at our Aville market. Pretty incredible. We had one lady come back three times for pretzels. I think they will do well during our Oktoberfest week. Probably need to keep making them after that. During my time here at the trade fair, I found two vendors that sell pretzel equipment. The first one had just what I wanted. A little tabletop unit that will dip six pretzels at a time in the lye solution. Downside, they don't sell to the U.S. or Canada. The second vendor, will ship to us, but only sells big, expensive machines that are far to big for our bakery. I'm kinda back at square one. I'm sure I can get our local welder guy to build what I want. I'll keep ya posted.

Well it's dinner time. Headin' back to the Altstadt, old city, here in Dusseldorf. Wild busy place. Lots of nitelife. It's in a part of the city that's left from before the war. Narrow streets with no form of pattern. Probably occupies one square mile. Food here is really good. But the beer is better!

Aufwiedersehn.

how much knowledge can one room hold?

2009-10-04T15:24:00.003-05:00

Pretty cool! I spent the afternoon with the Ambassaduers du Pain, here in Germany. We had an afternoon meeting with some of the biggest players in the French baking industry. Hubert Chiron, Pierre Nury, Patrice Ferrand, Dominique Planchot, Thiery Meunier, Bruno Cormerais & more. A bakers "Woodstock". Just think of the knowledge in that room! It's a wonder it didn't catch fire. There were four of us from the states. Myself, my son Guy, Peter Yuen & Mitch Stamm. No English spoken, only French. Hubert Chiron spoke for ninety minutes about enzymes and dough conditioners. Talked about how they work and the negative effects. Mme. Raemy Esther from "Haute ecole des sciences appliquees de Zurich" spoke for another ninety minutes about bread aromas and flavours and how they are percieved by consumers. Again, all in French. Had tougher time with that. I thought about it on my way from the meeting, "Why did they choose those topics"? Easy answer, ANYONE IN THAT ROOM KNOWS HOW TO BAKE! No point explaining liquid versus stiff levain. The most impressive part, I heard it over and over. The group is built on those who are passionate about the bakery trade and asa member, you must be willing to share.

It's late, I'm not sure what day it is, I've had it.

Good night.

Tomorrow, it's off to the convention.

uber artisan hot chocolate

2009-10-01T08:47:00.002-05:00

Last night was my last night at the Aville market. I said goodbye to the customers that I recognized as "My regulars". Told them that I won't be at next week's market, and I really appreciated their support all summer long. Unanimously they had a look of panic on thier face and the immediately asked "I thought we had one more week". I explained to them that I wouldn't be at the market, but Bennison's will be there. Lots of questions about getting our goods over the winter. Marc Levy came up with a great idea, this morning. We shoul've put together a mailing list thru the summer, and we could stay in contact with the Aville customers electronically. Great idea, a little late.

I will be attending IBA, in Dusseldorf, Germany. IBA is an international trade show that takes place every three years. Largest bakery trade show there is. Several buildings showing equipment and processes that fat to large for our little bakery. But very interesting none the less. Besides it's in Germany. After a few days in Dusseldorf, we will be traveling into Belgium to visit both Brussels and Liege. Fine, fine pastry and chocolate shops in both of those cities. I plan on seeing two of the guys who were a part of the Belgium baking team, I competed against in 2005.

Another event during IBA, is a few days with the French group "Ambassaduers du pain". The "Ambassadors of Bread". I'm not yet a member, but I found a sponsor, so while I'm there I plan to join. This group is focused more on the nutritional & quality values of baked goods, rather than supporting the baking tradition.

Two days ago, Jennifer made our first sheet of "Housemade marshmallows". It's something I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to use our own marshmallows for our hot chocolate. We been making our hot chocolate syrup for years. So now, in keeping with true artisan tradition, we are using real marshmallows. The texture is so much better than store bought. They also have vanilla bean in them. That makes them really cool. White marshmallows with tiny vanilla bean specks.

Gotta get busy creating the goods we will feature during our Oktoberfest week. Not anxious to sell them but we need to get photos done for our website.

Stay tuned.

runnin' out of room

2009-09-28T06:09:00.003-05:00

Been two weeks since I posted. Been workin' the twenty on and four off schedule. There are bakers here whose last day off, was before my last posting. The Jewish holidays and the start of our pumpkin farm has had us pinned down. Now that the holidays are over, time should loosen up. It got to the point, that a week ago Friday, the "House of cards, was comin' down". It was Rosh Hashanah, the first day of our pumpkin farm and we were running our cookie sale. I was trying to unload the oven. It was so crowded, I couldn't get the door opened. I mentioned this to a baker friend of mine. I said "There wasn't room enough to get the oven door open". He said "Yeah, rack oven doors take up lot of room, swinging open". I wasn't talking about our rack oven door. I was talking about our revolving oven door. All I was trying to do, was drop down a little aluminum door. There were so many racks full of product, I couldn't do it.

Saturday morning I came in during the Saturday market bake. We had reached a new low. There were racks of shaped bread, wrapped in pallet wrap, proofing in the store. No room in back. My point, today we have a meeting with the landlord, we are leasing some more space adjacent to the bakery. Without it, we'll never get thru the upcoming winter holidays.

I baked on Saturday night. We started at midnight. We are moving some folks around, adding a couple more. The corporate world calls it "Multitasking", I always new it as "Knowing different jobs". I decided that we need a "Proofer/retarder". It is a unit that is loaded with raw, yeasted product, during the day. Lets go with, loaded around noon. At that point it is thirty eight degrees. Around 9pm, it shuts off. Sits dormant for a few hours. Around midnight it adds ambient temperature air to the chamber. Around 3am, it starts to get warm, around 90'f. As it is warming up, it starts to add humidity to the chamber. At 5am, the product is proofed and ready to bake. It would allow us to start two hours later on Sunday morning. Familiar problem. If we don't have room to open the oven door, where would we have room for a proofer/retarder? Add it to my wish list.

Currently, we get all the product ready on Saturday afternoon. The last guy out at 9pm, pulls everything out and we let it sit at room temperature until we get here. It's chancy. In the summer, product is ready to soon. In the winter, product is late, because it is so cold in here.

I guess it has worked this way so far. But the thought of two extra hours sleep on a Saturday night.

gonna be a short night

2009-09-14T19:15:00.003-05:00

it's been a while. I apologize. I've been really overwhelmed lately. Not sure why, could be age. I can't remember a time, when I felt this far behind. It seems everyday we have a very large order from an array of customers. Wednesday we start our Rosh Hashanah goods. The same day, Didier farms opens their pumpkin patch. Wednesday, we have an order for an Italian festival at a large retirement home, here in Evanston. Worst of all the Andersonville farmer's market starts an hour earlier, at 3pm. This week one of our production staff, Joe Falcinelli, is attending a four day class at the French Pastry School. Pierre Zimmerman is here doing a guest chef class for four days. He is teaching an artisan bread class. I met Pierre at the Coupe du Monde in 2002. He was captain of the French team that won in 1996. He was the coach of the French team that won in 2008. He operates a family bakery in Alsace. Needless to say, he's a player. Hopefully Joe learns a thing or two.

The French Pastry School offers two professional bread classes each year. Up until now, they have had Pierre teach a viennoiserie(breakfast pastry) class, as well. The visiting bread instructors are Jeff Hamelman and Didier Rosada. I send one person to each of two of the three classes. I can't really say anyone has ever come back and said "We have to make this, We made this in class". It's more about maintaining interest and stimulation. I firmly believe educating our staff is the best way to spend our money.

Well, day is done, gonna be a short night. Gonna be lots of short nights this week.

cracked pumpkin pies?

2009-09-02T06:54:00.003-05:00

Last time, the last time I will speak of things that we produce here that I am very pleased with. A few weeks ago, I boasted about the infrequency of overbaked goods, the next morning we burnt up an oven full of eclairs. Yesterday, I mentioned about our florentines. Wasn't but two hours after I posted it, I went upstairs, florentines looked terrible. I think we have some funny sugar. I've been buying up sugar, because of rumblings of nationwide shortages, causing drastic price increases. The other day they cooked some simple syrup. Simple syrup a mixture of granulated sugar, water and cream of tartar. Joe called me over to the stove and questioned the color of the syrup. It was as dark as honey. So I'm suspicious of the sugar in the ugly florentines. Gonna try again with a different brand of sugar.

Busy day yesterday. A lady called mid morning, claimed the pumpkin donuts this year are better than last years. I'm puzzled, the last pumpkin donut she could have possibly tasted from here was December 24th. Pretty good memory. We mixed a batch of pumpkin pie filling yesterday as well. We will bake it today. It seems all bakers prefer to let pumpkin pie mix sit overnite, in the fridge, before baking. Our mix in particular works much better that way. Although I don't have much to compare it to. We've been making the same pumpkin pie recipe since my dad bought the bakery. I'm hesitant to talk about the success we have with it. I'll probably go upstairs and see some ugly pumpkin pies.

I'm really pretty proud of our pumpkin pies. We use only fresh broken eggs, not powdered or frozen. We use quite a bit of honey. If the mix sits overnight like I mentioned, the pies really have a nice shine. All that honey comes to the top as they cool. We use half evaporated milk and half fresh whole milk, no milk powder. This is the truth. I've been here, at Bennison's for thirty four Thanksgiving seasons. I'd be surprised if I've seen a half a dozen pumpkin pies crack in that time. Cracked pumpkin pies is something a lot of bakers battle. If I hear of that occurring, I immediately suggest trying fresh broken eggs, two and a half pounds for every number ten can of pumpkin.

A lot of old bakers believe that you need to "Age" canned pumpkin from one season to the next. Salesmen come in and when I ask about pumpkin, they reply "I have last years crop for x amount, and I have this years crop for this amount". Not sure I agree with the whole aging pumpkin thing. My dad always bought a year ahead. I guess maybe I'm just not old enough to think like that yet.

Gotta get upstairs and get started here. Got a lot of stuff to get ready for the market tonight. Weather is gorgeous, gonna be a big day.

thumbs down to the garlic

2009-09-01T08:00:00.005-05:00

Well I got here this morning and they were here, pumpkin donuts. I thought we would wait until next Tuesday, the day after Labor day, but Arturo said "It's September 1st". There will be celebrating in the streets, at the corner of Davis and Maple. So I went ahead and made a batch of florentines.

Florentines are legendary here in Evanston. Tag's bakery, here in town, up on Central street, makes 'em by the ton. Especially at Christmas, although last Christmas season, he was down big time from previous years. Used to be, we made florentines just for the customers that were in the wrong bakery. Folks from out of town would come to our bakery looking for florentines, thinking we had to be the florentine bakery. Not the case anymore. I gotta say, the florentines at Tag's are beautiful, just beautiful. Ours were never that nice. I mentioned before that I spoke with a few sugar guys I know and they fixed our problem. Now, ours are very nice. I'm looking forward to a busy winter season with them. We are working on some form of packaging, to create an upscale gift package.

We've already started on another sheet of plum kuchen slices. A number of people asked about them yesterday. We were busy yesterday, lots of traffic in the store. I guess we could really live on the edge and put together some pumpkin slices. Better yet, we make pumpkin cheese slices. We use a prebaked short dough bottom, we spread on a quarter inch of cheese filling, and then pour on pumpkin pie mix. They bake forever, but I'm tellin' you. Delicious, flat out delicious. We used to have a young man working in the store named John Willis. He went off to college. Every Thanksgiving he calls, from the airport looking for pumpkin cheese slices. Comes right here from the airport. We also make a pumpkin cheese gallete, same format only we use pie dough for that.

Tomorrow, for the Aville market we are making T.A.R.R.P. bread. We use sun dried tomatoes, asiago cheese, fresh rosemary, roasted garlic and shredded Parmesan. Hence the name. We use a little Whole wheat flour in the dough, we shape this afternoon, retard overnite and bake tomorrow. We use old baguette dough as the preferment. we don't add any yeast to the dough. There is enough residual yeast in the old dough. Really has outstanding flavour. I'm not a big fan of garlic, so I've only eaten very small pieces of this bread, but the aroma is incredible. It's one of those things that will call people in off the sidewalk. I know it's kinda weird not to eat garlic, my mother never cooked with it. Besides, if it isn't in a White Castle kitchen, why would anyone need it in theirs? I try to leave early the day they roast the garlic here. Marc roasts twenty pounds at at time. We buy whole peeled garlic, dump it into a deep roasting pan, add butter and olive oil, and roast it very slow.I explained before, you can't add raw garlic to a bread dough. The enzymes in it are to strong. Roasting it, denatures the enzymes. I saw a baking and pastry instructor add raw garlic to a dough. In thirty minutes it turned to soup, pancake batter. He blamed it on some other thing. After class, he asked me what happened.

Hey gotta run, lots goin' on here. Planning on huge markets tomorrow, weather will be perfect.

leapt up in a panic

2009-08-31T05:44:00.004-05:00

Felt good to be back in the bakery yesterday. All day, by myself. Had a lot to catch up on. Got a lot done. Weekend was good, very good. Weather could not be better. We are seeing lots of folks movin' back onto the campus here. Life is about to begin again. In fact, it is so comfortable outside, that we may even push up the start of our post Labor Day offerings. We always stop florentines between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but I think we might get started a little earlier this year. Labor Day is a little late this year. Things are going to really run together. Our "Back to school cookie special" will end on Rosh Hashanah. Our little bakery here will be rockin'!

Has funny experience Saturday afternoon. I returned to Chicago on Friday night around midnight. I knew we were in the weeds for the Saturday markets, so I was here at 2am. Truth be known, I missed the bakery. So it turned into a very long day. Got home around 3pm, showered and fell asleep watching the little league world series. John Roeser and I usually compare notes, late Saturday afternoons', just to see who had the more "Bizarre" finish to their day. I don't want to disclose much here. Most Saturday's, our demise is self inflicted. I was sound asleep, phone rang. I answered and it was Johnny. I asked "What time is it"? He said "5:30". My wife said I jumped up, and I was terrified. I thought it was 5:30 Sunday morning. Sunday was my day to work. A late start on my scheduled Sundays' is 4 o'clock, AM.I don't think John or wife have stopped laughing yet.

Yesterday we made a sheet of plum kuchen slices. Sold about eighty percent of the sheet. We used Danish pastry dough. We rolled it to fill a sheet pan. Spread it with a blend of pastry creme and almond creme. We covered it with sliced fresh plums, packed 'em on the dough pretty tight. Sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar and rimmed the edges with streussel. After a short proof, baked it. We sprayed it with apricot glace and sliced it. Glad to see it sold so well. It is really tasty stuff.

Yesetrday, while I was working, Peter Yuen stopped by the bakery. I mentioned that he will be competing in Paris, come March '10. He will be representing the U.S. in the viennoiserie category. I will be going with him, acting as manager/coach/chaperon, etc. He has already begun the "Yeast dreams". All past competitors talk about them. The dreams that will keep you awake, wondering if you remembered the yeast in all the preferments. Or you will dream that you are ten minutes behind schedule, with two hours left. They will plague him from now thru September '10. It's awful. On top of that, he is struggling with a shape for his last pastry. Been there. It's awful. Peter is a very talented and knowledgeable guy. He saw my attempt at tempering chocolate, chuckled and taught me a few tricks. This morning, the chocolate sheets I laid out, were perfect. Best part about this business, ya never stop learnin'. I knew the chocolate could would be better than what we had been doin'. I sent a text to my son last night. "I learned two things today that will change your life". We hadn't been getting the chocolate hot enough for the proper crystals to form. We were only taking it to 35c. Peter said it needs to go to 40c. We spread it out on acetate sheets and break it into random shards, and apply the pieces to the sides of our chocolate leaf tortes. This morning, chocolate was shiny as a mirror. Thanks Peter.

I gotta get upstairs. We lost Val, Valerie, last week. She went back to waiting tables. She got a job at the Publican. To bad, she is a very good baker. My son is away, Joe and Mark are off today. It's me and Jennifer on sandwich and croissant detail. Weather will be nice this week. Labor Day and farmer's markets should be busy.

smoothest ice cream ever

2009-08-29T08:26:00.001-05:00

Haven’t posted in a few days. Been traveling. We had to drop my youngest daughter off at college in Southern California. From there we rented a car and drove to Las Vegas. I spent the day on Thursday visiting influential Vegas pastry people. I hooked up with my buddy Chris Herrin from Bouchon. I mentioned before, he is the pastry chef there. He was my tour guide.

We stated the morning with a visit to the Ice Boutique, a wholesale ice cream business owned by Patrice Caillot. Patrice is probably the most open French guy I've ever met. Patrice was a member of the U.S. pastry team that competed in France a few years back. I don’t know much about producing ice cream, but what I tasted there was incredible. Patrice pointed out a number of interesting production points that make his ice cream so special. He blends all the ingredients, and allows them to set, at a controlled temperature for a minimum of twelve hours. Of course he uses only natural ingredients. No prepared mixes or bases. I saw a pile of dried, scraped, vanilla beans, thousand and thousand of beans. We tasted crème brulee and bananas foster ice cream, and strawberry sorbet. His ice cream is as smooth as custard. The crème brulee ice cream has shards of real caramel. He had unbelievable red colour is his sorbet. Only obtainable by using perfect strawberries. Patrice went on to explain that getting his business of the ground has been tough. Vegas is still very quiet. Food and beverage folks in town, are avoiding pricey items like ice cream from the Ice Boutique. Just like a retail bakery, since we use better ingredients, we have to charge higher prices. I am also sure, just like a retail bakery, quality will prevail.

After our meeting with Patrice we met with Jean Phillipe Maury, over at the Bellagio. Actually we met with Jean Phillipe, JP from now on, and his sous chef, Claude Escamillo. JP is a MOF, Muellier of France. Translates to “Best of France”. I think there are a hundred twenty of them, or so. Very difficult title to obtain. JP operates a pastry shop in the lobby of the hotel, and is also responsible for all pastry production for the buffet and room service as well. Sixty six people work in the pastry shop. Their work is stellar. Second to none. The pastry shop is near the registration desk in the hotel. When they came out to meet us, we walked for blocks thru the basement of the hotel. The employee cafeteria was bigger than any high school lunch room. I’m sure you can imagine, ten thousand employees. The Billagio is next to a new property called “City Center”. I understand that the pastry production will move over to that property and serve both properties. No bread baking, but they do a lot of breakfast pastry. I mean A LOT! Perfect chocolate work. All his petit gateaux, individual cakes, are just beautiful.

From the Bellagio we went to “Chef Rubber”. Chef Rubber is a unique business that supplies upscale pastry shops and choclatiers. They have a very extensive line of chocolate transfer sheets, chocolate colours, pastry tools and pastry publications. They have a showroom right there in Las Vegas. I could have gotten lost for hours. Tools and gadgets by the aisle. molds, cutters, engraved rolling pins, silicone forms, volumes of baking and pastry books.

From Chef Rubber we went to Bon Bread. A large artisan bread bakery started and operated by Carlos Pereira. They seem to be the only viable bread baker in Vegas. Typical American success story. Carlos came here from Peru, with nothing. Took classes with Didier Rosada. Strarted his bread bakery with an oven and a mixer. Worked night and day, sleeping in his car when necessary. He just took over an additional ten thousand square feet. New total is just shy of thirty thousand. Operates a whole fleet of trucks. I can’t imagine how much bread is consumed in Las Vegas daily. His bread is very nice. He has done this in ten years. Over at the Venetian hotel, home of Bouchon, they use his bread. Chris is very impressed with Carlos’ offerings.

The day ended with dinner at “The Range”. A very, very good steakhouse in Harrah’s casino. Bread there was pretty good. It wasn’t from Bon Bread. The Harrah’s group uses the Paris hotel as a baking commissary for all their properties. No room for dessert.

I’m writing this at thirty thousand feet. Anxious to get back to the bakery. We land around 10:30pm. I will be in the bakery by 2am. Weather for Saturday is predicted to be dry. Cool but dry. Got a lot to bake for the markets.

ken hillard

2009-08-23T06:24:00.005-05:00

Cool morning, this morning. I'm off this Sunday, that means I get to come in whenever I awake. I made it here just before 5am. I told you before, early Sunday morning, I 'm alone in the bakery, briefly. I really enjoy it, very soothing, to realize that this place really does get this peaceful. Got sack apple pies in the oven, and I have to make Tiramisu tortes today. We promised one for 7am, Monday morning. I could have said no, but yesterday afternoon, Monday morning was a long way off. Any bakers reading this can appreciate what I'm sayin'. Happens all the time. A customer wants a thirty inch tall bust of Elvis, next January 8th, no problem. I'll quote a price, which always turns out to be too low. It never fails, then the cake decorator guy, will get a speeding ticket in December, in Lake County, and he will have to be gone the entire day, on the 8th.

After our oven episode on Friday, we decided that, we would not bake in that oven Saturday night. We would have it cooled off to work on Sunday morning. We needed to vacuum out the ashes, clean the smoke covered windows and lens covers over the lights. Might funny, the timing of things. My buddy John Roeser, Roeser's bakery, on North Ave. in Chicago, had some work done on his oven a week ago, or so. This style of oven, regardless of manufacturer, they're pretty much all the same, mechanically. They all have a piece called the "Stabilizer wheel". I never paid much attention to it. I always knew it was there, didn't know why. John just had his replaced because his shelves were always unlevel. While we had the oven somewhat apart, I mentioned to Ken(Ken lives here in the neighborhood, more later) that the shelves always "Rocked" more than they should, in this oven. I'll be a sonofagun, since we took the oven door off, now I could see. The stabilizer wheels in this oven were about a half inch off, from where they should be. Now, if we hadn't had the little oven fire we had, the same week as John had the work done on his oven, my shelves would still be rockin.
Ken Hillard is a guy who lives here in the neighbor hood. He does a lot of painting and clean up down at the YMCA. He’s always around. Drinks a lot of coffee. You’ll never see Ken walkiong around the neighborhood without a Bennison cup in his hand. He turns up all hours of the night. He does some delivery work for the bakery, waters the flowers, moves the snow, does light repair work, and he was involved in the set up of this oven, I’v e been talkin’ about. He’s alittle guy, so whenever we need someone to crawl in the oven and fetch somethin’ out, Ken’s the guy. Sunday morning he leveled the shelves and cleaned up the fire remains.
Turn’s out Saturday was an awesome day for business. Rachel Ray turned up down at the GCM, so that really energized the crowd there. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, so the street s were full of people. We only had one wedding cake, so I count that as a favor. They day had a feel like there should have been a football game over at the high school.
Gotta get upstairs and get busy on some more plum goods, sellin’ fast.

smoke inhalation

2009-08-22T06:54:00.009-05:00

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.

1 cent cookie sale

2009-08-21T06:15:00.003-05:00

Nice cool morning. I stepped outside in the middle of the night, and it almost smelled like pumpkin pie. About ten more degrees cooler. Should be a good weekend, business wise. Although folks have one more week until it's back to school. Our bakery is on a corner. There is an alley that runs behind our bakery. The alley entrance is on Maple street. Just across the alley from us, is a new orthodontics office. Big office, gotta have four chairs. They just opened a week ago, seems like they are keeping summer hours for now. I expecting big things from them. I can see a lot of mom's droppin' kids off and coming to the bakery. We sent a cake over to them that other day, and we heard a lot of good response. My dad walked it over there. A woman was sitting there, waiting, and she offered that the bakery was her next stop. I don't really care where they come from, as long as they turn up here.

Once they are back in school, things really heat up here. As you might know, we are on the campus of Northwestern University. We really don't do much directly with the students, but it has a huge impact on the downtown area. we do a lot with birthday cake deliveries to the campus, as well. We bake for the sorority and fraternity houses. The restaurants that we bake for, really step it up, when the campus is full.

Once school starts, shortly thereafter, we start baking for Didier Farms, out in Prairie View, Illinois. Yes, that is a place, actually I think it's an intersection. Aptakistic and Buffalo Grove roads. Huge, huge business. Everything pumpkin. Pies, breads, cookies, muffins, sourdough bread and loads of sack apple pies. On Monday, Columbus day, it's their busiest day of the season. Ya gotta see it to believe it. They have the Lake County sheriff there directing traffic. School buses parked, lined up like German soldiers, for as far as one can see. I'd like to think it's our baked goods that do it, but I think maybe not. They have hayrides, haunted house, pumpkin patch and they fry donuts right there. We go out there with a van full of stuff, about every other day.

Back to school means we run our "Back to school, 1 cent cookie special". We offer all of our large cookies, buy a dozen, get a second dozen for a penny. We started it once I became a parent, and I realized how out of money everyone is, around mid September. Been doin' it for years. There are a couple varieties we only make for the cookie sale, English rocks and ginger molasses. Both are old school original Bennison formulas. The English rock cookie has raisins and walnuts in a butter cookie type dough. The ginger molasses cookie is turned over into coarse crystal sugar and topped with raspberry jam before it's baked.

Gotta get started upstairs. Got plenty to do. Markets should be busy tomorrow, weather is on our side.

the only thing I like about august

2009-08-20T05:08:00.003-05:00

Last night it happened, our first Aville market that involved rain. The worst part was, once we huddled everything inside the tent, the sun would come out. Get everything re-situatued, and it would sprinkle again. We were off to a great start, better than ever! Don't know if people were trying to beat the rain or what. It really never rained very hard, but it just kept coming. We didn't bake around it either. We loaded up. Needless to say our goods didn't fare as well as the farmer's.

The GCM, in the morning was very good. Store did very well yesterday also. Seems like the phone rang all day. Forever seeing the store folks walk around with an open laptop. That's a good sign. Whenever you see a laptop go towards the cake decorators, expensive items result.

I'm not a big fan of the month of August. It's typically hot, humid, slow, muggy, etc. The biggest bright spot for this month is Italian plums, prune plums. I love to bake with them. We received our first case, Tuesday. On Wednesday we made plum kuchen. We even made it in a square foil pan, for the market. For our kuchen we use our Danish dough. We roll it out to fit the pan and kinda "Rim up" the edges. We spread on a blend of pastry creme and almond creme, and strategically add the pitted, sliced plums. We then allow the dough to rise some, and we edge it with streussel, and sprinkle the plums with cinnamon sugar. We bake it and glaze it with apricot glace. It's one of my favorites. A piece of plum kuchen and a heavy shot of sweetened whipped creme. Can't go much further than that.

A coupe reasons I like to bake with plums. First we have a "Plum pitter". It's an old gadget that clamps to the table, and a little cup where the fruit sits. It has blade shaped like six spokes of a wheel. When the blade is forced thru the fruit it cuts it into six attached wedges, and forces the pit out the bottom. We can cut and pit a whole case of plums in minutes.

Second, they are easy to bake with. Even if they remain a little firm, after baking, they still taste great. We bake them into almond tarts and galettes. A galette is an open face kinda pie. We roll out our pie pastry and place it over a stainless steel ring that is sitting on a baking sheet. The rings are one inch high and seven and a half inches in diameter. We "Blouse" the dough down in the ring so it loosely lines the ring and hangs over the edge. We pipe straight almond creme in the bottom and sprinkle it with bread crumbs. The crumbs absorb any juices that result from baking. We pile in the pitted plums and sweeten them with sugar. We close up the top by folding inward, the dough that was hanging over the side of the ring. The result is an open top with the fruit exposed. We bake and glace them.

Not goin' upstairs today. I have fallen behind, again, here in the office. I got an email last night from the folks at Pastoral Artisan Cheese. They are opening a third location in the new French market, adjacent to the Ogilvie transportation center. When the whole indoor French market idea came about, I was very excited about it. Then word came that it was going to be open six days a week, no thanks. The folks at Pastoral are going to give us a chance to be involved regardless. I have more faith in the project now. Greg and Ken, principles at Pastoral, don't make many mistakes. Sound business guys. If the rest of the vendors at the market are equivalent to Pastoral, it will be a very successful endeavor.

kudos to marc levy

2009-08-18T04:57:00.006-05:00

Great news! Marc Levy is a Certified Baker! I got the results from the RBA last night. Great job Marc! During the test, Marc had some trouble with the oven temperature. Each candidate was assigned a single deck, in a stack of deck ovens. They were allowed to set the temperature wherever they chose to. Marc had his set correctly, but it wouldn't come up to the proper temperature. His white bread was in the oven, for what seemed like forever. Turns out, since it was in the oven so long, it started to dry out. The moisture loss results in under weight bread. But his overall performance overcame any loss of points he suffered.

It's hard to appreciate the difficulty of baking in an unfamiliar environment. When one is baking in their own surroundings, you allegedly know where everything is. You understand the idiosyncrasies of your own equipment. You know where the oven is hottest and how to manipulate the thermostat. When you are in a strange environment, and you have one chance, it's tough. Even mixer speeds are different. But if you are a certifiable candidate. You can overcome these hurdles.

We had seven master baker candidates and four certified baker candidates. Two master bakers passed. Nancy Carey, from Chicago, and Brad Hempel from Minneapolis, are now Master Bakers. Nancy started Red Hen Bread, here in Chicago. She is not so active in the bakery anymore. These days she is a chef instructor at the Culinary and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. Very talented, she did a terrific job with Red Hen. Brad has his own bakery in Minnesota. He is now working for a food service outfit at one of the colleges in, or near Minneapolis.

Luminita Cristea is now a Certified Baker. Lumi is a graduate of the baking and pastry program at Kendall. She is currently on her way to Scottsdale, Arizona, where she will be the head bread baker at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale.

Cheryl Adkins was the final candidiate to pass the level of Certified Baker. Cheryl is a chef instructor at a culinary school in Holland, Michigan.

Congratulations to all of you! Now that the results are out, I can talk about the exam. I am the certification chair for the RBA. Even I, didn't know the results until last night. I thought the judges were very sincere in their judging. They never seemed hurried or uninterested. They were genuinely committed to the process. You candidates passed, truly on your merits. This was not done Chicago style,as we say. I thought the test was fair, and a true example of your abilities.

We, as the testing body, are evolving. We made some changes for this test that I thought were very good. We have a long way to go. Thanks to all that spent their weekend at Kendall, the certification process survives because of you and for you. For those of you in the baking community, uninterested in certification, we'll be here, ever improving the process.

For those of you, the most important ones, retail bakery customers, we just raised our standards a little more for you.

demel's

2009-08-17T07:14:00.004-05:00

Today's forecast is not good. Been raining since 5am. Humidity is very high. Tough to keep a crust on our baguettes today. The night guys are supposed to cool the oven down some, and bake them a little longer. I don't think that happened. That idea was great back n the day when demand for our bread wasn't as high as it is now. Testimony to the idea that the more volume you do, the less you can keep an eye on things. Being an American, I want absolutely as much out of that oven as we can get.

I got here this morning and discovered an noon order for a dobosch torte. Dobosch, is an Austrian thing. A few months back, "Saveur" magazine did a story on Demel's Konditorei. Demel's is in Vienna. They claim to be the originator.They have been around for four hundred years or something like that. Beautiful pictures. Really portrays the European lifestyle. Coffee break in the middle of the day. Read a newspaper when you're not, in the bathroom. Hard to imagine. It's simple multilayered cake made from simple sponge cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercreme. The rub is that each layer needs to have a top and bottom crust. Baked in a sheet and cut out. I learned that from Karl Kleinert. I worked for him in 1976. Kleinert's Konditorei on Lincoln avenue, in Chicago. Karl would bake a sheet for each torte. Cut it into six cake "disks". He would use five for each torte. Baked them a little darker, so the crusts were pronounced. Pretty typical to just use yellow cake layers and split them, but Karl wanted it done differently. At Demel's they decorate the torte with fans made from a disk of sponge cake that has been spread with caramelized sugar. That's how we do it here. Real pain, caramelized sugar is hot, and it seizes quickly. Ya gotta get it spread on the sponge cake and cut into wedges, before the sugar hardens. Takes a little getting used to. Not only is it difficult to do, it has limited shelf life. Humidity in a refrigerator will liquefy that caramelized sugar, while you are standing there looking at it.

Karl was a great, great pastry guy. No bread. Only tortes, torte slices, cookies, bienenstich and some meringue pastries. He made incredible stuff. He pretty much worked by himself. He was difficult to get along with. He had "Konditor Gesucht" painted right on the window, "Pastry baker wanted". Didn't bother with a paper or cardboard sign. Whoever he hired would be gone in a few days. He wanted stuff just so. He had a seven pan oven and a thirty quart mixer. That was it. He worked night and day. Hard to imagine how one man could do what he did. I learned a lot from him. He made magnificent stuff. He moved to Florida and others tried to operate on that corner, but no one ever made it.

well, gotta get upstairs and get busy with my dobosch. They'll be here at noon.

call the police

2009-08-16T09:58:00.006-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted lately. Had a chance to get away to Wisconsin and I took it. Never pass up a chance like that.

Yesterday was not a good day. To much goin' on in the city. For the first time, that I can remember, there were vendors that didn't participate in the GCM. I come to find out that the majority of the parking down there is closed because of the air show. Air show traffic was a joy during a wedding cake delivery to twenty sixth street. When Mike left, we sent him with bottled water, blankets and canned food. we all know how Chciago winter's can be. We sold out of pastries early, and the girls came back with thirty or forty loaves of bread. Kinda unheard of. We even had bread left at our Evanston market. The customer count here in our store was down a little. We even had sandwiches left. We did however sell out of Toulouse, our breakfast sandwich. Mark said he even kicked them up a little. The past few Saturday's we were out early.

Yesterday, Chris showed us a new breakfast pastry. On Friday he mixed brioche dough. It's pleasing to talk to a baker. I asked him how much eggs, sugar and butter he was using in his brioche dough, out in Vegas. He replied "Fifty, tweleve and fifty". Meaning fifty percent and twelve percent, based on the flour weight. I said "Spot on". Him and I learned from the same source. Phillipe LeCorre, at the NBC. Chris was an intern there. He scaled balls of brioche dough at thirty grams. He placed three in a monkey bun cup. The cup we use is made in Italy, maybe three inches in diameter. An inch and a half tall. Thin brown, polished paper. He proofed them pretty good and brushed them with beaten eggs. Sprinkled them with pearl sugar, and baked them. On Friday we also made a hazelnut ganache with hazelnut paste, sixty four percent chocolate and butter. We are shooting for "Nutella". Once these brioche cups were cool, he injected them, from th etop with twenty five grams of hazelnut ganache. They were beautiful. Exepect to see them in our store on a daily basis, come cooler weather. What more need be said, brioche dough, crunchy pearl sugar and praline ganache. It's as far as you can go. You could be arrested for anything better. Warrants should be issued.

I'm gonna start buying up sugar. I told Patti, she might have to leave her car outside the garage until Christmas. I hear sugar will be scarce. Don't know if it's true, of course. lots of speculative emails goin' 'round. Could be the sugar players are long on sugar. Somethin' 'bout the government restricting imported sugar, bill on the senate floor 'bout changin' that. I do my best the understand compound interest in a savings account. I'm also a lot better with the Sox players batting avaerages'. We will pay what we need to pay. Thank God for the media,(in this case) my customers will be aware of the situation and be understanding if we need to raise prices.

I gotta end this. A customer is waiting in the store, for writing on a cake.

need a cheese monger now

2009-08-13T06:26:00.002-05:00

What a gorgeous day yesterday. Busy everywhere. Markets both cleaned out. Store was busy. Sold out of sandwiches early. Heavy customer count yesterday. The Aville market was jumpin'. That "Dinner crawl" really drew in the folks. They pre-sold over three hundred tickets. The market there has really turned into a social event. I guess if you live in Andersonville and you're not seen at the market, ce tre gauche!

We baked Chris' "Bostock" and fresh fruit croissnts. Straight up awesome. The raspberries and blueberries kinda came apart in the oven so the pastries were very moist. He baked them longer than I expected. The crust got a little crunchy, but was offset by the moisture. The bostock had a lot of things going on. Crunchy almonds, sweetness, a hint of orange, richness from loads of butter. I went and saw the Julia Child movie, Sunday night. The movie was o.k.. I thought it could have been more about Julia Child, and less about the book thing. Really more of a girls' movie. Meryl Strep was incredible. She did a great job. Anyway, lots about butter in that movie.

Bostock sold out first, last night. We only had twenty four pieces. A few folks came back looking for more. Did well with our pretzels last night. They were nice, for a first try. While I'm at the convention in Germany, in October I'll research them a little more. Mr. Hamelman out in Vermont is an old pretzel twister from way back. I'm gonna give him a shout as well.

The average sale at the Aville market is still increasing. People are buying more and more. Lots of mentioning about freezing and what they use our bread for. One lady said she served chicken salad on our raisin fennel bread. It really works when customers stand there and promote our product to other customers. There was a lady last night, almost got nasty with another customer when she questioned one of our prices.

Well this day is off to a typical start. Joe just came downstairs and said we are out of Swiss cheese. It's easy to find a five pound loaf of swiss cheese at six in the morning, right?

yuppie crack

2009-08-12T04:45:00.004-05:00

Gonna be a beautiful day today at the markets. I stood outside early this morning looking for these alleged falling stars, didn't see any. Inside tip, if you are near Broadway and Diversey on Sunday the 16th, the Pastoral cheese shop, 2945 N. Broadway, is celebrating their fifth anniversary. They will be giving away free baguettes with a purchase.

Today Chris made some "Bostock". Very traditional French item. They use day old brioche loaves and slice it pretty thick. Here we used a pullman style loaf, so it yields a square slice. he cut them every bit of an inch thick. He dipped them in simple made with orange juice. He then spread on a pretty thick layer of almond creme. He tossed together sliced blanched almonds, sugar and a little kosher salt. He ran them around the oven a few times to dry them out. He covered the top of the almond creme with these almonds and we will bake them this afternoon. This is an item that I've always wanted to make. My buddy and teammate William Leaman, who has Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle, calls bostock, "Yuppie crack". He says people get to his bakery early morning almost "Strung out. Gotta score some bostock".

Chris has a lot of good restaurant/fine dining/pastry experience. Hell, he works for Thomas Keller out at the French Laundry in Napa. Bouchon is a branch of the French Laundry. Today he also made fresh fruit croissants out of plain croissants. He splits them in half, lays them open face and spreads them with almond creme. Covers the almond creme with fresh fruit. today we did blueberries and rasp raspberries. He then almost "Packs" them with streussel. They end up pretty heavy. Once they are baked they get dusted with powdered sugar. I'm looking forward to seeing them baked.

well gotta get busy. I just found out that tonight is the "Andersonville dinner crawl". It should bring a lot of extra folks to the market tonight. Lots of yuppies.

who thought of that

2009-08-11T05:12:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was a loss. I was totally overwhelmed in the office. If I'm out of the office for any stretch of time, it seems forever before I'm caught up. Still not there, but I did gain some ground. I had my new payroll input training session yesterday. It seems pretty straight forward.

A good friend, Chris Herrin, arrived in Chicago yesterday. He will spend some time here at our bakery, helping out/working. Very talented guy. He is the pastry chef at Bouchon Bakery in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. I've known Chris for some time. He was an intern at the NBC in the mid 90's. Very close to William Leaman, my teammate on the 2005 team. Anxious to get some ideas from him. He's very knowledgeable when it comes to incorporating unique kitchen ideas with bakery type pastry. Yesterday, he told me that if you cryovac wrap a banana for ten minutes, you can unwrap it and use it on top of open face fruit tarts and the banana won't turn brown. Something about changing the composition of the banana. He mentioned other things, but the banana trick sticks out in my mind.

Today, we are going to shape the pretzels that we will be selling tomorrow night at the Aville market. I'm planning on making plain traditional laugenbrezels and the long, cheese filled laugenstagen. We will mix and shape them today and let them ferment overnight under refrigeration. Tomorrow we will dip them in a caustic soda bath, and bake them. The caustic soda is what gives them the colour and shine. It is very dangerous to work with. You need to wear rubber gloves and goggles when dipping the pretzels. I'm not sure what chemically transpires with the lye bath. I think it has to do with more denaturing of the wheat protein. Stuff sure does work. It's one of those things, ya wonder how that started. Did Franz wake up and say to Hans, "I have an idea. Let's try dipping raw bread in this bucket of very poisonous liquid". Or did a piece of raw dough fall into the same bucket, and Franz decided to bake it anyway?

Turns out Monday was a pretty good day in our store. Customer count was good.
Re-instilled my faith. It's easy for me to get discouraged over a, even slightly slow day. I guess I think to myself, "It's finally hit us. So far the economic slowdown really hasn't found us". I think it's true of most bakeries. I've said it before, we are offering real value.

Gotta run, gotta get things started. Gonna be a beautiful day Wednesday. Markets should be rollin'.

Filemon's back

2009-08-09T09:49:00.002-05:00

Well. the rain never came. We planned for rain and I shot myself in the foot. Both markets yesterday called around 10:30 looking for more stuff. Neither one of them sold completely out. the each came back with three or four loaves of bread. We sold all the pastries and we were out of baguettes at both markets early. The store was busy, busy early, and by mid afternoon, things quieted down. I guess everybody is either at Lolapalooza, or at the beach, eatin' ice cream. Can't blame them entirely. Ice cream at the beach, sounds better than coffee and donuts.

We started off very good today. have had a good crowd since we opened. But, like yesterday, I'm expecting that to fade.

Filemon stopped by this morning. Grabbed a cup of coffee, and his usual hard roll. Lots of cream and sugar in his coffee, then the hard roll. He eats it with a spoon. He's just makin' sure all the soakers and starters are ready for tomorrow. Which they were. his par-baked frozen inventory is at a minimum. Glad to see him back. Now I can catch up in the office. I'm gonna need a snow shovel, and a leaf blower.

We're planning on making lauger pretzels for the Aville market this week. As well as Irish soda bread. Filemon and I were discussing how fast time is passing. He brought up the subject of pumpkin donuts. We always start them at Labor Day. Pumpkin pies as well. As long as the temperatures are normal. We bake for Didier farms out on Aptakistic road, near Buffalo Grove. They start about the first of October, and go thru Halloween. Lots of pumpkin stuff, pies, breads, muffins, cookies. We also do very well with sack apple pies there. Columbus Day is their big weekend. Kids don't have school that Monday. You can't imagine the crowd there. Lake County sheriff is there directing traffic. They got us working nights during the month of October.

I gotta run and get Arturo some cream cheese. He's here fillin' the cookie case. Wants to make cream cheese pinch cookies. I forgot to order cream cheese last week.

Try to stay cool.

I should get plumbers wages

2009-08-08T06:37:00.004-05:00

Rough night, after a long rougher day yesterday. In Filemon's absence, Mark Levy stepped up big this week. Doing everything he has needed to and then some. He should be very proud of himself. Something to be said when you create nice product under extreme pressure, and uncomfortable circumstances. People pushing you all day long for product that has been promised to customers. Game ball Marc Levy. The week is almost over.

I arrived at the bakery at 2:45 this morning. I changed into work clothes and upstairs I went. I walked past the spiral mixer only to find a huge mess. Buckets of nasty water, and a sign on the sink saying "Do not use the sink". I really don't understand it, but whenever there is a leak/spill in the bakery, the immediate reaction of a night baker is to throw dirty aprons and cardboard at it. Never once have they tried to find and eliminate the source of the leak. So of course I turned on the water, no problem, for six or seven seconds. Right out of the front of the grease trap, just like a fountain. A hole, a hole in the center of the front of the grease trap about a quarter of an inch. How do these things happen? A hole in the center of a 1/8 inch thick steel. So I turned off the water, and waited for the spewing to stop. I started mopping. More cardboard. I took the cover off the grease trap. Gotta say, most people, when they wake up on a Saturday morning, awaken to the smell of eggs and bacon. Me, not so much. Don't know how many folks reading this have ever emptied a grease trap. Not much equals that, on the potency scale. So I managed to plug the hole with a nut and bolt, two fender washers and a couple squares of cut up garden hose. I only have to make it 'til Monday morning. So far so good. Oh, nothing like picking up dirty aprons, soaked in grease trap fluid, either. Soggy cardboard. I shoulda stayed in law school.

So the floor has been mopped up. During that episode, I had to bake the fruit topped croissants and the brioche for the farmer's market. My plumbing duties kinda backed those things up, so the truck got away late for the market. Just as I pulled the rack of croissants and brioche outside, I felt the first rain drop. I didn't last long and didn't rain very heavy. I'm expecting rain today, we cut down the markets by thirty percent. This day has only one way to go.

In spite of all that, my son Guy made some really spectacular chocolate leaf tortes. He finished them this morning. We use three thin layers of chocolate cake filled with our own chocolate mousse. He cooks sugar and trickles it into whipping egg yolks. Once that is cooled he folds that into melted fifty five percent Belgian chocolate. That, then gets folded into pure unsweetened, whipped creme. He pours the mousse into acetate band, ringed cake layers. He sets these up overnight in the fridge. The next day he pours them with a chocolate glace. Once the glace sets, he covers the sides with broke up shards of thinly spread chocolate. We've been working on getting these right, for some time. Since we are using real chocolate, it's needs to be tempered. Tempering chocolate in a humid, hot, flour strewn about bakeshop, is tricky. He's learning how to use a marble slab to do this. The cakes today, had it all. Nice glace, nice and shiny. The chocolate pieces, on the outside are nice and shiny as well. The sheets of chocolate had a nice "Snap" to them, when broken. These cakes fall into that category of goods my Dad talks about "Get in your car and start driving..........." Good job Guy.

Gotta run upstairs and check my plumbing job. Hope the floor is still dry. Day bakers will, at least tell me, when they're reaching for the dirty aprons. Haven't heard anything yet. Good sign.

sproutin' seeds

2009-08-07T05:02:00.003-05:00

Yesterday business was a little softer than the three previous days. Shouldn't come as any surprise. I think we will hold it down a little tomorrow at the markets. Prediction is rain. Sure will be uncomfortable for the afternoon wedding cake deliveries.

On Tuesday this week, Arturo made a batch of "Yogurt and grain cake". He makes a cake mix with non-fat yogurt, and he uses egg whites instead if eggs, so it's 99.9 percent fat free. We buy pasteurized grains, pre-soaked grains that we only use in this product. We add a little cinnamon and whole toasted hazelnuts. It really is pretty tasty. It sells very well when we make it. We bake it in large three pound rings and sell it by the pound. We have it all cut up and wrapped and priced near each register. It seems he waits until someone places an order for it before he makes it. Pretty often people will order an entire cake. A batch will make four ring cakes, and we usually sell out quickly.

Last night I had a discussion with Mark. He was setting up the grain "soakers" for today's sourdough grain bread production. Whole grain sourdough is one of our more popular loaves at the farmer's markets as well as everywhere else. We probably sell ten or a dozen loaves of six grain bread in our store daily. We make a blend of millet, flax, unhulled sesame, sunflower seeds and oatmeal. We buy fifty pound bags of each, and scale twenty five pounds of each(scaled when I'm present, otherwise just eyeballed) into our spiral mixer, and they run it to blend them. We scoop it all into a plastic rolling bin and work out of that. We soak the seeds at sixty four percent hydration and use them at different percentage levels, in the dough, depending on how seedy the final product should be. Friday is such a big production day that there isn't room in our refrigerator for all these buckets/tubs of soaker. Since it seems it's really turning to summer, last night we added salt to our soakers. There isn't any magical proportion. Whatever salt you add to the soaker, must be subtracted from the salt added to the dough. I think last night he added three ounces to fifteen pounds of seed mix. the salt gets dissolved in the water and poured over the seeds. We do this because, just like every other seed, as soon as water comes in contact with it, it begins to sprout. Chemical changes take place. Membranes start to deteriorate, germ and endosperm come together, etc. The warmer it is in the bakery, the faster that will happen. The salt inhibits that. The enzymes activated in sprouting will play hell with the wheat protein. That's why you can't add raw garlic to a bread dough. The enzymes in garlic are so strong, they will almost turn a dough to liquid. Probably never wondered why bagel bakers, only use toasted garlic. Roasting garlic will denature any enzymes in the garlic.

Have a good day. I just got here and discovered a 7am, chocolate mousse torte order. The order was accepted late yesterday, after I left. The mousse guy gets here at 8am.

Happy Friday.

soda bread. I can't believe it!

2009-08-06T06:40:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, oh what a day. We were two guys short, and we managed to get it all done. We made it on time to the Aville market last night. Both markets yesterday, were a little sluggish. We managed to sell all but a few things at both markets. But things never became overwhelming. Could be, folks with a life, have found their way out of town. Every week at the Aville market, sales are higher than the week before. That held true last night. It was a beautiful night.

One thing that I firmly believe, customers at the Aville market are growing to trust us. I can speak so securely about the Aville market, because I'm there. I don't want to make light of our other markets, but I don't get there very often. I can make an evening market, but daytime, not so much. A lady last night bought six almond croissants. Evidently she tries to make them last from market to market. Last night she said "This week I'll try six. Last week, five made it until Sunday". People come back to our table and seem in shock after me telling them that our miche will last for weeks, because it's real sourdough. Starting to hear more things like "I'll take your word for it" or "if you say so". Lots of folks askin' for business cards, "So they can find us during winter months". Fellow told me last night "I'm from San Fransisco, and I haven't found a bakery here that compares with the ones back home, until I found this market". The absolute best thing last night.....seven or eight people came looking for our Irish soda bread, that we had last week. Two people I remember when they bought soda bread the previous week, I told them "Next week I want a report". Both of them said it was very good. First time ever, anyone looked for our soda bread. We switched to a formula I got from a very good bread baker, guild member, here in Chicago. Not comfortable disclosing who it is, but she makes great bread. Up until this point we made soda bread that people only ate out of obligation.

Well gotta cut this short. Lots to do upstairs. Looks like it's going to be a good weekend, business wise. Once again more wedding cakes than I'd like to deal with, but, oh well. I hear it's gonna get hot. We've been lucky so far this summer. Just so it doesn't rain.

wonder what other sales I've missed

2009-08-05T06:50:00.006-05:00

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.

levain in the soaker?

2009-08-04T06:39:00.003-05:00

The absolute most gratifying thing about this business, is the fact that I can't stop learning. There are so many different ways to do something, and they are all correct. I suppose the flip side of that is, everyday I see something different. Usually, at least once a day, I'm in disbelief. The old saying "just when you think you've seen it all". I'm trying to make light of the fact, that it's not always a good thing.

One of the items on the CMB test was a grain loaf. Standard formula, Bread, whole wheat, and rye flours. The formula was disclosed on the first day of the test because it utilized a soaker. A blend of five different seeds/grains that were to be soaked overnight using sixty four percent water. It was candidates choice about prefermenting some of the flour. Candidate Petr Jacobs, a very skilled German baker, works for SAF yeast in Montreal. He did something I've never seen before. He added twenty two percent liquid levain to the soaker. It made such a difference. Since liquid levain is equal parts flour and water, he deducted the weight of each from the overall formula. His bread had overwhelming flavour. He went on to tell me about various grain fermentation practices he learned in Germany. Petr also used a star cutter to form his grain loaves. It would be impossible to try to describe it, but it was very cool. Something else I hadn't seen before.

This week will turn out to be more work than I anticipated. Filemon's son, Diego has been working this summer. A few extra hands for the market season. Good little baker. I guess when a guy takes off for a "family" vacation to the Dells, he takes his family. Talk about steppin' on a rake. So now we are four hands short. Oh well, this too, will pass.

Yesterday, we bought a full flat of fresh raspberries. Last night we made brioche dough and today we are going to make fresh raspberry brioche coffee cakes. Gonna be awesome. We roll out the dough spread it lightly with pastry creme, sprinkle on the fruit, roll it up and cut it into pieces and proof and bake it in a round form. I like to use as much fresh fruit as possible in the summer. Won't be long and we will have Italian plums and better peaches. Once the freestone peaches are out, we plan on making peach jam, and making fresh peach topped croissant.

I've reached the point in my morning, where the world won't leave me alone. I'm giving in and heading upstairs. Got a lot to get ready for tomorrow's markets.

my first cert weekend

2009-08-03T05:06:00.004-05:00

Arturo is back. Filemon is gone this week. Gonna be rough week. I think summer is finally here. If not, it's August for sure. I can tell by yesterday's customer count. I've always lived with the belief that if we can survive an August, we can make it thru the next eleven months.

I made it through the first certification exam weekend that was under my watch. I was very pleased. I thought it went well. Most importantly, the only thing I forgot was the formula books, on Saturday morning. Kinda important, but my son bailed me out.

The judges did a great job. Bill Moore, Tom Vacarro and Debra Socha, were outstanding. Very, very thorough. Patiently went over everything with great interest. So many times I see judges in this situation hurriedly doing their job. I'm not sure how many passed. I won't know anything until early next week. I will say the candidates, eight hours were full. They pretty much had to stay with it, at a very brisk pace to finish on time. As a part of the exam, each candidate, must display eight products in order to get credit for completing the exam. Regardless of where the item is in the production process. When the final bell rings, the ovens get turned off. The candidate has thirty minutes to get the goods displayed. I've seen raw product displayed. But better to do that and fail the category, than be marked as incomplete. This was not the case yesterday. They all completed their goods. There were plenty of items that were rushed through, but they were all there.

Chef Melina Kelson,CMB, was our on site coordinator. She gave up her weekend at home, spent twelve, thirteen hours each day with us. All while several months pregnant. She was there to run and get anything the candidates asked for. RBA is in her debt.

Howard Cook spent the weekend with us. Howard is the education and certification director for the RBA. He happened to be in town for a RBA Executive Committee meeting, that was held last weekend, here in Chicago.

So, it's on to the next exam. Next March in Hyde Park, New York. Much to do to keep improving our process. We have our next board conference call, the third week in August.

This weekend, further enhanced my belief in the certification process. I may have mentioned, there are many, many bakers that are not interested in certification. That's fine, but do it quietly. This past weekend, the judges and I were discussing bakers who, almost make fun, of our process. Well, it was unanimous, amongst the same group, then come test. I hear many bakers say, "I can't charge anymore for my goods, if I were a CMB, so why certify", I agree, you won't get anymore for your donuts. "Ice a layer cake and you are a CMB"? European bakers spend years in school to become bakers. I know they chuckle at our process. Their opinion "a long weekend at you are a master baker"? Give us a break, we've been at this for twenty five years. Besides, I've seen a lot of European bakers, fail our exam. It's tough, not only about ones' baking skill's, laying out a good plan, exercising time management, etc. To pass, you must have three things in the works, at all time. Keep your oven full.

If you're thinkin' 'bout certifyin', get in line now. Cause every exam is going to become more difficult. New sheriff in town. As our process improves, the level goes up. So come ice your layer cake. Try it in a different location, with unfamiliar buttercreme, while you're trying to maneuver product in and out of an unfamiliar oven, while other bakers are trying to do the same, while the clock is running, while your being judged, while you need to keep your table clean, and your apron white.

Dare ya.

green peas and a plastic scraper

2009-08-02T05:01:00.005-05:00

The first day of our test weekend is done. It's the morning after. It was an exhausting day. For both myself as well as the judges, site co-ordinator and candidates. We ended up with four CB candidate participants. Marc Levy from here at Bennison's, and Luminita Cristea, from Chicago, who used to be at Bennison's. Cheryl Adkins, is a Culinary instructor from Holland, Michigan and Joungmee Park is from Madison, Wisconsin. They all performed very well. they had their success's and their struggles. As required, Marc made two perfect coffee cakes. Magazine cover quality. Lumi iced her layer cake with perfection. Cheryl turned out the nicest sticky buns I've seeb at one of these exams, and Joungmee made an apple pie, that when I saw it cut, I said "we don't make pies that nice". I was very proud of them, 'specially Marc. They should be proud of themselves. Proud that they did it. So very few have done it, compared to how many could do it. The same is true of the CMB candidates that will bake again today. I don't know the results, nobody will for at least a week. At this point the results are irrelevant. The four that finished yesterday are better bakers because of it. They pushed themselves to learn new skills and exercise them in unfamiliar surroundings. The bakery world is better for it.

I think the greatest reason I'm involved in this whole process, is because of the bakers I meet. We are a unique bunch. Our profession is based on early morning starts, and we are busiest when other folks are enjoying their lives, ie. Christmas and Easter. Bakers are "salt of the earth people". there is an older fellow baking today. Woodward Powell. When you're back is turned to him, he sounds just like Bill Clinton. They are both from Arkansas. He seems kinda "a good olde boy". Always smiling. Can't totally stand up straight. Got the look like he spent his life rollin' biscuit dough with a wooden rolling pin. In every bakery, everywhere, us bakers use a "plastic scraper". In culinary school they are referred to as "bowl scrapers". They are the most used, abused, coveted, versatile, taken for granted, valuable, ignored, useful piece of plastic, in the world! They are approximately 5 1/2 inches long, 3 5/8 inches high and they weigh 24 grams. Three flat sides, and the fourth, is a little rounded to facilitate scraping round bowls. These little items can save a bakery more money, than any other tool. simply by being used to scrape the remaining, last ounce of jam or icing out of a plastic bucket. Many times a month my dad will come to me with a scraper full of whatever, and say "here". With the empty bucket in his other hand. Nothing more need be said. I know what he is implying. John Roeser said the same of his father.

Yesterday, woody, kinda looked me right in the eye, pulled a plastic scraper from his back pocket, and said, in his Clintonesque tone, "when I was a young man, starting in the bakery, I was working for a mean, old b________d". He told me "son, when you can eat green peas with one of these, you can call yourself a baker". I chuckled, a few minutes later, I laughed a little harder, on my way home, in the car, alone, I laughed until I cried.

Wait until I bring that up during the next certification board meeting. Gonna be hard to create parameters for that.

testing day is finally here

2009-08-01T10:09:00.004-05:00

No time to blog today. Busy at Kendall college judging the master baker exam. I got here this morning and I left the box of forula sheets, judges packets and the scoring sheets, at the bakery. Called my son and he saved the day.

Things have settled down considerably. Nervousness seems to be subsiding. The bakery world is improving as you read.

By tomorrow afternoon, we'll see what else I've forgotten.

Letchaknow how they make out tomorrow.

i knew it as soon as i heard his voice

2009-07-31T05:31:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was one of the most frustrating days I've ever had in the bakery. I couldn't get anything done. Arturo is on vacation, and like I said we are running out of the inventories he created. I can do his job. I know how to make all the things that he does. I don't have the time to commit to it. Yesterday, I needed to make eclairs. When Arturo does it, he uses five gallons of eggs. It's a pretty big batch. He makes the mix and runs them thru a wire-cut depositor. Forty five-fifty pans of eclairs, five, six minutes. But, of course, there is a lot of prep time, set up time, etc. Yesterday, I tried to make a one gallon of eggs, size batch of eclairs. The way we did it twenty five years ago. Took me all day. I poured the water in thecopper kettle at 7:30am. I added the oil at 8:45. I scaled the flour at 9:20. Lit the stove for the first time at 9:45'ish. Turned it off. Re-lit at 10:20. On and on. Went home, was mean to my wife and daughter. Had a couple beers at dinner. Apologized to my wife and daughter, still don't feel any better. Now I'm stressin' over puttin' faces on a few pans of smiley face cookies.

Next week, Filemon is going on vacation. I'm assuming that week to be better, because so many people understand what he does. There is only two of us, Frankie and myself, that understand what Arturo does. He pretty much keeps to himself. Does what he does and does it well. I've always said, between memorial day and labor day, are the worst weeks of the year. Busy with the farmer's markets, but when these guys start to take time off, things head south quick. These guys been here a long time. When they were younger, they played soccer on Sunday's. They would come in here on Monday morning's, reminded me of a few scenes from "saving private ryan". One would be limping, one would have a black eye, and ya know what young guys do after any game or sporting event. I was really glad when the school year started.

Wednesday, Diego had a big baguette dough on the mixer, preparing baguettes for the Aville market. I asked him "what's that"? He said "baguettes". I said "what an odd color". Diegos' a young guy, Filemon's son. I think he plays a little soccer, now and then himself, if ya know what I mean. Dough felt funny too. But then again, I don't feel the dough everyday anymore. I helped Filemon load the baguettes in the oven. They didn't have the usual spring. Seemed off. I asked Filemon about about it, he shrugged his shoulders. Thursday morning, I came in and some items weren't up to snuff. My eclairs, didn't come out a hundred percent either. Adding more to my frustration. But I thought the fact that it was a six, seven hour process had something to do with it. Then it happened, Patti and I were in the car last night 'round 9:30. My cell phone rang, it was Jeff Yankellow from Phoenix. My bread baking teammate from the baking team. "Jory, still using Harvest King"? My reply "yes". Jeff "havin' any problems"? Me "I'll call you in the morning". I KNEW IT!! I got the same exact phone call last year from Keith Brown, at Olde World Hearth, in Orlando, exactly, word for word. I'm callin' the mill this morning. I bet we are using new crop flour. Every year around the end of July, early August, they switch crops. For the first few days they blend old crop with new. The percentages change as the days pass. First day ten percent old, ninety percent new. Second day, maybe fifteen old, eighty five new, etc. Looking back at the reports I get each month from the mill, we are about ten days earlier than last year. Last year the new crop wasn't in the blender until bags with a mill date of July 31st. This whole flour milling thing amazes me. The flour has to age before it can be milled. It then must age once it is in the bag. Unless, you use bromated flour, which is outlawed in many states. Bromate is a carcinogen. I mentioned before bleached and bromated flour is commonplace in a lot of bakeries. Read your labels before buying your bread. Or buy it here.

I gotta get to work. I got cookies to face, a mill to call and a baker or two to call. Gonna take me all day to face those cookies. Arturo hurry back.

All is forgiven.

most soothing

2009-07-30T06:12:00.003-05:00

It's an unjust world. We've done some work at home, in the yard and we've sodded. I suggested they lay the sod each of the last two Tuesdays. First two Wednesday's it didn't rain this summer. Farmer's markets did great. But I gotta say, I don't believe there is anything more therapeutic than watering sod, with a hose. It's right up there with watching a Zamboni go round and round an ice rink. The Zamboni thing is only valid if you're sitting up high enough to appreciate it. At ice level, it doesn't have the same effect. Watering sod, is mindless, like icing layer cakes. Gentle spray of water back and forth, very relaxing.

I'm sure I told you, cake and cookie Arturo is on vacation this week. Yesterday, we had our employee benefits meeting. We're switching our whole payroll/benefits thing to one source. During the meeting yesterday, we closed the store. We stayed closed for about an hour and a half. First time we ever did that. Close in the middle of the day. We put a sign in the door, "closed for meeting", etc. We said we would reopen at 11:15, customers were there waiting. This made for a ridiculous day. Day baker Marc, was off for a funeral. He came in at midnight to make up for his absence. So two guys off on a market Wednesday, plus the meeting, crippling. When the day was done, I was done, as well.

This benefit package is gonna cost the bakery a lot of money, but our crew is worth it. We've arranged for our fulltimers to be insured. Hospitalization, dental, eyes, life, disability, the whole deal. Startin' a 401k plan, as well. Never did this stuff before. Never had a complete crew like this before. This has been an incredible summer. The markets have been very busy, and it has gone very well. Our crew has really done well with assuming responsibility, and it hasn't taken much on my part to get it all done. I put up the market numbers, on Thursday, and on Saturday morning the bread is there. Jeff Hamelman told me once, his theory about employees "it's their job to take care of me and my job to take care of them".

Gotta get upstairs and get to work. Today is the last day, Marc will have a chance to practice anything for his CB practical exam on Saturday. I think he is in pretty good shape. I know, but I can't disclose to him, exactly what products will be required of him. But I can disclose a general term like "cookies". Today he will be making a mix or two of hand bagged butter cookies.

Today, we've reached the painful point of running out of a lot of the items that Arturo had made ahead, filling his void. We need to start producing these items, to get us by until Monday. Next week, Filemon is going for a week. I'll be gald to see September 1st get here.

no shock, we're offerin' great value

2009-07-29T06:34:00.004-05:00

Bakery business is doing well. Not surprised, what we are selling is truly good value. I mentioned before that I'm a member of the Baker's Dozen. I spoke yesterday to fellow member, Rich Eberle at Reuter's bakery in Chicago. He said things are busier than he expected. We agreed, us retail bakers, are offering good value at a fair price. He said "people are catching on". You should see the fruit danish that went to the GCM this morning. Topped with fresh pitted sour cherries, blackberries, blueberries, sliced peaches, on top of a blend of pastry creme, lemon curd and almond creme. Just sinful. It's really not fair to the grocery stores, convenient stores,national chain coffee shops,etc.

The Andersonville market has outgrown one van. Tonight we are sending two vans down. One will unload and return to the bakery. We are making onion walnut bread, Irish Soda bread and pumpkin sourdough, as our special breads this week. The onoin walnut bread is stunning. Thick slice of that spread with some Brunkow, raw milk cheddar cheese. I twittered it this morning, that combination, "will put ya next to heaven, promise". Filemon Vega, our resident sourdough specialist, has incredible talent. Started in the bakery, knew nuttin' 'bout bakin'. Now, straight up, bulletproof. He use a blend of unbleached, whole wheat and rye for the onion nut bread. Levain, toasted walnuts and diced onions. You should smell it comin' from the oven. It's right out of France. Very traditional.

Speakin' of France, I'm going to France in April to manage the two American competitors, participating in the Masters de Boulangerie event. As of the 2008 world cup, the French bakers have decided to hold the Europain convention every other year. The Coupe du Monde is a part of Europain. They decided to do the coupe every four years. They will skip every other convention. I can understand why. You'd have to see this to believe it. Nobody can imagine the work that goes into it. Two years is not enough time to hold a baking competition, so instead of waiting six years, they decided to hold a little different competition in 2010. They have chosen twelve bakers in each of the three categories, to compete individually against each other. The competitors that finished in the top three in their category, during the last coupe get an automatic invite. I'm not sure how they decided who fills the other nine spots. Peter Yuen and Dara Reimers will represent USA. Peter will compete in the viennoiserie category and Dara will do an artistic piece. I was asked by the BBGA to go to Paris with them and act as manager. I agreed to do it, before I saw the job descritpion. Kinda like missing a committee meeting. I got a multi-paged email yesterday. I'm good with it, as long as there aren't any fundraising duties.

We are leaving six days before the event, to practice in France. This whole Coupe du Monde is sponsored by LeSaffre yeast company. They will host us and allow Peter and Dara to practice in a laboratory bakery in one of the yeast plants. Probably in Lille, north of Paris. The rules were sent to us in March. Peter is off to a good start. He is really more of my responsibility. Dara is going to be aided by Solveig Tofte, the bread baker from the 2008 team. Solveig, for whatever reason, rejected the chance to bake in 2010. I totally understand, the coupe experience is brutal. I could never do it a second time. Over teh next eight months, Peter and Dara will travel around the country, working with past team members. Of the eighteen team members I know, going back to '92, I think there are only two or three, who are no longer involved with the process. speaking for myself, I'll never miss another coupe. It's in me, deep in me. The two guys I baked with, our coach and manager, I hold next to my wife and kids. There isn't a day goes by, hell, maybe an hour that I don't think back to that experience. I still don't believe I was a part of that team. It was never fun, but oh so special.

Gotta get upstairs, had a sluggish levain for the Irish Soda Bread, for tonite. Probably ready now. Been sittin' at room temp for three, four hours.

I'll keep ya posted about the progress preparing for Paris.

If you can get down to the Aville market, get some o'that onion bread. You owe it to yourself.