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the games begin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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???

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

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

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

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

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.