Tamales

What could be better than arriving at work to find a plate of warm tamales on your desk?

Conchas Americanas

Normally, I stick to French and English but given 90% of the people I work with speak only Spanish, I figured I should learn sooner rather than later.  My Spanish is broken at best, totally incomprehensible, at worst.  I make an effort to get my point across.  When in doubt, I just replace English words with French words in hopes that the Spanish equivalent is close enough that someone will understand me.  There's definitely a lot of pointing and miming throughout my days.

Food can instantly break down language barriers.  Everyone understands the smiling face of someone who has just eaten a yummy dish.  Bakers the world over, strive to put this grin on the faces of everyone who tastes their breads.  This baker is no different.

My Mexican friends often bring me amazing tamales for lunch.  They watch in awe as I savor every last spicy bite of pollo, masa y chiles.  I guess they figure a girl as white as me can't handle picante!  I thought it would be nice to thank mi amigos the best way I know how...bake them bread.

Conchas are traditional Mexican sweet buns.  They are made with a buttery, milky dough and topped with sugary crusts.  The crust is cut to resemble a sea shell.  "concha" is the Spanish word for shell.  Typically, the shell-shaped crust is brightly colored and it may be flavored with cinnamon.  My version of the Mexican favorite was made with a brioche dough (of course) and a chocolate crust.  I ordered a concha topping cutter but it did not arrive in time for me to use it for my treats.  I cut scallop-edged rings of chocolate sugar dough to top the brioche.  The dough is topped right after the rolls are shaped.  As the buns rise, the crust seals to them.  As you can see in the photo, the crust cracks during the baking process, giving each concha a unique appearance.  Though they may not have been the most traditional buns, my Conchas Americanas were a big hit with the staff.

Hold Dough

Most, 95% say, of the Fairway bakery staff speaks Spanish.  Of those Spanish speakers, maybe 3 people (out of 70) speak enough English to have a conversation.  I don't speak Spanish.  I speak fluent French which comes in handy an over-estimated ten times annually.  The delivery drivers at Amy's Bread were African and they all spoke a French patois but they understood my French which made it easy to communicate with them as they spoke little English.  The screaming chef I worked under at the Ritz Carlton was from France.  I never let him know I could understand every word he dictated to his sous chef who was the only one he would give helpful hints on how to handle his antiquated formulas thus making it possible for me to figure them out when it came to my turn to make them.  One day he started screaming obscenities in French and I dropped the egg I was separating on the floor.  Busted!  That's when he asked if I spoke French, in French and I fessed up to my language skills.

If I played my cards better in college, I would have double majored in Spanish and French but alas I took classes like 'Floral Arranging' and 'Women, Work and Family' instead.  I was able to make my own floral arrangements for my wedding reception but otherwise my elective choices have proven to be pretty useless.

My day is spent playing a never ending game of charades in which I'm allowed to talk but no one understands me.  It is mentally exhausting!  When I lived in France, I became fluent pretty quickly only because I love to talk and I couldn't stand around mute.  I'm hoping this acquisition process works in a similar fashion at Fairway.  Fluent by next month!

After a long day at work, I come home and get to play the same game with my daughter who is little by little learning to talk.  She knows the basics and she is starting to put them together into sentences.  My husband has a thick Irish accent which most people can't understand.  Josie pulls words from his brogue and pairs them with mine to make her own language.  For instance, no one 'leaves' or 'is gone, they are 'away'.  Josie spends endless amounts of time saying 'Mommy away,' 'Daddy away,' 'milk away,' 'fuck (that's fork) away.'  Kevin is trying to teach her to say 'fork away off' but, thank God, it's not taking.  Yesterday she said 'Mommy away work push.'  Which translates to 'Mommy is away to work for push.'  'Push' is what Josie calls money.  She has a piggy bank that counts the change as you 'push' it through the slot.  When she began to understand, we would call her over to help us 'push' the coins into the bank.  Now she raids our pockets for push so she can fill her bank.  Good thing too, as that's the only way she's going to save for college!


The language acqusition at the bakery works much the same as Josie's.  Our health inspection was last week and every food item had to be accurately labeled and dated.  While checking the cooler to make sure this was taken care of, I noticed a bin of 'hold dough' from March 9th.  I was trying to figure out what we were holding the dough for when it dawned on me.  It should have read 'old dough,' as in 'pate fermente,' as in the starter dough for one of the formulas.  It made me chuckle at the same time as it warmed my heart to know they were trying so hard to please.  It took me back to the time I found a tub of 'robster bisque' at the Ritz Carlton.  The Asian intern had labeled the lobster soup he made earlier that day.  I also thought back to the time I informed my French host family that my friend was off fucking their daughter.  I meant to say he was kissing her and I meant it as a joke but my mispronunciation changed 'bisou' to 'baiser' and everyone gasped.  As least I can sympathize with my new Mexican friends.

Miguel's Grandmother

“I hate new people…I fuckin’ hate new people.” Miguel screamed at the top of his lungs while I, a very new person, tried to load baguettes into the oven.  The oven has four stone decks, each one holds about 50 baguettes. The trick was to fill all the decks before the bread in the first deck is fully baked thus allowing for a quick smoke break.  The faster one loads an oven, the longer the smoke break.  At the time, I could load one deck and get about half way through the second deck before I had to start pulling baguettes out of the first deck.  I was incredibly slow but I insisted on doing this.  I was determined.

If Miguel wasn’t yelling about how much he hated new people, again, I was the only new person, he was telling me to move my ass.  Miguel stands at a tall five feet and he has a little round Mexican belly.  Of all the Latino men who worked at Amy’s Bread, he spoke the best English.  He is married to a tall thin American redhead and they have a couple kids so it would make sense that his language skills are a little more developed.  I wanted to spend as much time with Miguel as I could as he was the best baker at Amy’s Bread.  He started out washing dishes and one day they let him shape the bread.  Shaping led to baking which led to mixing and now they refer to Miguel as the “dough whisperer” because he can get the bread dough to do anything he needs it to.  I wanted to be that good.  But alas, I couldn’t even fill an oven with baguettes.

Once I’d gotten a little faster at loading baguettes, Miguel told me I needed more ‘esteem’.  I thought he was being sweet and telling me I needed to have more confidence in my baking abilities.  What he really meant, with his thick Latino accent, was that the baguettes needed more ‘eh steam’ in order to get a better crust. 

It didn’t take me much longer to get the baguette loading down and to get Miguel to stop screaming at me.  Well, he still screamed but it was more light-hearted in nature.  Most of the time he was reminiscing about his grandmother in Mexico, “My grandmother can shape baguettes faster than you and she’s in a wheel chair and she only has one hand!”

At the end of my tenure at Amy's Bread, I could load a full oven, leisurely smoke a cigarette and take a bathroom break before my bread was ready to come out.  I could also shape baguettes faster than Miguel, or at least at the same speed, though he would never admit it.  I only know this because we used to race to fill trays and racks.  With 1,500 baguettes to shape each night, we found creative ways to entertain ourselves.  Miguel and I used to race (and I used to beat him!).

I have since quit smoking and my new oven is much smaller than the beasts I once knew but how I miss Miguel and his grandmother.