I Killed the Easter Bunny

Inevitably there will come a time when a huge mistake causes a production delay.  These mistakes are rarely made twice.  I remember the time I forgot the salt in the whole wheat dough or when I added the yeast for the double recipe in the single recipe.  New bakers tend to make more mistakes than us well seasoned life-ers (because we made them way back when).  When a member of my staff makes their first big blunder, this is the story I share to make them feel a little better….

My first week at Amy’s Bread was a whirl wind.  I spent three days helping the baguette team shape and bake baguettes.  The fourth day, I trained on the rack ovens.  At the time there was one convection oven which held 30 pans of product.  At the start of the shift, all the rolls and sweet breads had to be pulled from the walk-in cooler and left on the production floor to proof.  The spaces in the racks proofed at different times so you had to constantly rotate, turn and move trays.  In addition, different spaces in the oven baked faster than others so the same tango had to be danced during the bake.  Typically, a new hire trains for a week on this position before being cut loose on their own.  I had one night!

My second night, my first solo night, on the rack oven was the night before Easter.  There was a huge increase in breads to be baked in the rack oven due to the holiday.  I had to bake about 100 dozen hot cross buns as well as several dozen cardamom egg rings.  The eggs in the cardamom rings were dyed bright colors.  The colorful eggs sit at room temperature and are baked into the bread uncooked.  They finish as hard boiled eggs.  If they are cold when they go into the oven they will burst open, like a chilled glass run under hot water.  

Most of the special Easter products had already been sold.  They were for orders that were to be picked up later that day in one of the retail locations. I loaded the entirety of the rings onto the rack to go into the oven.  If I remember correctly, there were at least 120 rings baking at once.  The rack oven is programmed with the bake times, temperatures and amount of steam to be released for each product.  There are several categories of products that bake at similar settings.  During my night of training, Jose told me what to bake on which settings...the chocolate twists bake on the brioche roll setting, and so on.  I couldn't remember on what setting the cardamon rings baked.  I put them in as 'hot cross buns'.  I figured, Easter Bread as Easter Bread, check.  

I walked away from the oven to set up more racks of product and when I returned I was horrified.  All the color from the eggs disappeared.  Wait, no, it didn't disappear, it ran off into the bread itself.  They were ruined.  What happened?  Doh, hot cross buns get steamed and cardamon rings don't.  The steam washed away the dye from the eggs.  I just killed the Easter Bunny!

How did I fix it?  Well, I didn't.  It was one of those times that I had to send out less than perfect product because not sending it would be a worse tragedy.  It was too late to make more dough and at the time I had no idea how to make it.  The night was almost over and the orders would be picked up in a couple hours.  The only saving grace came much later when I retold the story of killing the Easter Bunny to a new baker who burnt an entire stone deck of rustic French rolls.  Everyone gets initiated.  I've been told, you're not a real baker until you have a bread massacre under your belt.

Over the Easter weekend, I taught a class at the Patisserie on this bread as well as Hot Cross Buns.  The cardamon rings were beautiful and I have pictures to show for it thanks to Barbara Fiore, one of my students who is also an excellent photographer.  Her art is visible on her blog  http://barbarafiore-lifewithpeter.blogspot.com

Dexter's Laboratory

When Mark and I were in the early planning stages of The Patisserie, we knew the menu was going to be local.  He is very strong in his convictions about organic, local products.  I wanted my piece of the menu to incorporate as many Pennsylvania traditions as I could.  I found out the Milford, 'Mill' ford, once milled buckwheat flour.  I use a buckwheat flour blend in my seeded wheat bread.  I make an apple bread because we are just a few miles from Warwick, NY, apple capitol, USA.  I use onions and potatoes from Pine Island, NY (check your bag of onions, I bet they were harvested in Pine Island!) in a beer bread which also incorporates, Yeunling, our Nation's oldest brewed beer, from Pottsville, PA.  When we first opened I made pretzels a la the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Of all my attempts at creating local, story based products, these were the least successful.  I thought they were beauties but the soft, salty twists just didn't sell.  I made pretzel kaiser rolls for Mark to use in a roast beef and blue cheese sandwich but he didn't sell enough of them to make it worth the daily pretzel process.

Pretzels are not as easy as you may think.  Mixing the dough is pretty simple.  It is a straight dough, meaning there are no starters, nothing to do the day before.  Everything is dumped into the bowl and it gets the hell beat out of it.  Most of my doughs are gently mixed but this one is mixed hard and strong.  Pretzels are supposed to be chewy and dense, not light and airy like a far less mixed ciabatta would be.  Typically, high gluten flour is used which is the same one would use when making bagels.  I use regular bread flour because I want my pretzels to be a little softer than the norm.  Once the dough is mixed, I divide it into 3 ounce portions and shape it into little logs.  These logs rest for a while before I roll the dough out into long snakey strands and twist them into the pretzel shape.  The resting step is super important in pretzel production because of the intense mixing.  The gluten strands are forming such a tight network, they need to relax before you can roll them into the long strands.  If they aren't given the proper time to relax, they will A. spring back into short strands and/or B. rip and tear.  The pretzel twisting isn't too difficult once you get the hang of it.  They kinda twist themselves if you get the right wiggle going.

The hard part of pretzel production is the dipping.  Pretzels have to be dipped in a lye solution in order to get that nice dark, crisp, salty crust.  Some home recipes say baking soda can be used to achieve this.  It can't, I tried.  I hate working with the lye because it is a hazardous chemical, sodium hydroxide.  Did you ever see the scene in fight club when Brad Pitt sprinkles lye on Ed Norton's hand and it burns a hole in it?  That's what I dip the pretzels in.  The solution is one ounce of lye with one quart of water.  I have seen bare handed bakers dip pretzels in this mix.  Not me!  I wear heavy rubber work gloves that come up to my elbows and I make sure I'm wearing my glasses to protect my eyes.  Carolyn, my dip assistant extraordinaire, says I look like Dexter from Dexter's laboratory when I'm in the process.  Once the pretzels are dipped, Carolyn sprinkles salt on top and they are baked until dark, golden brown.  Yum!

The hotel next door is interested in ordering pretzel kaisers so this week pretzels returned to our menu selection.  They are selling like hot cakes.  Finally, enough sales to make the pretzel production worth while.  I'm sure the Super Bowl helped out with the sales.  Pretzels and football seem to be well paired.  Carolyn and I also played around with filled pretzels and we came up with a yummy, 4 cheese jalapeno concoction.  Double Yum!

Chocolate Cherry Bread

My husband ate the entire loaf of chocolate cherry bread the minute I brought it in the door.  He was so excited to see it at the bottom of the bag.  I only make it once in a blue moon because no one buys it.  I can't say no one because there are customers who consider this bread their favorite.  There's actually a list of people we have to call when it appears on the bread line.  These people will reserve 4 loaves at a time.  They know how great this bread is!  I think it is one of those things that you have to try before you form an opinion.  The idea of chocolate bread is hard to grasp.

The flavors in this bread complement each other well.  The chocolate comes from a dark Valrohna cocoa powder.  It isn't sweet, just chocolatey.  There are also bittersweet chocolate chunks throughout the interior crumb.  I mix in a couple shots of espresso which bring out the chocolate flavor and add a bit of robustness.  The dried sour cherries are soaked overnight in a mixture or brandy, kirsh and sweet cherry juice.  The dough also includes a healthy dose of sour culture and pate fermente.  These add to the longevity as well as the flavor of the bread.  Though this bread is technically a sourdough, the sour is not an 'upfront' flavor.  If you can resist eating the whole loaf straight out of the bag, this bread makes great French toast or bread pudding.  I like to spread mascarpone cheese on a warm slice.

This is not my original creation.  I have added to the different formulas I've encountered but the idea of it comes from Nancy Silverton of La Brea bakery in LA.  By all accounts, she was the 1st to bake and sell this bread.  Amy's Bread has a version that is made on the weekends.  She also makes small, roll size loaves every day at the Hell's Kitchen location.  Wegmans ssells a chocolate cherry bread as well.  The management at Wegmans thought it was a good idea to have the bakers stand out in the store and give samples of this bread to customers.  None of the bakers were really known for their people skills (hey---they're bakers, not salesman!).  The higher-ups would tell us the selling qualities of each kind of loaf before sending us out to the floor.  They would always say, "this one is great toasted with butter," as if there is a bread that isn't great toasted with butter.  One of the bakers, Dave, said that he was going to tell customers the chocolate cherry bread makes a great tuna sandwich.  Every time I bake this bread, I think of tuna sandwiches and have a little laugh thanks to Dave and Wegmans.

I attended an event for the Patisserie last year and this was one of the breads I brought for everyone to try.  One lady exclaimed "this bread sounds sooo gross but it's really good."  I don't know why it gets such a bad rap because it is quite fabulous.  It also ships well and keeps longer than most loaves (again, if you can manage to not eat the whole thing in one sitting).  That's my sales pitch for one of my favorite breads!  I'll send out a bulletin next time I plan on making a batch.  I made a suprise, impromtu batch on Christmas Day.  As mentioned, my husband was thrilled!

'Can'ettone

I just wrapped up the last of my holiday bread classes for the season.  This is my favorite class to teach because we bake my favorite breads to eat.  With the students, I make German Stollen, Italian Panettone and Irish Barm Brack.  Every culture has a holiday bread of some sort and they always have tons of fruit, sometimes booze, butter and sugar.  Most of them keep for longer than a regular loaf of bread.  In the case of Stollen, it keeps indifinitely.  As a matter of fact, you're not supposed to eat it until a couple days after it is baked.

Stollen comes from Dresden, Germany.  It is supposed to represent a swaddled baby Jesus.  My recipe is for an almond stollen.  It has a log made of almond paste and sliced almonds that resembles a breakfast sausage (according to my students and coworkers) running down the center of the loaf.  The dough encasing the sausage is made of flour, lots of butter, sugar, candied fruits and almonds.  At the Patisserie, I use candied orange and lemon peel imported from France.  This isn't the candied fruit your grandma puts in her fruit cake at Christmas.  No bright red cherries here!  This stuff actually has flavor beyond sweet, tons of it!

The best, most decadant part of Stollen creation....it's dipped in butter.  Does it get any better?  When the loaf is hot from the oven it is dipped in clarifed butter (ours is an 83% fat, cultured butter).  You dip it when it's hot so it absorbs more.   Once it's wet and gooey, it gets rolled in vanilla sugar...that's sugar with added vanilla bean.  I challange you to find a Christmas loaf more glutenous than this.  The butter and sugar crust actually serves a purpose.   This is how one is able to keep Stollen around for months without worry of decay.  Last March, we found a hidden Stollen I baked in December and it was still yummy!

Barm means yeast and Brack translates to speckled in Gaelic.  Barm Brack is a yeasted bread speckled with lot of fruit.  It wouldn't be Irish without the booze and this one is boozed up for sure.  The currants, raisins and candied fruit peel are soaked in whisky over night (for a non-alchy version you can soak the fruit in black tea but what fun is that?).  The fruit represents 200% of the flour weight in this dough.  That's pretty much unheard of in the baking community.  Neither I, nor my students, would ever believe the dough would hold all the fruit if we didn't see it happen.  Like a King Cake, this bread is baked with inedibles representing prosperity or demise in the comming year.  Yes, the incredibly optimistic Irish include misfortune in their bread lure.  Apparently you could find a matchstick in your slice...this means you will beat your wife or be a beaten wife for the year.  Better yet, you could find a piece of cloth which represents how empty your pockets will be. You may get lucky and find the ring and marry or the coin and be rich.  I think there are seven jujus in all.  Maybe the true fortune is not breaking your teeth on one.

In our class, we made chocolate cherry panettone.  This is not the traditional raisin, candied fruit peel bread that comes in the box in every department store around this time of year.  I included this modern version in my class to distinguish it from the other two breads.  It can get a little confusing jumping back and forth between doughs when they all have the same basic ingredients.  So, I folded some melted chocolate into this dough and it stood out from the rest.

Panettone literally translates to Tony's bread.  Legend has it, a poor baker named, you guessed it, Tony, won the heart of his society sweetheart's father by baking him this bread.  The two were married, ate lots of bread and lived long happy lives.  Now this bread is a customary Italian Christmas gift.  You can find it everywhere.  I saw the stacked boxes in TJMaxx last week.  I'm sure the quality of those loaves is outstanding.  My version is not meant to keep beyond a couple days.  This bread is not as dense as the other two.  It contains a lot of butter as in a brioche loaf and not nearly as much fruity bits as the other breads.  We baked mini-loaves in the class.  In order to demonstrate how easy it is to find alternatives to ring molds or expensive paper Panettone molds, I had the students bake their bread in soup cans.  This is how our bread became affectionately refered to as 'Can'ettone!

Ginger Bread

Josie and her ginger bread

I thought it would be fun to play with the concept of gingerbread this year.  Instead of a traditional cakey or cookie-like dough, I decided to make an actual bread.  I started with a basic 25% wheat, 75% white flour formula then I added spice...heavy on the ginger, a little cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg and clove.  Finally, I chopped candied ginger and I dumped a few handfuls of raisins into the mix.  I shaped the dough into logs and scored a straight line down the center.  I was pretty happy with the way it came out but it was missing something.  Then I remembered the jar of black strap molasses I had hiding under my work station.  It's been there since I was pregnant. I used to put a tablespoon in a glass of milk for extra calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron in order to remedy my crampy legs.  Betcha didn't molasses was so good for you!  

Back to the bread....the 2nd batch I mixed included the molasses and now I'm content.  There's an extra richness.  It has the gingerbread flavors with a bread texture.  I can't believe I forgot the molasses on the first go as this is the base for most gingerbread cakes and cookies.  I also changed the shape a bit.  Instead of logs, I twisted the dough into turbins or spirals.  This makes for larger, softer slices.   Next mix I will be replacing the raisins with currants because a) it will make it a little more delicate b) those currants are tiny but they pack a big punch of flavor and c) I have a huge box of them in storage!



I brought a loaf home from the bakery on Sunday, hoping to share it with my family.  Yesterday morning, Josie and I ate the whole thing before Kevin even saw it.  Whoops!  Guess I'll have to make another batch so he can get a taste too.  I was going to toast it because it was a day old (yes, I'm spoiled) but it didn't require any heat to bring out all the flavors.  The best part about the bread is the little bits of candied ginger that melt in your mouth with every couple of bites.  I'm so excited about this bread...a holiday treat without the sweet.  The sweet, hopped up on sugar and butter, candied loaves of holiday tradition wear me out after a while.  I can only eat so much candied citrus peel before I'm ready for the fun to be over.


After a conversation with Mark and Christian, we decided to make this bread part of our line-up through the holidays.  It will be available at the Patisserie on Thursdays and Sundays through December.

Carnage

My cutting board is full of bread stumps.  This morning there is a loaf of Rosemary (which I'll get to in more detail tomorrow), Christmas Stollen from my holiday bread class, and I think what is the end of a loaf of Ciabatta bread that I brought home for my husband.  Believe it or not, this is the best thing I could be doing to keep this bread alive...it's future depends on me and how I handle it.

There are a few important things to remember when storing bread.  Delaying the staling process (or retrogradation of starches, for all the dorks like me) starts at the time of purchase.

1.  Keep the bread in the brown bag the bakery packs it in.  Don't ask for a plastic bag or, EGAD, saran wrap!  The plastic will hold moisture in and take away the crispness of the crust.  The one exception to this are the cool perferated plastic bags, the cello-like bags with all the tiny holes.  They do a great job at prolonging life. 

2. Don't ask the bakery to slice your bread!!!  You'll piss off the staff and you'll ruin the life of your bread.  Unless you're going to eat the bread on your way home, slicing it creates more surface area and it will dry out faster.  The best thing to do is to cut a slice when you need it and place the cut side down on a cutting board.  The board will keep the side you cut from fresh.

3. Never, never, never put bread in the refridgerator.  This makes starches retrograde faster than ever!  I know we all kept a loaf of Wonder Bread in our dorm fridges and it's true that the fridge will fend off mold but it will also fend off flavor.

4. If you're not planning on eating your loaf right away or if your stocking up for Monday and Tuesday when the Patisserie is closed, freeze your bread.  The freezer stops the staling process dead in it's tracks.  For best results (do I sound like a shampoo bottle?) wrap it in saran wrap even though I said never do this, now is the time.  Once it's wrapped in plastic, wrap it in aluminum foil.  Label it so you know what it is after it mixes with all the other wrapped and foiled loaves in your freezer...I'm speaking from personal experience.  When you're ready to use the bread, unwrap it and let it thaw.  Then, wet your hands and rub water on the crust.  Pop it in the oven at 375-400F for 10-15 minutes and it will be as fresh as it was the day you bought it.  I used this trick with a loaf that had been sitting out unwrapped at room temperature for a few days and it still worked wonders.

I will now step down from my soap box and go eat some of that yummy rosemary bread for breakfast...that is, if I can stay away from the Stollen that is beckoning.

Coming Soon....."What to do when your bread stales"

Lug Plan

Lugs are the big, flat, plastic bins that most bakeries use to deliver bread.  They are great for cooling the loaves and once they are emptied they compact together making for a great space saving tool.  They come in a variety of shapes, sizes and most importantly... colors.  Amy's Bread has three retail locations and each location is assigned a different color lug.  When the delivery drivers arrive to pick up the bread, they instantly know which stack goes to which store.  So, Thanksgiving rolls around and there is a lug shortage because there is simply too much bread to load into the every day quantity of lugs kept on hand.  This is where the Lug Plan comes into play.

The Lug Plan is infamous among management at Amy's Bread.  The buzz surrounding it starts months before the big day.  Basically, the plan states how many of which color lugs go to which store location and how many of which color lugs come back from each location in order to go out a second time. The first year I experienced said plan, it was made using an excel spreadsheet and it was little more than words and numbers.  At that time, there were only red, blue and the big, ugly, light blue lugs that only came out of storage for the holidays because they didn't fit into the other lugs.

During my last Thanksgiving at Amy's Bread, green lugs were added to the mix. [If I remember correctly, this was an ordering mistake.  No one actually planned on having a 3rd color]  There were 23 red lugs, 37 blue lugs, 12 ugly, light blue lugs and 15 green lugs.  I know this because I had to count them every year in order to help assemble the Lug Plan. The addition of the green lugs took the lug plan to a whole new level.  It went from basic spreadsheet to power point presentation.  The improved plan included arrows, colors, highlights, moving images, destination time stamps, dancing ladies and rocket ships.  It took weeks to create and quite some time was spent training a prodege to take over the next year's plan planning.  When all was said and done, the Lug Plan sat on my desk and all anyone needed to know was how many of which color lugs go to which store location and how many of which color lugs come back from each location in order to go out a second time.

This year at the Patisserie, I am happy to have a very small stack of light blue lugs that were rescued from behind a grocery store.  They are much more content now that they are cradling my yummy, organic, crusty bread than a yucky loaf of squishy Wonder Bread.

Thanksgiving

I'm in total production mode as Thanksgiving is quickly approaching.  This tends to be the busiest holiday for bread bakers...everyone needs bread to go with their Turkeys.  This year at The Patisserie, I'm offering an Apple Cranberry Walnut Sourdough.  This bread exemplifies the holidays for me.  It has a hint of cinnamon...just enough to make it smell fantastic when it's baking.  I make this bread the day before it is baked (which is why it isn't typically available on Wednesdays).  It sits overnight so all the flavors can get real friendly.  It is my grandmother's favorite bread. She and my cousin fight over it and hide it from each other.

I also have a Portuguese Corn bread on the menu.  Contrary to the southern US style cornbread (which is more a corn cake), this is a yeasted bread that is packed with flavor and it has a nice soft texture.  This is the ultimate day after Turkey and Cranberry sandwich loaf.  It also makes a great stuffing.  I just add chopped onions, carrots and celery, sprinkle some herbs, saturate with chicken stock and bake for 40 minutes at 350F to get a yummy homestyle stuffing.  I used it this morning for my fired egg sandwich...yum!

Next on the list is the Seeded Wheat Bread.  This bread has it all, whole wheat, rye, pumpkin seeds, oats, flax seeds, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds.  It is Mark's favorite bread.  It has a nice soft, airy texture to spite all of the inclusions.  The seeds are toasted which gives the bread a nutty flavor.  I must give a nod to Amy's Bread for inspiring this loaf.  She makes a similar product though hers is missing the oats and our sour starters are different.

As always, I will be making a variety of French products...rolls, mini baguettes and batards.  I will have an herb loaf too.  This one is great to throw in the stuffing mix as it is already herbed up for you!  Better yet, Christian has been working away to create stuffing mix for everyone.  It includes French bread, herb, seeded, rye and rosemary loaves.  It is cubed and it has had time to dry out...perfect for your stuffing.  We add fresh sage, rosemary and other seasonings to the mix....all organic.