Going Back to the Basics
Today was truly a remarkable day for me.. I was able to get reacquainted with my first love... baking... It was not only a refresher course for making a dough.. and decorating a cake.. i got to learn new bread variations as well. It was truly amazing how our two instructors were able to cope with the demand of their bakeshop considering they were only two (one was in charge of bread making, the other cake preparations) and the fact that their kitchen was too limited to operate as a bakeshop kitchen.. They had four chillers - two on top of the other two, a stove, a holding area, two counter tops, an overly used mixer and an old fashioned oven - a very old convection oven, all cramped up in a very small space. A far cry from pastry kitchens I saw back in school, back in my practicum days, and even those times i'd get the chance to bake a cake... Call me naive or whatever, but these guys only had the essentials to run a bakery kitchen. They made do with whatever they had and