Altitudes, Attitudes, and the Progression of Expletives
Kitchen Confessional | Bakery Edition
We are all in this together, from the oops, I burned it, to the oh, SUGAR, I forgot to add the salt, to the CODE RED, I frosted my cake before it was cool, and now it’s the leaning Tower of Pisa (currently watching British Bake Off)! Butter Cult is a safe space to share your deepest, darkest kitchen moments🖤. In doing this, you will not only get it off your chest, but you will also help us ALL learn and grow by sharing YOUR stories. The kitchen is not that serious, and we should be having more fun with our failures.
Straight from the belly of the bake shop. This week’s confessions are bakery-themed🤤!
Let’s get into Bakery Confessions!
There was the day I scheduled the entire bakery team for an “outing” to go cherry picking in the Sugarhouse Neighborhood at a customer’s house. We spent the entire morning climbing up and down ladders, picking cherries out of 3 separate trees. Snacking on them as we went along. We collected 4 large bus tubs worth, roughly about 80-90 pounds. But when I got them back to the kitchen and started washing and pitting them, I was finding all of these little white things all over them. It turns out that the trees were not treated with any pesticides, so the cherries were infested with worms beyond the point of saving them. So all 4 tubs went straight into the compost, and an awkward text got sent out to the team, asking them how many cherries they ate that morning! 😅🫢🤢 Andrew
Oh no! A harmless little team building, let’s get some fresh air and be productive-activity ends in 90#’s of hard-earned trash! Not to mention wasted wages, time, and energy. What’s the lesson? Try before you buy (pick)? I am not sure. Stone fruit is tricky. It’s not like you can test every single cherry to see if there are worms. Should you test 7, 35, all 90#’s, where is the line here?
The lesson might be, be wary of free produce? I remember having to pit and slice peaches or apricots when I was working at a bakery, and in almost EVERY fruit, there were earwigs living in the core. It REALLY grossed me out, I hate an earwig. They were easy to get out and not a detriment to the rest of the fruit, but oh man, that gave me the creeps! I have also decided that any pick-your-own farm stands are not my vibe anymore. I want to roll up and buy a nice bushel of apples that someone else harvested, and yes, I am willing to pay a premium if I don’t have to climb the tree to get them.
Learning the hard way about high elevation baking. In the beginning, all of my cakes sank in the middle, and so I’d scoop out any raw parts and then fill the cake with jams or custards instead.😂 Andrea
GENIUS! We love a problem solver around here. Was she going to waste that cake that she spent time, energy, and money making for a client? NO WAY. Now it is a custard-filled cake, which should be a welcome surprise to most people.
A lesson on high altitude baking. High altitude baking starts at around 3,000 feet above sea level, and the higher the elevation, the lower the air pressure. Low air pressure can affect how your baked goods rise, and cakes can collapse in the oven or not cook through evenly. There are a few ways to adjust recipes for high altitude. It can get a little squirrely, but don’t be afraid. Start with small adjustments and keep notes of your progress. And if, for some reason, your cake is not cooked evenly, take a note out of our girl’s book and scoop out the raw and fill it with cream, baby!
I had just started making an enormous batch of caramel drizzle in a bakery where the kitchen and storefront were one big room. A customer had walked up to the counter to buy some goodies, and I went over to help without reducing the heat. (Idiot)
When I had finished saying “no and thank YOU!” and spun back around to the kitchen, I watched bubbling molten sugar crest and cascade over the pot and start encasing the whole work table, floor, and induction burner in hard sugar.
Obvious lesson learned, don’t walk away from a hot burner 🤡. Haley
I never mentioned that if you want to include your lesson learned, go right ahead. What’s the lesson? DON’T WALK AWAY FROM A HOT BURNER! This is a very important lesson for our safety, sanity, and overall well-being. Even if you think ah, it will just be one minute, you NEVER know what thing will come up and cause you to be away from your hot pot for longer than just one wee second. Your kid might need his butt wiped, the mail may have arrived, the cat might be doing something cute, and you need to take a pic, you might see..Squirrel! The sky is the limit as far as I will be right back distractions go. I will admit this has happened to me a time or two, usually it’s milk, cream, or starchy pasta water that I have left unattended, but only momentarily, and oopsie doodle a mess has been made, cream ruined, milk burned, but the pasta water is no worse for wear.
When I was first starting out, I was making cookies, and I forgot to add the brown sugar. Not once, not twice, BUT like six times in a row! I am not sure why I kept doing this, but I wasted large batches of cookies each time. Oh, the lessons I have learned in the bakery. 🍪Cori
Oh my. OH SHOOT. DAMN IT. WHAT THE ACTUAL FACK!!!! That would have been the progression of expletives each time I pulled the cookies from the oven and realized that YET again I made the SAME mistake. I hate when this happens, when you keep making the same mistake over and over again, when you know better. Each time the cookies come out, you think really AGAIN! Hahaha, at some point, you have to look in the mirror and be like okay what is the lesson here? And how can I fix this from ever happening again?
What is the lesson here? Sometimes, out of sight, out of mind. I like to lay out all the ingredients that I need on the counter for the recipe I am making. This helps me get organized, not forget anything, and not have to be running to the cupboards to get every little item. I like to eliminate any unnecessary kitchen chaos that is in my control. I also like to have a recipe/list of ingredients, and every time I add an ingredient, I check it off. It’s not something I do all the time, but it is a helpful tool if you are worried about forgetting things.
It could also be some mental block unrelated to the actual making of the cookie, maybe the stress of running a bakery, the long to-do lists, or even just wanting to make the perfect cookie! Which is a very real stress in my world. She did tell me that after that spell of the brown sugar, she has not forgotten it since. Great news!
Whew, we made it through an excellent round of confessions, all covered in flour, sugar, and vanilla. I kind of want a slice of cake…maybe a spiced peach cake with brown butter chiffon, spiced peaches, and butterscotch cream frosting🍑. That is not from a fever dream; that is a real cake!
You know what I am going to ask. Send me your confessions!!!! You guys are really coming through with the confessions, and I think a theme is helpful to corral things. If you have submitted but haven’t seen your confession, DON’T FEAR, it’s coming. I have a secret spreadsheet where I keep your confessions nice and organized and locked up. Upcoming confessional themes: Moms - we love you, and we know you have a confession or two. The Pros - calling all professional chefs, give us everything you've got! We know you have some juicy stories for us.
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult
