bakeryn

[bakeryn]

My first baking job was in 2018 as a Pastry Production Specialist at an American gourmet grocery chain in Austin, Texas. I had done a lot of baking at home, had a summer job at a bakery in college, was studying pastry and baking arts at my local community college, and experienced a semester abroad studying pastry arts in France, but this was the real deal. The bakery had a Bakery Manager who oversaw the two departments: Pastry and Bread. In Pastry there was an AM and PM shift with a Lead for each, I was in the AM crew. Our stations were cakes, pies, minis, and mixing. I started with cakes and eventually transitioned into minis. The shift typically started at 5am, but during the holidays we came in anywhere from 2-5am with the mixers changing their schedule entirely and pies being 24 hour production around Thanksgiving. It was a production kitchen where I gained skills in decorating cakes and cupcakes, created a variety of pastry products, and learned about executing daily par lists while stocking our case and shelves all-the-while providing excellent customer service. It was a lot. It was a fantastic learning experience and a great starter kitchen. The product quality was slightly higher than your average grocery chain; if you ran out of product or wanted to experiment you’d likely be able to find something that would work in the store; it was very, very production heavy so while quality was high on the list, the faster you could get it done the better; it definitely had aspects of kitchen culture with drama, passion, etc.- but was kitchen culture Lite™ since our pastry room was within earshot of grocery store customers and the grocery chain had a culture it wanted to maintain. Like I said- great starter kitchen. I decided to leave after the holiday season was over to dive deeper into my niche, but really learned a lot about production work, my work-style, and a little more about the direction I wanted to go with my career. I learned that I’m not super into that style of high-production, hated how much waste we produced, wanted to make more from scratch with more local/organic ingredients with more focus on the food itself, but I also learned how to create products in high volume, liked the idea of how the different stations were set up, the consistency and creativity, and met some fantastic bakers during my time there. Here are some of the products I made: -Cupcakes- got to play around with color combinations and basic piping techniques to make our standard and seasonal cupcakes. Pictured above are our Spring Flower Cupcakes, just in time for Mother’s Day.

-Novelty Cupcakes- these were larger cupcakes that were had more flavors and textures than our standard cupcakes. We had our standard cupcakes and specialty cupcakes where we got to play around a bit with flavors and textures. Pictured here are two of the standard novelty cupcakes: Tres Leches- white cupcake soaked with tres leches, topped with whipped cream, bordered with pecans, finished with glazed fresh berries; Strawberry Shortcake- white cupcake filled with strawberry preserves, topped with whipped cream, bordered with sliced almonds, finished with a glazed fresh strawberry. -Cakes- we made a variety of cakes on the daily to keep our case and shelves stocked. Pictured above is one of the case cakes: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake- a chocolate cake layered with rich, raspberry chocolate truffle filling, dusted with confectioners sugar, topped with fresh raspberries, garnished with chocolate curls. Aside from the blanket of confectioners sugar, it was one of my favorite cakes there.

-Parfaits (for dayz)- our director really wanted us to keep parfaits on hand and our pastry lead really tried to push for it, but honestly we didn’t have the time, people, or space to do it reliably. They looked real pretty all lined up though. 

-Customer Orders- we had our standard case and shelf products that we always kept in stock, but we also took special orders. It was neat learning how to use what we had on hand to achieve what the customer wanted.

-Minis- the minis station had similarities to cakes in that we had a daily par for the case and shelf, specialty items, and customer orders, but it was a much smaller team, we did more seasonal items, and had a little more wiggle room for creativity with textures and flavors. We made a lot of different fantastic desserts, in large part thanks to the person who trained me on the station- their passion for food was inspiring. Pictured above were some of the standard pastries we made on the daily: Fruit Tartlette- tart shell filled a vanilla pastry cream, topped with glazed fresh fruit; Coconut Cream Tartlette- tart shell filled with coconut pastry cream, topped with whipped cream, finished with toasted coconut; Creme Puff- vanilla pastry cream topped with whipped cream sandwiched in pâte à choux, finished with confectioners sugar. -Catering Orders- one thing minis did that other stations didn’t do was execute a daily catering order. The orders usually consisted of a set of two types of mini tartlettes and three types of bars. The standard order consisted of 1) fresh fruit with pastry cream and 2) lemon tartlettes and 1) seven-layer, 2) chewy, and 3) lemon bars.

[bakeryn]

Update 6: An Overview. This is the overview of a series of posts about the time I studied pastry arts in France.

Links to all the posts:

Update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531

Update 2: The Town- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/189228260891

Update 3: The Field Trips- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624389695363792896

Update 4: The Graduation- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624459202287616000

Update 5: The Grande Buffet- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624466744797462528

It feels weird to condense all of these experiences down to a series of posts because they were so life-changing, but here I am three years later writing about them. There will always be more to say. Overall, it was nice looking back on my summer abroad since it was such a defining moment of my life, and I’m glad to have finally shared them on a single platform with y’all. I’m very much looking forward to being able to travel with my passion for food again. Until then, à ta santé.

[bakeryn]

Update 5- The Grande Buffet. This is the fifth part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France.

Links to previous posts:

Update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531

Update 2: The Town- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/189228260891

Update 3: The Field Trips- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624389695363792896

Update 4: The Graduation- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624459202287616000

The final part of our study abroad program- The Grande Buffet. For this project, we worked with a partner to produce different items with 30-40 portions of each item along with a showpiece demonstrating what we learned in France, inviting (a limited number of) family and friends to experience our creations. It was fantastic working with one of my now life-long friends to produce an amazing menu as well as working together with the other groups as needed and seeing how their projects unfolded. Our menu: Apricot-Basil Pâtes de Fruit, Mon (Petite) Premier Amours, Lemon-Lavender Macarons, French Onion Tartes, Green Lentil Galettes.

[bakeryn]

Update 4- The Graduation. This is the fourth part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France.

Link to previous posts:

Update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531

Update 2: The Town- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/189228260891

Update 3: The Field Trips- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/624389695363792896

After 90 or so hours of classroom time, living at the school, and countless experiences- we graduated. We finished our program making confectioneries (see more in update 1) in our final week for our June 2017 graduation ceremony. At the ceremony we met with our instructors and members of the school board, celebrated with confectioneries and champagne, and each obtained a Certificat d’aptitude professionnel de Pâtisserie Française from L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie. To celebrate, I ate my own chocolate showpiece created for said ceremony. 

[bakeryn]

Update 3- The Field Trips. This is the third part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France.

Links to previous posts:

Update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531

Update 2: The Town- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/189228260891

During the week we were in class studying the art of pastry, the weekends were for field trips exploring the art of french culture. For our weekend outings we went to: Tain-l’Hermitage faire une dégustation de vins à M.Chapoutier, manger le déjeuner sur le Rhône à Le Quai à Tain-l’Hermitage, et visité Cité du Chocolat Valrhona,; Le Puy en Velay pour découvrir les sites; Paris pour explorer ses profondeurs; et Lyon pour notre dernier week-end en France. 

Tain-l’Hermitage: taking notes during our tasting, Le Rhône, Cité du Chocolat Valrhona

Le Puy en Velay: There were a lot of stairs, a lot of religion, and spectacular views. 

Paris: There is a lot going on in Paris- history, food, art, culture, etc. While there we visited Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, la tour Eiffel, and more. My two favorite parts of Paris were E. Dehillerin- a kitchen supply store that has been around since 1820 with *floors* packed with any kitchen tool you could ever need and Musée d'Orsay- a museum on the banks of la Seine that happened to have a cosmos collection at the time with one of my (then newly) favorite paintings Nuit étoilée by Augusto Giacometti. I’m grateful that I experienced la ville de l'amour, but I don’t need to go again.

Lyon: Our last expedition before returning home was Lyon, France. This is when my life-long friendships with two fellow students was solidified and we became The Ladies of Lyon. Here we explored churches, ruins, stairs, food, and a great little film museum, Musée Cinéma et Miniature. There were a lot of fantastic things au musée- a surprising amount of Buffy props, the 7 meter Queen Mother from Alien, but my favorite was seeing THE REAL C3PO in a workroom across the way.

[bakeryn]

Update 2- The Town. This is the second part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France. 

Link to update 1: The School- https://bakeryn.tumblr.com/post/188580827531

L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie is in Yssingeaux, France, a picturesque small French village nested in the Rhône-Alpes region on the southside of France. Geographically, the town is located in the « pays des sucs », an area grown over volcanic residue and it also has a warm climate so rains quite a bit, so in the summer (when we were there) everything was gorgeously green and full of life which added to the magic of our time there. When we didn’t have class or planned activities we got to explore the town and surrounding area to our hearts desire and given how gorgeous and peaceful it was as well as having amazing weather while we were there I took full advantage of this. This is the town where I got to develop relationships with my classmates and others from the school, practice my French, meet friendly people, walk for hours on end, shop for memorable items for myself and others, go to my first French farmer’s market, reflect on my time in this amazing place… this is the town I called home for my time in France.

The school itself didn’t make it into the pictures of my last blog post, so I added one here. It’s a castle! I lived and went to class here!

The coat of arms for Yssingeaux is a blue shield with roosters. They were crazy about roosters there.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was that we had this amazing little park just behind the school. It was a set on a large hill and had amazing views of the surrounding area, I could do a whole blog post on just the park, but narrowed it down a couple of my favorite pictures.

Within several days, my friend and I found out that there was an entire store dedicated to selling beer on the other side of town, so as soon as we were able we made our way over there to shop their amazing selection. While shopping a rainstorm came in so we also checked out their bar while we waited for it to pass.

One of my favorite outings was going to a little bowling alley with some classmates. None of us are great at bowling, but it was a good bonding experience and the alley itself had a neat little arcade with some weird french games.

Our main group hangout spot was a little bar in the middle of town. This is the place we got to spend quality time getting to learn about each other and got to go out with one of the chefs who made some amazing meals for us as part of our school program. Some of the barkeeps were friendly and spoke little english, so I got to practice my french with them and try to order for people.

Outside of hanging out with people I went on some long walks around the entire town. I still can’t get over how gorgeous that town was, is.

[bakeryn]

Update 1- The School: this is the first part of a series about the time I studied pastry arts in France.

In the summer of 2017 I was given the opportunity to study Pastry Arts in a small town in the southside of France with a group of other students from my school and our faculty lead. The school we attended was L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Pâtisserie, an old castle that was re-purposed into a pastry school with dorms available to international groups and faculty. During this time, we were in class for 6 hours a day learning techniques to create a variety of french pastries from a different instructor each week and attended one demo from a guest chef.

Week 1, Cakes & French Tea Time: learned about and produced various cakes, petits fours, and macarons. Pictured: myself then the students, our lead, and our instructor with our pastries made that week. Back: Macarons- Black Currant and Violet, Chocolate, Lemon, and Passion Fruit; from left to right: Madeleines, Chestnut Cake, Financiers, Marbled Cake, Florentins, Marbled Cake, Florentins, Gingerbread, and Caramel Brownies. Week 2, Entremets & Tarts and Demo: learned about and produced entremets and modern french tarts; attended a plated dessert demonstration. Pictured: my entremets and tarts, me with my desserts, a collection from the class, the demo from the guest chef and his creation. The entremets and tarts: Mon prepier amour, le temps des cerises, tarte craquante, et tarte fraise agrumes. The plated dessert: Abricot Amande. Week 3, Confectionery: learned about and produced 10 different confectionaries along with a chocolate showpiece. Pictured: pate de fruit, nougat, marshmallow, caramels, jellies, pralines; bonbons; my chocolate showpiece (designed by our instructor for that week, made by me) as well as a glimpse of our confections table from our graduation, stay tuned for a future post.

[bakeryn]

These are some of my favorite non-thing-a-week homebakes from 2018:

Savory Scallion-Cheddar Scones.

Crustless Cheesy Bacon Broccoli Quiche.

S’mores Cupcakes. A chocolate-graham cracker cake brushed with chocolate vodka, topped with a “toasted marshmallow” (torched meringue) frosting, garnished with graham cracker pieces. Adapted from Autumn Skoczen's S'mores Cupcakes.

Apple Empanadas made for pi day.

Gluten-free Raspberry-Chocolate Cupcakes. These cupcakes are composed of a chocolate cake topped with a fresh-raspberry buttercream, garnished with a raspberry dipped in dark chocolate.

Pumpkin Seminaked Cake. This cake is composed of a roasted pumpkin cake (made with homemade pumpkin purée) that is layered and covered with cream cheese frosting and then garnished with pumpkin seeds, locally-sourced marigolds (the birth flower for October), and a cute tiny pumpkin.

Roasted Walnut-Honey Pears.

Strawberry-Basil Tiny Tarts. I had some leftover homemade strawberry jam from my Halloween finger cookies so I reheated some of it with basil and used it as a filling for these buttery, flaky, tiny tarts

[bakeryn]

My other baking/pastry class from 2018 was Advanced Pastries where we took the building blocks we learned in Fundamentals of Baking and applied them to more advance techniques. Pictured we have:

Genoise à la Confeiture Fraise. A tort with strawberry jam between 2 layers of genoise, coated and decorated with Italian Meringue, sided with toasted almond slices, and then (enthusiastically) torched. Chocolate Torte. A chocolate meringue disk sits on the bottom of this torte, which has alternating layers of whipped ganache and soaked chocolate genoise; which is then covered in chocolate buttercream and garnished with crisped meringue, chocolate shards, and powdered sugar. 

Truffles. Each truffle consists of a dark chocolate shell filled with either a banana rum or a lemon ganache. Making chocolates is quite a process, but is super fun and worth it when you have patience and a careful hand.

A Viennese Table. Consists of Bombes, Mille Feuille with Créme Diplomate, Mini Paris-Brest, Paris Montigue, Mini Eclairs, et Mini Cream Puffs.

Plated Desserts. Plated four ways, this dessert is composed of Angel Food cake, plum compote, and marscapone ice cream, decored with tuile, chocolate sauce, and fresh mint.

Swiss Roll Cake. This cake was for my practical for the class and consisted of a vanilla sponge cake rehydrated with a lemon simple-syrup, which was then rolled with a layer of strawberry jam and frosted with a lemon italian buttercream. Though I unfortunately ran out of time to decorate it nicely, the cake itself had a great flavor and texture.

[bakeryn]

Last year I took Breads and Rolls, which has been by far one of my favorite classes in Pastry and Culinary school. The class itself is set up to where each week is a different experiment where you have a control and then variations of that control, some tests included: ingredients, mixing, fermenting, proofing, shaping, and baking. The final projects for the class were to: 1) make your own bread recipe and 2) make a basket with dead dough.

[bakeryn]

New shoes v work shoes.

[bakeryn]

Last year I started a Thing-A-Week project where I did (at least) one creative thing a week (painting, baking, music, etc). Here are ten of my favorite home-bakes from that project! Starting at the top:  “Nutella” Macarons! This macaron is composed of a hazelnut shell with a (very) dark chocolate ganache filling.

Angel Food Cake with Lemon-Blueberry Sauce and Marscapone Ice-Cream.

Vietnamese Coffee Bread Pudding.

Honey Buns with Roasted Almonds!

Peach Tartlettes with Whipped Basil-Goat Cheese! These tartlettes are filled with a whipped basil-goat cheese mixture, layered with peach slices, brushed with honey glaze, and garnished with basil chiffonade.

Carrot Cake with a cream cheese frosting and finished with roasted walnuts.

Lemon-Basil Sandwich Cookies!

Witch Fingers. These “fingers” are composed of an almond shortbread cookie with mixed with a homemade strawberry jam.

Pizza dough.

Turkey Pot Pie. Enclosed in a buttery, flaky crust is a filling composed of a vegetable medley with lemon-thyme turkey breast and a turkey gravy. Served with an orange-cranberry sauce.

[bakeryn]

My professional goals

I have always had a passion for baking, however my first career path led me to Geographic Information Science and Computer Science. Though I greatly appreciate all of the knowledge, skills, and relationships I gained in that field, I found that my true passion still lies with food. My long-term goal for my professional career is to own my own bakeshop. In order to achieve this, my current objective is to learn as much as I can about the industry and products, while my intermediate goal is to start an online business as I look for a place to open a store-front.

 My current goal is to learn as much as I can about the industry and its products. As a way to start formally training, I decided to study baking and pastry arts as well as culinary arts. After studying abroad in France for pastry arts and realizing my full passion for it, I decided to transition my previous tech career into a free-lancing opportunity and began gaining experience through working in the culinary field. In addition to school and work, I also seek opportunities through workshops, classes, and organizations that could help me learn about the industry. In learning through all these avenues I have begun developing a strong network of peers and colleagues to help me realize my ambitions. In achieving these goals, I will obtain a strong knowledge of the industry and its products in order to progress towards my intermediate objective.

My intermediate goal is to start an online business while looking for a place to open a store-front. With the knowledge and skills I will gain through my previously stated goals along with my background in Computer Science, I will set up an online business to sell my products. Setting up an online business will help expand my client base while allowing me time to determine where I would like to open my bakeshop. Through obtaining my previous objectives and using my experience with Geographic Information Science, I will have a good basis for achieving my long-term goal of researching when, where, and how to open a store-front.

In conclusion, my long-term goal for my professional career is to own my own bakeshop. In order to do this I am currently learning as much as I can through school, work, and other resources with my intermediate goal being to start an online business while researching where to open my store-front. With my bakeshop, I hope to share all of my experience, skills, knowledge, and most importantly passion in the foods that I make with the people who try them.

[bakeryn]

I volunteered at That Takes the Cake: Science of Cake cake show the last weekend of February and had an amazing time! Got to see some stunning works of art, learn some Russian piping techniques, and got to volunteer for a super neat class about watercoloring cakes ^-^

[bakeryn]

Had a lot of fun making some S’mores Cupcakes for a friend’s birthday ^-^ A chocolate-graham cracker cake brushed with chocolate vodka, topped with a “toasted marshmallow” (torched meringue) frosting, garnished with graham cracker pieces. Adapted from Autumn Skoczen's S'mores Cupcakes

[bakeryn]

My header image is sourced from Melanie Chadwick. Check out her cool stuff!

[bakeryn]

The story so far

I have been baking for most of my life. It started with the (oh so classic) Easy-Bake Oven as a young lass; then moved to baking things for friends and family; then bringing in baked goods for co-workers and customers at my first job (and every job since); then events, then clients; now, I am leveling up my baking and pastry skill-set by studying it part-time with some amazing instructors, classmates, and experiences as well as becoming more scientific, experimental, and creative with my home-bakes. I have been wanting to start a baking blog for a while now, but convinced myself that I didn’t have the time when really I was just nervous about being vulnerable and putting myself out there- fear of judgement of my craft, fear of not being good enough... But, this year I’ve decided to start sharing my journey through baking and pastry arts. I have gained more confidence in myself and my craft and have become inspired by some strong, incredible people: my friend at The Alien Baker, Beth at BudgetBytes, Gale Straub’s She Explores, Chef Olivia at 34th Street Cafe and Catering, and so many others. I look forward to sharing this adventure with you. TL;DR I have been baking a long time and am (finally) sharing my journey in baking and pastry arts via blogging. Shout out to The Alien Baker,  She Explores, BudgetBytes, and Chef Olivia for being incredible and inspirational ^-^