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Mar 02
2010
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I miss baking. I miss the feel of soft, smooth dough pressed beneath my palm, and the ache in my arm from whisking a custard. I love the mechanical whir of the floor mixer, and the satisfaction of having a recipe turn out perfectly.
There's a satisfaction to the physicality of the job, too- coming home with an aching back and tired feet, and knuckles dry and cracking from being in flour all day. I miss that at my current job- I mean, cake decorating is all well and good, but it's very assembly line. The cakes are premade, the icings are premade... I just put them together.
There's a satisfaction to the physicality of the job, too- coming home with an aching back and tired feet, and knuckles dry and cracking from being in flour all day. I miss that at my current job- I mean, cake decorating is all well and good, but it's very assembly line. The cakes are premade, the icings are premade... I just put them together. My last day off, I had an overwhelming urge to bake something. I don't bake at home as often as I would like, mostly because I work all day, go to the gym afterwards, and am tired when I finally get home. Cooking dinner is generally the extent of my ambition. After that, I just wanna relax and maybe watch some Lost. (OMG! Final season of Lost!)
But, it was my day off, and it seems like ages since I've baked anything other than cookies. Given the luxury of time, I decided that baking a loaf of bread was just the baking-therapy I needed.
rom dive-y pizza joints, I like flatbreads, thin Italian pizzas, big floppy New York Style pizza, thick doughy Chicago Style Pizza... it's hard to go wrong. And, while I like almost any topping combination (sausage and green peppers are classic!) I do have a clear cut favorite- Hawaiian pizza is hands down my favorite topping! Mmmm... salty-sweet ham, sweet pineapple on top of savory sauce and covered in gooey salty cheese... Does it get better?
creative and make some decorative bread. Decorative bread (or deco bread, as we call it) is just a simple dough (or extra dough) that is shaped into elaborate braids, wreaths, or other designs. Then its egg washed for color and gloss, and baked. It's a lot of fun to make, because you can't really do it "wrong". I really like octopi, plus our lodge has a seafood restaurant, so I decided to make a big bread octopus. I had two types of dough, a dark rye and a white bread, so I was able to use some contrasting colors on his eyes and the suckers on his tentacles. I used flour to give him speckles on his head. 
by clipping the dough with the tips of a pair of scissors.
primary responsiblity is to make bread. The ski resort I work at has three lodges, and each lodge has a quick service and a table service restaurant (one actually has two table service), and we are responsible for looking at projected skier counts and the reservations at the restaurants and deciding how much of each bread to make.
