the girls do it better than the boys

Bread, that is. Some lonely like cook wandered into our kitchen a couple days ago to use the big mixer, and I'm not sure what he did (or didn't do, more appropriately), but all of a sudden he was shoved aside and my boss was coddling his bread dough.

There was no salt, for one. So while she explained to him about the importance of salt, what salt's role is in dough, she finessed the right amounts of water and flour. He left. He didn't come back for a while, so she continued, taking the dough out of the mixer, kneading it into a bowl, whispering sweet nothings into its yeasty lil ear. One of the sous chefs came by and was like We're Supposed To Get It Like A Windowpane, Huh? That's What You're Doing?
Short answer, yeah.

As I was hastening to get my second pot of goodness on the stove, I saw how the sous chef was shaping the bread. I stopped. I've got about nine months of day to day bread experience-rolls, focaccia, cornbread, crackers, light wheat, potato bread, biscuits, pizza dough-on my resume. And he was treating the bread like he was a kid playing bouncy ball by himself and he had all day to shape those out-in-the-air lil rounds as if they weren't gonna get crusty. I planted myself next to the prep table, picked up a round of dough. Spun it in one hand, feeling the contours of the dough ride up against my fingers and tighten. Like A Baby's Bottom, my old boss used to say. It's a body memory.
Like This, I said. Feel This. Now Feel Yours. His were flabby. We loved this dough into existence for him and I was not gonna let him do the next step without giving him something to aim for. I barely had time for a mini explanation before my arms were overloaded with dairy and I was back to work.

There's this chiboust I've been making every day at the new job. Ostensibly it begins as a pastry cream, but all the body memories of pastry cream are stripped form it and the project's turned inside out. Yolks and flours, flavorings are whisked into hot milk and the entire thing is cooked on the stove, on extremely low heat.

But mostly it's being whisked like you're Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is after you. Did You Break A Sweat? my boss asked the first time I made it. Well You're Not Whisking Hard Enough.

if you can talk you're not whisking hard enough
if you breath in-out you're not whisking hard enough
if you can think you're not whisking hard enough
if your muscles aren't straining burning, if your hands aren't calloused
you're not doing it right

One of the guys said if he had to make this every day he'd hate his job but I just shook my head and bent over my task. Each time I come to it I notice something new. Each fresh batch is a chance to whisk it better, to see how it reacts each time some level of starch or dairy is cooked out and the mixture thickens. To take it less seriously is to risk ruining it. I was trying to explain to a friend while biking home last night why it needed this level of care. That's Crazy was all he said. I've got boys shirking at the thought of whisking something with all your might for the better part of half an hour, but you know? You figure out what the purpose of movement is, what it really means to whisk something, what you bring to the kitchen and what kind of compromiser you are.

Each time you try to do it with all your heart.

Oh, and per the bread: there is no jest here. It's the sort of thing where if someone told you that you'd be in a kitchen where talented chefs were doing amazing things, and coaxing every molecule of yeast into its full potential, and everyone around you would be all flushed and happy and you couldn't wait to get to work every day, you'd laugh because you wouldn't think it could ever be true that you oculd be handed such gifts.

jam-time!

I figured out what I want to do with those pluot-plums in the freezer, and the wad of rose petals I ganked from the Albany shoreline trail and my old Fruitvale house. Plum-rose jam!

I haven't made jam in a long time, not since culinary school when we made buckets of jam, any and all flavors. Some of them are still sitting around my Somerville house. Some were given away as presents. Not sure when I will get around to this jam, but likely I'll try to get a sourdough starter going so that my the time I'm jammed up there will be good toast. I am such a bread-brat these days; I only eat Acme.

My favorite jam excursion is from my days on the farm, when I went across the river to my favorite farmer EVER's house and we had gallons of strawberries from the PFP and we made jam all day long, some with pectin and some without. I'm sure we talked about love, and why we love the wrong people or love too soon, too long, or without giving away all of ourselves. But now I only remember the jam.

I've got three fresh burns from last week as a reminder not to work distracted, and worked distracted all day.


I just got to say to a friend Autumn leaves and apples!

This is why I'm going to Boston in October (and hopefully NYC, the city I love to hate, as well). I make up little lists that go something like apples, apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, apples, ICA, Oleana, East Coast Grill, Lydia Shire stories, Herrell's, Harvard square, crunch of leaves
or
finding the Doughnut Plant for real, McNulty's, Bklyn, Grand Central, the 6 train, my two favorite places on Broadway ever, will I ever eat at Gramercy Tavern, I could go to Babbo, maybe I'll go be a line cook like Bill Buford, still haven't been to Cafe Lalo, or the Cloisters, Spuyten Duyvil, did I really ever live here.

God I love apples and I'm so nervous they won't have my apples here.

Thinking of doing utterly crazy things, specifically two, but they are secrets.


No more cooking with herbs. Get over this lavender, rose geranium, lemon verbena, slight thyme kick. Find something else and it better not be a spice.

Ai, forgot to make Chez Panisse reservations. I'm gong to have to put Chez Panisse in my cell phone and that is kind of sad. Determined also to go to another fine restaurant while Leah's here...Where I have been in this town: A16, Delfina, Frisson, Jardiniere.

my best private moments are in public ...

The FPFM was hopping today as usual! Cardoons, stinging nettles, purslane, lemon basil, heirloom tomatoes in all stripes and colors, figs, peppers sweet and hot. I intended to go shopping for some tomatoes and maybe some greens, lemon basil perhaps.

But then I was seduced on my way to the secret bathroom, where all the chefs and otherwise cool kids trot off to. I found a man sampling grapes, and when I asked to try one he handed me a cluster. I knew they weren't Concords but they looked similar in color. I smiled my thanks and ran off toward the bathroom, absentmindedly plucking a grape off the stem, popped it in my mouth, and came to a stop. The flavor of that grape jolted me, and I didn't move, didn't sway an inch except for the slack-jawed expression on my face of disbelief and thrill, but I felt naked in public. Had I known that grapes could taste like that? Or rather, that grapes could taste so purely and sweetly and not be the thickly fleshy, sexual kind where you work your tongue around the seed, the sort of grapes the Hudson Valley recalls though surely they are everywhere? I promised the man that I'd be back and then I continued my trek to the bathroom, pulling grapes into my mouth and almost laughing, bursting in on strangers in the bathroom, disrobing from my uniform, becoming a person again and not the white uniform.

I bought the grapes (I got them at Alfieri, and I'm planning a trip back Tuesday to see if there are more). And some Green Zebras, some lemongrass for coconut ice cream or sorbet), some spinach from the very expensive Star Route. Two things more on the FPFM: I really love the berries I've been getting from Yerena. They're organic. The blackberries last week were the best I've ever had. The strawberries are prime flavor this week. And best of all they give me heaps of berries (24 baskets between three kinds) for 44 dollars. And second, the Apple Store place in the FPFM had a large bundle of apple sticks tied together and a sign saying Faggot for Hearth or Bonfire. Technically a faggot is indeed a bundle of sticks, but cmon, I think its usage has evolved past that point and I really don't think the farmers market is the place to question your relationship to sexuality.

Cooking tonight for social events. The THINGy ice cream, for the cupcakery. And a grape-rosemary focaccia with my amazing grapes for a potluck in Oakland tomorrow night. Pictures when I can find the digital camera cable.

Body memory tonight while preparing the focaccia. It came time to stretch the dough, and so I oiled a half sheet pan and slowly got ready, not looking forward to this part. I lay my ball of dough on the half sheet pan and then I remembered how I'd done this twice a week for six months (and before that as well in another position). That it was in me, the method to stretch the dough was something my hands knew, even if my brain was nervous and out of practice. So I let them go at it, pulling and stretching and that dough just poured through my fingers out to the edges of the pan like it knew I was the master. It's baking now and I can just begin to smell it. Got to check if the ice cream base is cold. I'm sleepy. Cupcakery was intense today. I hauled my ass for three hours, busting out two 30 quart Hobart batch size buttercreams start to finish in an HOUR while depanning cupcakes, whipping frostings and then on to the decorating frenzy. Left me exhausted. I've been very tired this week. Lots of things on my mind, mostly women and work, and writing.

I want someone to come shopping at the farmers markets with me. And I want someone to share these private moments in public with. Then I get cold when people call me {well, people who haven't had the balls to call me in a year} and say I'm busy like in the middle of five different things gotta run. I want to say that the door closed, and you lost the right to be my friend when you treated me like such a stranger. And you mostly lack the cojones to question that. But is that really the right thing to do? Sometimes I miss these people but they act so much like children. I miss Somerville tonight. Cambridge. I'm on a quest for sahlab and other things appropriate to middle eastern ice creams. Tell me, Bay Area, that someone somewhere is making ice cream with sahlab. Somewhere there is dondurma, somewhere the strange ice cream with noodles that my manager wants. Because, really, are you gonna let Boston have one up on you?

mucho mas mantecadas hoy

It's nice to be working in a supportive environment. Cupcakery gets zany...one minute we'll have a rack FULL of cupcakes decorated nicely, and production will be winding down but not over, and we'll all be going home in a couple hours. So we bake more to satisfy the evening rush, and then while those are nicely cooling the shop will get slammed, the stock will move and those nice end-of-the-day cupcakes will become the right now cupcakes...which means more end-of-the-day cupcakes, which means more baking, which means more work usually seven or seven point five hours into an eight hour shift. Last week I was about to get slammed this way, and it was Friday so I'd been working since five anyway and was hoping to make it to the Trans March in far-away Dolores Park or if things ran too late over to Mamasita's to have some sangria with my coworkers...All of a sudden there were no decorated cupcakes and I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, until I finished production and frosted lots of cupcakes. My coworkers signed out changed into shimmery, tight, girly shirts and took their hair out of pigtails. They put on makeup. Then they frosted cupcakes for me.

It's been a long time since I dressed up nicely to go out. It's been a longer time since nicely dressed women helped me out of a jam.

Today (just like last Monday...) was slow to start off and then rushed and crazy toward the end. And I had an appointment at 3:30/4 but we didn't want to leave our coworkers with buttercreams to finish and six trays of cupcakes to bake, so we took inventory, finished baking the cupcakes, got them de-panned and ready for frosting, dealt with the plumbing emergency. I could have gone home earlier. I probably should have gone home what with the overtime and all. But I just couldn't do that to my lil punk baker.

Inspired by this post I think I'm going to go back to Bakesale Betty tomorrow and get some delicious scones to share with my coworkers on Sunday. And a little something for me. Also for Sunday: homemade pizza dough (not by me) with a surprise on top. Wild mushrooms? Bitter greens? Lil tomatoes? We're on such a bread kick. Even though our sourdough starter c o m b u s t e d.

Seriously. One morning we all came in and the yeasty living thing smelled like nailpolish remover. Was it the cake flour? Was the raisin water not providing enough natural yeast? Every time I fed it I'd look at it later and see how it had changed from a sad mixture to a bubbling living thing. I guess when you decide to wing breadmaking without knowing the intricacies (and we actually never made our own sourdough starter back in school in Boston) you're bound to run into some rough patches. So. Research. The breadmaking will not be stopped.

Thinking over what I want to do about something. Not sure yet.

what I'm thinking about these days

projects in the works, desserts appearing soon perhaps, etc.

sweetness: am I supposed to bake a variety of products with different sweetness levels to please different people?

do I overuse vanilla?

I always imagined heaven was made from buttercream one of the writers said to me just the other day.

who tags cake, and why?

flan for the FB: how am I supposed to make flan without ramekins? Manager suggested making it in disposable molds but custard needs something firm so as not to be damaged. Flan in muffin tins? Flan in silpat? How to get ramekins from the farm?

herbs: I'm getting half a pound of lemon verbena tomorrow at the market. Current plan is to macerate some strawberries in it for the shortcakes but what else am I going to do with the bundle of lemon verbena that is left?

politics of FB: Manager said nobody carried organic lemon verbena except for one vendor who tended not to bring it to the saturday market as the was no market for it. But this is just not true...who gets to decide who we buy things from because is doesn't seem to be me.

New berries: ollalieberries, huckleberries, fraises des bois, tayberries, boysenberries, want to try in raw form if possible.

new project: why are the cable stitches so much harder to knit after I slip them back onto the needle?

mushrooms: how no one ever told me that if you cook them long enough you cook out the water and they smell deliciously like teriyaki, or char from the grill. how if someone had told me long ago that mushrooms taste like lapsang souchong, like teriyaki, like crunchy caramelization, like earthy woodsy slightly buttery vegetation I would have been much more prone to eating them. how they possibly tried to tell me that but I would not listen.

how i can remember bacon, but not pork.

how goodreads has made so many people feel better including me.

gelatin: totally gross, but really amazing at the same time.

potato bread with a pesto swirl.

retro kick: interested in making bubble gum ice cream, and actually I bought some today at Mitchell's. I remember it being bright pink and with bright gum that was really chewy when you ate it, but one of the cupcake girls thought it was bright blue. The Mitchell's stuff was bright blue with this disappointing gum that was more like jawbreakers. Quite expensive for a scoop of extremely aerated ice cream. what does it it taste like after all? cotton candy, sort of, but what does cotton candy taste like?

today our sourdough starter began smelling like nailpolish remover. was it the cake flour? the raisin water?

how to be better, faster, more productive.

how plums are really something special...and the santa rosas, they're decent but they're not my plum. how I really like the Jade nectarines...but we only had them for a week.

how the other day one of my crushes told me she could tell i was from the east coast.

how i cross the streets when i shouldn't.

how i left virtually everything back east, and when will i get it, and how?

nuts and bolts, and yeast

(I used to live on a farm).
I say that I don't like fruit, but this is not the case. For years I've naturally gravitated toward a locally-grown fruit policy: I don't eat much fruit because most fruit, when you live in the Northeast, tastes like crap most of the time. I have always adored a few things: cherries, Maine blueberries, raspberries and apples. Apples I'm very particular about. They're more of a memory-fruit, a ritual. My mother always made apple pie (and she still does, but she does not make her crust). Every year we'd go picking, which when you're little is an excuse to climb apple trees and when you're big is an excuse to act little. It was only in college when I worked at an orchard that I really got to figure out what kind of apples I prefer, and now I'm loyal to a fault. I'll make do with Cortlands for eating or baking but it's Northern Spy that I prefer, both for the poetics of its name and for the reserved beauty of its delicate colors. Pale pink meets spring green. Winesaps are a different breed, small and dark and painful to the teeth on first crunch.

The other thing my fruit farmers taught me well were plums. They'd been a confusing fruit, sometimes bitter and sometimes sweet, and I think I feel about the plum how most people feel about the peach. There's something deliciously sexy about its juiciness, its softness and its earnest nature. I tried long ones and skinny ones, small ones and red ones and blue ones, and I never learned the name of the plum I liked best, but they're small, blue-ish and matte.

While plucking peach leaves at work this weekend I made a resolution to go deep with stone fruit this summer. I'm going to try everything Farmer Al puts out until I understand peaches, nectarines and pears the way I understand apples. I'm going to go slow, and I'm going to be thorough. It may require lots more trips to the Berkeley Bowl (currently I've got Santa Rosa plums and Blenheim apricots in house). I'm going to take fruit apart. Give me a hammer and I'll crack open pits, make noyau ice cream. The peach leaves are frozen, cooked down into simple syrup, infused for custard, but what else? What next?

The knowledge I want may not come this summer, and that is okay. But it's going to start and it's an education that's long overdue. I don't really know fruit. While I follow the incorrect crisp recipes at work and come out with watery, weird cherry crisp, the guys eyeball tapioca flour by the handful and get rock-hard crisp. It's all ratios, baking. AP or cornstarch or tapioca. I asked my boss what to read, because she'd know. She makes jams and crisps and puff-pastry-filled concoctions, and she was vague. How do you transfer a lifetime of knowledge? How do you give someone what your hands have learned? How can you teach them to go by sight, instinct, educated guess? She suggested I read the pie bible. So yes, we'll hit up the library this week and take a walk around Lake Merritt (hit up bakesale betty's or ici or cafe fanny while we're running around, perhaps).

There are cultures and yeasty concoctions brewing around the cupcakery this week. Lavash ferment for crackers I'm baking tomorrow. I started the ferment Friday with some bread flour and water, today we added honey and prepared the dough, and after a long slow rise in the walk-in tonight she should be good to bake tomorrow with some malden salt and pepper. There's also a sourdough starter we're working on with raisin water, and cake flour (for now, till we get something with more gluten).
Michael Ruhlman has some great things to say about bread in "The Making of a Chef." I miss bread. Most of my fellow bakers at the cupcakery are disinterested. They'd rather decorate cake. Bread is so calming. Reliable. Sexy, if you know what you're doing. Bread responds to the weather, the air, the hiss of steam or water in a hot oven. Bread is about controlling your variables and adjusting for time. I love the ritual of kneading, waiting for first rise, shaping. Patience. I miss the sour smell of yeast and the feel of risen dough, the way it turns under your hands as you ball it. I love how the dough responds to my bread knife (I love that knife) when it's scored. I may be in the pleasure business but bread's practical, economic, never expensive.

I wrote a story about bread as ritual. It's in need of a redraft, but as it stands:

Eleven o’clock that night Leti banged on the door to my room. She showed me her bread, which was lumpy, misshapen and rock hard. I rapped it with my finger, and the crust tore into my skin. "Um, nice," I said. "I’ve got to get up early, though, just make sure you clean the kitchen before you go to bed, si?"
"It’s awful," Leti said. "I followed everything Henry told me. This looks like shit." Leti’s eyes threatened to overflow with tears. She wanted my friends to like her, she said.
"I want to have something for the party, you know, something nice. Everything’s so nice up here." She gestured with her hands at the air around us. "Your apartment, she added, your job, your friends, you have such a nice life, Junior," she continued. "Dios mio, be happy with it!"
"I see how you look at him," she said. "Your Will. I know how you feel, baby, I’m sorry."
I told her I’d need to take some of her sourdough starter. Will was not fair game for conversation. "I’ll take it to Stephanie." Stephanie was Abeille’s patissier and her breads were legendary. "Let me take the bread, too. I’ll help you fix it."
I didn’t want to help Leti, not at all. I wanted my house back and I wanted my friend back and I wanted a man in my bed.
"There’s something I want to tell you, about Ramon," Leti said. The no-good.
My capacity for compassion was exhausted, and I told Leti to save it. I shut the door on Leti and tossed her ugly bread on my dresser.

notes from a bilingual kitchen

At the cupcakery, my fellow bakers and I are always trying to teach more English to the Mexican guys who work with us, and trying to pick up more Spanish from them. We've got the basics down, enough to say "mas zanahoria" and "dos bolsas chocolate." This morning found me trying to explain the concept of bragging to our 19 year old OCD dishwasher/prep guy who lines up all our cambros with the handles stacked in a perfect line. "Yo soy Miguel, rawr," posing with big muscles like a strongman. Then: "yo habla espanol, solo!" He laughs, but it's hard to know sometimes. What gets through? We thought we learned the word for mixer today but it was only sound, "sonido." In the kitchen we joke, we listen to energy or my ipod, we learn to force the overworked Mexicans to take a break. "Ahora," we say, "no mas trabajo. We'll do the dishes."

Bruce made crackers today with leftover flour tortillas and salt, and we had them with hummus. There's always snacks at the cupcakery, bagels or boxes of fruit picked up at Costco, cookies someone's made at home as if cupcakes aren't enough sweetness. With half a watermelon we made smoothies" watermelon, banana, lime juice, ice, some salt. Not great smoothies. Could have used some mint, some hot pepper. But nice to break up the day.

What I get from working at a bakery, what I haven't gotten in the restaurant scene, is bakers to talk about ideas with. Always the pastry person's alone, and at Sonsie every now and then Chef Bill and I would discuss things like making better muffins or how we could convince Michael to do a cupcake for the next menu, but this is different. I get to ask about things like if anyone has a good biscuit recipe. I get to share my idea for the roasted-apricot vanilla babycake with someone who won't just say "yum" but who will ask how much caramel, hard crack or soft. Someone for whom what I do is not just a component, so much less sexy than the crush of Saturday night service.

We want to make bread now, and crackers. I'm going to dig out some of Monte's recipes and Bruce is going to bring some in inspired by his Threestone internship. We've talked about starting a sourdough starter. I got Michelle into the idea of ice cream-injected cupcakes, so next batch, here we go. We feed off each other, on the good days. On the bad days we just bang stuff out in a flurry of decorating and scooping. But today was a good day, slow enough for cleaning and for talking. A nice way to end my new extra-long work week.

I've got some puttering to do at home,some peaches to make into pie and the bread recipes to search through, etc. I'm getting a reputation at the cupcakery apparently. Not at decorating (still can't pipe my way out of a room but I'm getting closer to the door). But for being good, for being fast.