The Role of Discomfort in Development

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Good evening, friends and neighbors.

I get to work these days before dawn. As I walk in, the first order of business is checking the oven to make sure the settings are right.

Next, the days first load of croissants- waiting patiently in the proof box since the night before. They need to be in the oven in 30 minutes.

They aren’t ready. Small and sticky still. Crap… that’s not right.

A quick look at the control panel on the box confirms my fears. They’re gonna be late.

Right- time for Plan B. The cookies have time to go in.

Wait… that doesn’t look right. Why is the oven temperature tanking? Ugh… ok. Back on track, make up the time later.

The new wholesale management system is messed up. No one to call to check numbers for retail. Dammit… ok, just fudge the numbers. Wholesale is accounted for, I can bake more for the store later if needed.

The piping tip I need is missing. Use a similar one and change technique to compensate.

Not enough sheet pans- the other stores haven’t been sending them back. Rummage around and condense. There’s gotta be stuff to layer.

It’s cool. I’ll figure it out. It’s fine.

Animated GIF of the cartoon

“Totally fine… I’ve got this. I’ve got this…”

“At least I’m learning some interesting tricks…”

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Hands That Feed- Culinary Charity, and What You Can Do

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Good morning, friends and neighbors.

Since the first time I heard it in the retrospectively-awful-yet-beloved Rankin-Bass animation of The Hobbit, this has been one of my favorite quotes in all of literature.

As Thorin, the Dwarven King, lies dying of wounds he sustained in a battle started in part by his own greed and bitterness, he speaks his last words to Bilbo Baggins are:

“Child of the Kindly West… if more of us valued your ways- food and cheer and song above hoarded gold- it would be a merrier world. Sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell.”

 

Whenever things get a bit too dark and heavy in this world, I try to remember that, and I try to do whatever I can to hold back the darkness a little longer.

I write some nice stories. I bake some pastries, and make people smile… and I thank Heaven that there are people in this world with the means and desire to do more than that.

Today is about them.

A quote from J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit

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The Candy Man

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Good evening, friends and neighbors!

Since I’ve lost weight and turned on to a more healthy lifestyle, my tastes have definitively changed.

I no longer crave (and no longer look forward to baking) saccharine-sweet things like I used to, piled deep with the butter and sugar that is cornerstone to pastry as a whole.

Instead, my tastes look toward more European recipes. When I was in culinary school, the running joke was “Take a European pastry, triple the sugar and fat, and you’ve got an American recipe.”

The joke is more true than you might think. European pastries and sweets tend to be considerably less sweet than American counterparts, and focusing on natural sugars like fruit- or more complex sweetness like that of dark chocolate- for their appeal.

That said, my sweet tooth may be diminished, but it’s still strong- though not always for pastry.

For reasons I can’t always eloquently explain, where elegant pastries in a case won’t always seize me…

a bag of rainbow-colored gummi frogs will not fail.

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