Finding Your “Why” Where You Are

January 5, 2018January 4, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors! Happy New Year! I hope everyone is starting 2018 off well. I’ve been starting mine off with getting a bit more reading in- and now I’m starting to look up more regarding Kabbalah.

No, not that fashionable, Madonna, celebrity bullshit. The real deal- and I started off learning about it with a book about a group of rabbis sitting down with the Dalai Lama.

No, that’s not a joke.

Cover of The Jew In The Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz

“Ok, so 6 Rabbis and a poet walk into India…”

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Define Your Limitations- Not The Other Way Around

December 22, 2016August 26, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker / 2 Comments

Good evening, friends and neighbors!

I was standing at the range in the cafe the other day. On Wednesdays, Victoria and I work together, and she tends to have me do the day-to-day production while she does macarons, special orders, and R+D’s new recipes. One of my duties, therefore, is to make the savory galette for morning bake to finish.

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Standing Still In The Storm

December 3, 2016September 1, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

When I was 13, my family would spend the evenings watching the original Iron Chef on TV. I was mesmerized watching the cooks and chefs fling food, whip, and wheel around each other- a ballet of orchestrated chaos that I’d learn to call “the dance” 15 years later.

In the center, like a stationary whirlwind, would sometimes stand my favorite Iron Chef- Masaharu Morimoto. Barely looking up, but barking instructions in Japanese to his cooks- and simply KNOWING they would be done. He called the dance, and controlled the storm from its eye.

“I’m not a fighter, but in my mind I’m fighting every day. ‘What’s new? What am I doing?’ I’m fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren’t samurai, but my soul is.”

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To My Teachers

October 14, 2016September 4, 2019 / The Black Hat Baker

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

So this happened last week-

She’s a student. Crazy capable, and catches on quick. We’ve had her as an extern for a while, and today- thanks to a crunch schedule- she gets to solo the pastry bench. I’ve already got things set up for her as much as I can. She has a production list, but she gets to decide her timeline. The list is reasonable, but unspecific- she’ll have to get creative.

I’m off to the left with my own work, taking care of the production end of things. I have a light list so I can keep an eye on her. She’s worked, she’s prepped- and now it’s time to fly.

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To Build A Better Baker: Reps, Rolling Pins, and Finding A Reason

March 31, 2016March 29, 2020 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Good evening, friends and neighbors!
Ostensibly, this is a baking and food blog. I am, after all, a baker and culinary professional. I am used to, and in fact EXPECT to, get a lot of questions.
Most of them, however, are about fitness and weight loss- particularly mine.
“How do you keep so slim while working in a bakery? I’d be as big as a house!” “How can you stand to be around all that butter and sugar?”

Or, worst of all,

“What diet are you on/pill are you taking to keep so trim?!”