My current class is front-of-house for the bakery and cafe open to the public on campus (though a lot of students eat there, too). It's not rocket science, and I've had worse jobs, and when it gets stressful because everyone is ordering at once and I'm out of granita mix and someone drops a glass that smashes all over my station, it's still, well, not hard. I mean, no one is going to send me to a gulag if the milk-to-base ratio on my iced chai latte isn't perfect.
My station, as you might surmise from the preceding paragraph, is cold beverage. Iced espresso drinks, made-to-order Italian style sodas, frozen slushie-type products that for some reason they call granitas, iced teas, juices, the odd glass of milk here and there. I don't love it, but I don't hate it. It is what it is.
The high point of the class for me has been the tastings and my daily refractometerizing. For the first seven days of class, we had tastings and pairings in lectures before class itself... coffee, teas and tisanes, beers, wines and dessert wines. It was interesting to learn the difference between ales and lagers, how to tell wines by the bottles (the shape, not the label) and so on. I will never be one of those people who swirls a glass, sniffs and declares "I'm getting slate on the south side of a roof, primrose, tobacco and apricots," but I do enjoy understanding more about the basics.
As for my daily refractometerizations.... because I make the "granita" bases, sometimes following recipes and sometimes creating my own flavors, I have to check the Brix of each batch. Basically, I check the percentage of sugar to be able to judge whether it will freeze and have proper texture and so on. For that you need a refractometer, which looks like a chunky pen. You drip some of the liquid onto the lens, close the cover and then hold it up to light and look through the opposite end to see where it falls on the Brix chart. It's just "Blinded Me With Science" enough to amuse me.
Anyway, I have checked the Brix of sorbets and spumas and ice creams a lot, especially in my second year of school. And every time I did, the chef whose refractometer I was borrowing made a fuss about it being an expensive and fragile piece of equipment, costing hundreds of dollars.
Yesterday, out of curiosity, I went online and found the model I've been using, the one all the chefs have. $46. Yeah, new, from the supplier, not even on Ebay or something.
Damn chefs.
But, uh, Santa? If you decide to slip a refractometer into my stocking because I've been such a good little pastry pirate all year, please note: there are two identical-looking models. One measures Brix in sugary things. The other measures the specific gravity of urine. Please be attentive to detail when ordering. Just sayin'.
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4 comments:
I can see myself paying $46 for a refractometer just to explain what it's for when people come to my house.
Hope Wiley's pullin' through his Lyme Disease adventure!
Wait! I don't have one of those, and now I think I need one because... well just because I like to measure things. Alas, I became the wrong sort of scientist.
hmmm... so Dr. Virago can order two and scratch off two names on her holiday shopping list? I will inform her forthwith... (I suppose she could also get *me* one while she's at it). And thanks, Tommy... Wiley is doing much, much better and is now back to his barking, continent, happy to burrow in the snow self.
I like the way you think, Pastry Pirate!
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