A Day (Or Three) in the Life of a Pastry Pirate

I realize I haven’t been saying that much about work. I guess because it’s pretty intense, and I get very absorbed in what I’m doing when I’m there, then when I come home it’s all about taking care of Wiley and relaxing, so I tend to switch gears and shut off the pastry part of my brain.

That said, I like it, and haven’t had any major screw-ups. Even though I’m based in the original restaurant, I do the dessert prep for the new place as well as the baked goods for the new coffeehouse.

Just a couple things I’ve done in the past few weeks include creating an orange pecan and white chocolate biscotti for the coffeehouse, making fennel ice cream (which Chef loved) and creating two desserts for the fancier of the two restaurants: a warm molten chocolate cake served with orange ice cream drizzled with a bitter chocolate and orange ganache, and a fancy version of strawberry shortcake with sugar-crusted pate a choux filled with whipped cream and strawberries sauteed with a little balsamic, accompanied with a quenelle of black pepper ice cream and a drizzle of balsamic syrup. I also did a rice pudding with toasted almonds and tart cherry sauce for the new restaurant, but it didn’t sell well so we’re going back to regular creme brulee, which I like doing anyway.

I kept the last three days’ worth of to-do lists I scribble on index cards every morning to help me prioritize. Here they are, with some additions:

Saturday - a Fairly Light Day

Take inventory of all ingredients, order as needed. Inventory existing product for restaurants and coffeehouse.

Make four pans of brownies for tomorrow’s ski race luncheon. Glaze with ganache. Cut.

Bake off 12 dozen cookies for tomorrow’s luncheon.

Make and scoop mudslide cookies (we make large batches of cookie dough, scoop them to portion and freeze them, then store them until needed).

Use puff dough scraps to make apple turnovers for coffeehouse.

Make vanilla ice cream.

Make fresh batch of caramel sauce.

Make bread pudding from leftover croissants.

Make cinnamon bun dough, freeze.

Bake two more pans of brownies for restaurant.

Make tart dough, wrap and chill.

In addition, I had to bake off another six dozen cookies (yes, 18 dozen total!) when we learned late in the day that we would have twice the number of race participants as expected tomorrow.

Deliver the Sunday morning products to new restaurant - apple turnovers, scones and cinnamon rolls.

Clean station, sweep, mop.

As I was getting ready to leave, one of the line cooks came running back to the area I work and asked if I could make him bernaise since they ran out. I made it once, two years ago, but said if he could talk me through it I would. So I wound up making a batch of that for the hot line. I like that the place is small enough that I get to do things like that.

Sunday - Attacked by Jackals!

Take inventory of ingredients and product as usual.

Make new batch of puff pastry (yes, by hand... I really got spoiled using the sheeters at school).

Bake and cut three sheet pans of poundcake for new restaurant. Soak scraps in rum syrup.

Make four dozen marble chocolate-covered strawberries for Oscar party that night.

Make regular and mini- size flourless chocolate cakes, one of our signature items, both for original restaurant and for Oscar party. Garnish.

Go through walk-in and find other random stuff to send to Oscar party people, garnish accordingly.

That was my list, but just before noon all hell broke loose. We were hosting a big ski race for the first time, which included a luncheon. Not only did we have twice the number of people show as planned, but one thing no one had really considered was that these would be voracious cross-country skiers who’d just finished 10K or 20K races. People weren’t taking one hamburger or hot dog, they were taking three or four at once. I had to leave my puff pastry in progress (never a good thing with lamination) and help Chef run food out to the masses. We couldn’t replenish the buffet fast enough. People were grabbing food off the platters as I was bringing them out, and peppering me with questions like "Is there olive oil in this?" "Are these beef or pork hot dogs?" "Why aren’t you bringing out more fruit salad?" "Where do I get my free race t-shirt?"

Aaaaaaaagh!

I lost about two hours out of my production dealing with the pack of jackals, so I didn’t get the rest of my list done. Fortunately, none of the items left unfinished were needed for that night, so I was able to roll them over onto the list for:

Monday - The Calm After the Storm

I like Mondays because after the always-busy weekend, it’s like going to the spa. The main restaurant, where I am physically located, is closed, so it’s just me, a dishwasher, and der ErlkonigRedux, the elderly retired Swiss chef who comes in part-time to do a bit of this and a bit of that to stave off the boredom of being a retired Type A personality. Aside from putting away the food orders when they arrive from purveyors, I’m free to structure my day as I please, with little or no interruption.

Yesterday my list included:

Inventory (I try to do it first thing when I get in so I know what’s needed, both for ingredients and product)

Make triple batch of vanilla ice cream since I have the next two days off and don’t want to run out.

Make double batch of caramel ice cream.

Make black pepper ice cream.

Make double batch of cinnamon roll filling, roll out dough, fill and cut rolls, freeze.

Make batch of sugar cookies.

Make sugar-crusted pate a choux, bake.

Unmold and portion bread pudding and arrange on trays for service, wrap.

Make fresh batch of creme anglaise.

Bake two more pans of brownies for new restaurant.

Roll out tart dough from Saturday, line individual shells and bake for later use.

Take scraps of poundcake that were soaking in rum syrup and flatten, press down with weights in attempt to make a dense cake Chef had in Europe once and wants me to recreate. Actually, despite his vague recollections, I really like the idea of using rum-soaked cake scraps to make petit fours, which I think is what he’s talking about. We’ll see.

Convince Paolo the Brazilian dishwasher to try the black pepper ice cream. Bask in ensuing complements.

Bask a little more when der ErlkonigRedux, unprompted, tells me how much he loves the fennel ice cream.

Start prepping "concepts" for original restaurant’s dessert menu, which Chef wants to revamp entirely next week.

Clean out walk-in and make sure all pastry products are wrapped and labeled.