Battle of the soup bases...house-made stock vs. canned broth

It shouldn't be too much of a shock that stock is better than broth.  But, who knew that it would be more cost effective?  It was a surprise to us that we could make our own stock for significantly cheaper than buying prepared broth.  For years we had been using canned broth in our soups and thought we were making a good compromise between a cheap powdered soup base and an expensive homemade stock.  Then a few months ago we found that our soup ingredient cost was too high and did some brain storming to figure out what was wrong and what we could do to remedy it.  In the end, we're making better tasting soups and sticking to our budget.  Life is good for our soup eating customers and us!

Left: chicken broth   Right: chicken stock

Easter Eve Breaks Baguette Record

I guess someone read my post a couple of months ago about me wanting to bake more baguettes.  Thanks!  With the extra accounts that we've gotten in the past month plus the holiday increase we baked 475 baguettes this morning.  I'm not really sure what the previous record was but I'd guess around 400.  We haven't even hit the farmers' market season or a big holiday yet.  I'm getting what I wished for and I'm a little afraid.  It would be nice to have a second oven and a lot more cooling racks.  That will have to be added to the bakery wish list.

This also is a good time to note that last summer I was happy to reach the one pallet of flour per week.  That's fifty 50 lbs bags or 2500 lbs.  Right now I'm running at around 70 bags per week.  I'm hoping that by the end of the summer I'll have reach the two pallets per week mark.

Another Lesson Learned...Actually a Few

I'm writing this, I guess, mostly for myself; to remind myself that I can only only do so much.  That I am good at somethings and not so good at other things.  I have my strengths and my weaknesses.  Yes, everyone does.  Now, change "me" to "the bakery" and the story continues.

I'm writing this because the past 4 to 5 weeks have been extremely hard on me.  Way too much stress for this time of year.  The winter is normally a slower season and it gives us all time to rejuvenate from the busy holiday season which follows the busy farmers' market season.  That all sounds nice but at the same time there are still the same bills to pay but less revenue.  To remedy this the bakery took on a new  client that asked us to do something that we weren't used to doing.  In fact, something that we aren't very good at doing because of the type of equipment that we have.  Our training and our equipment do an excellent job at baguettes, croissants, ciabatta, etc.  The learning curve was steep and the hours were brutal.  Throw in a streak of employees calling in sick and I was about to call in the towel.  Previous to taking on this account we had made projections on material and labor cost.  These approximations were based on a quasi similar product, but much more simple, that we have been making for years.  I quickly realized that we were way off.  You can imagine how I felt as I worked an extra 4 hours almost every day on this product knowing that I was running in circles.  Things have been tough at the bakery before, especially early on, but I think this was the worst I have felt.
Something had to change.  We analyzed more accurately what was actually going into this product and changes were made.  This is actually a good thing to do every now and then on every product; to make sure everything is in line.  Since then I have trained a baker to take over for some of the duties that I had early on.  This has helped a lot and I've been getting more me and sleep time.  Both of which make for a happier John.

In my perfect world, restaurants would be banging down the door for those things that we do well.  Unfortunately, I live in a world where that doesn't happen often enough and I guess that's what I get for opening up an artisan bakery (But, I wouldn't want to be baking anything else!).  So when I go off from our core product line I need to be very cautious.  Yes, with every mistake I learn something new; but, I'm also afraid of how many mistakes are out there to make.  It's more fun to learn from my successes!

Obviously, this client will remain unnamed and I hope that it will stay that way.  It wasn't their fault.  We told them that we could do it.  The blame lies solely on myself .

Everything Eggs

Today was the last day for everything eggs as I knew it.  Everything eggs is exactly what it sounds like...we take everything we can get our hands on and make an omelet with them.  These things amount to our sandwich fixings and anything that we put in our breads.  Over time we figured out what went best with our favorites.  For one, we developed the "bakery trinity" which is jalapenos, onions and olives.  To start, we'd take bacon and the trinity and cook these together in our cast iron skillet.  In the oven of course because we didn't have a stove top.  The bacon would render it's precious fat and caramelize the onions and saute the olives and jalapenos.  While this was happening we'd make our egg mixture by taking 2-3 eggs per person, ham (preferred over turkey), chipolte mayo (we like it extra spicy), our choice of cheeses (usually not Swiss, never blue, pepper jack and cheddar is good, Havarti adds an extra silky texture and provolone is a good bet too), salt and pepper and mix it together.  When our trinity was ready we'd pour the egg mixture in and let it cook slowly being very careful not to over cook the eggs.  I hate dry eggs.  I want my eggs to be creamy and wet.  My mouth is watering just thinking of it!

Why is this era ending?  This coming week our kitchen will move up to where the bakers are and with it all of there ingredients.  I'm certainly not complaining because now the possibilities will exponentially expand.  However, in this environment everything eggs would just be too ridiculously all over the place.  Even though it was fun to make the most of what little choices we had, now we'll be able to concentrate on certain themes.

The last Everything Eggs with fresh baguette.  Yummy!