Dream Job

The last thing I expected to receive in this depressed economic climate was an invitation to participate in my Dream Job. Actually, the last thing I expected to receive in this depressed economic climate was a chance to work part-time anywhere! I guess that's where Fate steps in and plays a hand for you.



During the busy Christmas season, Bill and I were invited to seven different parties and dinners. Normally, we get to one, so seven was a definite HIGH for us. We met some wonderful new people and at most of these, I would take along a tray of Christmas cookies I'd baked. They were well received and I admit it: I like to hear people rave over my baking. One of our new buddies proclaimed them to be, "The Best Cookies!" he'd ever tasted. So yeah, next party invite, here's Nancy in the kitchen baking up another tray of goodies to bestow on the group.



I guess you could say those cookies were my resume into this dream job. One of the participants was a man from Petaluma (go figure!) who was opening a new bakery/bistro in town. He remarked one evening that it would be a good thing for me to come into the shop one day a week to bake cookies for him. I laughingly agreed, figuring it was probably just 'party talk'. But what a lark that would be I thought, since secretly, I've dreamed of either working in a bakery or a restaurant and making folks happy through their bellies with my food!



This week, when I stopped by for a loaf of his extremely great Artisan bread, he asked me for my phone number and asked me if I was serious about baking for him. I told him of course I was! Next day, his partner and G.M. calls and asks if I could come in on Friday to 'watch her' bake for four hours. If it worked out, then she'd let me bake on Monday and Tuesday and several days a week I could go in and bake her signature baked goods. Heart pounding, I agreed (whole heartedly!).



The bakery/bistro is open from five to two and besides fresh bread and pastries sells coffees and sandwiches and salads for lunch. The day I got there, there were two brand new employees getting trained, one who was there for her second day and two others who've been there about a week, plus Mary and Bert, the seasoned owners. We got blitzed with the biggest day so far.



The first half hour, Mary was able to show me where a number of the products were stored and the location of the ovens, work center and utensils. She pulled out a sheaf of recipes and said even though the bakery was only in its third week, there were signature dishes that were expected to be on the shelves: notably the cinnamon rolls and the Magma Cake. So those two things I would be watching her bake that day.



We had barely begun the double batch of cinnamon rolls, when the gal who was making sandwiches came in with a strange look on her face. They had just received an order for twenty two sandwiches and had forty five minutes to assemble them. Without missing a beat, Mary told me I was on my own since she'd be hustling to help get the orders ready.



'Normally,' (I mean in my own kitchen), I don't always read a recipe completely through before assembing it. Today, I was, although a pounding excitement kept filling me up as I could sense the staff's urgency as the lunch crowd started arriving ( as soon as eleven, I might add.) I take this to be because in Arizona, folks go to work earlier in the day because of the heat, so naturally would want to eat lunch sooner. The restaurant is located in an old building downtown with fifteen foot ceilings and the acoustics are raw. From my post in back, stirring up a copious quantity of dough, I could hear a woman's high pitched laugh rocketing off the rafters. It sounded like a party going on out in front and this new staff was hustling, even if some of us had no idea where everything was!



So here I was, trying to follow the recipe as best as it was written. If it said to mix the eggs and milk and butter in a separate bowl, before adding it to the dry ingredients, so be it, I was! At home, I'd tend to just dump them into the bowl of dry ingredients and save myself an extra bowl to wash. AH HA! That's where the beauty of the bakery/kitchen comes into play. We had us here, A DISHWASHER to take care of that pesky extra bowl. I don't mean a mechanical-you-load-it-you-clean-it-out sort of dishwasher. I mean, a real blood and bones fellow named Bernie who washed, rinsed, sanitized and put them back in your own workstation so you could get them out and get them dirty all over again!!! I tellya after two hours of this, I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven!

When my first tray of liberally iced with cream cheese frosting cinnamon rolls hit the shelves, I started to relax a fraction. When the Magma Cake finally came out of the oven to cool and didn't fall or look mis-shapen, I relaxed even more, but by then it was time to call it a day. I didn't realize until I got home how totally worn out I was. It was a wild ride to find one's way around a strange kitchen and hustle to get everything done plus try to turn out a product that pleased the customers as well as the owners, but I think I managed. It's not everybody who gets to start their dream job the same year they are pushing sixty. But I think it can be done and I'm going to try real hard to prove I'm a good baker.

I purchased a couple of cinnamon rolls and brought them home for our breakfast this morning. They were pretty good. But Bill was still laughing that I had to go off to bed by eight o'clock last night. Evidently, a year of being retired had its effect on me and after only four hours of being a baker, I was pooped out quite a bit!