A Bakery Tour

For those of you who are intrigued by the idea that I go bake bread from 9 pm to 5 am several nights a week, here are some visuals to give you an idea what that actually means.

This is the bread oven where I bake. At a bakery like the ones where I have worked, there are usually three bakers working any busy shift: One baker mixes the breads, one baker shapes them into loaves and baguettes and rolls and such, and the third baker bakes everything in the oven. At my previous job, I was primarily the "mixer." At my current job, I'm the "baker." Everyone helps to shape the bread.

One of the breads we bake overnight is the baguette. When the oven is full, it contains 144 baguettes. On a Friday night I bake about 600 baguettes in addition to hundreds of other loaves. Here is a small fraction of last Friday night's bake:


Here is one of the baguettes, close up. It's from two weeks ago, and my "cuts" (those slashes you see across the top) have improved a lot since then... I'll have to take more photos!

The outer brown crust is that traditional crispy baguette style, and you can see from the cuts that the inside is much lighter and chewier. My current bakery bakes the best baguette I've ever had from a major bakery in Boston, if I do say so myself.

So on Friday I dropped a bunch of bread boards on my left foot and either broke or seriously bruised one or two toes... thought about posting a photo of them here, but it's a little gross, so you can check them out on flickr here if you like. Ouch! More photos of my Washington DC adventure are also posted.

Knitting next post; I've finally made something I can show you!