The Baker's Assistant

I first started out at my  daughter’s catering kitchen doing easy tasks…like a bit of public relations writing, decorating her rooms, running her dishwasher, putting away things, and more. Then I worked on chopping vegetables and fruits. I graduated to being able to arrange vegetable trays, fruit trays, and cheese trays. I started to make salads like tossed green salads, cole slaw, potato salad, broccoli cheese salad and other types. If I’ve cut and quartered some potatoes, I’ve done it for a 50 lb. bag, more times than I can remember. A little bit like KP duty in the Army. But I am in Erin’s Army at Erin’s Fine Foods.

I jokingly referred to myself as the Chef’s Apprentice. Now with a new deli in the downtown area, along with the catering kitchen – I find myself working as Katie Schettler’s apprentice baker. Katie is the pastry chef and a wonderful bread maker. It seems I have two bosses. I am a follower and not a leader and this suits me just fine.

Today, I got to use Katie’s recipes and also the commercial size mixer to do three different types of cookies – chocolate chips, dried cranberry/oatmeal, and peanut butter/oatmeal cookies. I made triple the amount for two of the cookie recipes and doubled the peanut butter/oatmeal ones. After making each recipe,  I used a medium sized ice cream scooper to place a scoop of the cookie dough onto a full sized disposable foil pan. When I was finished, I wrapped each pan, which would be placed in a freezer and used when we need them.

I didn’t mind baking. I actually enjoyed making the cookies, along with watching Katie working on the bread that she was making from scratch. The loaf bread and the ciabatta bread would be used for sandwiches down at Erin’s Deli at the K & L Gates building in downtown Pittsburgh.

Tomorrow will be another day of baking and putting together the scones. Now I can add Baker’s Apprentice to my resume along with Chef’s Apprentice.