Block 7: Week 3 - Yeast

I'm a little bit jaded writing this post because the last couple of days at school were pretty frustrating for me, especially yesterday. I'm having a hard time dealing with the laziness of people in my class. Every day, we have to package all the products that we make to be sold in the market. It is the shared responsibility of the whole class, but it tends to fall to those on the yeast station because a majority of the products to be packaged are the breads and danishes made by the yeast station. However, the last few days, a couple of other people and I packaged pretty much everything by ourselves while the rest of the class essentially stands around doing nothing. I don't even know why it makes me so angry, but yesterday, I almost lost it. I really need to work on being more patient. Really.

Yesterday was a crazy long day because I stayed after class to help out with the Winter Feast, a fundraiser for Junior Team Canada. It was a dinner for about 300 people, so we helped set up all the tables, the buffet area, and the silent auction. Then we served the passed canapes, champagne, and cleared the tables. Chef bought us all a beer afterwards to celebrate a successful evening. It was long and tiring, but fun.

Before the Winter Feast, I had lunch at Meat and Bread. It doesn't have a website yet apparently, but it's a new place that opened up near school. It's totally my kind of place - it only serves four sandwiches, one salad, and one soup, and it does everything really well, as far as I can tell. I tried the pork sandwich, which is pieces of this roasted stuffed pork with a salsa verde. They also top it with a bit of the crispy pork skin and serve it with a homemade sambal. Delicious.

Other than the frustration, it really wasn't that bad of a week. We were on the yeast station, which is probably the busiest of the stations this month. We made white bread, brown bread, french bread, sour rye, pumpernickel, danishes, croissants, and cinnamon buns. The hardest part is the timing of everything because once you make each of the doughs, it has to proof before it can be baked.

The best night this week was J's birthday - $2 beers are definitely trouble on a birthday. I also got a new nickname that night: Sar Bear (apparently I look a lot like Sarah Silverman).

Next week - Pastry.