Marzipan Magic...is she really Willie Wonka?

This morning, I did not get up and walk along the river, but I am going in the morning.  I was studying for class today and the music for the next GCT production, Plaid Tidings.  Before I knew it, it was time to head to Marda's Workshop, because I certainly got the golden ticket.  I would gladly be two feet tall and Oompa Loompa orange if it meant that I could live long enough to glean all of the experience that my teacher has. She really is a modern-day Willie Wonka in the magical sense.  Just when you think that you know what is going on, she pulls some outrageous stuff out of her closet and the candy-making just became spellbinding.  I am thrilled every day.

The first order of business today was to create mint caramels...the last of the nirvana from yesterday, and possibly one of the best.  We combined her caramel with mint white chocolate to create a wonderful filling for these beauties.  The initial white-green luster paint is painted on the mold before the chocolate goes in and is hidden until the big reveal when the chocolates are turned out. The photo does not really do it justice, but it is cool.  Of course, using the leaf mold is a great touch.  The flavor is not overpowering, but very smooth and the caramel just takes it all to another level.


Mint Caramels

After we decided how to make the mint chocolates up we headed into marzipan bases and French truffles. The first thing we did was make a marzipan chocolate that appears to be a maritime hat that Napoleon might wear...so its name is Chapeau Napoleon.  It is a layer of marzipan wrapped around an Amarena cherry (preserved sour cherry from Italy).  These are very tasty and easy to make.

Yes...that is 24 K gold dust brushed on the top....perfectly edible.
Chapeau Napoleon

Then we turned the Marzipan into a raspberry filling, that contained two kinds of raspberry essence (super-concentrated fruit) and freeze-dried raspberries.  These were double-dipped in white chocolate tinted pink and have a very intense raspberry flavor.  We also made dark chocolate mint truffles and they were not ready for photography as we finished them at the end of the day.  I have learned that a good chocolate tempering machine is a must to make the chocolates turn out well, and I have learned many good techniques from her in just a short time....more to come.  Here is a snapshot of the marzipan raspberry truffles.

Just before the white chocolate hardens, the chocolates are rolled in pink luster dust.
 This is a colored dust that has crushed pearls in it to add shine...totally amazing and magical.

Needless to say, my jaw was on the floor when we rolled the truffles around in pink fairy dust and they were shiny.  This effect is better appreciated in person, or by a better photographer.  We are doing a bit more marzipan tomorrow, but then headed to cream centers.  I am looking forward with great anticipation.  I am scheming about all of the ways these techniques and products may find their way into the bakery.  I will be the best Oompa Loompa that I can be.

Caramel Nirvana

I got up this morning and went for a walk along the Deschutes River here in Bend, and the view was amazing.  It was cool and crisp and the weather felt positively like fall.  I then went home, and got ready and fixed a little breakfast in my little chalet.  I then hopped in the truck and loaded all my trappings up to the International School of Baking.  It has only been one year since I have been here, but so much has happened with the progress of the bakery at home, and the decision to open a store downtown in Torrington.  It has been a wild train ride, and today was no different.  I have literally stepped off the train into Chocolate Wonderland.  While the rest of the world was celebrating Labor Day, I was working diligently with my teacher and her assistant to create caramel fillings that would be worthy of attention.

The whole day was spent on these fillings and learning to properly fill molds with chocolate and then filling and sealing them.  Marda's first instruction to me was that I was responsible for the choice of the mold for the chocolates and how we decorated them.  We also made a caramel base which we then divided into portions and each portions was flavored and made into a filling for a molded chocolate.  It was a great education.  We had tried working with molds at home before, but did not have the right tempering equipment.  There was also some technique differences that made these chocolates turn out amazingly well.  I still have much to learn as the photos will reveal.  Chocolate is unforgiving and must be handled correctly.  My molding technique will get better, and my design work is just beginning.  But the fillings, and the tempering of the chocolate were sublime.  The chocolates all had a perfect snap when you bit into them and I have never tasted such intensely flavored caramels before.

 

These  chocolates are filled with hazelnut caramel which was a mixture of finely ground hazelnut butter with the caramel we made in the beginning.  The chocolate mold was dusted with gold powder before filling and has tiny ridges along the mold...it is a very art deco-looking chocolate, though the photo does not do it justice.  They are absolutely delicious and a definite addition to my menu.

 

These little beauties are filled with chocolate caramel.  This was made by melting chocolate and stirring it into the caramel.  The mold was decorated with a transfer sheet that is put into the mold ahead of time with a removable back piece.  The transfer decorations are cocoa butter and transfer right onto the melted chocolate.  Very cool and beautiful.  It looks like the chocolate has velvet wallpaper on it.

 

These are blood orange caramels which I painted with tinted cocoa butter.  I liked the array of colors, but my painting techinique needs some work.  The caramel was made by again mixing the base caramel with blood orange paste.  These are excellent and I was so excited to make them. 

 

 

I felt like I had reached a new level of understanding and appreciation about chocolates and caramel and the flavors were Nirvana!

The Sky is the Limit

 

Today was my second pilgrimage to the mecca of baking and pastry in Bend, OR.  I left Boise this morning and was greeted by a mass launch of hot air balloons during a celebration of the Spirit of Boise, ID.  The timing of the event with the weather is so precise, that if there is any significant wind, then the launch will be cancelled.  Today, however, was a good day and the balloons were flying.  The plan was for about 50 to go up simultaneously, and then they land in parks and parking lots across the city.  I was in awe, and it appeared that they sky was the limit.

I start class tomorrow and the second phase of my pastry and baking education.  I am looking forward to learning as many different techniques and products as possible, so that the possibilities will be endless as to the things we can create and offer at The Bread Doctor.  I am thrilled to be back in Bend to study with Marda, and meet up with friends.  Bill and Donna Pfeiffer have graciously offered for me to stay in their guest quarters while I am studying with Marda.  Their home is beautiful and is situated on Mirror Pond in Bend.

We had a wonderful dinner tonight with the Pfeiffer's, their grandson and Marda.  We had a great time catching up and the meal was delicious and the company was delightful.   Marda brought chocolate volcanoes (sorry no picture...we ate them all) for dessert.  Speaking of chocolate, the first week of class is devoted entirely to chocolates both molded and hand-shaped.  This will be great and will feature many delightful flavors that I plan to bring home for to Torrington.

The next two weeks have been made that much more wonderful as I enjoy the beautiful quarter provided by Bill and Donna..  I am truly blessed.

 

 

Well, tomorrow begins a new chapter and the sky is the limit!

A New Vista

 

Well, we have been waiting four months to get this piece of artwork up in the big picture window in our kitchen.  My dear friend, Mark Bigelow, has been developing his wonderful talents as a glazier these past years and we asked him as he started his business to make this piece of art for our new remodel.  We are thrilled, and as I hung this up yesterday I realized that we are also headed on a journey into the world of bread and pastry art.  I can only hope that our contribution is as successful as the beautiful spectrum of color we now enjoy every time we work in the kitchen.

Marda Stoliar and yours truly in matching jackets....oops
(I am such a wannabee)

I am excited to head off tomorrow to drop off my daughter at college and then on to school myself in Bend, OR.  I feel much like I am headed off on a Greek quest to the oracle at Delphi.  Marda Stoliar is just about as close to a culinary demi-god as you can get without being punished by the gods for being too perfect.  The standard of excellence that I learn from her is just what I want to incorporate in our bakery in Torrington.  I am there for two weeks for chocolates (including caramels, crème centers, truffles, marzipan, etc), savory pastries (including samosas, empanadas, curry puffs, Chinese pork buns), specialty breads (San Francisco Sourdough, pita, semolina bread), and specialty Holiday items (gingerbread houses and Buche de Noel).  I will be blogging every day to keep my family and friends informed of my progress and share what I am learning.  When I return, I will be meeting with my contractor to finalize the budget for the remodel of the bakery.   Then off to the bank to beg for money to start.  Hopefully we will have the remodel underway by October 1.

 

I am leaving my practice of clinic medicine and obstetrics in order to make time for this new venture.  I feel a bit sad as I enjoy delivering children and caring for them, and the patients who have trusted me with their most precious possession will always be dear to my heart.  But in order to make time for the bakery, I had to have a schedule that was more predictable.  I will be working in the emergency room part of the week and baking the other part....a career splice.  The bright colors of the glass remind me of the incredibly beautiful experiences in life that I have had so far, but they are also tempting me on towards the wonderful adventures that lie ahead.......my new vista.

Free At Last...

Well, the 4th of July came and went, but we did move back into the kitchen in the last week and we were freed from culinary purgatory.  The new space will be a lovely place to bake, cook, entertain, imagine, grow our extended family, and enjoy.  We have finally completed a very big dream of ours.  And though we had to make compromises along the way, as is the case with all remodels, we are very pleased and I breathe a sigh of relief every time I go into the kitchen.  Our contractors, Ridgeline Construction, did a beautiful job and we are thankful to them.  I have finally announced another baking sale for August 13 and 14 (we had already scheduled a family vacation).  The Bread Doctor will be making bagels and Russian Black Bread, adding a cinnamon-raisin bagel to the repertoire.  I did take the opportunity to wake my sourdough up from its three month slumber and you will see it featured prominently in the middle of the island in the photos of our new culinary workshop.  It is growing well and should be ready for baking soon.  I have included a few photos of the finished kitchen for my family who live at a distance and may never see it.  But this will be the site of baking activity until the downtown bakery opens next spring.

 

Beautiful Cherry woodwork done by Ridgeline Construction.(yes those are all cookbooks....crazy)

 

 

Gas oven and range and tile backsplash (done by Paul Pardus)
 

You can see from the photos, that Lisa and I both love green, and we finally got the gas range we have always dreamed of.  We also had a wonderful contractor that custom built all of the cabinets, the island, bookshelf, dresser, and the window seat.  He and his crew are great.  Another miracle was the way that they were able to build the new roof to complement our prior roofline.  It really is quite nice.

Brick walkway coming soon

As we designed the kitchen, we were attracted to the work of artisans that surround us.  Our friend, Mark Bigelow, designed and constructed several stained-glass panes for various locations in the kitchen.  He started taking classes in glasswork about a dozen years ago and makes beautiful things.  He has his own business now and a Facebook page (Mountain Light Glazier) and was recently showing his work at the arts festival in Jackson, WY while his wife, Claudine, played viola in the Teton Music Festival.  Check out his work, I was astounded.

Dish cupboard next to the sink

Cabinet over the toaster that holds the toast trimmings (butter, jam, honey, cinnamon sugar, etc...)

 

This beautiful piece will be hung up in this picture window after the vacation.  It is especially meaningful to Lisa and I because we were both Chemistry majors and this is the colors of the spectrum done in brilliant glasswork.

 

We are truly blessed and grateful for those who have worked so hard to make life beautiful for us.  I personally have only one thing to say "Thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

 

 

Going downtown....the rest of the story

Well, there is much to update since January.  I did get my permit from the city of Torrington which allowed me to open an in-home bakery.  This gave me the permission to get some commercial grade equipment at home which started with the double steam-injected oven  from French Canada.  It is the only Cadillac that I will ever own and here is a photo of the beauty.

This has helped me be more efficient with baking times and produce more product the last few months.  I was able to bake 48 dozen bagels in one day and then the next week make 64 dozen caramel cinnamon rolls over two days.  The oven is a blessing and will be a permanent part of the bakery for years to come.  It heats up quickly and has a built in fan to circulate the air for even baking.  I had to stop baking right after Easter, because that is when the wall of my kitchen was knocked down and we are progressing with the addition at home.  But I was able to sneak in an entire two days of baking with my sister, Jarene, in addition to the bagels and cinnamon rolls.  Here are some snapshots of the breads we made those two days.

I have been going through baking withdrawl for six weeks, but I am hoping to be baking again by the 4th of July.  They are actually installing cabinets today and the fabricator is here to make the template for the countertops.  I had an ingenioius friend of mine come and tear into the sheeter and learn all about how it works and he was able to get it running just beautifully.  I have a couple of parts to replace, but that will  be fine and then I will be able to begin test baking Croissants and Danish Pastries.  This will be very exciting, albeit challenging in the summer months.  During my time off from baking, I naturally have had many hours to plan the future of The Bread Doctor, LLC.

After a few months of baking, I had the growing realization that it would not be wise to build an entire commercial kitchen in my garage.  As the bakery business grew, I could see myself getting too big for the garage very quickly, and then having to move out.  This would leave me with a garage that was unfit for any vehicles to park and a large waste of money and time spent in repurposing the space.  (These realizations will seem obvious to any clear-thinking observer, but I was a man obsessed with a dream.)  Having accepted this realization, I knew that I had to explore other options.  I say this in a rhetorical sense, because I had no other obvious options at the time.

At the beginning of April, I headed downtown for theatre business and I happened upon a "For Sale" sign in the window of an old building right on Main Street.  It had large picture windows that jutted out to the sidewalk, wooden floors and a high-vaulted ceiling.  My pulse quickened and I called Lisa to come down and look with me.  Of course, this became the beginning of the Cinderella story.  After negotiating an offer and some repairs with the owner, the building became the property of The Bread Doctor, LLC.   Here is a photo of the front and the sign.

 

So.....the building purchase has led to a cascade of events.  I immediately have begun planning a renovation timeline and a timeline at work to allow me to be free to open the bakery down town in the spring of 2015.  I will be baking again at home in July and keeping the business going there until I am ready to move to Main Street.  I hired my baking teacher, Marda Stoliar, to come to Torrington over Memorial weekend to design the bakery.  That was a wonderful couple of days and was very exciting.  Here we are in the empty building sitting at the drawings trying to figure out how to use all of the space.

 



It has been a thrilling adventure the last few weeks, but I am very excited and feel that things are working out well.  There have been many meetings already with the plumber, electrician, city building inspector, HVAC specialist and discussions about the walk-in refrigeration and freezer needs.  The contractor working on our home has agreed to remodel the bakery, which is a blessing, and  I am learning a very large amount about the process of remodeling, and business planning. 

I will be attending school for two weeks in September and again next April to learn more about a few of the items I want to feature in the bakery and to learn to decorate wedding and special occasion cakes.  I will be working only in the Emergency Room starting on January 1 and will be leaving my clinic practice on October 1, 2014.  The eventual plan for the bakery is for me to work the emergency room on Monday and Tuesday each week and have the bakery open Thurs, Friday and Saturday.  There is much to do and I will be working and baking my brains out for the next year to get this all ready, but it will be exciting.   And that....is the rest of the story.

Miracles, Madness.....and Magic

Really, baking bread is a miracle with a little bit of magic.  When you consider that you are trapping air bubbles in a matrix of protein and water (gluten), it is a miracle that anything is more than a piece of leather when it comes out of the oven. But gluten is very adept at trapping the air and even letting you knead and shape it in various ways.  In the last few weeks, I have been test baking Schneken (German brioche rolls), TBD (The Bread Doctor) Sourdough, and Russian Black Bread.  All are very different doughs, but start with flour, water, salt and yeast.  Here are some photos of the finished products:

TBD Sourdough



Russian Black Bread

Schneken made from Brioche

 

 I had a sale of Russian Black Bread this week and had orders for 51 loaves.  I am very pleased with the flavor and texture of the bread, although my teacher's loaves were darker when we made them in school.  My son, Andrew, states that the Schneken rolls are his favorite pastry.  They have an Amarena cherry in the middle which is a very delicious and unique flavor.  I had never tasted one before baking school.  The sourdough bread is made from a wild starter that I made when we lived in Salt Lake City going to medical school over 20 years ago.

Here is a photo of the outside of the kitchen remodel that we are anxiously awaiting, and the madness is just beginning.  The laundry room under the kitchen is out of commission, and Lisa is at the laundromat weekly.  We soon will be looking forward to days of microwave meals from our dining room or something similar when they knock out the kitchen walls and gut it to make the old room and new rooms one.....more madness.

 

 

Now, for a bakery update.  During December, I met with the local planning commission to get a conditional use permit.  This was needed in order to build a commercial kitchen in my garage, which is the next project after the kitchen remodel.  This will allow me greater freedom in what I can offer from the shelves of The Bread Doctor: cream puffs, cheesecakes, cream pies, chicken pot pies and the like.  This was a great step towards getting the home bakery up and running.  As a result, I have been shopping for bread ovens and will get one in about two weeks!  I should be able to bake several (10-15) loaves at once, which will speed up production and allow me to offer more than one item at each sale in the bakery.  This will be an exciting advancement in the course of the business. I have decided to continue to market most of my bread baking products online, through internet ordering on my Facebook page or website (www.thebreaddoctor.com).  I hope to  be able to increase my offerings to 2-3 times per month after the oven is in place and all of the commercial kitchen details are worked out.  The adventure has been a hectic ride, but the baking is fun and magical, and the creative rewards are well worth it.  Keep tuned to the blog for future updates.  I have had several sales here in Torrington that have met with good reviews, so I feel that I am producing a good product.