My first baking job was in 2018 as a Pastry Production Specialist at an American gourmet grocery chain in Austin, Texas. I had done a lot of baking at home, had a summer job at a bakery in college, was studying pastry and baking arts at my local community college, and experienced a semester abroad studying pastry arts in France, but this was the real deal. The bakery had a Bakery Manager who oversaw the two departments: Pastry and Bread. In Pastry there was an AM and PM shift with a Lead for each, I was in the AM crew. Our stations were cakes, pies, minis, and mixing. I started with cakes and eventually transitioned into minis. The shift typically started at 5am, but during the holidays we came in anywhere from 2-5am with the mixers changing their schedule entirely and pies being 24 hour production around Thanksgiving. It was a production kitchen where I gained skills in decorating cakes and cupcakes, created a variety of pastry products, and learned about executing daily par lists while stocking our case and shelves all-the-while providing excellent customer service. It was a lot. It was a fantastic learning experience and a great starter kitchen. The product quality was slightly higher than your average grocery chain; if you ran out of product or wanted to experiment you’d likely be able to find something that would work in the store; it was very, very production heavy so while quality was high on the list, the faster you could get it done the better; it definitely had aspects of kitchen culture with drama, passion, etc.- but was kitchen culture Lite™ since our pastry room was within earshot of grocery store customers and the grocery chain had a culture it wanted to maintain. Like I said- great starter kitchen. I decided to leave after the holiday season was over to dive deeper into my niche, but really learned a lot about production work, my work-style, and a little more about the direction I wanted to go with my career. I learned that I’m not super into that style of high-production, hated how much waste we produced, wanted to make more from scratch with more local/organic ingredients with more focus on the food itself, but I also learned how to create products in high volume, liked the idea of how the different stations were set up, the consistency and creativity, and met some fantastic bakers during my time there. Here are some of the products I made: -Cupcakes- got to play around with color combinations and basic piping techniques to make our standard and seasonal cupcakes. Pictured above are our Spring Flower Cupcakes, just in time for Mother’s Day.
-Novelty Cupcakes- these were larger cupcakes that were had more flavors and textures than our standard cupcakes. We had our standard cupcakes and specialty cupcakes where we got to play around a bit with flavors and textures. Pictured here are two of the standard novelty cupcakes: Tres Leches- white cupcake soaked with tres leches, topped with whipped cream, bordered with pecans, finished with glazed fresh berries; Strawberry Shortcake- white cupcake filled with strawberry preserves, topped with whipped cream, bordered with sliced almonds, finished with a glazed fresh strawberry. -Cakes- we made a variety of cakes on the daily to keep our case and shelves stocked. Pictured above is one of the case cakes: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake- a chocolate cake layered with rich, raspberry chocolate truffle filling, dusted with confectioners sugar, topped with fresh raspberries, garnished with chocolate curls. Aside from the blanket of confectioners sugar, it was one of my favorite cakes there.
-Parfaits (for dayz)- our director really wanted us to keep parfaits on hand and our pastry lead really tried to push for it, but honestly we didn’t have the time, people, or space to do it reliably. They looked real pretty all lined up though.
-Customer Orders- we had our standard case and shelf products that we always kept in stock, but we also took special orders. It was neat learning how to use what we had on hand to achieve what the customer wanted.
-Minis- the minis station had similarities to cakes in that we had a daily par for the case and shelf, specialty items, and customer orders, but it was a much smaller team, we did more seasonal items, and had a little more wiggle room for creativity with textures and flavors. We made a lot of different fantastic desserts, in large part thanks to the person who trained me on the station- their passion for food was inspiring. Pictured above were some of the standard pastries we made on the daily: Fruit Tartlette- tart shell filled a vanilla pastry cream, topped with glazed fresh fruit; Coconut Cream Tartlette- tart shell filled with coconut pastry cream, topped with whipped cream, finished with toasted coconut; Creme Puff- vanilla pastry cream topped with whipped cream sandwiched in pâte à choux, finished with confectioners sugar. -Catering Orders- one thing minis did that other stations didn’t do was execute a daily catering order. The orders usually consisted of a set of two types of mini tartlettes and three types of bars. The standard order consisted of 1) fresh fruit with pastry cream and 2) lemon tartlettes and 1) seven-layer, 2) chewy, and 3) lemon bars.
