4:40am. Oven on. It takes fifty minutes to come up to temperature with the stone in, and there is no shortcut.
5:10am. Loaves out of the retarder. Scored one at a time — the blade drags if the dough warms even slightly, so they come out of the cold in threes.
6:30am. First bake out. The crust sings for about a minute as it cools, a fine crackling you can hear across the room. This is the best part of the day and it lasts sixty seconds.
7:15am. Madeleine batter out of the fridge, tins out of the fridge. Nine minutes a tray, four trays.
9:00am. Cream whipped, buns split and piped. These cannot be made early and they cannot be made late.
11:00am. First pickups. This is when the studio stops being a kitchen and becomes a shop for four hours, and the switch is harder than it sounds.
4:00pm. Starter fed for tomorrow. Levain built. Dishes.
6:00pm. Tomorrow's dough mixed, first fold done.
People assume a bakery is peaceful. It is not — it is a series of things that cannot wait, arranged so that none of them overlap. When it goes right it looks calm from the outside. That is the whole craft.
Filed under
- studio
- behind the scenes
