Wyoming Week 6: Bakery

This week flew by in a cloudy haze of sugar and flour.  I’ve had more butter than I want to admit, less sleep than I want to think about, and lots of fun.  (Word to the wise, though, the first time you try cronuts, try not to stay up all night before doing so, and then definitely do not eat 3 within the space of 5 minutes.)

It was great working with the masters over at the bakery this week.  Deb, the amazing head baker, gave us the run-down of the equipment needed for their operation.  Having never been behind the scenes of a commercial bakery, I was amazed by the size and variety of equipment.  This was my first experience with walk-in ovens, mammoth mixing bowls, and donut robots.  It was also my first time using non-digital scales.  All the bakery recipes use weights, so I got lots of practice, but I still didn’t entirely master it by the end of the week.

Giant Mixer

Donut Robot

This thing can form about 30 rolls in 10 seconds

It was fun hearing about the special challenges of serving high-class desserts.  Deb creates a new dessert each year for an on-campus gala, and she has made some amazing, but stressful-sounding dishes, including a baked Alaska with 3 different layers of gelato and a 2-layered flan baked inside mini pumpkins.  As if these don’t sound challenging enough, keep in mind that about 500 people go to these galas.  Also, she has to transport the desserts a long distance, sometimes to places without adequate freezer/refrigerator space.  Yikes!

The projects we got to work on this week included baking cookies, decorating cakes, making dinner rolls, frying donuts, and cronut (croissant donut) testing!  The bakery is trying to develop an ideal recipe so they can start selling cronuts at the retail operations on campus.  The cronut testing was by far my favorite, even though I had to do two midnight-8am shifts to be involved.  We got to make the croissant dough (including, yes, spreading a half-pound of butter over the dough), cut and fry the cronuts, and toy around with fillings and glazes.  Some of the flavor combos we tried were lemon blueberry, pumpkin maple, and cinnamon chocolate.  SO GOOD!  I think I’m permanently spoiled for normal donuts.

Katlyn's beautiful frosting flowers

Cronuts Before Frying

After Frying: Behold that layered goodness.

This weekend was awesomely fun too!  Claire, Katlyn, and I checked out the farmer’s market downtown on Friday.  Then on Saturday, I met up with some friends and saw a parade then went to Sybille Canyon.  On the way, we saw buffalo, antelope, elk, cattle, and llamas!  Then in the canyon, we went swimming, cliff diving/jumping and shooting.  It’s not every day that I get to jump off a cliff, shoot handguns and rifles, and ride in the back of the truck.  I was stoked.

The lake we swam in (the rocks in the far background on the left are what we jumped from)

I can't remember the name of this rifle, but it was super fun to shoot (and a bit painful, haha)

Until next week!