Bakery Letter #3

Edging closer to spring, a dedicated bakery fridge (!), and more.

I’m pleased it’s February. At the end of the month my beloved Pisces grandmother celebrates her birthday; we’re edging ever closer to March and therefore spring; it’s nearly time to sow the seeds for the garden I’m planning in the backyard; the Georgia strawberry season. I feel like I wait all year for the strawberries. I say the same thing about stone fruits and citrus season…

Are we enjoying reading the Bakery Letters as much as I’m enjoying writing them? If I’m going off metrics alone I’ve gotten more new subscriptions from the Letters than the recipes. A less emotionally evolved Teresa would let this hurt her feelings a little, but the Letters aren’t behind a paywall so more people are reading them. Simple stuff, nothing personal.

Speaking of paywalls, I read something recently on the Substack Notes app (can’t remember from who now, forgive me) on how sending free previews of the paywalled stuff is akin to sending out an ad. Those of us publishing work on the internet have to at times market that work. Weird! Although I certainly don’t view the free previews sent to my own inbox as advertisements, I’m aware there’s a difference between sharing a link to new work on a social app and sending a whole email to someone’s inbox. The latter is more intimate so I suppose I see how it can seem inelegant to take up that space.

I think of the free previews for the many newsletters I subscribe to as a reminder to me, the reader, to sign up for a paid subscription if I’ve forgotten about wanting to do so. I’m also just nosey and love to read. But, if the general feelings are that sending out free previews really are decidedly gauche let me know and maybe I’ll reconsider, emphasis on maybe.

Bakery Life This Week

There are six cakes, including a sheet cake (my lifelong favorite type of cake) and conchas to make this weekend. I will be deep in baking mode by the time you read this. These big bakes have a tendency to show you what you’re made of. If I wasn’t a baker at heart (hey-o), if I didn’t absolutely love this work, a single big bake would have scared me away. When you have big batches of buttercream to make for several cakes, cookies to scoop, bake, tray up and then oh yeah, don’t forget about the concha dough in the fridge that still has to be portioned and proofed before customers — people who have already paid for their food, by the way! — show up at the front door, there is nothing to do but get it done.

Bakery window view, my happy place.

Later in March I will be tasked with making just over 500 cookies for something exciting that I’m not sure I can talk about yet, but anyway all of this required a dedicated bakery fridge. This is a beyond exciting time for At Heart. So now the fridge that holds our seltzers, beers, and various dinner leftovers can once again be strictly for normal household stuff, while the bakery fridge will house all my cakes, doughs, the pounds and pounds of butter that one uses at a bakery, etc.

Cakes from the last week. More citrus peel bows!

More people have ordered the piloncillo chiffon after a month of only winter citrus cake orders. The piloncillo chiffon is what it sounds like: a chiffon cake sweetened with piloncillo alone. For this cake I layer caramel pastry cream that I’ve lightened up with whipped cream (basically diplomat cream except I don’t use gelatin at the bakery so it’s omitted here). Luscious. The whole thing gets enrobed in a swiss meringue buttercream with 72% Ghirardelli chocolate that was gifted to me by local Cherry Bombe team member Catherine, who I met last summer when the girlies were in town for a networking event. (This is also where I met Kim Severson who would later order a birthday cake!)

Some BIZ NOTES that there will not be a recipe next week as I’m baking for Valentine’s Day, have a cake to make for the folks at Kamayan ATL, a beloved, award-winning Flipino restaurant the next day, and then I am finally getting that nixtamal lesson. I’ll write all about it in the following week’s Letter.

Favorites This Week:

1. Like many others this week, I’ve been once again listening to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. There are songs I really need to be in the right emotional space to listen to lest I immediately melt into a puddle of tears upon the first few chords. Fast Car and Fade Into You by Mazzy Star undo me completely. Sometimes this is exactly how I want to feel, exactly what I need for 4 minutes, 56 seconds before I get on with whatever I was doing before. “I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone…”

2. Ribbon markers in cookbooks. I noticed this week while looking for a recipe that my copy of Six California Kitchens: A Collection of Recipes, Stories, and Cooking Lessons from a Pioneer of California Cuisine by Sally Schmitt of the French Laundry had one that I’d never used. I’m a dog-ear book page person, I’m not precious about the books I own because I actually read them, complete with highlighting and underlining. A ribbon marker is a practical, fun detail in a book that I simply love.