Retail was definitely one of my favorite classes. One reason I loved it so much was because I got to make a lot of bagels in that class. I’ll probably never forget the first time I made bagels there. The first week that my group was making bread, Chef Vagasky asked us if we could make Chef Jeff’s bagel recipe from Artisan Breads. I was the only one in my group who had taken Artisan Breads, but I brought the bagel recipe to class and said we would make them.
Everything was going great until I suddenly couldn’t remember what we were supposed to do next. I thought Chef Vagasky might know since he had been in Artisan Breads with me, but he couldn’t remember either. He said he could call Chef Jeff and ask him, but I told him it was okay and he didn’t need to do that. He said he would anyway, but then something else came up that he had to do (I don’t remember what it was, but it’s not important to the story). So Amy, Sonia, and I weren’t really sure what to do.
We just sort of stood around waiting and thinking for a few minutes, but then we decided that we would never figure it out by ourselves. Amy finally said “Hey Chef, what did Chef Jeff say?” He pulled out his phone to call him, and I all I could think was “Please don’t say my name... please don’t say my name... please don’t say my name...” The last thing I wanted was to look like the slacker who didn’t pay attention in class.
Luckily for me, he just said he had some students who were making bagels. He told me everything Chef Jeff was telling him, and the whole time I was trying not to slap myself and yell, “How could you not remember that, idiot?! If you had just kept working, you would have remembered!” As I was reprimanding myself, I heard “This is Miss Violet we’re talking about.” Great. Then he laughed and said “Yeah, little miss sunshine.” I think I saw a little bit of sarcasm drip off his phone.
When I talked to Chef Jeff the next week, he told me he hadn’t been very happy about it, and he had gotten even more mad when Chef Vagasky said it was me.
These people love me. They really do.
Anyway, my group ended up getting so good at making those bagels that one day I told them, “We probably make Chef Jeff’s recipe better than he does. And you can tell him I said that.” Amy did, so he challenged us to a bagel throwdown (yes, we actually called it that) and he just barely beat us. Then he admitted that he hadn’t expected our bagels to be very good. Thanks for having faith in us, Chef.
My next story is completely unrelated. Just throwing that out there.
When I try to think of memorable experiences, one thing I try to think of is inside jokes. Inside jokes are always super memorable, and there’s one inside joke I know I’ll never be able to forget even if I want to because it’s written on my jacket. My friend Katie, who I first met in Intro to Cakes, wrote “Violet, you are a PROFESSIONAL” on my jacket when she signed it, and ever since then, it’s made me sad to think about how many people have probably read that, didn’t know it was an inside joke, and thought that Katie was a boring person who would write something totally serious. For the sake of Katie and all those people, I’ll explain the whole “professional” thing.
One day in Advanced Bakeshop, we were making joconde that was decorated with decor paste. For those of you who don’t know how to use decor paste, you spread it on a silpat, make some sort of design in it, and then pour the cake batter on top. One of the people in my group was having a hard time spreading out the decor paste to the right thickness and making it even everywhere. I offered to help and show them how to do it since I had done it several times during my summer as an intern at Baked. I told them I was a professional decor-paste-spreader since, even though I didn’t get paid for it, I had done it in a “professional environment.” I may as well be a professional. They were both pretty impressed with my mad decor paste skills, and by the end of class that day, they were spreading decor paste like professionals, too. And it just sort of caught on. If Katie came into class late, I would be sure to tell her that that wasn’t very professional. If I made a really ugly cake, Katie would be sure to tell me that it didn’t look very professional. And of course if one of us did something that was super awesome, like selling out at the bake sale in Retail, then we would be sure to congratulate each other on doing whatever it was “like a professional.” By the way, Katie is so professional.
I have one more unrelated story, and then I’ll leave you all alone until tomorrow. In Intro to Bakeshop (we haven’t talked about that class in a while, I know), I had a partner for a few weeks named Eli. Eli is one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, but he made me very mad one day. We were making apple pie (or “apply pie,” according to the recipe), and we had a big bowl full of sliced apples that were going into the pies. We were supposed to put lemon juice on the apples so they wouldn’t turn brown and look disgusting, so Eli squeezed a few lemons over the apples, then tossed them a few times until they were all completely coated with the juice.
It would have worked out great if we were making apple and lemon seed pie. But it was okay after we checked each apple slice individually for lemon seeds and moved them to a clean bowl.
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| Me, Sonia, and Amy with our last bagel in Retail. We were sad. |
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