Just a girl who loves flours.

**I actually wrote this post at the end of June but apparently never posted it....

Sorry, better late than never. **

It's been a month since the last blog post and I'm sorry. I think there's a lot to fill you all in on, but thinking about that stresses me out so I'm going to talk about bakery things.

I've been itching to blog about all the different types of flours we use at the bakery, so today's the day. Prepare to be educated.

I won't be offended if you don't wanna read about flour.

Okay, so first off, the breads we make in the bakery are gluten free. Some people, especially those with Celiac Disease, are placed on a gluten-free diet because their bodies cannot process the gluten. Gluten is a protein composite found in wheat, barley, rye, and triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye). Gluten is formed when wheat flours and water mix, creating a strong, sticky, and stretchy protein that gives structure to baked goods and helps wheat flour morph into many different foods.
When you see flour in a recipe, you know gluten is going to be involved.
And that's why we don't use regular flours in the bakery.

According to Wikipedia: "Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, beans, or other seeds or roots."

Every day, I prepare the pre-mixes we use for the bread. Because of this, I handle a lot of flour.
To illustrate this, here are the ingredients in the White Bread that we make:

White Bread Ingredients:filtered water, cold milled sweet white rice flour, cold milled sweet brown rice flour, egg whites, tapioca flour, palm fruit oil, sugar, potato flour, yeast, xanthan gum, psyllium husk powder, sea salt, calcium propionate

White Rice Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Tapioca Flour, Potato Flour.
Flour, Flour, Flour.
And of course, flour-like ingredients such as Xanthan Gum, Psyllium Husk Powder, and Ground Golden Flax Seed (in the multigrain loaves).

Right off the bat I can tell you that tapioca flour and xanthan gum are difficult to work with. They act almost like a fluid and get powder everywhere. The white and brown rice we grind ourselves at the bakery by using food processors and the flax seed is ground using a Blendtec blender. I pretty much have the pre-mix recipes memorized now. Of course we weigh out everything because that's more accurate.

((Here's where I got sick about writing about flour...))


Now for the DL on my life.
  I learned (during a cookie baking venture) that I have CostCo sized butter in my fridge. It is one whole pound of butter. There were four 1lb. sticks in the pack. Paula Dean would be proud. I had to find out how many sticks 1lb. was equal to for my sugar cookies. For the record, 1lb. is four sticks of butter (or two cups)

Another baking tidbit I had to Google was about how to make cake flour out of regular flour (because who purchases cake flour regularly anyways? Here's how it's done:

Step One:  Measure out the all-purpose flour that you’ll need for your recipe.

Step Two: For every cup of flour you use, take out two tablespoons of flour

and return it to the flour bin.  Throw the cup of flour

(minus the two table-spoons) into a sifter set over a bowl.

Step Three:  Replace the two tablespoons of flour that you removed

with two tablespoons of cornstarch.

Step Four:  Sift the flour and cornstarch together.

Sift it again, and again and again.

The cornstarch and flour need to be well incorporated and the flour aerated. 

Sift the flour and cornstarch mixture about five times.

You're Welcome.

Calendar time!

June 6th we went to the Rooftop concert series that Provo has the first Friday of every month. We're definitely going to keep doing this because it was so much fun! There's some great local bands out there. We enjoyed listening to Van Lady Love a ton. And we got a bunch free stuff from the Google Fiber booth because we have Google Fiber :)

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Sometimes I can convince Christopher that we should try a new food place. We usually end up really enjoying our meals and our time together. June 14th we wandered into a place called Gloria's Little Italy (after driving around for half an hour because I'm indecisive and didn't want ANYTHING fast food. It was a quaint little joint off of Center Street and ended up being super good and a lot more food for your dollar than we were expecting. Check it out!

Chicken Parmesan Sandwich

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June 20th we went with our gang to Strawberry Days which is apparently a big thing in Utah. We had some delicious strawberries and cream that we waited in line forever for and rode all the crazy, insane, and rickety carnival rides. Man I love carnies.

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Another random food place we visited was Parley's Place in Salem. We were looking for a wedding reception on June 21st that we never found and became thoroughly frustrated. We were also hangry, so I yelled, "FOOD!" at Siri and this was where she took us. It was a little diner in the middle of nowhere that had some delicious food and milkshakes. I'm bummed we don't live closer! It ended up being a fun little adventure for us :)

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Also, I think I'm going to dye my hair red.



Brace Yourselves.



There's never a dull moment.

Trust Me, I'm a Baker

 *Warning: Grisly pictures ahead. Not for the faint of heart.*

So I became part of a Tim Burton movie recently.

Many of you probably know already from Facebook and such that I sliced my hand open recently and had to get 16 stitches. It was the unfortunate outcome due to a mixture of frozen fudge, an awkward cutting angle, and my own impatience. I now adhere more closely to knife safety.
And I strongly recommend CutCo knives. They really work!


Here's the timeline of my healing process in pictures:

 

This is what it looks like now.
Still have some healing to do.

I've mostly kept my hand wrapped up in bandage tape and gauze and then wear a latex glove while I'm at work. Those gloves don't breathe at all. It's pretty miserable. Now I'll have to be extra careful to make sure the cut doesn't split again. I don't know how to take it easy :p


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As for all this work I've been busy with, well, I started working at a bakery at the beginning of the month. My major (Food Industry Management) requires that I spend one semester working on the production side of a company. The company that I am at is called New Grains Gluten-Free Bakery.

Here it is in the Macey's grocery store. It's cool to look back on this picture and recognize all the work that goes into it all. We bake, cut, package, seal, and label everything by hand. Those black bags are pre-made mixes that we weigh out and bag and seal on a daily basis. The sugar cookies are frosted by hand.

So what is a day in the life at the bakery like?

Well, first I wake up at 5am. Yup. It's rough. When I get to the bakery I have to put on a hairnet and an apron. Then thoroughly wash my hands.

After that we start the bread making process.

One of the supervisors is usually running the mixing process and keeping track of how many batches of bread we have to make. One batch is equal to... you guessed it, 13 loaves of bread. As the supervisor weighs out the dough into the loaf pans, some of us are in charge of smoothing the dough into the pan, because guess what, gluten-free bread doesn't rise the same as regular bread. We literally have to shape the loaf to make it look normal.

Once the batch is all smoothed, we put it on a cart and place it in the proofer (20 minutes for white, multi-grain, sourdough or egg-free loaves). After it's done in the proofer it goes into the oven. 60 minutes for sourdough, 40 minutes for the rest of the breads. We have 6 ovens. There's usually 3 carts in the proofer at a time and the whole process continues until we've finished the amount of bread we need for the day. Once the loaves are out of the oven, we place them on shelves (see below) to cool.

 

We usually make dinner rolls and hamburger buns the same time as the bread (one person is in charge of that while the others are smoothing). The same goes for tortillas and pizza crusts at another table. We have to wait until we've almost finished with the bread to start the English muffins though because those have to bake at a lower temperature.
Once we've finished baking the bread, we start packaging the dinner rolls because they don't have to be cut and they cool down the fastest. Then one of the supervisors starts cutting the bread. We put it through a slicer that cuts it all up like sliced bread should be. Then we bag and date and twist tie the bread (with the correctly colored twist tie of course).
Meanwhile, someone is getting together the orders as everything is getting bagged. Some orders are double bagged for shipping and others are placed in boxes. Personal orders are usually double bagged, the grocery store ones usually are not.
Also during this time, someone can be grinding flax seed or coconut for later or they can be measuring out pre-mixes for use the next day at the bakery (that's usually what I like to do). Some pre-mixes are also weighed out into individual bags to sell in stores.
Cookies are usually made on Saturdays when I don't work so I don't know much about them except that we flatten them ourselves and push the chocolate chips into the cookies that have them. This prevents them from streaking the bags when we put them in. For the cookies and macaroons and pecan caramel bars, we seal them all individually. The Pecan bars are cut in precise squares (like we literally measure it and cut along a yard stick - I did that once) and the edges are left over for us to snack on :)
We usually wrap up the day around 3pm. Although lately it's been around 1pm.

All in all it's a pretty good job. I'm learning a lot and I know it's information I can use despite everything being gluten free. My only complaints are that I don't have a lunch break (only a 15 minute break) and I've yet to be paid (I've tried convincing myself that this is okay because many internships aren't even paid anyways, but let's face it, I'm poor and I need the money!). Despite all this, I think the week before the family reunion is going to be my last because I've got a lot of days I want to ask off in July and I could really use more sleep. Plus they're increasing the hours the Info Desk is open at the Wilk so I'd rather not be working 6am-2pm at the bakery then 3pm to who-knows-how-long at the Info Desk. We'll see what happens though.



As for other exciting happenings in my life:

1. Friday, May 16th: Brigitte got married! I'm so excited for her and everything was so nice. The Manti Temple is beautiful and I was so glad I got to go. She looked gorgeous!
It was also cool to see a sealing from the other side. Brigitte and Seth are pretty fun to talk to too. They have this whole story about why their wedding rings are significant. It was adorable to see Seth at Brigitte's side the whole evening, holding her hand. Super cute :)

2. Friday, May 23rd: We found a random carnival in the parking lot of the mall. Of course we went on all the spin-y rides and made ourselves sick. It was so much fun! after this we were going to watch the meteor shower, but could cover prevented us from seeing anything. Bummer!

3. Saturday, May 24th: We went to the Hispanic/Latino Market so Christopher and Kolby could get all trunky and so I could try some of the things that made the especially nostalgic. We decided to get really culturally diverse and went to the Asian Market as well.

These were our spoils of war:

They were pretty good. We apparently made some popular choices.

I, like a nerd, had a blast reading all the ingredient labels.

Life is Good.

My Mom Came to Visit!!

So since last time....

April 9th - Christopher and I went on a date to a sushi place called Asahi because I had been craving it.

The Sweet Jesus, The Caterpillar, The Rockstar

April 13th - We made some campfire dinners and took them up the canyon to cook em in the woods. We forgot eating utensils, so we whittled some sticks and used them as chopsticks!

April 15 - Christopher's Birthday
We decked out the apartment in Iron Man themed decorations and acted like we were still kids at a trampoline warehouse. I made him some yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Sean Cobb was in town and staying with us for a couple nights too; just in time for Christopher's birthday! It was a huge success.

April 15th also happened to be the last day of classes at BYU and by April 21st I was done with finals! Yay!

However, I did take a mental break on Sunday April 20th for Easter. We went to Logan to see Kolby's stomping grounds. His grandparents and parents were so welcoming and fun! We had a blast!

 April 21st we took a trip to Utah Lake to celebrate being done with Winter Semester.

April 24th was Ashleigh's Birthday and we celebrated it for three whole days! Owl balloons and candles, rent-a-puppy, the whole shebang. Happy 21st Ash!

 And now we're pretty much caught up. My mom's just been chillin' with us the past couple days after her writing conference. Yesterday we took on a huge project to stock my freezer with freezer meals and frozen slow cooker meals. I think the total amount of meals was 32 when we were finished. Most of which are big enough to feed a family of four! Leftovers for dayssss!

We started by having a massive Sam's Club shopping trip:

Then we started cooking up a storm:

We cooked and shredded ~26 chicken breasts.

We browned like 13lbs of ground beef.

Gob tons of Meat Sauce

Cilantro Lime Chicken

Final Product:

We made a mess of my tiny kitchen.

12 pan meals to bake, 16 bagged slow cooker meals.

I think we'll be good on dinners for a while now. Thank goodness for mommas! I sure love mine!

And in case you crazies want to attempt this or any part of it, here are the websites and recipes we used:
28 Freezer Meals in One Afternoon
8 Slow Cooker Meals in One Hour

P.S. Christopher video blogs about the things we do now. I think he covered some things that I missed (like the Provo Spring Festival and when I taught everyone how to make sushi). Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/user/WeDontReallyEvenCare

The End.