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What's A Girl Doing In the Kitchen?

When I left the restaurant scene out of a broken eardrum (no, not from swimmer's ear) I decided to take up on baking seriously since i know i will not dwell well in the hot kitchen or as we call it "the back of the house".. It was hot, you bump on to guys who are sweating round the clock and being new and a "girl" you kinda like the unofficial muse in the kitchen and nobody takes you seriously.

Seriously. It is true, these guys all 8 of them trained together for a month before they opened the restaurant so they know each other. Here you are, apprenticing and so small you look pretty much like you entered the restaurant looking for your father. Meaning one of the cooks.

For a while you do not seem to care, but later on as the gruelling task of unending potato peeling and onion chopping, you feel like you needed to say something, or else, you will be buried with more potatoes and onions to peel and chop. Not that it looked so bad, after all there were 3 of us. Very funny.

About a month after, i decided to show off my hidden talents. This is it. If i do not do this, these cooks will forever make me do the mise en place very 7 am. I cannot believe that i will use up all 700 hours of on the job training doing the soffrito!!!

I brought my ingredients and made cinnamon rolls that day. That was around 4 pm, i clock out at 7 pm so i had the time to let this dough rise and bake them. The day after, someone was trying to swap recipes with me, and if there's one thing that would make you "the it" person in the restaurant is if you know something that they do not know. Say what? Someone just told me one staff had a crush on me.Gee, i hope it was not because of the cinnamon rolls.

So i did swap recipes with some of the pastry chefs in the restaurant. One of them became a good friend until he left. My experience working in a restaurant was not that bad, but i knew i was not cut out for it.. Not enough time for yourself. I quit after a few months and went to Purefood's Flour and Bakery Division.

If you think it was easy working in a bakery, not really, but you get the hang of it because you are focused on one agenda only, and that is to make breads.. No grilling, no chopping, no skewering, pan frying, garde manger etc., Just one, making good breads.

The day after i made the cinnamon rolls, Mrs Soliven got wind of it and had some that morning. I am not sure if the boys in the kitchen reheated or warmed up the rolls but since i did not use any bread improver in the dough, i am quite sure the rolls will be a bit dry and hard since it came out of the walk in chiller.

"Matigas!" (tough, hard)she said this as she took a bite of the cinnamon rolls, while me and my classmates bolted out of the kitchen as we laughed all the way to the staff lounge. Not my fault. Why in the world would they serve her something straight from the chiller? I remember hiding from her for about a week after this.






My Cinnamon Rolls









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