Work experience at Rick Stein's - Day 4 - Early Pastry

Another day in Pastry-dise! I really enjoy working in pastry. Today I came in at 8 am and first thing I did was making more bread and butter pudding and after I had used the mix that I did the last time, I made some more bread and butter mix as well. That gets stored in the fridge for a maximun of a week. But so far everything has always been used within a day or two. Having experienced several lunch and dinner services at the restaurant now, I take back my critical approach of pre-prepared food as I realise that this restaurant would never be able to serve over one hundred covers if they hadn't done the preparation and pre-cooking. And everything is chilled in these super cold fridges that make it foodsafe.

After the bread and butter pudding preparation, I went on to tuiles. Having missed the day at school, this was a premiere for me. And I admit it is not easy but by the end of making about 40, I got the gist of it and they looked quite good. We baked them off and then I hurried to twist them into ice cream cones. Some broke, though, as they cooled down too much by the time I got to the 11th tuile on the sheet.

Then on to baked chocolate mousses - made the mix, prepared the tins and pipped the filling for them to be baked off later when needed. By that time the lunch service was in full swing and I was asked to assemble two small fruit salads with my own presentation idea. I really enjoyed that. After that I just did a few bits and bobs, like cutting pre-rolled defrosted cookie dough into biscuits to be baked and getting the seeds out of about 50 passionfruits.

Finally, once the service was over, we just cleaned down, meaning wiping all the surfaces down with soapy water and scrubbing and whiping the floor. They do a full clean down of the kitchen at least 2-3 times a day - after each service a proper one and before service all the surfaces touched.

So today it was just an early shift. But tomorrow I am back on a split which basically means a double shift from 8 am until finish at night.