Socchan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soc_puppet) wrote2017-02-05 11:49 pm
soc_puppet) wrote2017-02-05 11:49 pm
Today in Bakery Adventures
Today did not start out fantastically! I think I got something like four hours of restless sleep last night, which is not ideal when opening at absurd o'clock in the morning. Or ever, really. Still, I got to the bakery safely and got through the morning routine with no real hassle...
And then, around 10:30, our big rotary oven malfunctioned.
We rely less on our rotary oven than we used to, having switched to baking our dinner rolls in a smaller convection oven, but we do still use it for things like muffins, breakfast breads, some sandwich breads, and some cheesecakes. It takes a while to get up to temp, so I'd turned it on while shaping the dinner rolls to give it time to heat up before baking some breakfast breads and/or muffins in it later. I'd just managed to get the first batch of lemon poppyseed bread into the small convection oven when the rotary started to sound a long, constant tone that I usually associate with stuck baking racks. Since I was only planning to bake the muffins in the rotary, and hadn't scooped them yet, there was no rack in the oven.
Something I should say about this oven is that is has a very loud alarm. It's loud enough to be heard over upwards of sixteen chatty college students working on their own baking projects with music playing in the background. It might even be loud enough to be heard over four or more mixers going at top speed in the same environment. Imagine a loud, piercing, consistent beep sounding and not stopping and nothing you can do will make it shut off. The plug is inaccessible, and everything else seems either too drastic (gas shut-off valve, though I still would've tried it if it hadn't been inside the still 250*F oven and where I could see it easily) or too easy to go horribly awry (the circuitry box to the left of the oven, which I didn't even dare try to open, because who knows what I may have accidentally bumped and shut down).
Imagine telling a supervisory person what's going on, but they're distracted and don't quite comprehend the entire situation. Imagine going forty minutes with that consistent blaring alarm before tracking down the same supervisory person to try and explain better (and thankfully succeeding).
I believe I totaled an hour and fifteen minutes with the alarm going. I'll admit that I took quick breaks every ten minutes or so to get away from the noise, but I could only do that so often without feeling like a lazy disappointment with a talking-to on the horizon. That said, I still would've left earlier if I hadn't had the breads in the oven.
I took lunch in the staff lounge before I left, and stopped by the bakery once more before I went out the door to go home. By some miracle, in the twenty minutes since I'd clocked out someone had found a way to stop the alarm. I was grateful for that, since I wasn't sure that anyone had contacted our new pastry chef about the situation yet, and had been planning to do so myself if the alarm had still been going. I drove home knowing that at least the situation had been somewhat mitigated, if not entirely fixed.
I have no idea if the oven is fixed. I have no idea what it will take to fix it, or if it just needed to be "rebooted". After all that, I was glad enough to get home and sleep.
And then, around 10:30, our big rotary oven malfunctioned.
We rely less on our rotary oven than we used to, having switched to baking our dinner rolls in a smaller convection oven, but we do still use it for things like muffins, breakfast breads, some sandwich breads, and some cheesecakes. It takes a while to get up to temp, so I'd turned it on while shaping the dinner rolls to give it time to heat up before baking some breakfast breads and/or muffins in it later. I'd just managed to get the first batch of lemon poppyseed bread into the small convection oven when the rotary started to sound a long, constant tone that I usually associate with stuck baking racks. Since I was only planning to bake the muffins in the rotary, and hadn't scooped them yet, there was no rack in the oven.
Something I should say about this oven is that is has a very loud alarm. It's loud enough to be heard over upwards of sixteen chatty college students working on their own baking projects with music playing in the background. It might even be loud enough to be heard over four or more mixers going at top speed in the same environment. Imagine a loud, piercing, consistent beep sounding and not stopping and nothing you can do will make it shut off. The plug is inaccessible, and everything else seems either too drastic (gas shut-off valve, though I still would've tried it if it hadn't been inside the still 250*F oven and where I could see it easily) or too easy to go horribly awry (the circuitry box to the left of the oven, which I didn't even dare try to open, because who knows what I may have accidentally bumped and shut down).
Imagine telling a supervisory person what's going on, but they're distracted and don't quite comprehend the entire situation. Imagine going forty minutes with that consistent blaring alarm before tracking down the same supervisory person to try and explain better (and thankfully succeeding).
I believe I totaled an hour and fifteen minutes with the alarm going. I'll admit that I took quick breaks every ten minutes or so to get away from the noise, but I could only do that so often without feeling like a lazy disappointment with a talking-to on the horizon. That said, I still would've left earlier if I hadn't had the breads in the oven.
I took lunch in the staff lounge before I left, and stopped by the bakery once more before I went out the door to go home. By some miracle, in the twenty minutes since I'd clocked out someone had found a way to stop the alarm. I was grateful for that, since I wasn't sure that anyone had contacted our new pastry chef about the situation yet, and had been planning to do so myself if the alarm had still been going. I drove home knowing that at least the situation had been somewhat mitigated, if not entirely fixed.
I have no idea if the oven is fixed. I have no idea what it will take to fix it, or if it just needed to be "rebooted". After all that, I was glad enough to get home and sleep.
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You made it a long time and I'm proud of you. \o/
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Thank you :) <3
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