Monday, June 20, I didn't have to work until 9:30 pm, so I had the day to myself. I spent quite a bit of time enjoying the outdoors and then did productive stuff like catching up on evaluations/work for Susan and laundry. I started my bakery shift at 9:30 and the bakery staff was awesome! Everyone is super chill during the overnight shift and there are few students that volunteer to work that shift. Meaning, the same two or three students are always working with the full time staff. They're like a little family down in the bakery.
We started out by making donuts. They make several different kinds; cake donuts and raised donuts. The raised donuts include long-johns, glazed donuts, coffee dunkers, fried cinnamon rolls, apple fritters, and twists. I had never made donuts before, so this was very fun for me!
Before anything, we had to make sure the fryer was on and had adequate oil. It was kind of gross to see these giant blocks of solid white fryer oil that we cut chunks off of to add to the fryer. We weighted out and mixed the cake batter dough while one of the other bakers made the raised donut dough. The cake donut dough got put into a piece of equipment that looks like a funnel, but has an attachment on the end that can be fitted for making donut holes or round donuts. Then, once the machine is turned on, you press the handle and donut dough shapes get dropped into the oil. How fun! Once the first side had been cooked for awhile, we used wooden sticks (think giant chopsticks) to flip all of the donuts over and finish cooking on the other side.
The hot donuts were then brought over to the glazing station where I got to get my fingers messy (my favorite part!) and coat these bad boys in sugary goodness.
Next, I helped John run the raised donut dough through the dough sheeter to flatten. We docked the dough to prevent bubbles forming, and cut out the different shapes. The regular donut shapes have a cool cuter that looks like a rolling pin with donut chapped cookie cutters attached to it. It is an efficient way to cut out 12 donuts at a time. The twists are made by taking a regular donut shape, stretching it gently, and twisting into a figure eight. The long johns are just rectangles of dough, and the cinnamon rolls are the raised dough filled with cinnamon sugar and rolled into spirals. These shapes had to be proofed for awhile before frying.
When they were ready to be fried, we went through the same frying process as with the cake donuts, except for with the cinnamon rolls. These are a submerged donut, so an extra mesh shelf rests on top of them to hold the donuts under the oil, allowing all sides to be fried at once. We filled the long johns, iced the long johns, glazed the cinnamon rolls/twists, and iced the regular donuts. Some of them also got rainbow sprinkles. The little kid in me loved sprinkling rainbow stars on…extra pretty :)
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| Making mini cake donuts |
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| Glazing Station |
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| The beginning of all the goods - we did fill the cart by the end of the night |
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| Filling long johns |
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| Rainbow sprinkles! |
Meanwhile, some of the other bakers/students were making cookies for the following day as well as muffins and crusts for lemon bars and coffee cakes (the filling would be added the next day).
I helped Rita assemble carts of baked goods to be distributed around campus come morning. Carts were being sent to catering, the retail locations (coffee shop, book shop, etc.), and upstairs to Piazza dining center. Every morning, they receive their desserts for the day including breakfast goods like coffee cake, banana bread, muffins, or donuts as well as the cookies, cakes, and bars that are for that day's lunch and dinner desserts. It's a cool system. I am really impressed that they make everything from scratch.
My last assignment of the night (morning?) was to make layer cakes that would be filled and assembled later that day. The recipe was for chocolate toffee layer cake (Oh yeah!). I really like using all the foodservice size baking equipment. It's kind of cool, because they have mixers ranging in size from 10lb capacity to huge floor mixers that can handle over 100 lbs. I used a size in the middle because I was only making 12 layer cakes. I weighed out all of the ingredients, mixed the batter, and then weighed out each pan of batter. Precision is key so that each cake is equal size and will bake evenly. The ovens were also cool. The cakes were on trays and arranged on a baking cart. These baking carts get wheeled into the ovens and the top gets slid onto a locking bar at the top of the oven. Once attached and when the oven doors close, this spins the rack to allow for even baking across each cake. The cakes didn't take very long to bake, so I wheeled them out and let them cool. After a little clean up of dishes and work surfaces, I was done for the day.
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| Chocolate coffee layer cakes |
Walking back to the apartment at 5:00 in the morning, the sky was as clear as can be, with a billion starts and a clear, almost full moon. I was absolutely wired once I got back, so I didn't fall asleep right away, but it was certainly a weird experience to wake up at noon. I am definitely a morning person and I'm not sure if I've ever slept until noon before now in my life!
The rest of Tuesday June 21 was mine to kill as well, so after some food and a walk on some trails, I went to see a movie. Me Before You was a good movie, but it was kind of sad. The theater was pretty empty because the movie came out a few weeks ago. Shout out to my girls back home (Molly especially!); I saw a chick flick voluntarily, haha!
Wednesday June 22, I started out the day with my Mastermind class by John Maxwell. This week we covered the law of connection (leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand), the law of the inner circle (a leader's potential is determined by those closest to him), and the law of empowerment (only secure leaders give powers to other). I really love all of the stories and quotes John uses in his book. He uses examples of people like Abraham Lincoln, Mother Theresa, Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham, etc. John also uses personal experiences including his work in his church. I will have to look up his Leadership Summit sessions.
I also met with Matt to discuss summer conferences. He gave me an overview including conference rate schedules, how housing is determined, what groups use university facilities for conferences, how menus are planned to fit groups, and necessary communication points between conference coordinators and food services.
Matt also took me over to the Rialto dining center (the other large dining center across campus) which is not open for the summer. We walked through the layout and the different venues and he discussed the similarities and the differences between the two dining centers. Both are great, but there are some differences. For example, Rialto is set up with a separate cook-chill area. Meaning, they prepare mass quantities of items like taco meat, soups, chili, etc. that are immediately put in the blast chiller, shrink packaged, and then sent across campus in cold carts to the other facilities where they can either be used immediately or frozen. Also, while Piazza has two large woks, Rialto doesn't really use their single wok, but they have double flat tops instead. Here they do many "bar concepts" like crepe bar, slider bar, omelet bar, street taco bar, etc. It sounds really fun!
Thursday June 23, I worked with Stacey and Cathy in commissary. I am continuously impressed by how far ahead of the curve UNI is with their food service systems. In doing some research and talking with Susan, there are not many other universities that have a commissary set up like this. A lot of areas on campus utilize it too; catering, retail, dining centers, etc. Each location on campus places orders, the commissary preps the items, and then hot/cold carts are prepped and sent via truck to these locations.
For example, deli meat and cheese is a job that gets done very regularly. All the different kinds of turkey, ham, beef, chicken, provolone, cheddar, etc. that have been ordered by locations on campus are sliced, weighed out, packaged, and added to the location's cart. The same is true for vegetables. Locations can order washed and prepped vegetables. However, not all vegetables are prepped on site. Economically, some are bought rather than prepared. For example, onions are bought pre chopped because a single employee would be dedicated to using the vegetable dicing equipment all day and would not have time to finish the other tasks of the day due to the vast amount of onion needed by all locations on campus. Also, it is cheaper to buy pre-shredded lettuce because that is a consistent 10 lb bag, but when you order a box with 30-40 heads of lettuce, you could receive very small ones depending on the weather that year and the weight could greatly vary.
I also got to work with AJ and Ryan and help assemble sandwiches to be sent out to the retail locations and box lunches for catering. Some of the sandwiches/wraps we made were three cheese on ciabatta with roasted red pepper spread, roast beef and cheddar with horseradish spread on a tomato basil wrap, chicken and bacon club wrap with ranch spread, ham and swiss on a pretzel bun, etc. Having sampled one of the box lunches myself at last week's blue zone meeting, I can vouch for their deliciousness! They also put nice salads and fruits in the boxes as well.
Stacey showed me how he does the pull for dry goods in preparation for events. We gathered all of the bowls, trays, utensils, napkins, plates, dry goods, and boxes needed and separated them by event. This makes it easier on the cooks because everything is set and ready to be filled with food. We can go from one area of the kitchen to another, fill the boxes/trays via assemble line, package, fill cold carts, store in cooler, wait for trucks to take.
Friday, June 24, I met with Susan and discussed how my projects were going. I also checked how our numbers were looking for my special event, seeing as a couple more small groups were added. After bouncing a couple of ideas off of her, I logged into FoodPro and finalized my menu choices. I am meeting with Sara next week to precost/forecast and enter my order. Woohoo, things are moving along!
Saturday June 25 was the Sturgis Falls celebration. Every summer, this festival is put on from Friday to Sunday. There are carnival rides, games for kids, fair food, a parade, and lots of live music. I went to the parade in the morning, walked around and saw all the rides and the masses of people during the afternoon (no fair food for me though), and watched some live music at night. I didn't recognize anyone in the lineup as they were Iowa locals, but they were pretty good. The best ones/more popular ones were later at night, so I stayed for awhile to listen to a couple different bands.
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