Baking at the Supermarket

Welcome back! In my previous post, I mentioned opening duties. The baker takes dough, off individual trays covered in parchment paper, from the Transit Case, to tray it for Proofing (humidity) one hour, then baking (about twenty-three to five minutes).
Now we'll pick up after the break (I like mine during sunrise), with several things described thoroughly in said post.



Now, let’s walk back in after break, fresh air, sunrise if it’s visible.

Finally, we go back for the rack with our donuts, which includes ones on glaze racks, for the donut case, and others for bakery production. It’s important to only glaze the ones on glaze racks, as the rest are for icing.

I bring my bucket over to the table. When I’m the one racking donuts for Prep, I like to put the Glaze Racks in the easiest position to pull. Every thing else will stay on, the whole time.

First, open your bucket, with the handle tool to leverage it open. Use a spatula to stir for about ten seconds. With the spatula set aside, begin dunking your donuts! I do a two-handed, two-donut approach. I start drizzling glaze on the donuts beneath, as I pull each pair through the goop, out of the bucket, and back to the tray. We like keeping the donuts on the 20-slot racks; they can all go in at once.



Your croissants rack takes fifteen minutes, so catch the beep!

I found myself keeping a small chart of the degrees to which different racks had proofed, according to their ultimate needs (between an hour and an hour and forty-five minutes).

Soon, we’ll pop that donuts rack into the oven for two minutes around 375-400 degrees, to set the glaze.

Break! If you have some calories on hand, you’ll want to ingest them- and drink some water. It’s after this that you have most of your lifting.

Now, we come back and lay out flat trays with parchment paper coverings- I like to do three at a time, at least two. These are ParBakes, which is to say, partially-baked, and you won’t need spray.

We’re heading into the Freezer for our Izzio, la Brea, Primetime, French (hard) rolls, and bagels. Tray your bagel load separately, to gather them all on one rack to bake separately from the rest of these breads.

As you tray this load of bread, keep in mind the bake times and temperatures. If you rack it up correctly the first time, you’ll save yourself so much energy, so make that a worthwhile goal. It’s easy to fix if you haven’t baked the bread, yet, but they do categorically fit together for baking at each time and temp.

Your department is sure to have these posted and in their manuals.

Break down the Frozen Load Here, we need a pallet jack, which you’ve been shown how to activate and pull. We’re headed to the Big Freezer, outside our department, where we’ll find one or two pallets for Bakery. The items on board will be familiar. We’re rolling all this back to the department. That should take about ten minutes, tops, just go carefully. I believe these are going to the department’s freezer. You may have to hold one in the big meat department fridge area- just don’t leave them at room temperature very long.

You’ll need the necessary complement of U-Boats- I’d say, roughly two per palette. I had to include the department’s grocery buggy, to break down the two loads for Monday. This is something you want to get out of floor traffic as early as possible. Think about how you stack, and when a box runs horizontal, just stack it parallel to the handle- it won’t take up very much space, hanging off the sides.

Get these u-boats back into the Cooler. Those are the big green pallettes on wheels you use to load things off the floor. It’s so fun, figuring out how to steer these things where you want, without trapping yourself. I hurt myself a little a few times.

Now, let’s get out some boxes of Hamburger Buns, Pan Rolls, Cocktail rolls (same dough), bring them over by the table, and set up a couple of flat trays with parchment and spray. Group your burger buns in fours, snug together. You’re doing eights of those, and the other rolls are bagged by the dozen.

These all bake at 380, but first, proof them for thirty minutes, and afterwards, we’ll proof them for another hour, an hour and a half total.

Back to the freezer with our Zebra’s list of pies, whole and half. Spray Quick shine on the maple apple and cherry pies. They go, in their tin, on the flat trays.

You hopefully have all this done, about four hours into your shift.

Let’s bake the pies and turnovers and strudel bites at once. First, the pies get fifteen minutes at 450. Now we could add in strudel bites- they need 23-25 minutes. They can go in separately, too, if you want to get the pies started, but there you go. Depends on how fast you can get 30 bites at a time onto trays over parchment paper.

The pies go in for two times, second at reduced temperature, in our store, but they can be baked consistently at one temp, one time, I think 385 for 35 minutes.

This is the earliest I’d consider Lunch, but if you can do one more task? Donuts. I got Strussel Bites finished before I left, yesterday, because I had been waiting to put in my batch of La Brea breads, to finish out the department’s baking needs for the morning. Cookies are the afternoon department’s domain. Then I lay out three trays, and add parchment. Here, you add one metal watchacallit with its triangles-up- it’s a rack, not the big ones on wheels, but one you find beneath your Baking Table. You want it ‘upside down’ or the donuts will be raised too high to fit into the wheeled rack and will roll all over the kitchen floor.



I presently make 4 two-dozen trays of Donuts to Glaze. Here’s where you catch all the glazed deserts- it’s only about six trays, total, and you place them back into the donut rack as you complete each one.

Now, I’m ready to begin portioning, with usually four donuts going onto the rack to be glazed, and eight on the parchment-covered flat racks to be iced. The Long Johns are not glazed, and you lay out a dozen of each of the three kinds. I find it best to look on the Zebra for whatever box I have on top of my Huge Donut Trailer. You are mostly working with donuts at this point, but there are a few Pars listed on the Zebra, like the number of Strussel Bites.

Don't let this rack drop in temperature or the contents will mush! I like to work with another U-boat or wheeled cart, to set aside the boxes I’ve gone into, then restack everything as it was again at the end, minus whatever boxes we empty in the process of panning. I go through my donut boxes, picking over the freezer loads for additional boxes as I need them.

As soon as you’re done, the strussels and turnovers are quick to melt, so, immediately get this big donut cart back to the freezer. I learned an even better trick: slip it into the Cooler!

Baked breads from our transit case doughs at the start.

Here’s a great place to take your half hour for Lunch.

Afterwards, we’re Setting Up Prep for Tomorrow. We’ll need our Zebra again. It’s got our numbers of French breads etc. we need to pan up in the Transit Case.

We’ll pan up Chocolate croissants according to the number on the Zebra, four to a box. Then we have Classic and Mini Croissants, four and a dozen to a box, respectively- usually nine boxes each.

Put these together on a 16-slot, or medium sized, rack, and cover them with a plastic bag.

Transit Case and Croissants both go in the Cooler, as soon as they’re panned up.

You should be about six total hours into your tasks, now. Put your load away. Clean up and take cardboard to the trailer.

And that is how you get it all done in seven hours! Plus half an hour for lunch. I have this process down to just over eight total hours, including lunch and breaks. I think I've been at it about ten times, now?

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