The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1920-09-10
LESSONS OF
BAKERY SHOP
How the Bakers Do a
Thousand "Bakings'
in One Day

IN the bakery SnOp Cney uoH 10
things like mother used to do" A
bakery, any bakery, say the Smith
bakery in Blackfoot, is quite won
derful place and we'll worth any
persons time to study. Within its
heated walls various operations are
carried out in day which, spread
among 500 families would be called
Kitchen work." If not downright
"drudgery." Everything is done on
such a scale that 1t cannot seem
petty. Even the baking Cor is it
cooking?) of cream puffs appears to
be merest routine, not fussy or an
noying.
These bakers are disillusioned Gull
mary experts. To them cooking and
baking and mixing ingredients and
keeping up the fire SO the oven will
be hot are not the "homely arts, :"
performed with loving hands-they
do not give a lump of dough any
undue consideration, such as patting
it this way and twisting it that to
make it look nice and everything;
they do not throw it playfully up in
the air, as the hired girl used to do
to "give it more life' { a myth we
never did believe) but they, these
bakemen, can cut off a hunk of it as
it oozes from the mixer that will
just weigh eighteen ounces, and do
it nineteen times out Of twenty as
precisely as a machine. When 1t
has been baked it weighs sixteen
ounces, one pound, and costs Is
cents.
And when the chef is making
cream puffs he just grabs up hand
full of runny, golden goo out of a
concave wooden receptacle and drops
dabs Of it in regular rows In wide,
fiat pans, four one way and six the
other at the rate Of two pans a
minute. You can tell from his far
away expression that he is not bit
inflated because he can make good
cream puffs. 1t is only a part of a
days work, like milking cows, or
wedding beets. He looks about as
interested in those delicate pastry
bubbles as a fireman is in the coal
he shovels. He knows not, or has
forgotten all he ever knew. about
cream puffs that failed to luff, into
which you couldn't inject chunk of
cheese without the aid of chisel.
He only knows just how to mix the
stuff and how big the dabs of 1t
should be and how long 1t should
rest in the superheated oven so that
every puff will hold loose cream and
yet be as tender as muffin. But
then he has had much more time
than the average cook in which to
practice, for instead of three meals
a day for the family, he has for many
years been baking the materials for
a thousand meals every day.
There is one operation in making
bread that anybody but baker
would habitually spend quite a bit
Of time on, and that is rolling out
the loaves to make them fit their
pans, end to end and side to side.
This time expense, little as 1t seems,
yet is enough to warrant the use of
whole machine in the bakery.
The device consists of simply set
of rollers that turn towards each
other. One man throws the shape
less dough chunks in at its mouth
and another catches them as they
come out rounded and of just the
right length. The square loaves are
baked in pans, while the vienna
loaves go in on fiat sheets as in a
French bakery. The baker puts
them into the deep, low ceiled oven
by means of long oar which he
shoves in as far as he wants and then
jerks back so that the loaves slide
off and stop.
These bakers are not so laxative
as Frenchmen. A visitor makes but
little difference with the days work.
In France you can delay the whole
bake by going in and striking up a
conversation with the baker while
he is trying to load his oven. II you
stick hard and fast by him he will
possibly take you into his living
quarters behind the shop and give
you drink of cognac, after which
you are supposed to go away and let
him work. To remain would be such
a broad hint for more!
The square bread loaves, OF which
the Smith bakery makes the greatest
number, are wrapped swiftly by
nimble fingered girls as soon as they
have cooled off. If they wrapped
them hot they would sweat or some
thing. No "stickum" is used to keep