40 More Hours

Well there's only about 40 hours left to complete my externship. Thyme flies when you're having fun! I would be sad if I had to leave the Griggstown farm when my hours are finished but fortunately that wont happen. I'm pretty excited to be staying on and working for a while longer. Fall time and the holidays seems like it will be a busy and interesting time.

Matt talked to me this week about continuing to work. He said he likes the bread type things I've brought it and wants to give me the opportunity to continue to bake new things to sell in the store. I had told him that I really enjoy baking the most and he wants to sell more baked goods in the store so it seems like the perfect chance for me. It seems there couldn't have been a better place for me to intern at... I wouldn't think most places would give an intern that much freedom to experiment and bring in new things. We'll see how it goes.. :)

Fougasse!

One of my favorite bread recipes is a olive and sun-dried tomato fougasse that I made one night in baking class. I've made it a couple times at home and when I saw we had many olives and sun-dried tomatoes at work I figured it'd be a fun thing to test there. On Thursday morning I baked four loaves and cut two of them up as samples and one I used as a side for the lunches. As usual, the bread went over really well, the staff loved it and customers were asking if we were selling it in loaves. The fourth we sold to a customer at the end of the day. Matt really liked the bread and asked me if I would bake more of it the next day. Unfortunately, all the sun-dried tomatoes were gone so I couldn't but he is ordering more and I will bake a bunch of bread to sell this coming week. I'd like to try another flavor for the fougasse too since some people don't enjoy olives so much. Maybe one with onions and...?

Last Wednesday we were preparing the lunch menu for the next few days and needed a salad for a side dish. I was supposed to make a coleslaw with red and green cabbages but someone had disposed of the green cabbage so Mike told me to make a salad out of tomatoes. I figured I'd make a simple salad with just a few ingredients so I collected a bunch of yellow, orange, and red tomatoes, red onions, and fresh basil. I diced up the tomatoes and onion, chiffonaded the basil and made a viniagrette with olive oil and red wine vinegar. It was pretty simple but very tasty and people bought it up. This week I was asked to make it again so that we could sell it in the store. I wanted to add in some cubed mozzarella but all the mozzarella had gone bad so that will have to happen another week. The salad is almost like a bruschetta so we sliced up and toasted a baguette and will try selling it as bruschetta to see how that goes. Its so much fun to be able to experiment and branch out with something new.