I’m having a @japhroaig moment: made a wonderfully crusty free-form long loaf with good crumb from my standard poolish and am enjoying it with a good hard cheese. It came off my peel (onto the stone) with a bit of a drag, so it ended up having a slight horseshoe bend, but otherwise it’s a perfect, tangy, chewy loaf. Yum.
Realized as soon as I thought of him that I should have taken a photo before I ate half of it!
Have you ever worked in a commercial food service operation? I don’t want to talk down to you, if you have. My own experience is weirdly mixed, but in ways that I feel that I might be able to give you some pointers.
The opportunity to use the facilities of a proper kitchen at your own leisure to develop dishes sounds like a dream.
Doing the same thing in the same kitchen whilst it is working. Not so much.
I just saw a recipe for ‘egg clouds’ on reddit. Whip the whites for 5 mins to get an emulsion, form into cloud like blanket, pour yolk into middle of blanket, grill.
Add a bacon weave underneath for maximum yum.
This is my breakfast tomorrow morning!
I would love pointers. Never worked in a pro kitchen, and it would be before opening hours.
What I have been talking to David about is recipe troubleshooting and development. Like how to make the perfect ciabatta, or a kick ass brisket, or maintain a sour dough mother.
So little to no line work.
Ooh, and also how to make the current recipes more scalable.
I am an engineer, and he is a PhD mathematician. And I can teach him things–i.e. ‘punch down’ a loaf means radically different things per style. Please do not put your pain al’ciene in the dough hook cycle after bulk fermentation.
Heh, ever had that moment when you are sliding say a pizza off your peel and a third of it sticks? And the oven is open, rapidly loosing heat? And you have to run for a spatula to get the cthulu fecker off your peel?
(Spray oil and albers corn meal ftw. Learned the haaaard way)
Be thankful you’ll never find out just how badly your knife skills suck. 
I read that as Al Pain’cieneo and thought “Say hello to my little friand”.
I think I might need help… 
When I was working on speed, while… Let’s just say not paying attention, I got a nice scar.
Onions buuurn!
Heh, I Al Ca’poned myself 
You already know from baking that recipe scale-ups don’t always transform ingredient proportions linearly, so I’ll skip that part. My best advice is around time-to-table and holding patterns. One of the most disheartening complaints I sometimes heard was, “It’s cold.” You can’t just hurl most things in the nuke-o-matic for 30 seconds and bring it right back out. Among other things, it’s not what the customer is paying for. Furthermore, time gets wasted and everything gets backed up and before you know it, you’re in the weeds because one thing came out cold, and before you know it, more orders are coming out cold. Save people the aggravation and expense. Dishes that require independent, multi-part executions before being brought together in their final preparation are just asking to go cold while one element is waiting for another.
Maximize prep-work in favor of shorter service turnaround. Some dishes don’t allow this, so avoid them altogether. There is no rule that just because you had an amazing idea, that you’re not going to have another one that works better in the commercial environment. Wow-factor often comes from simple recipes that require esoteric cooking techniques and equipment not found in the home. If you can sous-vide, for example, then go for it and don’t expect to have to do much more to “sex things up.” A reason brunch is popular is because people can’t be arsed to poach eggs and make hollandaise, even if they know how to do it at home.
Also, and this depends on geography, hit up the hipsters for a fast buck. Don’t be ashamed to throw together a dish or two that appeals to people looking for something decadent and strange, as long as it’s not the whole menu (unless it’s that kind of restaurant.) But it’s really cheap to throw bacon and Gorgonzola in something, give it an ironic name, and charge a premium for it.
Beyond that, I feel like I’m missing a lot, but I’m going to say that people working in commercial food service hate certain dishes and ideas, and that hate should be taken seriously. It’s rarely because it’s more work, and mainly because those dishes are just really easy to screw up, and really hard to put together. This is not to be confused with annoying tasks that can be done in prep or have a decent payoff but are kind of messy, like roasting red peppers, but if a cook only has ten seconds to throw the raw egg yolk into the pot of octopus legs and while working with tempura batter before it flattens, something is begging to go wrong.
And that is why kitchen design should never be left to people who care more about style than function! Crucial items need to be an arm’s reach away.
However, that does NOT SCALE when you’re talking about a commercial kitchen. Completely different animal.
Keep going! You don’t have to cover it all in one post at one time. Great stuff.
Seriously! And why did I forget about sous vide? I am a brewer, and mastered long term temp control with huge amounts of liquid a decade ago. I personally have several industrial high temp pumps, heat exchangers, insulated 20 gallon stainless vessels, etc.
Keep’em coming!
For all my grand ideas I think I will start with modest aspirations.
Baked goods that can sit on the counter (rolls, tarts, savory tarts, sweets, etc). Impulse buys.
Soup, especially vegan.
Ingredients for sandwiches. Such as pastrami, baguettes, sour kraut, pickles, etc.
Even that is probably biting off a lot
But at least I have all of those recipes already committed to memory. (Except the soups, that will take some experiments)
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