I was on fire at Amy's tonight. In fact, I'd say I got as close as I ever have there to literally bursting into flame, since I burned a knuckle on the outside of one of the ovens...But figuratively, also, I feel as though I am finally finding my groove. I unloaded a whole bunch of bread from the deck ovens, using one of those long-handled wooden paddles you might have seen at pizzerias and a technique one of my baker buddies refers to as "fulcroming." Yeah, okay, so I dropped a few loaves, but I'm learning and improving bigtime and it makes me feel like I might see some arm muscles one of these days, if I don't throw out my back first. Navel to spine, my Pilates teacher would say. My scoring is getting a lot better, too, and I feel all-around less confused and less like I'm following the grownups around. If they want me to do something, they tell me. The situation was helped a great deal last week, when I discovered that one of the guys I'm assisting is from French-speaking Africa. To have two people calling out to tell me what to do in a language that is supposedly my own, but that is so heavily accented as to be difficult for me to understand, is tremendously frustrating. The French has helped, not only in giving us something in common, but also in making some instructions easier for me to understand. I also like that I am actually making things easier for the people I'm working with. Now, I am trusted to complete tasks on my own, like scoring tray upon tray of rolls (I want to say they're challah
rolls, but I'm not 100% sure), which involves a series of long strokes across several of them at a time, and then a second pass of strokes perpendicular to the first. They come out looking somewhat like these guys over here on the right,
except that they're softer on the inside than those look and don't have the grain action on top. I think I'm ready not to dread going in to Amy's on Tuesday evenings. I've always known that's it's good for me to be working there, like eating my vegetables and exercising are good for me. But it's getting to feel more mine, and that's a gratifying step.
I was on fire at Amy's tonight. In fact, I'd say I got as close as I ever have there to literally bursting into flame, since I burned a knuckle on the outside of one of the ovens...But figuratively, also, I feel as though I am finally finding my groove. I unloaded a whole bunch of bread from the deck ovens, using one of those long-handled wooden paddles you might have seen at pizzerias and a technique one of my baker buddies refers to as "fulcroming." Yeah, okay, so I dropped a few loaves, but I'm learning and improving bigtime and it makes me feel like I might see some arm muscles one of these days, if I don't throw out my back first. Navel to spine, my Pilates teacher would say. My scoring is getting a lot better, too, and I feel all-around less confused and less like I'm following the grownups around. If they want me to do something, they tell me. The situation was helped a great deal last week, when I discovered that one of the guys I'm assisting is from French-speaking Africa. To have two people calling out to tell me what to do in a language that is supposedly my own, but that is so heavily accented as to be difficult for me to understand, is tremendously frustrating. The French has helped, not only in giving us something in common, but also in making some instructions easier for me to understand. I also like that I am actually making things easier for the people I'm working with. Now, I am trusted to complete tasks on my own, like scoring tray upon tray of rolls (I want to say they're challah
rolls, but I'm not 100% sure), which involves a series of long strokes across several of them at a time, and then a second pass of strokes perpendicular to the first. They come out looking somewhat like these guys over here on the right, except that they're softer on the inside than those look and don't have the grain action on top. I think I'm ready not to dread going in to Amy's on Tuesday evenings. I've always known that's it's good for me to be working there, like eating my vegetables and exercising are good for me. But it's getting to feel more mine, and that's a gratifying step.
No comments:
Post a Comment