Pastry Family Tree
One of the challenges that I face with my staff is that they tend to slow down and become nervous when given a new recipe, whether it is for something as simple a new cookie, or something a little more complex. For instance, I gave a recipe to one of my newer cooks, J. It listed the ingredients, listed cooking methods, and combining the components. When it came time to finishing the recipe, it said "Put the pastry cream into the robot coupe and add the chevre." She turned to me and asked if she had missed something. "Where is the pastry cream? It's not listed in the ingredients." she asked. I then had to show her that the first part of the recipe is making a pastry cream with the first few ingredients. I suppose part of me knew that they are not aware of what they are making on a daily basis or why. That they just look at ingredients listed and methods and don't think about it. That they were just blindly trying to get through prep lists and go home. J