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Pressing On

by | Dec 12, 2020 | JB-45, Just Bakery

Happy Friday! Just Bakery is in production mode baking up all these holiday goodies without the extra help of the students-and they are feeling it! If you haven’t checked out our awesome holiday specials yet-what are you waiting for?! We have Gingerbread Houses and Cookie Decorating kits if you want something creative to do with your loved ones. Or if you would rather just snack on something beautiful without the work, check out Sylvia’s gorgeously decorated sugar cookies or buy a pound (or ten 😉 ) of our melt-in-your-mouth tea cookies! We restock our online store every Sunday and make sure to order early because we can only make so many!

As you know, the students have gone to virtual kitchen science this month so we can safely prepare all our holiday goodies. It doesn’t mean they are off the hook! Here is Amy to tell you about what they did this week:

“We are continuing to learn how to “Bake it up a notch” and we’ll soon be able to “proof” it to you as well! 
This week, for Mindful Monday, we watched a video and talked about the word “control” and how many of us struggle with the need for it in our lives. Whether it be the feeling of the need to control certain people or situations, or the absence of control in our lives, it is something we all have to find balance with. One of the emotions behind control is the very presence of fear.
 Many times, during our childhood years, the people who were supposed to protect us, were not available to us in our times of need. Because of this we end up developing a profound sense of a need to control.  By doing this, we can make sure that everything in our surroundings is safe and planned with no room for surprises. Even though we know from a logical sense that many things, especially other people, are beyond our control, the need to feel “in control” is very real. I suppose from the opposite perspective, trust or faith would need to be highly present in order to let go of the need to control. Trusting a person or situation often gives us a sense of peace and safety and therefore, the need to have control is much less prominent.
As we continue to use these Mindful Monday topics and discussions to gain more insight into ourselves, we are better able to understand why we react to specific things or people in life. This knowledge allows us learn tools to develop more trust in ourselves during times when we cannot predict the outcome of a situation or when we have to walk through our fears “afraid” and allow things to happen as they may. “If those cookies would only behave right, the next batch wouldn’t scare me so much”. Ok, so it’s not that simple, but we do the best we can in life.
So, we press on! This week Tuesday, we met with Sylvia via Zoom and reviewed our worksheets and videos on Flours, the Straight Dough Method, and Gluten. These are giving us a solid understanding on the science behind the baking for when we get back in the kitchen in January.
On Thursday, we talked about Baking Terminology. We went over some of the basics such as what is a batter versus a dough, what it means to “cut in the fat”, crimping as a decorative technique or a way to seal edges together, what it means to dock, fold, and ferment, etc. 
In addition to that, Sylvia showed us a Youtube Video about Cake Decorating with Fondant and also she showed us some pictures of her own lovely work from the last five years after graduating Just Bakery.
 
Next week we are going to talk about cookies which will be nice as we approach the Christmas Season; maybe so we can get prepared to help Santa’s Elves in the kitchen? Either that, or to make sure Santa’s Elves are practicing their ServSafe sanitation skills? Stay tuned to find out what the Elves are doing wrong! It’s always fun to pick on an elf. “