Week 2 at UND!

When people ask me how I decided to study nutrition, they are always surprised when I explain the round-about way I ended up where I am. In high school, I had dreams of becoming a pastry chef and one day opening up my own bakery. After high school, I spent my first two years of college at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, RI as a baking & pastry arts major. My classes included mainly culinary labs and I spent my summers working in a local bakery. I really enjoyed baking, but I began to have second thoughts about committing my life to working in a kitchen. I was intimidated by the long hours and especially the early bakery mornings! Around the same time that I was deciding I may not want to continue on in baking and pastry, I was required to take an introductory nutrition class. Needless to say, I fell in love with the subject! To make a novel-length story very short, I decided to leave Johnson and Wales in order to study nutrition at UConn...which I believe turned out to be the best decision I have ever made!

Although I never question my decision to change my career path, I definitely miss spending so much time baking! It will always be one of my favorite hobbies. Luckily for me, this past week for my internship I got the chance to work at the UND bakery! It was a bit nostalgic for me; I really appreciated having time to do something that I was once so passionate about. I spent three shifts helping out doing a little bit of everything around the bakery. As I mentioned in my previous post, the bakers here work overnight shifts, so for three days my work shift was from 10pm until around 5:30am.  When the bakery team comes in to start their shift they say “good morning” and when they leave just before breakfast time, they say “goodnight”.

So many carbohydrates!!!!

Tracy, who is in charge of the bakery here, unfortunately had to get surgery on his wrist and is confined to a cast….not terribly convenient for working in the kitchen! For much of my time in the bakery I acted as Tracy’s hands, helping him with mixing dough, scooping muffin batter, and frosting cupcakes. Tracy wanted to test out some new frosting flavors, so Wednesday night (…or Thursday morning?)  we created cherry, lemon, banana, almond, cookies-n-cream, German chocolate, and strawberry frostings. Healthy? No. Delicious? Yes.

One of each type of cupcake!

One task of mine was to frost a “student cake” which was probably half the size of a piece of notebook paper. Tracy explained to me that UND students get a free mini cake each year on their birthday. I think that is so cute….UND treats their students so well!!!

Happy birthday, anonymous student!!

One project that Dustin has begun this summer that I have been helping out with is the removal of trans fats from the bakery. During my free time last week, I used FoodPro to make a grand list of every bakery item containing partially hydrogenated oils. Turns out this is going to be quite the daunting task!! Since we are still at the very beginning of this project, I was unable to do much recipe testing while in the bakery. The only only recipe I tried which was on the healthier side was a whole wheat pizza dough.

Since this was my first time working in a bakery this large, I noticed a few pieces of equipment that I had never seen before. The oven was huge with rotating platforms...a bit tricky to maneuver at first, but I got the hang of it. There was also a giant chiller which froze dough rock solid. It was capable of dropping to -20 degrees in just ten minutes or so. My favorite piece of equipment that was new to me was the device used to fill the donuts. On top of the machine is a big tub of whatever the donut will be filled with, then two spouts with sharp edges are on the bottom of the machine. When you poke a hole in the donut with the sharp edge, the filling will automatically pour out of the spout. I suppose it looks cooler if you see it in person, but it was MUCH easier than using a piping bag. 

Creme brulee donuts...I got to torch the top of them!

I was very good about not sampling everything I came across at the bakery...I forgot how tempting it can be surrounding yourself with sweets all day (or night). I did, however, fall in love with UND's "Monster Cookies"-- peanut butter, oatmeal, mini M&M's, and chocolate chips. YUM.

Although I managed throughout the week with the weird bakery hours, by Friday I was exhausted. Most of my weekend was spent catching up on sleep...and Netflix. I did, however, make it outside to go for a bike ride and play volleyball with some people from my dorm building. I had intended on accomplishing a lot more, but next weekend I will be more well-rested. This coming week, I am spending a few days working with catering. I have never worked in catering before, so I'm excited to learn something new!