Sheldon wrote:

>
> Dave Smith wrote:
>> Curly Sue wrote
>>
>> > Of course people can bake for fun and/or challenge. I just don't
>> > agree with the statement that almost anything baked is better at
>> > home and it's just a matter of following a recipe. I would hope
>> > that a baker with years of experience who makes their living at it,
>> > would do better than someone who gets a recipe and tries something
>> > once.
>>
>> I think that the challenge for professional bakers is to mass produce
>> their goods on a scale that is profitable and maintain high standards
>> of quality. Once the process becomes mechanized the quality goes
>> downhill. Good baking is a time consuming process that works well at
>> home, but quality almost always slips when you start mass producing
>> the stuff.
>
> The last thing to slip with mass produced baked goods is quality... if
> the quality of mass produced baked goods slipped one iota it would
> become compost.
> You're making the leap to comparing the neighborhood bakery with the
> national bakery, something you obviously know nothing about.
>
> Neighborhood bakeries are not into mass production, most everything is
> done by hand the same as one would at home, just on larger scale.
> Yeah, they have stand mixers too but much larger... they produce a
> thousand muffins exactly the same way a dozen is produced at home...
> well not really, at home most folks scoop the batter with some kind of
> spoon, it's slow, messy, laborious, and not very consistant...
> professinal bakers scoop batter with their hands, it's very fast, no
> mess, extremely consistant, and labor is practically effortless, a
> professional baker can fill twelve dozen muffins and be onto the next
> gross while you're still futzing with your first dozen... you won't
> find rubber spatulas in a bakery, they use the scrapers located at the
> ends of their arms... really very few hand tools/gadgets in a bakery,
> most every operation is done with hands. The most important and
> highest paid position in a neighborhood bakery is the finisher, and
> that is all hand work, decorating is done one at a time, no mass
> production (to date no one has figured out how to decorate nearly as
> well by machine). And they can definitly bake infinitely better
> quality products at any neighborhood bakery but as I said in a
> previous post they bake at a level appropriate to the economics of the
> neighborhood, no sense preparing costly gastronomical delights for
> display purposes only, just so poor slobs like you can peer in the
> window and drool over what they can't afford.
>
> Of course you know all about the virtues of mass produced, you typical
> Twinkie maven.
>
> Mass production baked goods are at a national level, where volume runs
> into the millions, where the most critical goal is *consistancy*, not
> quality, a very different baking operation... those who do the actual
> baking have no baking skills whatsoever, they're minimum wage
> production workers... everything is automated, even the finishing work
> is done robotically, essentially the only labor needed is 24/7 fork
> lift operators and janitorial service. The relatively few tool room
> employees who maintain the machinery probably command the highest
> wages of anyone in the plant, they're highly skilled mechanics but I
> doubt many have ever even baked a box cake. There will be a few QC
> people too, they measure, they taste, they don't bake. Those who
> develop the recipes are located in a relatively small test kitchen,
> could even be on the other coast, because the nationals will maintain
> several stratigically located production centers, to keep distribution
> costs down, and each regional production center will most usually
> prepare a somewhat different version, to satisify the different tastes
> in the areas it serves. The test kitchen employees are not
> professional bakers, they wouldn't know where to begin in a
> neighborhood bakery... they are food scientists, typically chemists,
> they develop the mass produced packaged products you find on
> stupidmarket shelves, they are NOT professional bakers. I don't
> consider Twinkies, Ring Dings, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and the rest quality
> baked goods, maybe you do but I call that dreck.
>
> Dave Smith, quit bluffing... you havent a clue about bakeries...
> Wonder bread is mass produced, probably your benchmark.
>
> Sheldon


"A bore is someone who opens their mouth and puts their feats in."
--Anonymous


Andy