The Continuing Drama that is My Job

Have I mentioned that I like my job? I do, it is not boring. Yesterday I went in to bake bread and found out the temperature probe, which had been sticking out in the middle of the oven for a few months, had broken off so the oven just kept getting hotter and hotter. That meant I would have to bake bread in two smaller ovens that are on the line where we make lunches. The first batches from each oven were burned on one side and soft on the other, they were pathetic loaves of bread. The back of the ovens were apparently very hot, but I couldn't see back there at all so I didn't pull my bread out to check it until the front was just getting golden and by then it was too late. One of the loaves also got stuck on the top of the oven because the shelf was too high, but I couldn't move it down, so the top of that loaf was a bit mangled. The bread started to improve, but was still browning too quickly so the next couple loaves were doughy. We finally got the temperature and rotation figured out and the loaves started to look much better. I was trying to get all the bread baked before lunch because there is not any room there to bake bread anyway and if people are working on lunches, it is downright dangerous. However, that was not to be and five loaves were left in the proofer while we had our lunch rush and got over proofed. We baked them anyway and they were very fluffy, but should be okay. We didn't end up losing any bread because James decided to do a special of crab sandwiches with crust less bread, good thinking. The loaves at the end actually started turning out better than in the regular oven because the fan in that oven sucks out all the moisture we try to put in to get a good crust and it is a constant battle. But the smaller ovens didn't have fans so they kept the moisture in and we were able to get a nice hard crust that had a great crackle (think Ratatouille: you can tell good bread by the sound). Since the oven was out in the middle of the kitchen to be worked on anyway, James and I rewired the fan switch to be off/on instead of high/low; okay, it was really mostly James, but I helped. The day ended up having good come out of a minor disaster, now we should be able to get good crusted sourdough in our regular oven too.