Christmas time is here!

So this is obviously very late to be posting Christmas-type pictures but I'm gonna go for it anyway.

I wanted a tree but couldn't bring myself (or our budget) to fork over $20 for a three-foot tree (which was all we had room for). Joseph and I went back and forth over it, mostly as my sentimental nature swelled and I regained my senses again. Finally, we realized that we already had all we needed, thanks to Joseph not tossing out the cardboard from the futon we got a while back. Here it is, in most of it's glory.



I later added a popcorn string, a paper star and some paper snowflakes but I haven't uploaded any pictures of that yet, maybe later I will.

On Christmas day we had a quiet little celebration with our friends Bryan and Amanda Ann at their lovely home. Some of their relatives had sent them some food and I managed to get a couple things from work so very little actual cooking was done by us. We were very grateful for that since Amanda Ann and I both had to work the day before and after.



Here is us not cooking in the kitchen.



Our tasty spread.



She's my friend. Isn't she adorable?



Here we all are, ready to enjoy our dinner. That's Rodger in the front, hoping there will be scraps.



After dinner we compared hair to see whose is longest. I won, but just by a little bit.



Then we played Taboo while Rodger took up more than his share of the couch, as usual. Thanks to Bryan and Amanda Ann for having us over and putting up with us. We love you guys.

Bringin home the bacon

I've been meaning to post some pictures from work for a long long time but I just haven't gotten around to it. Here they are, finally.



This is Deni working on condensing the cookies for the catalog so they don't take up so much space. This is about a quarter of the cookies we were mailing out at the peak of our season. Our record day we mailed out 4,000 cookies. Since then, things have dropped off significantly and we've been sending out more like 50 cookies and are down from shipping three days to just two.

The rack beside her is one of the oven racks. They hold 15 sheetpans and we can fit two of them in our rotating convection oven.



Here's some pretty Raspberry Linzer cookies. These are tasty but freakin time consuming, since you have to cut out tops and bottoms for each cookie, spray the tops with water and sprinkle with sugar before they bake, and then put jam on each one.



These are Bianci although I think the catalog called them Almond Cloud cookies. I think they are cool looking. They are scooped and left out so they develop a crust. Then they get covered with powdered sugar and smushed. They are a little too sweet for me though.



An army of gingerbread men. We could fit 8 dozen on one sheet pan once they were baked.



Some beautiful bread. I think this is 5-seed.



This is a small batch of coffeecakes. We often make twice that many.



Our convection oven I mentioned earlier. It's bigger than the one and only closet in our apartment.



This is our 60-quart mixer. It's awesome.



This amazing machine is called a sheeter. It's basically two conveyer belts with a roller in the middle that can be adjusted to different heights. I love this thing. We use it to roll out everything from sticky buns, to cookies, to pie crusts. We also use it to roll layers and layers of butter into our croissant/danish dough.



While we all work in one big room together, it's somewhat divided by this huge oven into the bread end and the pastry end. This is the bread end's oven. It has three levels, each with their own steam injection. Each level is stone and the oven can hold over 100 baguettes or about 90 of the round loaves pictured above.



This is one of the bread ends spriral mixers (they have two). I'm not sure what the capacity is on this monster but I know we often mix up 90K of baguette dough in it. On this mixer, the bowl spins as well as the dough spiral which is on one side of the bowl. I hope that makes sense.



These were pumpkin cheesecakes before I forgot them for about an hour and they were destroyed.



Finally, all of my co-workers but one. Back left is Lisa who works on the pastry end. She is having a baby this summer and she makes me laugh. Next to her is Russ, who is from Wisconsin. He drives the delivery van and helps out on the weekends. He's pretty funny. Next to him is Jefferey who is my boss and one of under a hundred people in the US to earn the title of "Master Baker" and yes, I am serious. Next to him is me, obviously. Front left is Frank who works on the pastry end. He used to work for the Ritz Carlton until he left them for King Arthur Flour. Next to him is Martin who works on the bread end. Martin is a pretty cool guy who listens to bluegrass, plays the banjo and just moved to White River with his wife and two beautiful daughters. Martin used to be an investment banker in New York City and before that, was an opera singer. I'm not joking. Next to him is Christoph who works on the bread end. Christoph is really nice and is getting married next weekend. Next to him is Peter who drives the van during the week. We are really lucky to have him. He a cheerful guy and ready to jump in wherever he is needed, from washing dishes, to rolling baguettes, to cutting or scooping cookies, to just about anything else. He's one of the very few people I know to have actually grown up in Vermont, and the only one in this picture. Not pictured is Sharon who works on the bread end. She is pretty cool and she goes biking a lot and is taking off a couple weeks in the spring to plant her garden.