# Bread service.....



## nolapastrygirl (Feb 24, 2011)

I am the pastry chef at a 100 seat, fine dining restaurant in New Orleans. I roll out 200 rolls for dinner bread service. I have discussed bread service with the executive chef . He says the free bread service is not going away. And I do have to say the bread is quite tasty. It's served warm, with whipped and then piped butter. This really cuts into my other prep for the evening. Any ideas for other breads that would not take up so much time. Thanks in advance. PS..our kitchen is tiny. I work out of a closet, in the old shot gun house.


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## lyndonb (Nov 7, 2013)

Long Ciabatta, and Soda bread "french stick" style? Get the servers to warm, slice and serve to guests? x


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## nolapastrygirl (Feb 24, 2011)

The servers do not have a place to cut the bread. But i do already make cibatta. We dont have baskets. The bread is kept warm in the warming box. They put the needed amount on a plate and place it on the b&b plate.


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## chefross (May 5, 2010)

Drop Biscuits are very popular in these parts. A server walks around the dining room with a small tray of these beauties and with tongs offers them up to everyone. They are well made, moist, and warm. They too, are served with regular and honey butters.


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## nolapastrygirl (Feb 24, 2011)

I make my buttermilk biscuits for our weekend brunch. This is an option I put to the chef. He requested I try again, kindly reminding me i am the only one that makes the biscuits. Thank you for the ideas. I just know, that somewhere there is an answer. Our kitchen can handle 4 people at a time and me in my closet. I have no backup.I handle all of our breads, ice creams, sorbets, jams, pastries, desserts, etc. Thus the reason behind shortening dinner bread service.


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## nickyc (Oct 9, 2012)

Are you doing rolls instead of sliced bread because you don't want them to dry out in the warmer?

A good simple focaccia cuts out a lot of time in shaping. You can mix, bulk ferment and preshape /shape one day, then retard overnight on the sheet pans they'll be baked on. Pull out when you come in and let the come to temp for a little while before seasoning and baking...you could probably even get away with making 2 days of dough at a time. bake times for focaccia are also relatively short and storage of the shaped dough is easy.

gougeres can be quick if you have good piping skills, but you may have to bake through service to keep fresh

savory biscuits, maybe with green onion and cheddar. a little higher food cost, but if they are loose enough to do as drop biscuits you'll save a lot of time

you could make crackers in huge batches once a week

alot of richer doughs hold up to freezing and can be made in larger batches, frozen  and pulled as needed each day. 

or tell you chef or manager that you need help with your bread shaping, maybe see if they'll let you train a dishwasher to do your roll rounding after you get your dough mixed and risen.


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## laurenlulu (Sep 9, 2012)

You can use a portion scoop for dough rather than rolling, once it proofs it's hard to tell the difference


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## laurenlulu (Sep 9, 2012)

I grew up around NOLA, little town called Thibodaux..


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## nolapastrygirl (Feb 24, 2011)

Actually, I do have a dishwasher that works in the room, plating salads and desserts. He and the line cook take turns. But since they have both burnt the rolls one time too many, or didn't get them make in time to rise and be ready at 5pm, chef has asked me to stay to see the bread through to completion. I make ciabatta for our mussels, brioche for my bread pudding and French toast(brunch), I make 130 buttermilk biscuits on Sat and then again on Sunday for brunch. Then rolls(dinner) and hamburger buns(brunch) 5 days a week. I also, make our sorbets, ice creams, coulis's, sauces, different coated nuts for happy hour and bread pudding, cakes, pots de crème, cookies, granola, jams, etc. I will have to say, I have been getting killer overtime. So that's a plus. But I swear, I get so burnt out rolling out bread. I am thinking I will have to come up with something that anyone can do, fits the bill for a fine dining, but pleasing to the chef as well. Things are so tight during service, there is no time to bake anything during that time. I mentioned a dressed up cornbread, and that was shot down. I think our restaurant is not the norm anyway. The owner has never worked or owned a restaurant. Our kitchen is smaller than the dining room. We seat 80. We do 150-200 people for brunch on Sat and then again on Sunday. We have 'campers', because we do bottomless Mimosa's. When we close after brunch, we go right into getting ready for dinner. Our total BOH is 4 at any service. Chef, sous, line and pantry. I'm not bitching, I promise. But I know there has got to be a solution. So keep'em coming....Thanks so much


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## linecook854 (Feb 13, 2013)

NOLApastrygirl said:


> I am the pastry chef at a 100 seat, fine dining restaurant in New Orleans. I roll out 200 rolls for dinner bread service. I have discussed bread service with the executive chef . He says the free bread service is not going away. And I do have to say the bread is quite tasty. It's served warm, with whipped and then piped butter. This really cuts into my other prep for the evening. Any ideas for other breads that would not take up so much time. Thanks in advance. PS..our kitchen is tiny. I work out of a closet, in the old shot gun house.


I was in a some what similar situation as the sous at my place. Our bread service consisted of a straight baguette dough with no enrichments or pre-ferments or sponges or the like. Portion and tie into a knot shape and bake in the combi with a good amount of moisture to get that typical baguette crust. The labor intensive part was obviously making each individual roll into a knot shape, also consistency. Our prep cook would make a perfect shape but take HOURS to complete it. If I was doing them the shape was not perfect but I banged them out because I had so much more important things to worry about than bread! Our bread was fantastic straight out of the oven and we'd serve it with cultured butter with sea salt, delicious. We would keep them in the warmer but would replenish throughout the night so bread didn't sit in the warmer for more than a hour or two.

Our problem to our situation never was rectified. A less labor intensive bread like a focaccia was discussed but then problems like holding sliced bread becomes an issue as well as baguette dough being more applicable to a French restaurant. Eventually our band-aid fixer was to set aside 20 minutes of myself, two line cooks to shape out bread with the prep cook. It works though. The line cooks hate it, the prep cook gets offended because he's so slow and I expend time I don't have to give but the customers get their bread, and that's all that matters.

That's my experience with bread service, I can't really answer your question because it seems you can't get a helping hand unfortunately. Hope my experience helps in any way.


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## nolapastrygirl (Feb 24, 2011)

linecook854 said:


> I was in a some what similar situation as the sous at my place. Our bread service consisted of a straight baguette dough with no enrichments or pre-ferments or sponges or the like. Portion and tie into a knot shape and bake in the combi with a good amount of moisture to get that typical baguette crust. The labor intensive part was obviously making each individual roll into a knot shape, also consistency. Our prep cook would make a perfect shape but take HOURS to complete it. If I was doing them the shape was not perfect but I banged them out because I had so much more important things to worry about than bread! Our bread was fantastic straight out of the oven and we'd serve it with cultured butter with sea salt, delicious. We would keep them in the warmer but would replenish throughout the night so bread didn't sit in the warmer for more than a hour or two.
> 
> Our problem to our situation never was rectified. A less labor intensive bread like a focaccia was discussed but then problems like holding sliced bread becomes an issue as well as baguette dough being more applicable to a French restaurant. Eventually our band-aid fixer was to set aside 20 minutes of myself, two line cooks to shape out bread with the prep cook. It works though. The line cooks hate it, the prep cook gets offended because he's so slow and I expend time I don't have to give but the customers get their bread, and that's all that matters.
> 
> That's my experience with bread service, I can't really answer your question because it seems you can't get a helping hand unfortunately. Hope my experience helps in any way.





linecook854 said:


> I was in a some what similar situation as the sous at my place. Our bread service consisted of a straight baguette dough with no enrichments or pre-ferments or sponges or the like. Portion and tie into a knot shape and bake in the combi with a good amount of moisture to get that typical baguette crust. The labor intensive part was obviously making each individual roll into a knot shape, also consistency. Our prep cook would make a perfect shape but take HOURS to complete it. If I was doing them the shape was not perfect but I banged them out because I had so much more important things to worry about than bread! Our bread was fantastic straight out of the oven and we'd serve it with cultured butter with sea salt, delicious. We would keep them in the warmer but would replenish throughout the night so bread didn't sit in the warmer for more than a hour or two.
> 
> Our problem to our situation never was rectified. A less labor intensive bread like a focaccia was discussed but then problems like holding sliced bread becomes an issue as well as baguette dough being more applicable to a French restaurant. Eventually our band-aid fixer was to set aside 20 minutes of myself, two line cooks to shape out bread with the prep cook. It works though. The line cooks hate it, the prep cook gets offended because he's so slow and I expend time I don't have to give but the customers get their bread, and that's all that matters.
> 
> ...


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## linecook854 (Feb 13, 2013)

Not to mention some guests would eat 3 or 4 rolls each! The amount of rolls we would shape on busier nights was quite a bit to keep up with. Also, our just splendid FOH staff would ask us to fire trays of bread randomly and they would end up throwing away as much as 3-4 full sheets pans of rolls, this would drive me to complete madness!


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## phaedrus (Dec 23, 2004)

linecook854 said:


> Not to mention some guests would eat 3 or 4 rolls each! The amount of rolls we would shape on busier nights was quite a bit to keep up with. Also, our just splendid FOH staff would ask us to fire trays of bread randomly and they would end up throwing away as much as 3-4 full sheets pans of rolls, this would drive me to complete madness!


You can't fix stupid! We pick on FOH I know but some of them have no concept of food or how a restaurant makes money. If you're making it from scratch in-house then firing bread probably shouldn't be their call. At least it should be a FOH sup or manager.


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## picpoulsherbet (Oct 6, 2014)

We ser ed gougeres as a pre meal snack to all our customers, this wS the method: make the gougere batter and freeze it in silicone moulds, then turn out of the moulds and box. At 5.30, 7 and 8 I'd bake a batch from frozen (they come out perfect everytime) at 180 for 10, then 150 for 20 then krep themin the hot cupboard. as soon as a table walked in id inject 5he gougeres with a cheese emulsion and serve


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