I’m exhausted. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m pursuing some in situ training as a professional baker. I am officially “Assistant Baker”. The hours are challenging (4 am to 12 noon), for one. The job is also highly physical. I like this in some ways. After a year turning to mush in China, I am back to putting on upper body muscle and building core strength. However, I wake up unable to close my hands, and my shoulder and elbow joints are starting to hurt. I am learning a lot, but the pay is terrible, especially given the high cost of living in Whitehorse. I’ve been at it for 2 months working for the abusive Tuzlak, and I will be under the supervision of my third head baker as of Tuesday. 
Good to see how people do things differently, but it is very challenging to be expected to follow the sometimes illogical fast-paced routine of a new person after just getting used to someone else. I just have to see all of this as part of my learning process and life experience.
Anyhow, I wanted to post some photos of my experience so far. All the photos are clickable for enlargements. I’m going to include some of the things I’ve baked and a few photos of the environment. In another post, I will show some photos of a bakery that I visited in China just before I left.
One of the interesting things about where I work is that we mostly function as a vegan/vegetarian establishment. We don’t bake with eggs or milk, but use substitutes such as ground flax with hot water, apple sauce, soy milk, margarine, etc. I wouldn’t say that the city of Whitehorse has a big enough population to support this kind of baking. It’s kind of interesting that when the head baker and I decide to use cheese on our brick oven pizzas or in our ciabatta bread, it sells out and people get really excited… In my years of experience in a variety of environments, including business, I’ve learned that you have to know your market in order to succeed. Sometimes, I don’t get the sense that that is what is happening where I work. But my opinion doesn’t matter at the bakery, unfortunately.
As Assistant Baker, I am in sole charge of the regular ‘pastries’ offered, which include muffins, cookies, ‘brioches’ (cinnamon and chocolate-walnut buns), and ‘scones’. I put these in quotes as without the normal ingredients, these items don’t really turn out like they are supposed to. They taste and look fine, but they are a healthier version of what you drool over when you go to most bakeries. The brioches are not sticky and gooey. The scones aren’t crumbly-buttery. Still, they taste fine.
In addition to the pastries, I also help out with the bread. We also do bagels, buns, cheese sticks, pizza and calzones, and if there is time, we bake other desserts. I made a wicked cranberry-rhubarb streusel the other day.
I am inspired to do some home baking. It has been a couple of years since I had an oven at home. Two summers ago, I was on a quest for a decent chocolate chip cookie recipe. The fall following that, I made pumpkin and lemon pies (with shortening!) on the farm where I was volunteering.
It’s funny, I really had very little cooking and baking exposure as a child. My mother cooked and baked, but wasn’t really very parental or a sharing person, so I didn’t learn anything from her at all. We did the (very) occasional family/group apple crisp bake-off. I got to cut up the apples… On a few summers, during a week spent with my grandmother, my great aunt helped me bake a cake from a box mix and then apply pre-made icing. I didn’t start real baking until my late teens when I started dating and taught myself how to make Boston Cream Pie and stuff like that. So yes, it is seems funny to me to a) be nearly 40 years old and female without all of this beautiful home baking knowledge passed on from older generations, and b) to be taught how to bake by a series of men all younger than me. Better late than never, right? 
