breakfast — Blog — Catering and Personal Chef

Gluten-free Blueberry "smoothie" pancakes & a story

A year ago, I decided to start a small business. Since then, it’s gone from microscopic to small, despite what people seem to gather on social media. “It looks like business is BOOMING,” remarked a friend recently. “Booming” isn’t exactly the right word. It’s more of a geriatric jog. Fine, crawl.

Why such a slow incline?

It’s complicated. Owning your own business and then scaling it so that you can generate a livable wage, hire employees, meet demands, purchase all the necessary licenses (trust me, there are tons) and insurance policies (oops), invest in heavy-duty equipment to improve efficiency, etc.–it’s not just complicated, it’s F-ING difficult. Sometimes I don’t even want to get out of bed. And then when I linger in my safety net of pillows and a down comforter, I come up with even crazier ideas, like starting a catering and personal cheffing business in addition to the bread business. It’s like deciding you want two more kids when you can barely afford to keep one alive.

Or maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit. Because the truth is, I haven’t really fully invested myself into the biz, despite what my bank account might reflect. Savings today, gone tomorrow. Lesson learned.

Practice makes perfect red bean baos (Recipe)

A good cook can as easily make a crummy cake as a good lover can screw up a relationship. Cooking skills don't necessarily carry over into the realm of baking. And sometimes a sexy cuddle should stay exactly that, no strings attached.

In cooking, there’s more room for error. Anyone with enough enthusiasm, a decent palate, maybe a glass of wine or a shot of mezcal, can dive into cooking with wild abandon and end up with something delicious. An olive oil-finish, some squirts of lemon, a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt can go a long way to save a dish.

Baking on the other hand is a science. There’s just no rushing through the chemistry and math that transform wet brown batter into an irresistible chocolate soufflé. At restaurants, I’ll often hear friends scoff at their food and say, “I can make this at home! Psssh.” But I’ve never heard anyone tell me that she or he is going to recreate the chocolate babka from Breads Bakery. That’s because baking requires a tremendous amount of studying and practicing. And humility. And an acceptance that the first try if far from being the last. But back to that earlier analogy: Baking, like a relationship, takes work.

I suck at baking. Once, I attempted to make croissants from scratch. For three days, I’d jump out of bed at 5:30 A.M., salivating as I rolled and folded the laminated dough, dreaming of the warm, buttery crescents. By day four, it was time to bake the croissants. This was my first attempt, but I was already expecting Parisian patisserie-level perfection. But the croissants came out cakey and dense. Zero flakiness. They were good enough to be biscuits but not croissants. Hadn’t I followed directions? Or measured the flour correctly? Wasn’t I careful with the dough, like a first-time mom is with her newborn? I couldn’t pinpoint the problem, not with only one notch on my belt. Anything could have contributed to my dough’s undoing, like inferior ingredients to the uncalibrated oven to Mercury stuck in retrograde.