[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
The role of the oven master<\/p>\n
is almost like a NASCAR pit crew.<\/p>\n
I’m responsible to bake off all the pastries.<\/p>\n
Breadbelly is an Asian-American bakery in California.<\/p>\n
In the morning, I have to bake off 20 items.<\/p>\n
I have such a small window to bake off,<\/p>\n
putting the final touch on those items.<\/p>\n
If you come to Breadbelly,<\/p>\n
pretty sure that I am the one who bake the products<\/p>\n
you have on your hands.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
Hi, good morning.<\/p>\n
Welcome to Breadbelly.<\/p>\n
My name is May Nguyen,<\/p>\n
and I am the oven masters of the bakery.<\/p>\n
It’s about 3:45 right now,<\/p>\n
and we got a lot of pastry waiting for us in the proofer.<\/p>\n
So let’s get going.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
In the morning, I have about two hours and a half window<\/p>\n
to bake, finish, and garnish everything<\/p>\n
before the delivery person comes in.<\/p>\n
This is an oven.<\/p>\n
Usually we set it to automatically be turned on around 3:30.<\/p>\n
This is our walk-in proofer.<\/p>\n
It’s literally a size of closet.<\/p>\n
It’s got a lot of humidity.<\/p>\n
This is black sesame, bramble berries, Danish,<\/p>\n
and our blueberry croissant tart<\/p>\n
with brown butter financiers.<\/p>\n
So I’m gonna pop this into the proofer right now.<\/p>\n
We’re gonna have the oven occupied all the time.<\/p>\n
It’s very fun.<\/p>\n
It’s like playing puzzles.<\/p>\n
I think the ham and cheese is ready.<\/p>\n
The layers are separating nicely.<\/p>\n
The next thing I’m gonna do is<\/p>\n
to set up my egg wash station.<\/p>\n
We recently changed to the gun<\/p>\n
because our production volumes has been increased twice,<\/p>\n
essentially the last few months.<\/p>\n
And also with the gun, I get a nicer, even brush<\/p>\n
’cause the brush depends on the pressures of your hand.<\/p>\n
You can mess up the layers of the laminated pastries.<\/p>\n
It give the products a really nice, shiny,<\/p>\n
deep amber colors.<\/p>\n
I love my theme, but honestly,<\/p>\n
like the first 30 minutes<\/p>\n
before my oven master assist comes in,<\/p>\n
it’s like my favorite time of the day.<\/p>\n
It literally just me moving around,<\/p>\n
trying to get things done, and I’m just in the zone.<\/p>\n
So it’s my favorite 30 minutes of the day.<\/p>\n
It’s ready to be pushed to our rack oven.<\/p>\n
This is our walk-in oven.<\/p>\n
It’s a rotating rack.<\/p>\n
It’s super nice because it helps us<\/p>\n
to really increase our volumes in the productions.<\/p>\n
So sometimes things like this happens,<\/p>\n
the oven is not rotating.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna be quick fix.<\/p>\n
I have to reset it for 10 second.<\/p>\n
It happens once in a while.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what cause it,<\/p>\n
but usually just like reset the ovens will fix it.<\/p>\n
Nice, it’s moving.<\/p>\n
This is our monkey bread, which use croissant trim,<\/p>\n
not to waste anything.<\/p>\n
So that’s why we comes up with these products.<\/p>\n
I do try to tidy it up a little bit<\/p>\n
so that it doesn’t get overflowed.<\/p>\n
It seems like it’s also ready to be put into the oven.<\/p>\n
So I’m just gonna pop it in real quick.<\/p>\n
Just gonna set a timer.<\/p>\n
Timer is like the most essential tool.<\/p>\n
The oven itself has its own timer.<\/p>\n
And then I have one over there next to my station.<\/p>\n
Usually I use this one for like the total times<\/p>\n
the bake off that I think it would need.<\/p>\n
And then this one, I would kind of set<\/p>\n
for something that I need to check<\/p>\n
in the middle of the bake.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna drink my juice really quick.<\/p>\n
This is definitely my non-negotiable.<\/p>\n
I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but I need my tea.<\/p>\n
And this, I drink this juice every day, any morning.<\/p>\n
Just to wake me up.<\/p>\n
It’s a vitamin C and lemons and also olive oil.<\/p>\n
It’s very tart.<\/p>\n
This is my tea, the only thing I would need in the morning.<\/p>\n
The next thing I’m gonna do is set up my kaya buns.<\/p>\n
This is our milk bread dough that got proof overnight.<\/p>\n
It will be added a, we call it kaya head.<\/p>\n
It’s almost like an almond cookie.<\/p>\n
We put it on top so it’s like a crackling,<\/p>\n
or like contrast.<\/p>\n
We always kinda want to give our pastries<\/p>\n
a lot of contrasting texture,<\/p>\n
so the milk bread’s gonna be very fluffy and soft.<\/p>\n
And later when it’s cooled down,<\/p>\n
it will get filled with pandan coconut cream.<\/p>\n
So that’s like very smooth, velvety,<\/p>\n
and this gonna add like a nice crunch.<\/p>\n
Besides oven master stations,<\/p>\n
we also have lamination stations,<\/p>\n
dough mixing stations, and pastry prep stations.<\/p>\n
So pastry prep stations pretty much handles<\/p>\n
all of the productions of mousse,<\/p>\n
like making these kaya hats or like portioning doughs.<\/p>\n
It’s about four teams.<\/p>\n
We have about eight people in our team,<\/p>\n
so it’s a lot to coordinate,<\/p>\n
but it’s a really fun team to work with.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna put some pearl sugar on top.<\/p>\n
[oven beeping]<\/p>\n
At least within the 30 seconds of the timer goes off,<\/p>\n
you should check.<\/p>\n
The reason why I have a timer in the middle of the bake<\/p>\n
for this item, the monkey bread,<\/p>\n
because sometimes all the pieces kind of fall.<\/p>\n
Most of the time everything looks good,<\/p>\n
but sometimes like for example this one,<\/p>\n
I’m just gonna give it a little push<\/p>\n
so that it stays nicely in the ring.<\/p>\n
That’s get hot.<\/p>\n
This is a very special gloves that’s needed for the ovens.<\/p>\n
It’s quite long to protect my arm,<\/p>\n
but as you can see I still get some burns.<\/p>\n
That’s just part of the job.<\/p>\n
[fan whirring]<\/p>\n
The fan is blowing and this is a convection oven,<\/p>\n
so every time that I open the door,<\/p>\n
cool air flew in, so it’s like the temperature’s dropping.<\/p>\n
And then the moment that I close the door,<\/p>\n
the temperature’s gonna spike quite a lot.<\/p>\n
We do try to minimize that.<\/p>\n
Okay.<\/p>\n
That’s kind of the first thing I learned<\/p>\n
when I moved to this station,<\/p>\n
to be friends with all these timers going off.<\/p>\n
Like, it will be okay.<\/p>\n
Like you can, it can wait.<\/p>\n
That’s the time for my Danish.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna pull it out now so that it doesn’t go over.<\/p>\n
[oven beeping]<\/p>\n
Timers for my almond croissants.<\/p>\n
It seems like I get a golden top, so it should be done.<\/p>\n
It does need to get some finish,<\/p>\n
but we do want everything to be cooled down properly<\/p>\n
before we can garnish.<\/p>\n
Okay, I’m gonna check my croissant in the oven,<\/p>\n
if it’s ready.<\/p>\n
We do need to pull everything out<\/p>\n
because the lighting in the oven can kind of be deceptive.<\/p>\n
We look for like a very deep amber color on our products.<\/p>\n
You will get like a very nutty, toasty, caramelized flavors.<\/p>\n
Well, I just pull my monkey bread<\/p>\n
and some trace of the ham and cheese out from the oven.<\/p>\n
And then I just popped in my soba cookies<\/p>\n
and the sashimi cookies.<\/p>\n
The next thing I’m gonna do is gonna pop in<\/p>\n
all these kaya buns into the re-vent.<\/p>\n
And then once it’s done,<\/p>\n
I can do my Danish and croissant tart.<\/p>\n
So I can check off everything that I already baked.<\/p>\n
The ham and cheese is in the oven.<\/p>\n
Chocolate is in the oven.<\/p>\n
Danish monkey bread is done.<\/p>\n
Almond croissant is done.<\/p>\n
Soba cookie is in the oven.<\/p>\n
Sesame cookie is in the oven.<\/p>\n
Okay, we on time.<\/p>\n
The soba cookie is actually something that blew my mind<\/p>\n
when I first started.<\/p>\n
I never seen any type of cookies like that before.<\/p>\n
It has a drache buckwheat,<\/p>\n
which is like a caramelized buckwheat crusted on top.<\/p>\n
It’s got dark chocolate<\/p>\n
and also a duche de leche chocolate chunk.<\/p>\n
I think the oven temperature is quite ready<\/p>\n
for me to pop in the kaya buns.<\/p>\n
The black sesame cookie is not a part of the opening bakes<\/p>\n
but because it’s get baked at the same temperatures<\/p>\n
with the soba cookie,<\/p>\n
so that’s why I just pop it in right now.<\/p>\n
I’m just gonna head over to my Thermomix areas<\/p>\n
and get set up for my cheesecake.<\/p>\n
This is Daniel’s, my oven master assist.<\/p>\n
He comes in at 4:30 to help me with a lot of things<\/p>\n
that I was not able to get to.<\/p>\n
One of them is gyeranbbang,<\/p>\n
which is our text on the Korean street food.<\/p>\n
Gyeranbbang has a cake-like cornbread<\/p>\n
and an egg on top and cheddar cheese.<\/p>\n
Our basque cheesecake is also a very popular item.<\/p>\n
We also use mountain thyme cheese from Cowgirl Creamery,<\/p>\n
which is right over there in Marine County.<\/p>\n
This is just heavy cream.<\/p>\n
I usually try to keep it around 15 minute<\/p>\n
because I know that I also have things going on in the oven<\/p>\n
and most of the time I’m just back and forth<\/p>\n
while this one’s running.<\/p>\n
It’s a do-it-all machine.<\/p>\n
We literally use it for so many of our recipes.<\/p>\n
You can blend things, you can cook things.<\/p>\n
Right now I’m just putting in my chunks of cheese<\/p>\n
because it’s kind of hard to hear the ovens from this side<\/p>\n
so I’m just gonna go check my ovens quickly.<\/p>\n
I have about 36 seconds on this oven<\/p>\n
so I’m probably gonna just stay here<\/p>\n
and making sure that I can pull it out when it’s done.<\/p>\n
I want the top to be dry and the color is a golden brown.<\/p>\n
I think it’s ready.<\/p>\n
Knowing that the Danish gonna come out soon<\/p>\n
and this bake rack is pretty full,<\/p>\n
so I’m just gonna grab another one.<\/p>\n
Seems like the colors is where I want it to be,<\/p>\n
so I’m just gonna pull it out now.<\/p>\n
This is our blueberry croissant tart.<\/p>\n
They have a brown butter financiers and our blueberry comes<\/p>\n
from the Triple D Life Farm in Fresno.<\/p>\n
Blueberry is so good right now.<\/p>\n
And every time that we have a delivery<\/p>\n
from the Triple D Light, it’s very dangerous<\/p>\n
because it’s saying the walk-in and every time I goes in,<\/p>\n
some blueberry is gonna disappear.<\/p>\n
So I’m just gonna pump it to 460<\/p>\n
for my gyeranbbangs and my cheesecake.<\/p>\n
With this special mold, it does need to get unmold<\/p>\n
within the first few minutes out from the oven.<\/p>\n
If I don’t unmold it right away,<\/p>\n
the butter’s gonna get hardened and set<\/p>\n
and the layers will get stick to the mold<\/p>\n
and it’s gonna be impossible to unmold.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
I’m in a good spot with my oven,<\/p>\n
so I’m gonna move back to finish the cheesecake.<\/p>\n
Everything is blended well and emulsified,<\/p>\n
so I’m just gonna portion these into 390 gram each.<\/p>\n
The basque cheesecake will have a burnish crust,<\/p>\n
but still very gooey in the middle,<\/p>\n
so that’s why we use this springform mold.<\/p>\n
with parchment lining<\/p>\n
so that we can easily unmold them later.<\/p>\n
This is our packing station.<\/p>\n
We have a lot of clipboard just to help us with organize<\/p>\n
and know where things go.<\/p>\n
And it’s organized by the priorities.<\/p>\n
The best cafe, which is our wholesale clients<\/p>\n
that need to be ready by 6:20.<\/p>\n
1408, which is our other location on the Clement Street<\/p>\n
and that’s need to be out by 6:30.<\/p>\n
Both of these will get picked up<\/p>\n
by the same delivery person.<\/p>\n
So I’m just going to pack for both of these right now.<\/p>\n
That’s the queue for our gyeranbbang.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
Back to the packing station.<\/p>\n
Every product does get cooled down properly<\/p>\n
before we can pack them.<\/p>\n
And also using this green rack really helps us<\/p>\n
with preventing condensation or steaming the products.<\/p>\n
Once I pack something, I’m just gonna put a quick check mark<\/p>\n
so that Daniel or the delivery person will know<\/p>\n
that this is ready to take.<\/p>\n
Open time.<\/p>\n
I think this is good.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna pop in my milk bread rolls.<\/p>\n
It’s almost like a dinner roll.<\/p>\n
Each different items will get<\/p>\n
a slightly different garnishes to finish.<\/p>\n
Daniel is finishing the blueberry croissant tarts<\/p>\n
with kersis jams and we’re gonna put something<\/p>\n
we call fruity pebbles on top.<\/p>\n
So this is our black sesame raspberries Danish.<\/p>\n
This one will get black sesame financiers<\/p>\n
and fresh raspberries inside.<\/p>\n
And I’m just finishing off with the guava jam<\/p>\n
and raspberry powders on top later.<\/p>\n
Right now, this is my favorite<\/p>\n
because I love black sesames.<\/p>\n
And it has like a nice tart from the raspberries,<\/p>\n
very rich taste from the black sesames.<\/p>\n
Complements each other really well.<\/p>\n
With pastry, it’s just a joy that it brings to people.<\/p>\n
I think that’s kind of like draws me to this career<\/p>\n
because I always love pastry, love sweets.<\/p>\n
I even have a tattoo of ice cream on my arm.<\/p>\n
I don’t get to see sunset quite often,<\/p>\n
but it’s always nice that summer is coming<\/p>\n
and we get some sunlight early.<\/p>\n
It’s a little bit after six right now.<\/p>\n
We have about 15, 20 minutes to finish.<\/p>\n
Usually my last thing to do gonna be filling these babies<\/p>\n
with pandan coconut cream.<\/p>\n
This hob is very efficient for me<\/p>\n
to pipe in the pandan coconut cream.<\/p>\n
Pandan is a very prominent ingredient in pastry,<\/p>\n
especially in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
A little bit grassy, but it pairs really well with coconut.<\/p>\n
This is our most popular item.<\/p>\n
It’s kind of what we’re known for, beside the kaya toast.<\/p>\n
That’s 40 that need to get sent to 1408.<\/p>\n
I think everything is already get packed.<\/p>\n
Daniel is going to get them loaded and drive<\/p>\n
to the wholesale clients first,<\/p>\n
and then to our other locations across town.<\/p>\n
There are some items that I think<\/p>\n
I can just put in the ovens right now<\/p>\n
because the oven is not occupied<\/p>\n
and I want it to run as much as I can.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna grab some biscuits from our freezers.<\/p>\n
The biscuit is used by our savory teams<\/p>\n
for the biscuit smash.<\/p>\n
We make these biscuits from frozen<\/p>\n
just to make sure that it will get a very nice lift<\/p>\n
and then all the layers from the frozen butters.<\/p>\n
The frozen butter, basically when it melts,<\/p>\n
all the steam comes out<\/p>\n
and it makes the biscuits very tender.<\/p>\n
This is a special biscuit wash.<\/p>\n
Basically, we only use egg yolks and heavy cream in this.<\/p>\n
The gun will not do the job because it’s kind of too thick.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
Right now, I’m just input the amount of the pastry<\/p>\n
that we have for this location into the iPad<\/p>\n
so that the front of house can take over.<\/p>\n
These are our tart shells for the not-ube tarts.<\/p>\n
It will get baked the day before so that the next day,<\/p>\n
when we cool down,<\/p>\n
we can fill them with the sweet potato fillings.<\/p>\n
This just making sure that we have a flat, nice, round well<\/p>\n
to fill the sweet potato filling later.<\/p>\n
It’s really heavy.<\/p>\n
Ooh.<\/p>\n
Our chef get a lot of influence from her background.<\/p>\n
She’s Filipinos and ube is kind of the staple<\/p>\n
in the traditional cuisines.<\/p>\n
However, here in California,<\/p>\n
we cannot substantially source ube.<\/p>\n
So this is our take on that.<\/p>\n
We use purple sweet potatoes for our fillings<\/p>\n
because this get really hot.<\/p>\n
So I don’t want to have a lot of carry over cooking.<\/p>\n
I’m just gonna move them out on some of the ones<\/p>\n
that I think it’s ready.<\/p>\n
Okay, I think that’s all done.<\/p>\n
Oh, the second part of the day<\/p>\n
will be our production bakes off.<\/p>\n
Production bakes off are all like the pastries<\/p>\n
that can be sales tomorrow.<\/p>\n
This is kind of like the time<\/p>\n
that I can slow down a little bit.<\/p>\n
And today, honestly, production bake doesn’t look too bad.<\/p>\n
I’m still constantly making things.<\/p>\n
It’s like a game for me to find all these pockets of time<\/p>\n
so like, okay, maybe I can grab something<\/p>\n
from the dish pits or I can set myself for tomorrow.<\/p>\n
I’m just gonna go pull the almond cookies<\/p>\n
which already been stitched for me<\/p>\n
the day before by my team.<\/p>\n
Our almond cookies, 80% of the products<\/p>\n
are made from almond paste.<\/p>\n
Just gonna fix them, make them look nice.<\/p>\n
Some of them kind of get spread out<\/p>\n
when it’s baked in the oven.<\/p>\n
So that just kind of help round them up again.<\/p>\n
And now I’m gonna fill them with strawberry jam.<\/p>\n
Next is gonna be the umeboshi,<\/p>\n
which gives it a very nice contrast of the saltiness<\/p>\n
and the sweetness of the cookies.<\/p>\n
Because I have some time just waiting<\/p>\n
for the almond cookies,<\/p>\n
I’m just kind of set myself up for the banana cakes,<\/p>\n
which is gonna be the next thing that I bake.<\/p>\n
I started working at Breadbelly about a year ago.<\/p>\n
I started out with laminations,<\/p>\n
which is making all the laminated pastries,<\/p>\n
chocolate croissant, ham and cheese and stuff.<\/p>\n
And then I move on to dough productions<\/p>\n
as well as pastry prep.<\/p>\n
This position opened up about three months ago<\/p>\n
and I’m very grateful that Chef Kate offered it to me.<\/p>\n
So it’s kind of nice that I get to work at all the stations<\/p>\n
before moving here so I know how much labor<\/p>\n
and care go into making each of these items.<\/p>\n
Honestly, I could not imagine me<\/p>\n
as a morning person at all.<\/p>\n
Like, I love sleeps,<\/p>\n
but it doesn’t feel like a job at all, honestly.<\/p>\n
I’m literally having fun all day<\/p>\n
and I’m also very lucky to have a supportive husband.<\/p>\n
He drives me to work every morning around 3:30.<\/p>\n
I’m gonna top this off with oat streusel.<\/p>\n
[upbeat music]<\/p>\n
The black sesame cookies that we make up this morning,<\/p>\n
I fill them with dulce de leche fillings<\/p>\n
and I now have to sandwich them.<\/p>\n
With the not-ube top, it can be a little bit too sweet.<\/p>\n
So that’s why we have the middle niche<\/p>\n
from the burn niche meringue.<\/p>\n
And then I’m gonna top it with the salted egg yolk as well.<\/p>\n
We have about 30 seconds right now<\/p>\n
for the first tray of milk bread to go out.<\/p>\n
If I don’t unmold them right away,<\/p>\n
it will get steam inside the mold.<\/p>\n
It’s about 12 right now,<\/p>\n
and I’ve been going since 3:45 this morning.<\/p>\n
I hope it’s fun for you as it’s fun for me.<\/p>\n
I’m just gonna finish setting myself up<\/p>\n
and it’s time for you to go.<\/p>\n
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