Welcome to My Kitchen
Where I Currently Bake – Los Feliz & Los Osos
At present, I bake in two kitchens about 230 miles apart. I bake in my home kitchen in Los Angeles, the setting for this book, and I bake in my bakery in Baywood Park (Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery – shameless plug #1), near Morro Bay about halfway between LA and San Francisco. It’s a long but fairly pleasant drive along the coast from LA to Baywood Park.
There are many differences between the two. Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery, for example, has more machinery and refrigeration, the hallmarks of a commercial baking space, and my home kitchen has wooden work surfaces, better cross-ventilation, a better sound system, and is very conveniently located.
Come to think of it, another difference is the telephone: my home kitchen, not surprisingly, has one; my bakery doesn’t. (We never got ‘round to installing one, but, after a while, we concluded it was probably best that customers not to be able to contact us too easily. We’d rather they just show up at the bakery when it’s open.) At home, though, baking is part of the family routine, so the phone generally should be answered. That’s why I always use only one hand for the particularly messy parts of dough making, leaving one hand clean enough to answer the phone (or the door, for that matter).
There are also similarities. Both are in residences: Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery takes up about half the ground floor of a house, and Los Angeles is in, well…. my house in Los Feliz. Both workspaces are about the same size, and both are set up to make it as easy as possible to work in them. Most all the work takes place within the triangle defined by the work surface, sink, and oven. All the tools and ingredients are stored nearby.
Though I like my kitchens, and they’re pleasant places in which to bake bread, I’d not consider them special kitchens, ones designed specifically for that purpose. Because I moved around a lot when I was young, I’ve baked in many different home kitchens with many different kinds of ovens, and I’ve found that as long as you have the basics – a work surface, a sink, a working oven, a refrigerator – you can turn out a decent loaf of bread.
It does help, though, to have a fairly consistent temperature in the kitchen. My LA kitchen has central air conditioning and heating, but I find that I rarely use them. Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery, being a short walk to the beach, has neither, though it does sport a small wall heater – never used – and, due to that lack of cross-ventilation, a couple of window fans, which are kept going most of the time. I suppose that a climate as temperate as that of the California coast (though it seems to becoming less so) does not require a great deal of climate control: a few well-place windows should do it. Should you reside elsewhere, keep an eye on the temperature and try to moderate it, as necessary…
I have wood floors in my home kitchen and linoleum in Pagnol. Both are comfortable and easy to clean. However, in both kitchens I have made yet another concession to age: commercial sponge-rubber mats on the floor before the work surfaces. They make a difference when you have to stand in one spot for long periods, even in comfortable shoes.
With fewer windows, Pagnol needs more lights than the home kitchen. I use incandescent lights at home and a mix of incandescent and fluorescent in Pagnol. Many people express an aesthetic preference for incandescence, but I’ve found it doesn’t make much difference (though that could reflect my general disregard for aesthetics in such matters). As long as there’s enough light to see what you’re doing, you should be fine. It’s sometimes easier, though, to check the color of the crust under incandescent light when the bread comes out of the oven. (Pagnol’s oven decks have strong incandescent lights in them.)
Having said all this, there’s a certain cachet attached to baking bread in a home kitchen. That is, after all, where one makes home-made bread, which is generally held in higher regard than “commercially produced” or “store-bought” bread. But, of course, it’s not necessarily the location in which the bread was created that determines its quality. It’s the way in which it was made. At home, though, you’re less likely to have access to the heavy machinery that commercial bakeries so often employ to churn out the maximum number of loaves in a given time. Thus, you’re more likely to do the work by hand and take more time to do it. Both these aspects of the process enhance the chances of baking loaves truly worthy of the label “home made.”
Next Chapter: My Evolution As a Baker
At present, I bake in two kitchens about 230 miles apart. I bake in my home kitchen in Los Angeles, the setting for this book, and I bake in my bakery in Baywood Park (Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery – shameless plug #1), near Morro Bay about halfway between LA and San Francisco. It’s a long but fairly pleasant drive along the coast from LA to Baywood Park.
There are many differences between the two. Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery, for example, has more machinery and refrigeration, the hallmarks of a commercial baking space, and my home kitchen has wooden work surfaces, better cross-ventilation, a better sound system, and is very conveniently located.
Come to think of it, another difference is the telephone: my home kitchen, not surprisingly, has one; my bakery doesn’t. (We never got ‘round to installing one, but, after a while, we concluded it was probably best that customers not to be able to contact us too easily. We’d rather they just show up at the bakery when it’s open.) At home, though, baking is part of the family routine, so the phone generally should be answered. That’s why I always use only one hand for the particularly messy parts of dough making, leaving one hand clean enough to answer the phone (or the door, for that matter).
There are also similarities. Both are in residences: Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery takes up about half the ground floor of a house, and Los Angeles is in, well…. my house in Los Feliz. Both workspaces are about the same size, and both are set up to make it as easy as possible to work in them. Most all the work takes place within the triangle defined by the work surface, sink, and oven. All the tools and ingredients are stored nearby.
Though I like my kitchens, and they’re pleasant places in which to bake bread, I’d not consider them special kitchens, ones designed specifically for that purpose. Because I moved around a lot when I was young, I’ve baked in many different home kitchens with many different kinds of ovens, and I’ve found that as long as you have the basics – a work surface, a sink, a working oven, a refrigerator – you can turn out a decent loaf of bread.
It does help, though, to have a fairly consistent temperature in the kitchen. My LA kitchen has central air conditioning and heating, but I find that I rarely use them. Pagnol @ Third Street Bakery, being a short walk to the beach, has neither, though it does sport a small wall heater – never used – and, due to that lack of cross-ventilation, a couple of window fans, which are kept going most of the time. I suppose that a climate as temperate as that of the California coast (though it seems to becoming less so) does not require a great deal of climate control: a few well-place windows should do it. Should you reside elsewhere, keep an eye on the temperature and try to moderate it, as necessary…
I have wood floors in my home kitchen and linoleum in Pagnol. Both are comfortable and easy to clean. However, in both kitchens I have made yet another concession to age: commercial sponge-rubber mats on the floor before the work surfaces. They make a difference when you have to stand in one spot for long periods, even in comfortable shoes.
With fewer windows, Pagnol needs more lights than the home kitchen. I use incandescent lights at home and a mix of incandescent and fluorescent in Pagnol. Many people express an aesthetic preference for incandescence, but I’ve found it doesn’t make much difference (though that could reflect my general disregard for aesthetics in such matters). As long as there’s enough light to see what you’re doing, you should be fine. It’s sometimes easier, though, to check the color of the crust under incandescent light when the bread comes out of the oven. (Pagnol’s oven decks have strong incandescent lights in them.)
Having said all this, there’s a certain cachet attached to baking bread in a home kitchen. That is, after all, where one makes home-made bread, which is generally held in higher regard than “commercially produced” or “store-bought” bread. But, of course, it’s not necessarily the location in which the bread was created that determines its quality. It’s the way in which it was made. At home, though, you’re less likely to have access to the heavy machinery that commercial bakeries so often employ to churn out the maximum number of loaves in a given time. Thus, you’re more likely to do the work by hand and take more time to do it. Both these aspects of the process enhance the chances of baking loaves truly worthy of the label “home made.”
Next Chapter: My Evolution As a Baker