Can This Professional Chef Survive As A Baker For A Day? • Tasty - HeyHo Kids

It is love. Bread is love. Bread is the product of patience.

There's nothing better, more filling than super good bread fresh out of the oven with a slather of butter.

I could eat that for dinner every night.

Everybody loves bread, but also a lot of people just take it for granted.

Today I'm here at Bread Lounge in Los Angeles, California and gonna go through the motions of an every day baker for a wholesale baker.

- It's not the easiest job, let's put it this way.

You have to be up all night.

It's physical work.

You're on your feet.

- Having spent the first seven years of my career as a pastry chef, I kind of have a leg up on baking, but not at this scale.

- I think even people that were born to be bakers didn't become bakers in one day.

- Thankfully I'm small but mighty and at the end of the day we'll see if they would hire me or fire me.

- So the first step is weighing the ingredients and putting them into the mixer.

So now we're going to mix the Danish dough so we'll put everything in the mixer.

(squeals) All that's left is the yeast.

(whirring) That's cool, no? Let's see if you can hit it in the middle without the dough catching it.

Today we have time, but usually I just pour, like, third of it.

Let it mix.

Come after a few minutes.

Throw another third in.

Taking the dough out of the mixture, that can be a very challenging part.

And our Danish dough is almost ready.

I just want to make sure there's no pieces of butter showing up anywhere.

Now I remember my first day that I couldn't even, I didn't even know where to start.

You get to a mixer with two, 300 pounds of dough and someone tells you, "Just take it out," you'll do the easy part, take it out of the mixer.

- Yes.

- I'll do the labor part of making a ball out of a piece of dough.

(grunting) There's different types of dough that gives you different challenges.

Some dough are really stiff and then it's just really heavy and it's hard to cut it and take it out of the mixer.

Some doughs are very sticky and they stick all over your hands.

Okay, so this is our ciabatta dough.

I use my good hand to hold the scraper and my weak hand to, like, scoop to scoop the dough.

So just scoop the dough and then I just cut it.

- Got it.

(clanging) (playful music) How do you get it off of you? - When you start cutting a lot of times, in the meantime it's sticking to your fingers, then it doesn't want to come off.

It doesn't want to come off.

It doesn't want to come off.

Don't play with the food.

- All right, so I'm gonna try and do what we want.

(panting and grunting) How do you? How many, like, weeks, days, hours does it take for an employee to get used to doing this? Oh my god.

- [Ran] I think getting used to it is one thing.

Doing it right is another thing.

(clanging) - So you're telling me to keep my day job? - For example, hitting the mixer is not the recommended way to take the dough out of the mixer.

(clanging) (playful music) - That was on accident.

- And if you don't mind, I'll take over before the sunrise again.

(laughing) - I for sure honestly no joke thought the ciabatta, pulling it out of the bowl was gonna have me, like, "Okay, you're done.

"Quit hitting my bowl.

"I told you to stop.

"Get the hell out.

" - The next step will be folding the dough.

We're gonna do the same ciabatta dough that we took out of the mixer.

After a few hours, we need to fold it every few hours.

So we stretch the dough, put it in the middle, stretch, put it in the middle.

Same thing from the sides.

Then we just flip it so the seam is down.

We'll do one-one.

- [Claudette] I'm a very competitive person, Ran.

- So make, if, okay if you're competitive then this is not good.

- Yes.

Okay.

- It needs to be smooth.

- Got it.

- When you have layers, you're basically putting the dough the wrong way.

- Oh, like that? - The paper should, we want it outside.

- It tastes good, though.

- Most customers don't like paper in their ciabatta.

- [Claudette] So then here you would go and lay it flat? - [Ran] Yeah, and then you just have to flip it down.

- [Claudette] Got it.

- [Ran] So you see how small it is now? - See, 'cause I'm, I did a good job.

- [Ran] Much better.

(thudding) Beautiful.

- Okay (laughs).

- That was really good.

You know what, I'm gonna have some coffee.

(laughing) I'll be back.

- Have fun (laughs).

- You're doing a great job.

- Thank you.

- [Producer] Is this tiring? - No, it's fun.

This is why we do what we do.

I like using my hands.

- [Ran] But then usually the guy that does that, once he's done here we're going to help them on the table.

So these guys are cutting and then these guys are making the round.

That's the pre-shape.

That's not the shape of the loaf yet.

We just pre-shape it, let it rest, and then we'll shape it.

The better we do the pre-shape, easier it is to later on shape the bread.

It's a matter of time.

We have to do this process as fast as possible.

- I'm going fast.

I think.

(speaking foreign language) - Well, the fastest one isn't here, so there's a shot.

The teamwork here is palpable.

Like, you know that every single person here is helping each other.

(speaking foreign language) It was really humbling to not be good at something and have them be patient with me.

- Usually it's the same guy needs to shape and put them on the tray at the same time.

(speaking foreign language) We can try put the bread on the linen.

We fold the beginning so we make, like, little tiny wall so the bread won't fall.

Little bit of flour.

Put one, make a divider.

We don't want to put too much flour.

We cover and it goes on the rack.

You have to be fast.

You have to work in the same pace as the rest of the team, otherwise you get piles of dough piling on the table and you basically putting the whole process behind.

- Goodnight.

- Can I say something? - Yes.

- See these guys? - Yes.

- They're waiting for you.

- Oh.

They're not that much faster than me.

Baking is a family thing, right? - Yeah.

- Most cultures it's a family, generational.

Is your family making breads? - Nope (laughs).

I'm the only one in the family.

The first one.

I guess I'm the only crazy one.

(laughing) When you work in a bakery, your coworkers are like your family.

- Yeah.

- Like, you spend so much time together.

You need each others' help.

It's a teamwork.

So it really feels like a family.

Usually people that work here, they're here for a long time so they spend together really.

- And they take care of each other.

- I hope so.

- That's all you hope for as a boss is to be, like, okay, the wheels are all moving in the right direction because everyone respects everyone.

It's like everyone has each others' back.

It's exciting to be in that environment 'cause, for me, I get creative juices flowing when I'm around people that really care about what they're doing.

- [Ran] Okay, so these are our sourdough loaf and now it's time to bake them so they're gonna put them on the loader, score them, and then they go into the oven for about an hour.

- I don't have very many days when I get to be a student again and the amount of work and patience that bread entails is insane.

This one? - Yeah.

- And this one? - Yeah.

(squeals and chuckles) - So Claudette, what do you think is the most fun part? - I think being on that table's the most fun part.

- The table? - Yeah.

- Really? - Yeah, 'cause it's like more of a teamwork, but this part is interesting to me 'cause it's a guessing game.

You can't see it.

It's different from when you're cooking and it's visually in front of you so you see, "Okay, yeah, this is done.

" This was fun for me because I like feeling on things I don't know.

I mean, I know the basics and the fundamentals of baking but I don't know what you know 'cause you've been doing it for so long, you know.

Same as I can teach you something that-- - I'm sure about cooking, you could teach me a lot.

(laughing) A lot.

You wouldn't even know where to start.

Okay Claudette, so we got the chance to spend the whole day together in the bakery and we had the chance to go through the whole process.

I got to see your skills, your abilities, and I have to say for a first time in a bakery you did great and I would definitely hire you.

- Well, thank you.

- [Ran] You're welcome.

- It's very, very refreshing to be in a bakery at this size and what you guys are doing is pretty amazing.

My one takeaway today is that I just wish people valued bread for the amount of pain in the (bleep) work that it is (laughs).

- I think everything we don't have to work hard for, we take for granted.

If you have the chance to go through a process of how anything is made and you realize that it's not made (snaps) just like that, you might appreciate it more.

But I think with bread today, things have changed and people have much more appreciation to artesianal bread where the bakers really take the time and their effort to make the best bread they can.

- I wish people could see the faces and the hands that touch bread in places like this that still have magic in handmade breads.

It was very, very fun.

You have a very good team.

- Thank you.

And you were a great addition to the team today so you're welcome any time.

- Thank you.

Thank you so much.

(pleasant music) (shutter clicks)