When I saw this guy was on the front page of Zhihu today, I felt very sad and quickly came to apologize. I wrote the first version of this post just out of passion. Seeing that a blogger I always admired was hit hard by this post, I didn’t overestimate my ability to write about what I know. The shortcomings are of course the number of sands in the Ganges. Welcome. pointed out. The illustrations in this article were personally collected from food blogs. There are links to the authors in the pictures. If you are interested in the product, please click on the link to visit the original author's blog.
In terms of content, a topic that was originally discussed about home baking and professional baking was digressed thousands of miles away from the topic (it was written by An Shengsheng as a record of the baking factory’s experiences. I was cautious and thought that everyone would prefer to watch the reveal. This is what happens when you read scandalous news articles. Do you have a better life reading The Sun than The Times?) But this one actually became the most upvoted answer? ! What a waterfall of sweat. Now I get very nervous when I see the number of yes votes increasing, for fear of misleading others, which is really an easy way to atone for my sin. My answer is just to talk about what I know about professional baking and home baking in China. If some of the answers above are blinding me, then I am Dayeer Yang, and they are all the same.
As a person who has worked in a well-known bakery chain for four years (only during winter and summer vacations), I have N friends who are engaged in this industry (factory), and I often come into contact with pseudo-professionals and so-called professional factories in my daily work. Baking amateurs are actually beginners. Let me tell you what I know a little bit about. Because of my limited knowledge, I don’t know much about it, such as the high-end Le Cordon Bleu version like Mi Qiqi’s, and the private workshops in the community and on the street. The lowest-end bakery (the kind whose products are all about flavors, pigments, and additives) is not very involved.
Among the answers to the questions, classmate Mi Qiqi’s answers are even more beneficial. Reading her answers often reminds me of the book “Go to Paris and Bake Macaroons” before, but, just, cough Well, just like what was complained about in "The Boys Here", people like Wang Yuyan went to shoot brochures, but the real situation on campus is that most of them are stupid girls. Personally, in Beijing (I dare not say China, for example, professional baking and home baking in Shanghai are much more developed than in Beijing), the baking industry is still a rare blue belt, and most of them are blue ribbons. I recommend reading two posts on Douban,
Hell’s Kitchen - Challenge the crazy overtime and baking training in the hotel - Do you want to go abroad? Quoting one of the paragraphs: As for domestic training classes, I attended a training class, and then I finally learned that mousse can be made with mousse powder, tiramisu can be made with tiramisu powder, and the pattern of marble cheese You can use chocolate-flavored oil to paint, you can add cake oil to cakes to make them more fluffy and stable, and milk-flavored powder can make the dough or cake smell particularly fragrant...I won't generalize, after all, I only have an in-depth understanding of one training institution. However, I believe this is a common phenomenon because these educational content that can reduce product costs are very popular with certain companies. But having said that, the training you get may not be the best, and it will be somewhat different from your psychological expectations, but it can still make up for some of your shortcomings. For example, it at least taught me how to make bread. The general steps, and also learned more about the other side of the baking market. However, in such a training institution with non-strict standards, while accepting the advantages of the institution's teaching, you must also adhere to your own principles. Therefore, I did not complete the three-month course, probably less than two months. After I thought that I had acquired the knowledge I wanted, I applied for suspension of the reserved course.
Well, although I have never attended this kind of domestic training class, the production and R&D personnel I have come into contact with are all from this kind of major. The expression refers to workers. For example, some workers’ daily work is to put the toast dough coming from the assembly line into the toast box, take off the bread baked on the grill and put it on the packaging machine assembly line, and put the mooncake machine into production. Putting the snacks on the baking sheet, you say this does not require training. Of course, the boring work content and low wages caused by zero technical level are also the main reasons for the large turnover of workers in the workshop.
So I admire everyone who really likes baking and strives hard to pursue their dreams, such as Mi Qiqi, the classmate upstairs. However, I personally admire everyone who has hit a brick wall in the past. He said that if one day you return to China and engage in related work, don’t be sad because of the harsh reality.
Because sometimes there is a certain distance between ideal and reality. For example, if you are a professional baker and learn to be a top baker, the cost of raw materials is all included in the tuition. You don’t have to consider the cost when making. But, but, let’s learn what we love. Baking is a pursuit of one's own dream, but the boss's pursuit of opening a store is not the same. He is pursuing maximum profit at the minimum cost.
Of course, the products produced by big hotels and big factories still make people more confident, because they can’t ruin their own sign. If Kempinski Bakery (I heard that many foreigners go to buy from him every day) (Half-price cakes after eight o'clock) The cakes produced are just like the cake shops in the wet market. Can they still have business?
To maintain the operation of an enterprise (factory, hotel bakery, chain bakery), or to continue to make profits, you must have a dedicated heart and exquisite skills, but you cannot rely on these alone. , so Wu Baochun is going to study for an MBA. National Taiwan University refused to accept him because of his low academic qualifications, and he will still be in the news, because he is indeed good at making bread, but he may not be so proficient in personnel management, cost control, financial management, etc.
So maybe a top Le Cordon Bleu student who comes back from France and works in baking in China sees all kinds of flavors, pigments, preservatives, and additives every day, and his worldview is about to collapse, so Nowadays, many delicious dessert shops and coffee shops (in cultural and youth areas such as Shichahai and Nanluoguxiang in Beijing) are opened by overseas returnees. Of course, some are successful in pursuing their dreams, and some are damned after seeing success. After all, now The rent is too expensive. Look at the bookstore that Xu Zhiyuan opened in the Old Summer Palace before. Later, he hid his face and now went to Blue Harbor. It was Blue Harbor who took a fancy to his brand and offered a condition of not charging rent for three years. #@, of course, I personally think that this way he may not be able to earn money for labor, water, electricity, and energy. Isn’t that just a waste of money? Of course, this is a bit far-fetched. I suggest interested students refer to Zhuang Zuyi's "Anthropologist in the Kitchen", Chapter 13: The Development of a Chef, and Chapter 17: It's Not Easy to Open a Restaurant! , through the real-life account of working in a hotel kitchen and the account of an idealistic chef with advanced culinary skills opening a store and then destroying it, we can get a glimpse of the hardships of food practitioners.
Origin:
1. Equipment and raw materials (cost first)
1. A long explanation.
In this article, I personally subdivide the bread sold outside into two types: large-scale factory production type and relatively small-scale bakery type (restaurant bakery, chain bakery). Personally, I also think that the professional pastry chef author who answered everyone’s questions may be of the second type, and belongs to the superstructure. The author here will only talk about the middle and lower classes of the professional baking market that I know (middle-class high-end bakeries, lower-class bakeries large factories).
1. Professional and amateur feeding.
Home bakers are purely amateurs and purely interested in it. It is almost inevitable that everyone will like it at first. From raw materials such as butter, flour (high-gluten, low-gluten), sugar, yeast, eggs, and even molds, oil paper, tin foil, fixed assets such as chef machines, bread machines, egg beaters, ovens, and even Japanese imports if you get more involved Fermentation boxes, chef machines imported from the United States, air dryers and other big things with four-digit prices are waiting for you. A large box of molds at home is considered an entry-level standard configuration. A background cloth for taking photos and a large cabinet of cups, plates, and dishes can I dare to say that I have opened a food blog. How about the molds for Gugu Hof, Crelo, and Macarons? You should also have at least one set of silicone and one set of non-stick ones. Of course, at least they are from Lekui and Beiyin. Like me, I use Sanneng to celebrate the New Year. All the ones produced by foreign trade stores are embarrassing to say hello to others.
Professional baking companies are relatively simple. The four-joint toast mold can make all kinds of toast. Of course, most of them are made in China. They don’t know whether Kaiyin is good. The problem is that it is expensive, hot air oven, and tunnel. Furnaces, various production lines, and raw materials called the manufacturers to request goods, and then waited for the delivery trucks.
Of course, there is too much to talk about when it comes to production raw materials. Let’s not mention the general environment, but only the cost. From a certain perspective, cost is the foundation of a manufacturer’s survival, and the brand is the god. Damn, it's just the basis for you to be able to sell it at a higher price than others.
Whoever runs a factory is not running a porridge factory, and running a business is not doing charity. Without profit, everything is just a cloud. N years ago, I interviewed the boss of Lee Kum Kee. He once complained about the product prices of mainland seasoning companies. He said implicitly, "The Chinese idols can come at the same price (we can't afford this price)." At that time, he was just curious about his family's requirements. Family members are not allowed to divorce. If they divorce, the family rules of property inheritance rights will be cancelled.
I didn't understand the deep meaning of Mr. Li's words. As a result, the Sudan Red incident happened within two years. Then I realized, cost, cost is really an unchanging business theme.
So why don’t you dare to eat the products of small manufacturers? Large manufacturers have strict supervision for brand and export. Their exports are relatively reassuring and their management is quite strict.
Some students cited disinfection, sterilization, and hats and masks in the production process of large factories. . . . . Wait, but when I visited, I saw that the difference between the scene and reality was basically the same as the bedrooms in home magazines and the bedrooms in real life.
There are many reasons for this. First of all, how difficult it is for factories to recruit people now. For example, I often deal with a large foreign-owned factory in Tongzhou because the local government helps recruit workers (large taxpayers), which is relatively better. According to Friendly provided by my best friend, when recruiting people in the workshops of several bakery companies in Daxing Development Zone, people come and go like a spring breeze. People are always recruiting and people are always leaving (it sounds like Foxconn Khan), production The working hours in the workshop are long, the labor intensity is high, you have to work shifts (morning and evening shifts), you work overtime during holidays, it is difficult to take a break during the Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival, etc., etc., etc., etc., these are enough to constitute a high-intensity flow of personnel. According to my best friend who is in charge of quality control She said that every time she went to the vice president of production to ask for instructions on work, she always saw a group of people waiting to resign around her door, making her look like a petition office.
Having said so much, I am not talking about the inside story of the factory. Under this kind of spring breeze and smooth flow of personnel, new people need to be trained and learn, and there must be a process of on-the-job training and from raw to mature. Therefore, it is not surprising that product quality is unstable and regulations are not implemented in place (such as the prescribed actions for hand washing and disinfection). Well, if you insist on believing what is in those corporate videos and brochures, , a promotional video shot by a large and well-known company. The protagonist is my bestie. From washing hands to disinfecting, and wherever her face is important, she makes a cameo in the whole process. I have also seen that film. It is really high-end and atmospheric, although the authenticity is relatively low. Awesome.
2. The various drugs we took in those years.
Let’s talk about edibles first. One of my best friends graduated from N University. She works in quality control in a large factory and is also in charge of regular product testing. The products of large factories are relatively guaranteed. Every time the product was sent for inspection, there were no problems, but one time it was called back and it was said to be purple sweet potato filling. What's the problem? It's a quality problem. The laboratory station said it was true. There was too much starch in the stuffing and I forgot to put the purple sweet potato. Next, the leader of Shenma became furious and cursed the manufacturer, demanding rectification within a deadline and so on. It has nothing to do with the topic, so there is no need to say more. Under the flower arrangement, I go to the supermarket every Mid-Autumn Festival to look at the mooncakes from various manufacturers. Why is the price difference between the big manufacturers and small manufacturers of a piece of lotus seed mooncake more than ten times? Cost, cost.
Okay, starch is a great way to make stuffing. Although it is a bit funny, at least starch can be considered as particulate matter. The person upstairs said that even if the raw materials are used, there are additives. I agree with it to a limited extent and will explain later. (Please read the following text word for word) However, we do not use bread improver, cake oil, flavor, pigment, preservative, or foaming agent, so I will omit 10,000 words below.
Some people know that the common carmine is actually cochineal, which is extracted from a kind of insect. Although this is purely natural, there are N friends around me who will never eat any red or nearly red takeaway food after knowing it. Women are really troublesome.
Does anyone know that the cheap baking powder commonly available on the market contains aluminum? Shenma, you said there are expensive ones that do not contain aluminum. Dear, do you think the factory will use that kind? Cost, Cost.
Does anyone know the dangers of bread improvers, cake oils, and emulsifiers to the human body? Shenma, if you don’t know, well, go to Baidu yourself.
Does anyone know that domestic butter has many more additives than imported butter?
Some people know that the factory produces all kinds of pastries using margarine, which is the legendary margarine. The guy upstairs said that the recipe for the baking book says how many grams of margarine there is right from the start. I’m sorry, but I don’t read much. So far, I have only collected a small number of baking books published in China, including those from Japan and Japan. They are not available in Europe, America, Hong Kong or Taiwan, mainly because they cannot afford them and cannot understand them. The total height was originally up to the waist, but after a lot of work was done to save the rough parts and save the essence, the current height is only about knee-high. In my limited collection of books, I have never seen such an off-the-line recipe.
Natural butter (animal butter) is unstable and difficult to use, but I personally recommend this spokesperson to read the blogs of two great gods, Love and Freedom and Texas Farmers, which contain N SO detailed discussions. Some articles can be read as professional papers.
I once saw the longitudinal section analysis diagram of croissants on a chef’s blog. It made me admire it and reminded me that the R&D staff I’ve seen at home are all messing around. I was actually asked a few questions during interviews. The most shocking thing was when I interviewed a production supervisor. He recommended a new bread of his own, similar to Stollen. I praised him for a few words (actually, it has much less fruit ingredients than the homemade bread, which can be seen here and there). (I was so embarrassed to say it was called Christmas fruit buns) I asked casually, is this bread so well textured? Is it ice fermentation? The supervisor said, what is it called an ice species? Me? @!#$%&, so some of you upstairs are really not too superstitious about production in large factories. When I was interviewing CEOs of various companies, I actually had an appointment and when the time came, I opened the door and the boss was scolding the R&D director for being useless.
I also went for an interview, and I happened to catch up with the boss of the company inspecting the new gold bricks made by the R&D staff. The two gold bricks were exactly the same. The boss asked me to taste them. After taking a bite, one was fragrant and the other was ordinary. Students who have eaten crispy bread all know this. But my boss told me that the fragrant one is made from margarine. Yes, that’s right, it’s trans fatty acid. Congratulations to that classmate for getting the answer right. That one didn’t do so well. It was made from imported natural butter. At that time, trans fatty acids were at their peak, and the boss sighed for a long time about this issue. Well, dear friends here, what would you do if you were the boss? I only interviewed the boss once, and I don’t know what she did next. But when I look at the labels of bread in the supermarket (I haven’t bought it for many years, so I’ll learn from it), most of the time I see vegetable butter on the ingredient list, okay. You know.
This same boss once caught her and yelled at the production supervisor. The production supervisor was a 11.8 meter tall man from Northeast China. He became anxious for a moment and asked the boss directly if he wanted a good product and easy handling. What about the jujube paste filling? There is one that costs 4 yuan per catty, and there is one that costs 40 per catty. Which one do you want? I didn't know which one she used. I was sweating for a long time.
Some students above said that many things can only be made by professional baking. Well, I have seen only a dozen types of bread production processes in factories. In the middle, imported filling machines are mainly used, mainly from Japan. The price is cheaper than European and American products, and it has more functions and is more durable than domestic products. In the production of cakes, the batter is poured into the mold, and cake oil must be put in. In the garbage area (big factories have special garbage areas, everyone understands), you can see a lot of cake oil packaging remains, as you can imagine Decide on the dosage. If this thing is healthy or not, just search on Baidu and you will know. Ignore the above advertisement, why should I use it? I think I know it. Anyone who has made cakes at home knows the importance and difficulty of beating eggs. Okay, let’s make a small cake at home. The weight is limited, but the factory As for production, the daily output of a best-selling item may reach a thousand (kilograms), beating eggs in one pot after another? What should I do if the dough cannot be beaten? What should I do if the dough is defoamed when it is transported from the kneading area to the production area or put into the oven for baking? Okay, so why are there so many stabilizers in the food of Mao Factory? (Here’s a paragraph from Baidu Encyclopedia: Cake oil is also called cake emulsifier or cake foaming agent. It plays an important role in the making of sponge cake. In In the early 1980s, cake oil was not added when making sponge cakes in China. The whipping time was very slow, the yield rate was low, the texture of the finished product was rough, and there was a serious eggy smell that was added later. Without cake oil, the entire whipping process of making sponge cake only takes 8-10 minutes, the yield rate is greatly improved, the cost is also reduced, and the baked finished product has a uniform and delicate texture and a soft texture.) You can take a look at the popsicle packaging. In the ingredient list above, are there any emulsifiers from Shenma? Putting aside Shenma's corporate conscience and profit costs, large-scale production is different from small-dose production.
This problem will be encountered by professional bakers in reality. Which one do you use? Indeed, an amateur may not have the skills, but she has the energy. If a product cannot be made well, she will struggle over and over again. When buying raw materials, you can choose which one is more expensive and which one is easier to buy. Haven’t many people said that baking is more wasteful than playing with a SLR? ? Look at the picture below, can you tell it was handmade by an amateur?
3. Mass production and small-scale production
I originally wanted to call it large-scale production and hand-made, but domestic bakeries, foreign-funded, joint ventures, and private enterprises are all included. Due to the space and capital investment, The reason is that bread and cakes are mainly made by hand. Here I will talk about the difference between those made in large quantities and those made in small quantities.
You all know about Taiwan’s Wu Baochun. Now he has opened a bakery in Kaohsiung, so he is considered a famous figure in the bakery industry. But as you can see on Baidu, his masterpiece is fermented longan bread. , only selling 300 pieces per day, is this hunger marketing? No, this is the difference between machines and handwork, or the difference between factories and bakeries.
If anyone has watched the documentary <
There is also the Japanese movie <
Okay, stop talking nonsense (because I have been talking), even if we have never worked in a bakery, through these clips, we can basically understand their daily operations, but, I can say, The factory is different from this one, completely different, really different. I have also read blog posts written by some experts about visiting ** factories. I won’t say whether they are soft articles or not. Let’s borrow the title of the book << What you think you think Is that what you think? >>A friend of mine who works as a public relations manager in this kind of company often complains to me about the hard work of this kind of reception and the things behind this kind of industrial tourism, so there are rumors about his family using rotten fruits to make juice. This is not surprising to me at all. One of my colleagues was surprised and said, ah, it turns out that his juice is really made from fruit. Well, this colleague has been doing in-depth investigations and writing scandal reports for many years and has a slight case of sunglasses syndrome. (Always look at the world through those eyes).
This difference also exists in factory production and bakery production. For Mao'an, take Wu Baochun's Zhendian Zhibao wine-stuffed longan bread as an example. Because it is handmade and quality and quantity must be maintained, it can only sell 300 pieces a day. The production capacity ends here. If this product is to be mechanized, it must be based on The product formula is adjusted based on the characteristics of the machine (I interviewed the R&D director of a joint venture baking company, and their daily job is to develop bread based on the characteristics of the machine), and whether the product can reach the level of manual work is yet to be determined. Why Mao said this is because if he could produce 30,000 kilograms by machine and there was a market (judging from the news reports, there really is), I believe he would have done so long ago.
So by extension, why do the breads produced by big factories that you see in supermarkets look silly and simple, not as colorful as those in bakeries (well, I heard Several chain bakeries in Beijing all deliver frozen dough from the central factory and then turn it into different varieties when decorated in the store. (To be tested) That’s because labor is expensive (a worker’s salary, bonus, and insurance are not a small amount), and it can be made with machines. All are made by machines, and when developing varieties, we try our best to research those that can be produced on a large scale. Those that are too complicated by hand are often directly killed.
Take the familiar braided bread as an example. Regardless of whether it is a three-strand braid or a five-strand braid, it all needs to be braided by hand. You cannot use a machine. Shenma Garland Bread, etc., you can make it at home. Knitting noodles while listening to music may feel very satisfying, but in the factory, when I saw the problem board (the white board indicating the daily output in the production workshop) early in the morning, there was two thousand kilograms of braided bread, and I was crying. According to the jargon, this thing is called "nothing. "Work", the time it takes for you to work hard for a group of people to make a hundred kilograms of toast is enough for a few people to easily make a few hundred kilograms of toast. This several hundred kilograms is still a conservative estimate. For Mao, use a toast production line. By the way, when I first heard about this artifact, I was really curious. Mainly because I couldn’t understand how the rolling process, which cannot be omitted when making toast, is realized with a machine. Later, by chance, I wrote a manuscript for a company’s new product, and it was actually approved. I went to look at the machine, and after a brief understanding, I felt that it was done by machine imitating handwork. Of course, you have to say that Shenma’s rolling strength and accuracy are indeed different from manual work, but the machine is labor-saving, dear, and it really makes the dough go better. Once you put it in the machine, just wait to get the toast (untoasted of course) at the other end.
So sometimes when we see a group of people busy in front of a project in those open bakeries (with large transparent glass), we have to understand the craftsmanship of many varieties of bread in the bakery, ahem , quite big, so didn’t some of the kids who were engaged in this kind of work say that they were very tired at the end of the day? It’s understandable, but students who don’t understand can watch the documentary episode I mentioned above, and you’ll know how labor-intensive the bakery is. To quote the Douban post I mentioned earlier: Everything is a new experience. I remember that on the afternoon of the third day of induction training, I was taken to the bakery. Annie, a female chef who has been in the industry for more than 20 years, came out to greet me. She said to me: "What you learn in chain bakery companies is basically useless here. We have completely different working methods." After that, she introduced me To a foreign chef, I didn’t expect that the chef’s first sentence was also to inoculate me. He said: “You have to be mentally prepared, because it is the Beijing Auto Show, and it is common to work overtime until 11 o’clock in the evening.” I thought to myself, in order to do this In this business, if you are willing to sacrifice for anything, why should you worry about this? So I confidently promised not to slack off and always be ready to fight. The hotel I stayed in had a very high occupancy rate, and there were so many banquets and takeaways, so working overtime was almost crazy. I live in the East Fourth Ring Road. I get up at 5:30 every day and go to the hotel for breakfast at 6:30. I go to work officially at 7:00. I get the pastries and cakes from the gourmet shop before 9:00, get the floor snacks at 10:00, and prepare the afternoon tea desserts before 1:00. , after having lunch, I started preparing the semi-finished desserts for the next day. Okay, it’s four o’clock, is it time to get off work? However, there is still a banquet and takeout for the next day! Okay, let's continue making dessert together. It's almost 22:23 as soon as we finish it. It's almost 24:00 when we get home. After washing up and going to bed, we get up again at 5:30 the next day, and the cycle starts over and over again. There were two takeaways around 12pm and lasted until 3am. After I returned to the hotel and cleaned up the stall, I thought I had to get up at 5:30 to go home, so forget it and sleep for 3 hours in the staff lounge. Get up and continue working.
Reposted from Zhihu Ye Shi