Our ovens are convection ovens and we have two of them. Convection ovens can be either gas or electric. If the oven is gas you are required to have it under a hood with a fire suppression system. The ones we use are electric so while the hood is not needed, it is a good idea to have them vent to the outside or it gets really hot inside the kitchen. Ours at Bittersweet are unfortunately not vented to the outside and so when we are running both ovens it gets like a sauna in there. When baking in a convection oven you usually set the temperature about 25 degrees lower than the recipe calls for since the convection ovens a little quicker than a conventional oven. At Bittersweet we bake everything at 300 degrees so that anything we are making be it cookies, cake, muffins, brownies, etc. can be put in the oven together. This makes things much easier since pretty much on a daily basis we are all working on different items for the shop.
We have two different mixers that we use at Bittersweet.......well, actually three mixers. We have a regular KitchenAid mixer that we use for very small jobs like royal icing, peanut butter cup filling, etc. The mixer I use the most often is the 20 quart Hobart mixer. I use this mixer to make almost everything that can be made in a mixer for the shop: bagels, brioche, cake batter, brownies, buttercream icing, muffin batter, waffle batter, and so on and so forth. To give you an idea of the size batches that can be made in this mixer I can make at least 5x what I can make in the KitchenAid mixer, so, that means instead of making one cake at a time I can make up to 5-8 cakes at a time. The last mixer is our big mama 60 quart Hobart mixer. I use this bad boy whenever I need to make a huge batch of anything. Ok, for a visual......when making brioche I can get one brioche ball in the KitchenAid mixer, 5 brioche balls out of the 20 qt mixer, and 18 balls of brioche out of the 60 qt mixer. We used this one a lot during king cake season to make the brioche and the fillings, and also during Super Bowl week to make all of the red velvet cupcakes and brownies for the booth on Super Bowl Boulevard. I don't know that I will need a 60 qt anytime soon for Sweet Inspirations, but I am definitely on the lookout for a good used 20qt. mixer. So make sure and let me know if you see a good deal! :)
Of course we have a fridge and freezer in the shop as well. The cooler/ fridge that we use is a three door model that is located in the kitchen with us. Sometimes, it seems like it is a little too small for the operation and the owner looked into a walk in cooler, but I think she has decided to stick with what we have for now. I will definitely be looking into a walk in cooler for my shop and hopefully a either a walk in freezer or at least a 3 door reach in freezer. In my opinion you want to make sure you have room for everything you need and with a fridge or a freezer you want there to be plenty of room for the cool air to circulate and keep everything at the proper temperatures.
There are many, many other pieces of equipment that we use in the shop and now that I am moving towards my own business I am realizing just how many things I am going to need to purchase. It is a little scary but I have faith that slowly but surely everything will work out. This is my dream and I know that I can do this!!!
I know this hasn't been the most exciting post, but I hope you have enjoyed the little bit of an inside look to the bakery.
Keep it Sweet and live life to it's fullest! Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!!!!
Oh, here is a little sneak peak at my logo for Sweet Inspirations. Hope you like it!!
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