- 2 days ago
Bon Appétit spends the morning with oven master May Nguyen at Breadbelly, San Francisco’s acclaimed Asian-American bakery. Every morning, May races against the clock to bake, finish, and garnish hundreds of pastries before sunrise. Discover how kaya buns, croissants, milk bread, black sesame pastries, and more come together in just 2.5 hours.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:02The role of the oven master is almost like a Nascar pit crew.
00:06I'm responsible to bake off all the pastries.
00:10Breadbelly is an Asian American bakery in California.
00:13In the morning, I have to bake off 20 items.
00:17I have such a small window to bake off,
00:20putting the final touch on those items.
00:23If you come to Breadbelly,
00:25I'm pretty sure that I am the one who bake the products you have on your hands.
00:33Hi, good morning. Welcome to Breadbelly.
00:35My name is Mei Nguyen and I am the oven master of the bakery.
00:38It's about 3.45 right now and we got a lot of pastries waiting for us in the poofers.
00:43So let's get going.
00:46In the morning, I have about two hours and a half window
00:50to bake, finish and garnish everything before the delivery person comes in.
00:56This is an oven. Usually we set it to automatically be turned on around 3.30.
01:01This is our walk-in poofers.
01:03It's literally the size of a closet.
01:05It gets a lot of humidity.
01:07This is Black Sesame Bremble Berry Danish
01:10in our Blueberry Croissant Tart with Brown Butter Financiers.
01:14So I'm going to pop this into the poofers right now.
01:17We're going to have the oven occupied all the time.
01:20It's very fun. It's like playing puzzles.
01:22I think the ham and cheese is ready. The layers are separating nicely.
01:28The next thing I'm going to do is to set up my egg wash station.
01:32We recently changed to the gun because our production volume has been increased twice
01:39substantially in the last few months.
01:41And also with the gun, I get a nicer even brush.
01:45Because like the brush depends on the pressures of your hand.
01:47You can mess up the layers of the laminated pastries.
01:51It gives the products a really nice, shiny, deep amber color.
01:56I love my team.
01:58But honestly, like the first 30 minutes before my Oven Master Assist comes in
02:03is like my favorite time of the day.
02:05It's literally just me moving around, trying to get things done.
02:08And I'm just in the zone. So it's my favorite 30 minutes of the day.
02:12It's ready to be pushed to our rack oven.
02:16This is our walk-in oven.
02:18It's a rotating rack.
02:19It's super nice because it helps us to really increase our volumes in the production.
02:28So sometimes things like this happens.
02:30The oven is not rotating.
02:32It's going to be a quick fix.
02:35I have to reset it for 10 seconds.
02:37It happens once in a while.
02:40I don't know what caused it.
02:41But usually just like we set the ovens.
02:44We'll fix it.
02:46Nice. It's moving.
02:49This is our monkey bread.
02:51Which use croissant trim not to waste anything.
02:54So that's why we come up with these products.
02:56I do try to tidy it up a little bit so that it doesn't get overflowed.
03:01It seems like it's also ready to be put into the oven.
03:04So I'm just going to pop it in real quick.
03:06I'm just going to set a timer.
03:08Timer is like the most essential tool.
03:11The oven itself has its own timers.
03:13And then I put one over there next to my stations.
03:16Usually I use this one for like the total times of the make-off that I think it would need.
03:21And then this one I would kind of set for something that I need to check in the middle of
03:25the bake.
03:26I'm going to drink my juice really quick.
03:28This is definitely my non-negotiable.
03:32I don't drink a lot of coffee but I need my tea.
03:35And this.
03:36I drink this juice every day, any morning.
03:39Just to like wake me up.
03:40It's a vitamin C and lemons and also olive oil.
03:44It's very tart.
03:45This is my tea.
03:46The only thing I would need in the morning.
03:49Okay.
03:49The next thing I want to do is set up my kaya buns.
03:51This is our meal bread dough that got puffed overnight.
03:55It will be added a, we call it kaya hat.
03:58It's almost like an almond cookie.
04:00We put it on top so it's like a crackling or like contrast.
04:03We always kind of want to give our base cheese a lot of contrasting texture.
04:08So the meal bread is going to be very fluffy and soft.
04:11And later when it's cooled down, it will get filled with pandan coconut cream.
04:15So that's like very smooth velvet teas.
04:17And this is going to add like a nice crunch.
04:20Besides open master stations, we also have lamination stations, dough mixing stations and pastry prep stations.
04:27So pastry prep stations pretty much handles all of the productions of meats.
04:32Like making these kaya hats or like portioning doughs.
04:35It's about four teams.
04:37We have about eight people in our team.
04:39So it's a lot to coordinate, but it's a really fun team to work with.
04:43I put some pearl sugar on top.
04:47At least within the 30 seconds of the timer goes off.
04:51You should check.
04:51The reason why I have a timer in the middle of the bag for this item, the monkey bread,
04:56because sometimes all the pieces kind of falling.
04:59Most of the time, everything looks good.
05:01But sometimes like for example, this one, I'm just going to give it a little bush.
05:04So that it's staying nicely in the ring.
05:06Just get hot.
05:07This is a very special gloves that needed to for the ovens.
05:11It's quite long to protect my arm.
05:13But as you can see, I still get some burns.
05:14That's just part of the job.
05:18The fan is blowing and this is a convection oven.
05:21So anytime that I open the door, cool air blew in.
05:25So it's like the temperature is dropping.
05:27And then the moment that I close the door, the temperature is going to spike quite a lot.
05:31We do try to minimize that.
05:34Okay.
05:35That's kind of the first thing I learned when I moved to this station.
05:39To be friends with all these timers going off.
05:42Like it will be okay.
05:44Like you can, it can wait.
05:46That's the timers for my Danish.
05:49I'm going to pull it out now so that it doesn't go over.
05:54Timers for my almond croissants.
05:56It seems like I get a golden top so it should be done.
06:00It does need to get some finish.
06:02But we do want everything to be cooled down properly before we can garnish.
06:07Okay.
06:08I'm going to check my croissant in the ribbon oven if it's ready.
06:12We do need to pull everything out because the lighting in the oven can kind of be deceptive.
06:16We look for like a very deep amber color on our products.
06:21We will get like a very nutty, toasty, caramelized flavors.
06:25So I just pull my monkey bread and some trays of the ham and cheese out from the oven.
06:32And then I just popped in my soba cookies and the sashimi cookies.
06:35The next thing I'm going to do is going to pop in all these kaya buns into the ribbon.
06:39And then once it's done, I can do my Danish cheese and croissant tart.
06:43So I can check off everything that I already baked.
06:46The ham and cheese in the oven.
06:48Chocolate is in the oven.
06:49Danish monkey bread is done.
06:51Almond croissant is done.
06:52Soba cookie is in the oven.
06:54Sesame cookie is in the oven.
06:56Okay.
06:56We on time.
06:58The soba cookie is actually something that blew my mind when I first started.
07:03I never seen any type of cookies like that before.
07:06It has a dragei buckwheat, which is like a caramelized buckwheat, crusted on top.
07:11It's got duck chocolate and also a duche de leche chocolate chunk.
07:16I think the oven temperature is quite ready for me to pop in the kaya buns.
07:20The black sesame cookie is not a part of the opening mix,
07:24but because it gets baked at the same temperature with the soba cookie.
07:27So that's why I just pop it in right now.
07:29I'm just going to head over to my thermomix areas and get set up for my cheesecake.
07:34This is Danielle's my oven master assist.
07:38He's comes in at 4.30 to help me with a lot of things that I would not able to
07:42get to.
07:44One of them is geranbang, which is our text on the Korean street food.
07:48Geranbang has a cake like cornbread and an egg on top and cheddar cheese.
07:54Our basket cheesecake is also very popular item.
07:57We also use Mountain Thames cheese from Cowgirl Kimmeri, which is like right over there in Marin County.
08:03This is just heavy cream.
08:05I usually try to keep it like around 15 minutes because I know that I also have things going on
08:09in the oven.
08:10And most of the time I'm just back and forth.
08:12While this one's running, it's a do-it-all machine.
08:15We literally use it for so many of our recipes.
08:18You can blend things, you can cook things.
08:20Right now I'm just putting in my chunks of cheese because it's kind of hard to hear the ovens from
08:26this side.
08:27So I'm just going to go check my ovens quickly.
08:29I have about 36 seconds on this oven so I'm probably going to just stay here and making sure that
08:35I can pull it out when it's done.
08:36I want the top to be dry and the colors are golden brown.
08:41I think it's ready.
08:43Knowing that the Danish is going to come out soon and this beer rack is pretty full, so I'm just
08:47going to grab another one.
08:50Seems like the colors is where I want it to be, so I'm just going to pull it out now.
08:55This is our blueberry croissant tart.
08:58They have a brown butter financiers and our blueberry comes from the Triple Delight farm in Fresno.
09:05Blueberry is so good right now.
09:08And every time that we have a delivery from the Triple Delight, it's very dangerous because it's say in the
09:14walk-in and every time I go in,
09:17some blueberry is going to disappear.
09:19So I'm just going to pump it to 460s for my geranbangs and my cheesecake.
09:24With this special mold, it does need to get unmold within the first few minutes out from the oven.
09:30If I don't unmold it right away, the border is going to get hardened and set and the layers will
09:36get stick to the mold and it's going to be impossible to unmold.
09:42I'm in a good spot with my oven, so I'm going to move back to finish the cheesecake.
09:47Everything is blended well and emulsified, so I'm just going to portion these into 390g each.
09:54The basket cheesecake will have a burnish crust but still very gooey in the middle.
10:00So that's why we use these springs form mold with parchment lining so that we can easily unmold them later.
10:09This is our packing stations.
10:12We have a lot of flip boards just to help us be organized and know where things go.
10:17And it's organized by the priorities.
10:20The Breast Cafe, which is our wholesale clients, that need to be ready by 6.20.
10:2514.08, which is our other location on the Klemens Street.
10:29And that needs to be out by 6.30.
10:31Both of these will get picked up by the same delivery person.
10:34So I'm just going to pack for both of these right now.
10:37That's the queue for our geranbang.
10:44Back to packing stations.
10:47Every product does get cooled down properly before we can pack them.
10:51And also using this green rack really helps us with prevent condensation or steaming the products.
10:58Once I pack something, I'm just going to put a quick check mark so that Daniels or the delivery person
11:04will know that this is ready to take.
11:06Open time.
11:09I think this is good.
11:11I'm going to pop in my meal bread roast loaf.
11:13It's almost like a dinner roast.
11:17Each different item will get slightly different garnishes to finish.
11:22Daniel is finishing the blueberry croissant tots with consist gems.
11:26And we're going to put something we call poudibepos on top.
11:29This is our black sashimi raspberries danish.
11:32This one will get black sashimi financiers and fresh raspberries inside.
11:37And I'm just finishing off with the guava jam and raspberry powders on top later.
11:42Right now, this is my favorite because I love black sashimi.
11:46And it has like a nice tart from the raspberries.
11:49Very rich taste from the black sashimi.
11:52Compliments each other really well.
11:54With pastry, it's just a joy that it brings to people.
11:58And I think that's kind of like draws me to this career.
12:01Because I always love pastry, love sweets.
12:05I even have a tattoo of ice cream on my arm.
12:07I don't get to see sunset quite often.
12:09But it's always nice that summer is coming and we get some sunlight early.
12:16It's a little bit after 6 right now.
12:18We have about 15-20 minutes to finish.
12:21Usually my last thing to do is going to be filling these babies with pandan coconut cream.
12:25This hopper is very efficient for me to pipe in the pandan coconut cream.
12:31Pandan is very prominent ingredients in pastry, especially in Southeast Asia.
12:36A little bit grassy, but it pairs really well with coconuts.
12:40This is our most popular items.
12:42It's kind of what we're known for besides the Kaya toast.
12:45That's 40 that need to get sent to 1408.
12:49I think everything is already get packed.
12:51Danielle is going to get them loads and drive to the wholesale clients first
12:55and then to our other locations across town.
12:58There are some items that I think I can just put in the ovens right now
13:01because the oven is not occupied and I want it to run as much as I can.
13:08I'm going to grab some biscuits from our freezers.
13:11The biscuit is used by our savory teams for the biscuit smash.
13:15We make these biscuits from frozen just to make sure that
13:18it will get a very nice lift and then all the layers from the frozen butter.
13:23The frozen butter basically when it melts,
13:26all the steam comes out and it makes the biscuits very tender.
13:29This is a special biscuit wash.
13:32Basically we only use egg yolks and heavy cream in this.
13:35The gun will not do the job because it's kind of too thick.
13:42Right now I'm just input the amount of the pastry that we have for this location
13:47into the iPad so that the front of the house can take over.
13:51These are our tart shells for the not-ube tart.
13:54It will get baked the day before so that the next day when we cool down
13:58we can fill them with the sweet potato fillings.
14:00This is just making sure that we have a flat, nice, round well
14:05to fill the sweet potato filling later.
14:08It's really heavy.
14:10Our chef gets a lot of influence from her background.
14:13Now she's Filipinos and ube is kind of the staple in the traditional cuisines.
14:19However here in California we cannot substantially sauce ube.
14:23So this is our text on that.
14:25We use purple sweet potatoes for our fillings.
14:28Because this gets really hot so I don't want to have a lot of carry over cooking.
14:33I'm just going to move them out on some of the ones that I think is ready.
14:37Okay, I think that's all done.
14:40So the second part of the day will be our production bags off.
14:43Production bags off are all like the pastries that can be sold tomorrow.
14:48This is kind of like the time that I can slow down a little bit.
14:52And today honestly like production bags doesn't look too bad.
14:55I'm still constantly making things.
14:57It's like a game for me to like find all these pockets of time.
15:01So like okay, maybe I can grab something from the dish pits.
15:04Or I can set myself for tomorrow.
15:06I'm just going to go pull the almond cookies.
15:08Which already been staged for me the day before by my team.
15:13Our almond cookies, 80% of the products are made from almond paste.
15:17Just going to fix them.
15:19Make them look nice.
15:20Some of them kind of get spread out when it's baked in the oven.
15:23So that just kind of help round them up again.
15:24And now I'm going to fill them with strawberry jam.
15:28Next going to be the umeboshi.
15:30Which gives it a very nice contrast of the saltiness.
15:33And the sweetness of the cookies.
15:35Because I have some time just waiting for the almond cookies.
15:38I'm just kind of set myself up for the banana cakes.
15:40Which is going to be the next thing that I make.
15:42I started working at Red Belly about a year ago.
15:45I started out with laminations.
15:47Which is making all the laminate pastries.
15:50Chocolate croissant, ham and cheese and stuff.
15:51And then I move on to dough productions.
15:53As well as pastry prep.
15:55This position opened up like about three months ago.
15:58And I'm very grateful that Chef Kate offered it to me.
16:01So it's kind of nice that like I get to work at all the stations before moving here.
16:05So I know how much labor and care going to making each of these items.
16:10Honestly, I could not imagine me as a morning person at all.
16:14Like I love sleeps.
16:15But it doesn't feel like a job at all honestly.
16:17I'm literally having fun all day.
16:19And I'm also very lucky to have a supportive husband.
16:23He drives me to work every morning around 3.30.
16:26I'm going to top this off with oat trousseau.
16:32The black sashimi cookies that we make off this morning.
16:35I filled them with douce de leche fillings.
16:38And I now have to sandwich them.
16:44With the not ube top, it can be a little bit too sweet.
16:48So that's why we have the bitterness from the burnished meringue.
16:53And then I'm going to top it with the salted egg yolk as well.
16:57We have about 30 seconds right now for the first tray of meal bread to go out.
17:01If I don't unmold them right away, it will get steamed inside the mold.
17:08It's about 12 right now.
17:10And I've been going since 3.45 this morning.
17:14I hope it's fun for you as it's fun for me.
17:16I'm just going to finish setting myself up and it's time for you to go.
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