The bakery has been open for six weeks and a day now. The first day went well, but then it slowed down; business increased, but boss cut back on hours. I worked five days a week, but consistently worked twenty-seven-hour weeks, although I keep having appointments. Nobody else has appointments!
About two weeks ago, some website wrote an article about us. Last Friday, the
Arizona Republic printed an article about the bakery and then the
East Valley Tribune (the daily circulation is just over 100,000) ran an article. Then
Phoenix New Times (circulation 79,000) published an article by a blog called "Chow Bella."
We have been busy!
I worked six days this week and actually had a couple of hours of overtime. I have been trying to think of all of our misadventures. There was one day that we somehow blew a fuse and the iPad running our register stopped working without an Internet connection. Cookie Girl was not able to make anything. We were unable to slice bread. Whenever I tried to look at the fuse box, Boss was already there, with Oven Guy.
It turned out that there were two problems. Neither of them knew what they were doing and Boss was not wearing his glasses. I got the extension cord from my car, found a good outlet, and got the register back on-line.
We have two ovens. One is a double that cooks twelve loaves of bread in each and the other is larger. We put at least five dozen loaves on a wheeled rack and the oven rotates the rack. Both ovens are convection, but each of them had horribly inconsistent heat, so we were always checking and regularly rotating the bread. Both are supposed to have steam capabilities, but it was a while before we were able to use that, which is necessary for making French and other hard-crusted breads. The smaller one, apparently, sprays cold water on a hot fan.
Explosions ensue.
We had our health inspection on Tuesday and did well, but Boss was tied up with that for an hour, and we were extremely busy!
The larger oven was repaired again yesterday and we were amazed all day, it worked perfectly! Just when we seemed to understand how to use the oven, it started raining, and it took longer and longer to bake, even though we continued to increase the temperature. Today we baked at a lower temperature and suddenly everything baked twice as fast! Everything was ready at the same time, too!
It turned out that the oven was installed incorrectly--the fan was wired backwards! It reminded me of Baltothewolf's issue.
I made a sticker that we put by the register, asking people to like us on Facebook. I also made this, even though Boss says that he does not like bumper stickers. I just made it, I do not know if I will actually print any:
