Making Granola the Pannifer's Way

First you'll need a really big mixer.  This one should do.

Start with fifteen pounds of large flake oats.

Add a variety of other flakes and seeds.

A well in the dry ingredients will help to keep the honey from sticking to the sides of the bowl.  And if you measure the sunflower oil and then the honey, clean-up is much easier!

Give it a twirl!

And into the pans.

Nice and hot in here....

Spread it on a clean counter to cool.

And there you have it - breakfast for a month!

 

The Great Granola Crisis Of 2007

Have you ever had a project that you just couldn't seem to see the end of? Not because it was too big, or you were procrastinating, but because bad karma seemed to just attach to it?

One of the stores that we wholesale our granola to called late last week with a special order. Could we get ten pounds to an agreed drop-off point by Tuesday afternoon? Certainly.

I told Alan about it. And then had to remind him. Twice.

I felt really mean about it, too. We were having a very nice, very lazy Monday and he had to head downstairs to make up this small batch of granola. Two small batches, actually. They misunderstood when I said our minimum order was ten pounds. And ordered two different kinds.

We nearly forgot to deliver the silly stuff on Tuesday. There was just something about that batch...

Still. It was dropped off on time and that was that. I thought.

Yesterday, I was in the shop. And having a pretty good day, too. I sold a photo early on and that took the pressure off the day. So I was happily floating through Blogland when the phone rang.

It was the man who had ordered the special batch of granola, to say that the store he was planning to buy it from didn't have it.

So I called the drop-off point. They clearly remembered putting it on the truck. Called the other store. Definitely not there.

It had been lost it transit.

Now, we're not talking about some huge grocery conglomerate here. There are no massive warehouses, transit hubs, or an employee list that runs to several hundred pages. We're talking one truck, one driver. Point A to Point B.

And suddenly I go from my quiet day in a sleepy village to Modern Career Woman, trying to increase my readership on my multiple blogs, trying to sell cookbooks, trying to run a brick and mortar shop and trying to track down The Lost Granola of Doom for Mike, who is leaving town in a couple of days and would really like to be able to take the stuff with him.

A few more phone calls and a lot of head-scratching later and I think we've got Mike some replacement granola, but he'll have to drive into Stratford to get it. The doomed shipment is nowhere to be found. It doesn't help that the driver has gone on holiday. And you just know that, come time to pay for this particular batch, the cheque will get lost in the mail.

I know there are people who work in cubicles the world over who dream of being able to escape that life and strike out on their own, with a little business. Baking, say, or antiques.

I, on the other hand sometimes dream of a job in a cubicle with underlings to pass my problems on to.

But, really? Not that often.

Business 101 - Knowing Whom to Please

Just a quick lesson today...

When purchasing a used dough fridge over the phone, when you're told that it will be a Pepsi fridge, this is what it will look like:



Also known as the "My Wife's Gonna Kill Me...."

Punching Down the Dough

We need a new fridge. Desperately. The one we have does keep the food well within the Health Department's safe range and that's a good thing. What it most emphatically does not do is keep the dough from growing.

And since it sits next to my desk in the second-hand store, and since Alan is frequently away at farmer's markets, it falls to me to deal with it.

I'll be sitting in my nice peaceful shop, just going about my day, when I hear the ominously quiet, muffled "Kapouf". It's a sound easily missed in the ambient noise of pig trucks, riding lawn-mowers and rockin' car stereos. It is a sound whose magnitude does not do justice to the chaos it signals.

Because what that muffled "kapouf" means, is that one of the lumps of dough lurking in the fridge has popped the lid off its bin and is now escaping. First it will take over the inside of the fridge. If I don't wrestle it back into submission, it will push open the door and come after me. Drastic action is called for.

The bins have to be pulled out of the fridge, disentangling tentacles of dough. This action requires at least four hands, of which I have merely two.

Once they are out of the fridge, the lids must be taken off (no easy task, it sometimes feels like someone is hanging on from the inside) and the dough punched down so that the lid will fit back on.

As embarrassing as this is to admit, for the wife of the baker (and let us be clear that it is the wife of speaking here. Alan is a perfectly rational human being for whom all of this is just life as normal.), doing this kind of freaks me out, a little. In fact, it scares me.

Dough is a living thing. It grows. It moves. It breathes. And one of these days, I am going to encounter the batch that objects, strongly, to being punched.

We're going fridge shopping on Monday. I'll keep you posted.

I Want a Do-Over!

I've been having a bit of trouble lately, trying to get a handle on what direction to move this site.

We started out with a food shop. But that closed earlier this year, which gave me the opportunity to expand the scope of this little food site. So far, so good.

But then I started uploading our Foodletters. They're not bad in themselves, and I think they're a really good resource for recipes and cooking how-to's. But mixing them in with everything else here was just messy. I found it confusing and I'm in charge. I can't imagine what my readers thought (actually, I can. That's why I'm changing things).

So. I've started yet another blog, here. It's just the foodletter archives, leaving this site for recipes, restaurant reviews, travel stories and other ideas as they occur.

I hope you like the changes. Comments, suggestions, critiques are welcome. Though I'd really appreciate it if you could be gentle with the last of these - I'm still a newcomer to all this and prone to feeling fragile!

Back Again

To any of you still reading this, thank you so much for your patience.

There have just been so many changes here!

For those of you who don't know, the foodshop is now closed. Alan is taking his bread on the road to three farmers markets through the summer. In the winter months, he will be at the Stratford farmers market on Saturday mornings.

Between that and the wholesale granola orders, he is very busy indeed.

As am I setting up my second-hand/hand made home accessories shop, May December Home

With all that going on, the food blog fell by the wayside for awhile. But it is important to us and we want to keep in touch.

Happy at the Bakery

Some days, I'm really excited about high-tech gadgetry and dream of doing all our business online. Though I admit I'm stymied by the logistics of e-mailing fresh bread....

Today, though, I'm content with our 'bread and mortar' business.

Here's what happened - we subscribe to a really nice "postcard from Provence". A couple of times a week it arrives in our inbox with a painting by Julian Merrow-Smith. Each painting can be ordered online, if you wish, or you can just look at the picture and smile and dream, which is what we usually do.

But today, Julian upgraded to new software. And it all went a little haywire. Every time someone sent in an email to his site, the new autoresponder immediately forwarded it to everyone else on the list. My inbox started filling up with irate "unsubscribe me immediately" messages, interspersed with frantic notes from Julian telling us all not to respond to any emails from him until the problem was fixed.

I can only imagine how horrified he must have been that the wonderful new program he had installed was going so terribly wrong. There haven't been any new emails in several hours, so I'm hoping he's sorted it all out. I really like getting the postcards.

And it really has helped me to be more appreciative of my very low-tech bakery. I'm sitting here now, watching the snow swirl down (we're in the middle of another blizzard). There's fresh bread on the racks, and the sample today is a really tasty balsamic and herb bread dipping oil. Think I'll go have another little taste....

Samples!

Alan and I went to the giant CFRA food show in Toronto on Monday. It's a huge trade show for people in the food and restaurant business.

I don't really like trade shows all that much. There's just too much walking, too many people and within about twenty minutes of getting in the door, my brain starts to feel overloaded with too much input. However, we must do these things for the bakery we love.

The cool thing about food trade shows is that almost every single exhibitor gives out samples. It's amazing. You walk, you eat, you get stuck in gridlock, you eat... you get the picture.

We'll be placing orders with some of the vendors in the next little while, bringing some of the best products to our shop. But in the meantime, I've decided that this sample thing is way too good to save for the food shows. From now on, we're offering free samples in the shop!

So far this week, we've tried the Nutty Baker's Apple Squares, the Monforte Dairy Smoked Sheep Milk Cheddar I told you about earlier. Tomorrow, who knows?

We're having fun. Hope you are, too!

Smoked Sheep Milk Cheddar

As promised last week, Ruth came by this evening with an order of hard cheeses, including a new one: Smoked Sheep Milk Cheddar.

I had to risk spoiling my dinner and try a piece. Wow! It is (dare I say it?) smokin'! The cheese itself has a smooth texture and the smoked flavour (like a really good smoked salmon) just rounds it out nicely. I wouldn't make a meal of it, but on a cheese plate, with a nice glass of red wine, it could be just the thing to help you forget this miserable weather.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Shopping: How to Get What You Want More Often

Even though we're a food shop and the pre-Christmas mayhem hasn't really hit yet (though we are busy), I thought this story from last summer might help those of you who are actually braving the shops.

It was late in the day and I must have been getting tired when a woman came in, looking for something (I can't now remember what).

She started off by shaking her head as she said "You don't have ________ do you."

As I said, I was a little tired, so I started to shake my head along with her when I suddenly realized that we did, indeed, have what she was looking for.

I snapped to, pulled it off the shelf and made the sale.

Ever since then, I've been noticing how many people ask for what they want in the negative. And I wonder how often they leave a store disappointed.

Because, here's the thing. I'm the owner here. That gives me a massive incentive to give my customers what they want.

In most stores, the person waiting on you is a staff member, trying to do a good job, of course, but if they're tired, or it's been one of those days, it might be easier to just agree with the customer and say, "No. We don't have that."

It's just a suggestion, but if you find yourself coming home empty-handed whenever you go shopping, you might want to try stating your question as a positive: "Where can I find...?" or at the very least as a neutral: "Do you have...?"

The person serving you will have to think about it a little more and you may just get what you want more often.

Good Morning!

A new shipment has just arrived from The Garlic Box. It's stuff we're already carrying, but we needed to stock up to get ready for the Christmas Gift Baskets.

Included with our order was a product list (very clever marketing...) So now's your chance to help us order. Please write in and let us know if you'd like us to carry the Garlic Steak Splash or the Balsamic Vinegar with Garlic. Or maybe both?

Speaking of Gift Baskets, please keep us in mind for the food-lover on your list.

"Christmas Morning"

Fresh Loaf of Bread

Four Fruit Jam

Gourmet Coffee

$20.00

"Happy Hour"

Fresh Loaf of Bread

Toscano & Piacere Cheeses

Black Olive Tapenade

Vegetable Antipasto

$35.00

"Dinner Party"

Our Own eCookbook (0n disc)

Excellent Bread Knife

Fresh Loaf of Bread

Flavoured Bread Dipping Oil

Beeswax Candles

Sparkling Beverage

$50.00

Shipping is available within Canada. And we're happy to put together custom baskets, as well!

FAQ

Where Else Can We Get Your Bread?

Although this isn't always stated as a question, I'll answer anyway...

On Tuesdays and Fridays, our bread is available at The Gentle Rain (30 Rebecca Street) in Stratford. We usually deliver by noon. They also carry our granola in bulk. And you can buy our organic granola at Pfennings Organic in St. Agatha.

See? Even if we're not open, you can still find our bread!

The Bread Game

If you came in to Pannifer's Bakery to buy bread yesterday, you'd have gotten it for free.

Yes, indeed, we do still play The Bread Game. It's a way for us to get people talking and to thank our customers for coming in. That's the marketing-speak reason. Most of all, we play it 'cuz it's fun!

Making people smile because they're getting their bread for free beats trying to write attention-grabbing ad copy that might not even reach our intended audience.

So thanks to all who played. And those of you who missed it - better luck next month!

Hello? Is this thing on....?

(ahem)

Presenting..... (ta da..)

Pannifer's Food Blog!!!

We're very excited here, and hope you will be, too. This is our chance to interact with our customers-at-large, to let you know when another great Canadian food product comes into the store, to let you know what else you can do with some of our products, to share more ideas than can possibly fit in the newsletter.

We hope you'll interact with this blog. See it as your chance to share your ideas with us, to tell us your favourite food products, let us know what you'd like to see more of, maybe post a favourite recipe!

I don't want to take up too much of your time on any one posting, but let's get the ball rolling with alternate suggestions for the Garlic Box Tapenade. Yes, it's lovely served with cheese and crackers. It also makes a great spread on a sandwich. And if you want dinner in a hurry, try tossing a heaping tablespoon in with a serving of cooked pasta. Quick and yummy.

In the category of new products... Ruth at Monforte Dairy delivered some Sheep's Milk Cheddar last week, the result of her foray to Cheese School in Vermont a few months back. It's going quickly, but I'll be sure to order more.

That's all for today, but I'll post again soon, so be sure to check back...

Cheers!