Not being tied down to a teaching schedule allows me more flexibility to attend ex pat events.
OIC
Thursday night there was an event right upstairs from the bakery, at the German restaurant. There is a chain of schools in China that are built on the British model, and called 'Oxford International College'. This one is k-12, although sometimes they just focus on high school and A levels.
Through Facebook, some of the 15 foreign teachers had already found my place. To my surprise and mild disappointment, they prefer my white bread over the whole grain. Business is business, however, and I am just happy to make a sale. They invited me to their promotional event, where they hoped to create some buzz for themselves. Theirs is a new school in Changzhou, setting up in temporary quarters until they can build their own campus just a mile or so from my bakery.
The event was very poorly organized. Once orders started going into the kitchen, it seemed they would never come out. This is not normal service at the German restaurant, and so I thought something was amiss. During the evening I told Klaus that we needed to talk. He, too, had something he wanted to talk with me about. The next day I sat down with Klaus and we discussed our interests. I couldn't help but bring up the previous evening, with empathy. He explained how many times in the past two weeks they had changed their minds, about venue, menu, size and just about every aspect of it. In the end he understood that there would only be about 20 people, and they would not be eating but just having drinks. He staffed accordingly.
About sixty people showed up, and after drinking a while, they decided to order dinner.
Last year Lori, the Rain Girl, was teaching at a similar local high school geared to a western curriculum. That school contracted with outside agencies to staff their foreign teachers for science, math, history and English rhetoric and literature. Lori taught the latter, also focusing on preparing them for their APs. Through her I got a glimpse of the chaos that can arise when staffing is bi or multi cultural. The Chinese have their way of doing things, and even if their curriculum is geared to the west, they will only minimally listen to the advice and suggestions of their western teachers.
So the OIC will have a long and painful learning curve as they try to integrate their staffs and present a unified face to the community.
The OIC team hoped the even would be a recruiting and sign up event, too. But who were they recruiting? They had told Klaus that he should talk up the event to his clients, and for each child signed up he'd get a bonus. But Klaus's clientele are mostly bachelors! The poor guys who have come from Germany and other European countries unaccompanied, and without domestic help. They eat out frequently, and hang out at the bar to socialize with other guys. Being new to the community, the OIC team had no feel about these matters. They are groping about trying to get a hook into the ex pat community, to get their children signed up. But few young families choose to live in Changzhou. There were a few Chinese families at the event, no doubt friends of the Chinese staff.
During the evening I discovered that most of the foreign staff were already aware of the 'bread lady.' A couple of them sat me down and went on about the school lunches. They are not so open to the Chinese food, being greasy and full of MSG. They long for sandwiches. They proposed that I send out sandwiches to them each day. They told me the man to talk to, to get it organized.
I did phone him, Desmond, the next day. The ex pat staff pointed out this assistant head teacher as the mover and shaker among the Chinese staff. He said I needed to send him a menu and a price list. I did that. Now we'll see how long it takes him to get back to me.
Meanwhile, since I don't want to get involved in baking meats, I spoke with Klaus about collaborating on this. He said that they had approached him also on the same problem. He could easily roast beef for me, and also chicken breasts. I thought to offer tuna salad sandwiches, and a choice of either Edam or cheddar cheeses. I have those two on hand already. The suggested price was very high, at about 30 rmb per sandwich. This was the price suggested to me by the ex pats, and Klaus agreed. So we'll wait and see.
Klaus, for his part, wanted to talk with me about the change in his menu. He asked me if I couldn't supply him with a long ciabatta, which he could slice up and serve. I am not clear if this was to be something on the menu, or the free bread basket. I gave him a sample the next day, filled with sliced black olives, pesto sauce and a drizzle of olive oil, topped with a sprinkling of parmesan. The dough was prepared with dried tomatoes baked right in.
Wine Tasting Party
Speaking of cheeses leads me to the second attempt at buzz-creating. I have decided on doing a wine tasting party. Rachel's dad is a wine distributor, so he has picked out three nice wines from France Oldenburg de Lafia. I never heard of the winery, but that doesn't mean much. I always buy the low-end wines. The distributor in Shanghai requires that I buy five cases! I'm also buying a white Chinese wine (probably a Chardonnay) and a high-end Chinese wine of the same variety as the French wines, Cabernet. I'm also buying Merlot for the sampling, from the same French winery.
For all this, tomorrow I must fork over 5,500 rmb to Rachel's father. Now, I was hoping to invite 20 people to come, at 100 rmb per head. That's only 2,000 rmb! I went back to the Facebook page where I posted the event and raised the price per ticket to 150 rmb, and expanded the 'guest list' to 30 people. If the weather cooperates, I should be able to have a small grouping of people outside as well. I won't provide tables, but at least benches for seating.
The cheeses are pricey as well. I'm planning on either an Edam or an Ementhaler, an Irish "Kerrygold" brand mild cheddar, and a tiny Camembert. Then I'll have to bake up some breads to go with all of that. Probably the lean, unenriched breads are the best. Their simplicity should be a good backdrop for the other rich flavors of cheese and wine. Should I also offer a sausage? Please comment. There is an abundance of what is called 'Taiwanese sausage' available in the supermarkets. I could roast them in the oven and slice them alongside the cheeses. I don't have a chaffing dish in which to keep them warm. So should I bother at all? And what about fruit. Should I also have some grapes, sliced apples, and yellow mellons?
I don't want to go into debt for this, but I also want to make it elegant, a night to remember. I'm hoping against hope that some of the people will want to walk away with some of these wines. If I offer it at the price I'm buying it at (and I do hope I'm getting a better price than at a retail shop), they might be motivated to buy. Then I have a better chance of breaking even.
He is gifting me with two cases of Australian wine. I would love to savor them for myself, or save them for Christmas presents, but I suspect that I will have to find a way to sell them to earn back my investment in the evening.
The Monkey King
Just two nights after this, on Saturday, there was another ex pat dinner. This group had met twice before over the past four or six months, though we are no formal group. Again, a note is placed on Facebook, and we congregate.
AnnMarie came down from Xin Bei and asked if I could bring some bread for her. So I did bring a bunch of bread, though the particular kind she wanted had sold out. It is tacky to try to sell bread at an event like that. I did it the last time, too, because the event was upstairs at the German place. I'll have to refrain from doing it again. This evening no one but AnnMarie bought.
This dinner was held at the new Italian restaurant. Coincidentally, I met the head chef and the hostess at the police station when I went to renew my visa last time. I saw that the chef, who is Italian from Sardinia, had a company business license. Yet I would consider a restaurant to be the same category as a bakery! So I asked them about it. They gave me the phone number of an agency. It is the same agency whose phone number I attained three weeks ago when I went to the appropriate government office myself. Those people don't speak English, and so I had made no headway.
This time Rachel knuckled down and focused on helping me through the process. Previously she had spoken to that agent on the phone and learned what I had to do, but never got around to sitting with me and going through it all. Now we have all the wrinkles ironed out, and should be able to submit the application this week. It will still take four to six weeks, which is longer than my visa. The policeman told me that he wouldn't be able to renew my tourist visa again. So around Sept. 9 things will come to a head again.
After the revelers left the Italian restaurant, I sat with Alex, the chef, and asked him what kind of visa he was able to get with his company license. He was vague, and didn't remember exactly. First he said it was a one-year business visa, then he called it a Z visa (work visa). He makes his own breads for the table baskets, and of course, his own pizza dough. The pizza is to die for. I asked where he got his bread flour. He said he buys it locally. We compared prices. My price, brought down from Shandong, is cheaper than his. But is his flour really hard-wheat bread flour? Well, the breads all tasted very good. We'll have another discussion when we both have time, and find out more. If I can buy 200 kgs and split the per kilo cost, shipping charges, and storage with him, it would be a bonus for us both.
His restaurant is called 'Monkey King'. There has been a restaurant with that name in Xin Bei as long as I have been in Changzhou. I am curious about the relationship between the two.
The cinnamon buns were a real hit; they sold out, all 13 of them. Well, more like ten after we all sampled them. I wanted to staff to know what they tasted like. So I made them again Sunday, all in one day (the other batch sat in the fridge two days). The dough came out very different! There were only about seven. I wonder if I somehow killed the yeast. I don't know! Never mind, not much foot traffic today, so they won't sell out. What sold today is the carrot muffin, which I made a week ago and froze.
In the bakery this weekend
The focaccia was baked early in the day. I should have waited, because that is usually a late afternoon item. Sitting on the counter all sliced up, they must be getting a little stale. I should encourage the staff to offer to heat them up for the customer. Our ovens stay warm enough to do this easily.
I tried making the miche again, but I believe I've lost my touch for the sourdough. This batch died, and the dough never rose. I use the whole grain flour for that, which is much more expensive than my usual flour, so it was a noticeable waste of money. I shall have to get serious about sourdoughs again. This is not something you can do slapdash, keeping a sourdough alive takes careful attention. I still have a small amount alive, but I am starting another one now. Tomorrow is the fourth day, after which it will be ready to build a barm.
Saturday is Tina's day off. Peter (the new baker apprentice), Xiao Lan (the dishwasher, Rachel's mother, and the name on my business license) and I were here without an interpreter. It was interesting. Difficult. Today I have begun building a vocabulary list, for all of us to study. I need a printer! Perhaps tomorrow I can do something about getting my printer fixed. That will help a lot as we develop menus and check sheets and such.
OIC
Thursday night there was an event right upstairs from the bakery, at the German restaurant. There is a chain of schools in China that are built on the British model, and called 'Oxford International College'. This one is k-12, although sometimes they just focus on high school and A levels.
Through Facebook, some of the 15 foreign teachers had already found my place. To my surprise and mild disappointment, they prefer my white bread over the whole grain. Business is business, however, and I am just happy to make a sale. They invited me to their promotional event, where they hoped to create some buzz for themselves. Theirs is a new school in Changzhou, setting up in temporary quarters until they can build their own campus just a mile or so from my bakery.
The event was very poorly organized. Once orders started going into the kitchen, it seemed they would never come out. This is not normal service at the German restaurant, and so I thought something was amiss. During the evening I told Klaus that we needed to talk. He, too, had something he wanted to talk with me about. The next day I sat down with Klaus and we discussed our interests. I couldn't help but bring up the previous evening, with empathy. He explained how many times in the past two weeks they had changed their minds, about venue, menu, size and just about every aspect of it. In the end he understood that there would only be about 20 people, and they would not be eating but just having drinks. He staffed accordingly.
About sixty people showed up, and after drinking a while, they decided to order dinner.
Last year Lori, the Rain Girl, was teaching at a similar local high school geared to a western curriculum. That school contracted with outside agencies to staff their foreign teachers for science, math, history and English rhetoric and literature. Lori taught the latter, also focusing on preparing them for their APs. Through her I got a glimpse of the chaos that can arise when staffing is bi or multi cultural. The Chinese have their way of doing things, and even if their curriculum is geared to the west, they will only minimally listen to the advice and suggestions of their western teachers.
So the OIC will have a long and painful learning curve as they try to integrate their staffs and present a unified face to the community.
The OIC team hoped the even would be a recruiting and sign up event, too. But who were they recruiting? They had told Klaus that he should talk up the event to his clients, and for each child signed up he'd get a bonus. But Klaus's clientele are mostly bachelors! The poor guys who have come from Germany and other European countries unaccompanied, and without domestic help. They eat out frequently, and hang out at the bar to socialize with other guys. Being new to the community, the OIC team had no feel about these matters. They are groping about trying to get a hook into the ex pat community, to get their children signed up. But few young families choose to live in Changzhou. There were a few Chinese families at the event, no doubt friends of the Chinese staff.
During the evening I discovered that most of the foreign staff were already aware of the 'bread lady.' A couple of them sat me down and went on about the school lunches. They are not so open to the Chinese food, being greasy and full of MSG. They long for sandwiches. They proposed that I send out sandwiches to them each day. They told me the man to talk to, to get it organized.
I did phone him, Desmond, the next day. The ex pat staff pointed out this assistant head teacher as the mover and shaker among the Chinese staff. He said I needed to send him a menu and a price list. I did that. Now we'll see how long it takes him to get back to me.
Meanwhile, since I don't want to get involved in baking meats, I spoke with Klaus about collaborating on this. He said that they had approached him also on the same problem. He could easily roast beef for me, and also chicken breasts. I thought to offer tuna salad sandwiches, and a choice of either Edam or cheddar cheeses. I have those two on hand already. The suggested price was very high, at about 30 rmb per sandwich. This was the price suggested to me by the ex pats, and Klaus agreed. So we'll wait and see.
Klaus, for his part, wanted to talk with me about the change in his menu. He asked me if I couldn't supply him with a long ciabatta, which he could slice up and serve. I am not clear if this was to be something on the menu, or the free bread basket. I gave him a sample the next day, filled with sliced black olives, pesto sauce and a drizzle of olive oil, topped with a sprinkling of parmesan. The dough was prepared with dried tomatoes baked right in.
Wine Tasting Party
Speaking of cheeses leads me to the second attempt at buzz-creating. I have decided on doing a wine tasting party. Rachel's dad is a wine distributor, so he has picked out three nice wines from France Oldenburg de Lafia. I never heard of the winery, but that doesn't mean much. I always buy the low-end wines. The distributor in Shanghai requires that I buy five cases! I'm also buying a white Chinese wine (probably a Chardonnay) and a high-end Chinese wine of the same variety as the French wines, Cabernet. I'm also buying Merlot for the sampling, from the same French winery.
For all this, tomorrow I must fork over 5,500 rmb to Rachel's father. Now, I was hoping to invite 20 people to come, at 100 rmb per head. That's only 2,000 rmb! I went back to the Facebook page where I posted the event and raised the price per ticket to 150 rmb, and expanded the 'guest list' to 30 people. If the weather cooperates, I should be able to have a small grouping of people outside as well. I won't provide tables, but at least benches for seating.
The cheeses are pricey as well. I'm planning on either an Edam or an Ementhaler, an Irish "Kerrygold" brand mild cheddar, and a tiny Camembert. Then I'll have to bake up some breads to go with all of that. Probably the lean, unenriched breads are the best. Their simplicity should be a good backdrop for the other rich flavors of cheese and wine. Should I also offer a sausage? Please comment. There is an abundance of what is called 'Taiwanese sausage' available in the supermarkets. I could roast them in the oven and slice them alongside the cheeses. I don't have a chaffing dish in which to keep them warm. So should I bother at all? And what about fruit. Should I also have some grapes, sliced apples, and yellow mellons?
I don't want to go into debt for this, but I also want to make it elegant, a night to remember. I'm hoping against hope that some of the people will want to walk away with some of these wines. If I offer it at the price I'm buying it at (and I do hope I'm getting a better price than at a retail shop), they might be motivated to buy. Then I have a better chance of breaking even.
He is gifting me with two cases of Australian wine. I would love to savor them for myself, or save them for Christmas presents, but I suspect that I will have to find a way to sell them to earn back my investment in the evening.
The Monkey King
Just two nights after this, on Saturday, there was another ex pat dinner. This group had met twice before over the past four or six months, though we are no formal group. Again, a note is placed on Facebook, and we congregate.
AnnMarie came down from Xin Bei and asked if I could bring some bread for her. So I did bring a bunch of bread, though the particular kind she wanted had sold out. It is tacky to try to sell bread at an event like that. I did it the last time, too, because the event was upstairs at the German place. I'll have to refrain from doing it again. This evening no one but AnnMarie bought.
This dinner was held at the new Italian restaurant. Coincidentally, I met the head chef and the hostess at the police station when I went to renew my visa last time. I saw that the chef, who is Italian from Sardinia, had a company business license. Yet I would consider a restaurant to be the same category as a bakery! So I asked them about it. They gave me the phone number of an agency. It is the same agency whose phone number I attained three weeks ago when I went to the appropriate government office myself. Those people don't speak English, and so I had made no headway.
This time Rachel knuckled down and focused on helping me through the process. Previously she had spoken to that agent on the phone and learned what I had to do, but never got around to sitting with me and going through it all. Now we have all the wrinkles ironed out, and should be able to submit the application this week. It will still take four to six weeks, which is longer than my visa. The policeman told me that he wouldn't be able to renew my tourist visa again. So around Sept. 9 things will come to a head again.
After the revelers left the Italian restaurant, I sat with Alex, the chef, and asked him what kind of visa he was able to get with his company license. He was vague, and didn't remember exactly. First he said it was a one-year business visa, then he called it a Z visa (work visa). He makes his own breads for the table baskets, and of course, his own pizza dough. The pizza is to die for. I asked where he got his bread flour. He said he buys it locally. We compared prices. My price, brought down from Shandong, is cheaper than his. But is his flour really hard-wheat bread flour? Well, the breads all tasted very good. We'll have another discussion when we both have time, and find out more. If I can buy 200 kgs and split the per kilo cost, shipping charges, and storage with him, it would be a bonus for us both.
His restaurant is called 'Monkey King'. There has been a restaurant with that name in Xin Bei as long as I have been in Changzhou. I am curious about the relationship between the two.
The cinnamon buns were a real hit; they sold out, all 13 of them. Well, more like ten after we all sampled them. I wanted to staff to know what they tasted like. So I made them again Sunday, all in one day (the other batch sat in the fridge two days). The dough came out very different! There were only about seven. I wonder if I somehow killed the yeast. I don't know! Never mind, not much foot traffic today, so they won't sell out. What sold today is the carrot muffin, which I made a week ago and froze.
In the bakery this weekend
The focaccia was baked early in the day. I should have waited, because that is usually a late afternoon item. Sitting on the counter all sliced up, they must be getting a little stale. I should encourage the staff to offer to heat them up for the customer. Our ovens stay warm enough to do this easily.
I tried making the miche again, but I believe I've lost my touch for the sourdough. This batch died, and the dough never rose. I use the whole grain flour for that, which is much more expensive than my usual flour, so it was a noticeable waste of money. I shall have to get serious about sourdoughs again. This is not something you can do slapdash, keeping a sourdough alive takes careful attention. I still have a small amount alive, but I am starting another one now. Tomorrow is the fourth day, after which it will be ready to build a barm.
Saturday is Tina's day off. Peter (the new baker apprentice), Xiao Lan (the dishwasher, Rachel's mother, and the name on my business license) and I were here without an interpreter. It was interesting. Difficult. Today I have begun building a vocabulary list, for all of us to study. I need a printer! Perhaps tomorrow I can do something about getting my printer fixed. That will help a lot as we develop menus and check sheets and such.
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