Meet Karen, Market Street Baker

What's it like to be a Market Street Baker?

Being a Morrison's Market Street Baker is magical because you never know what's going to happen during your shift. You can plan, prepare and predict an outcome, yet you'll always have surprising circumstances. It sounds challenging, and it is, yet I can't wait to get to my Bakery every morning. Feeding our community is a great honour. It's a nice feeling to prepare such delicious products for our customers daily. There's also such joy in pushing towards new trends and extending our product range.

What is your favourite product to bake and why? 

I like to make and bake all types of bread from scratch since the dough has the most potential to have freedom of expression and become individualistic in terms of it's size from scaling, moulding, proving, baking, cooling, slicing and packing.

What is the most important skill to have as a baker?

Your hands are crucial to the success of everything, so be careful with your hands and measured in your response to baking by thinking head, heart, hands in a coordinated way. You can be fast, but don't rush because you must multi-task many things all at the same time and be thinking many steps ahead. 

Do you have any tips/tricks to share with customers?

The moulding of a cob should be a tight circular movement to knock out as much air as possible on a stainless steel surface, to get good traction. Handle the dough quickly so it stays fresh. Tray up the cobs six to each tray so that they won't touch to maintain their shape. After proving, I sprinkle sieved flour over the dough balls, whilst flouring and scoring before returning for baking in the oven. For baking, I ensure that they're all a deep golden brown before removing them from the oven. Throughout the day I bake some lighter and some quite dark, as some customers like their cobs light, soft and squashy and many of our customers like cobs with a dark crispy crust. Note: Don't slice any bread hot or warm as it goes extremely flat and doesn't preserve well.

How many doughnuts do you make each week?

I make a minimum of 4,900 doughnuts each week.  If they are on promotion, or at seasonal busy times, this can increase to 7,000 a week.

What is the most interesting fact you have about baking?

Yeast is a living micro organism that has been around for hundreds of millions of years and one gram of yeast contains 20 billion cells.  We do a yeast viability test to give an indication of the effectiveness of the yeast in fermenting the dough. 

How can we inspire the younger generation to become bakers?

The younger generation may be inspired by baking if they identify the Baker role as a serious profession that combines proven science, best practice, advanced skill and creativity.