Kristi

Kristi and I had the chance to meet twice, though our second meeting was rather short.  Kristi has been working at the COOP for about a year and a half and loves it.  She has been going to college focusing on Nutrition as well as Culinary Arts.  Other things about Kristi is that she loves Strawberry Rhubarb pie... but one of her true favorite pies would be her Grandmother's Apple Pie.  Other than that she really loves most fruit pies so long as they are in season.

Kristi was the first of my mentors/interviewees that I had met with so she actually gave me a little tour of the kitchens in the COOP.  It's REALLY COOL how everything works back there!  There's this large wooden table with a shelf in the middle of it that divides it in half and holds recipe books.  The bakery uses one half of the table and the pastry department uses the other half.  The pastry department is in charge of really all the treats that the COOP sells... Cookies, pies by the slice, cheesecake bars... Just about everything except for the breads and the meals.

For pies at the COOP they use a quiche crust that the rest of the kitchen also uses for quiches and chicken pot pies.  This crust is actually made with flour, salt, butter, and cream cheese... No water at all.  Because water isn't added less gluten is formed which creates a flakier crust.  Typically the kitchens will make a big batch of 15 crusts at one time in the mixer.  Once the crust is made it is separated into balls which are then frozen until needed.  When it's time to make a pie the crust is taken out and allowed to thaw while the filling is being prepared.  Once the filling is ready they roll out the crust, put it in the pan, put in the filling, and then refrigerate that for about an hour.  After that the pie is baked in a convection oven.  Because they use a convection oven the baking process only takes around 45 minutes as opposed to the usual 60 for pies.

In addition to showing me around the coop Kristi gave me some great baking tips:

First of all, I was worried about the fact that whenever I needed to pre-bake a crust I always ended up using black beans to hold down the crust as opposed to proper pie weights.  Kristi assured me that beans actually work better than the weights!  Though she also suggested I try using pennies so that I won't be wasting any beans.

I also had been having a hard time with rolling out my dough.  Kristi told me that the most important thing to do was to keep the dough moving and shifting on the counter.  As soon as it stops shifting it's important to pick it up and get some more flour under it to help prevent it from sticking.  She also told me that I'm probably worrying too much about making my crust SUPER thick.  It is actually better to have a thicker crust that what I've been aiming for recently and it will help save me from having my crust tear so easily.

Meeting with Kristi really was fun!  She taught me some useful things and it was REALLY cool to see how the COOP works!