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NO CONSISTENCY! LOW QUALITY! NO PRIDE IN THEIR BAKERY GOODS! SAFEWAY DOES BETTER!
THE CROISSANTS AT COSTCO ARE SUPERIOR!!!
They have even served raw egg products!!
THE CROISSANTS AT COSTCO ARE SUPERIOR!!!
They have even served raw egg products!!
Cafe Columbia calls themselves a "Bakery", yet the current bakers (Kelly & Jessica), nor the owners, have any baking experience, outside of simple home baking skill, which even so, are seriously lacking. The receipes come from the internet and the skills are copied from YouTube!! They use a Pizza Machine to try to laminate doughs.
Kelly strongly claimed that she "knows how to bake", yet seemingly left eggs out of the carrot cake one day, and when a barista reached for a slice for a customer, it fell apart. Only god knows how many were sold before I realized the carrot cake Kelly made was crap.
When I was hired to be the Bakery Manager, one of my first changes in the croissant receipe was correcting the flour used, to bread flour. They had been using All Pourpose flour for everything. This so called Bakery didn't even use Pastry Flour. So Kelly asked, why I use Bread Flour, asking, "won't that make the croissants chewy?". I knew then, that Kelly was not at all a baker. Learn more about my bad experiences with Kelly on the Employement Page!
Kelly strongly claimed that she "knows how to bake", yet seemingly left eggs out of the carrot cake one day, and when a barista reached for a slice for a customer, it fell apart. Only god knows how many were sold before I realized the carrot cake Kelly made was crap.
When I was hired to be the Bakery Manager, one of my first changes in the croissant receipe was correcting the flour used, to bread flour. They had been using All Pourpose flour for everything. This so called Bakery didn't even use Pastry Flour. So Kelly asked, why I use Bread Flour, asking, "won't that make the croissants chewy?". I knew then, that Kelly was not at all a baker. Learn more about my bad experiences with Kelly on the Employement Page!
The left image is one of Kelly's croissants,
She feels this is quality that is acceptable.
Not only is it poorly shaped, it has almost no layers.
The right image is how a croissant must look
prior to baking.
She feels this is quality that is acceptable.
Not only is it poorly shaped, it has almost no layers.
The right image is how a croissant must look
prior to baking.
Then there's Jessica,
Jessica learned her skills in a High School home education course. One day while watching her laminate croissant dough, she pondered as to why the edges of the dough cracked as she passed it though the pizza dough sheeter. Jessica was trained by Kelly, so I can not blame her for her poor skills and serious lack of knowledge. But I can blame her for her lack of pride in her work and lack of desire to learn. It was clear to me that Jessica was just there for the paycheck. It is almost funny when I observed Jessica scooping cookie dough onto a baking sheet with a scooper, then grabbing one scoop, breaking it into halfs and hand rolling it with a full scoop. I asked why, and her reply was, "because that is the size of our cookie". So I turned around to the selection of scoopers, grabbed a proper sized scoop, I took her one and a half ball of cookie dough, and showed her how nicely it fit in the larger scooper, saying, "there's your cookie". Really, what a waste of time using a scooper smaller then what you need, and then spending time hand rolling the portions to come to the same result as you would if you used a "PROPER SIZE SCOOPER".
Jessica also had no idea and was not properly trained on how to make pastry creme, croissant dough, biscuits, scones, etc. Absolutly no experience or baking knowledge!!
Jessica learned her skills in a High School home education course. One day while watching her laminate croissant dough, she pondered as to why the edges of the dough cracked as she passed it though the pizza dough sheeter. Jessica was trained by Kelly, so I can not blame her for her poor skills and serious lack of knowledge. But I can blame her for her lack of pride in her work and lack of desire to learn. It was clear to me that Jessica was just there for the paycheck. It is almost funny when I observed Jessica scooping cookie dough onto a baking sheet with a scooper, then grabbing one scoop, breaking it into halfs and hand rolling it with a full scoop. I asked why, and her reply was, "because that is the size of our cookie". So I turned around to the selection of scoopers, grabbed a proper sized scoop, I took her one and a half ball of cookie dough, and showed her how nicely it fit in the larger scooper, saying, "there's your cookie". Really, what a waste of time using a scooper smaller then what you need, and then spending time hand rolling the portions to come to the same result as you would if you used a "PROPER SIZE SCOOPER".
Jessica also had no idea and was not properly trained on how to make pastry creme, croissant dough, biscuits, scones, etc. Absolutly no experience or baking knowledge!!