This week while we were having a planning meeting for December we laughed at each other because of all the weird bakery lingo we were using. Had someone overheard our conversation they would likely have absolutely no idea what we were talk about.
What we found interesting is that after 4-years of working together, first out of old garage, now here at our commercial facility, we have come to have our only recipe language. As if when something was set, we simply just kept using that term, volume, metric, etc.
This lingo is often most noticeable in our recipes. When we want to test a new product, often it comes from a recipe or an idea we’ve found in a book or online and we test it in a small batch. Once we are happy with the product, we scale it up to meet a size that works in our big mixer. Somehow though, we don’t change the terminology of the recipe to a bakery standard.
If a test recipe for 5 loaves for example is our baseline and we can easily make 20 loaves of dough in our mixer we start calling it a x4 (Times Four). So, each week when we talk about how much we make, we say “let’s make a x4”. If for some reason we want to pull back and de less, we might say “let’s make a x3.”
A real example of this is our milk bread dough. Marie consistently mixes what we call a “x3” but for the holidays we will often make a “x6”, which is just double our normal amount.
Our brown butter sourdough cookies are similar with a different metric. Over two years ago when we tested the recipe, we determined that we needed to mix a “XL” batch of that recipe to make what we needed for the week. The “XL” has become our standard or regular mix.
Could we change those measurements to make more sense for our normal products? Yes. Would it confuse us when trying to plan out a weekly production schedule? Yes, for the first couple weeks anyways.
Should we standardize the measurements and recipes? Yes, especially if we want to eventually scale up our production with more people (we’re always looking ;). Is it fun to have our own little secret lingo? Yes.
What strange or workplace specific lingo do you use with co-workers that no one else would understand. And we’re not just talk about acronyms the GNWT and industry so lovingly likes to come up with.
