Today, Houlton Bakery is closed as it usually is on Mondays, but inside the ovens are warm and much work is going on. My sister, Gainor, Houlton Bakery's owner, is preparing doughs for tomorrow, ordering food for the weekly delivery from FSA on Tuesdays and cleaning anything that didn't get done after the hectic closing on Saturday, right before Easter Sunday. Kellie is helping out today with baking and prep work for the start of business Tuesday. A lot will be done in the relative calm of a typical Monday. See our new stools for the bar just waiting for tomorrow's customers...
On Saturday, so many big white boxes of Potato Rosemary Rolls and beautiful braided mini-Challah breads baked by Joe for Easter orders went out the door. And two beautiful strawberry 4 - layer cakes, decorated with whipped cream and looking fresh as spring. Several trays of delicious lemon bars, chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, pecan sticky buns and of course, traditional hot cross buns.
I was able to help out too on Saturday, and for the first time, was at the sandwich prep counter, sort of "front-of-house", creating one of Houlton's favorite lunch recipes for Smoked Chicken Pasta Salad. An extra flavorful offering, all fresh ingredients and house-made dressing, one customer wanted to know why we hadn't sent out the word ahead of time! Oops, that was my job as the email mistress and now hopefully we can do better with a blog in keeping the loyal and new customers informed here in a more fluid manner!
So, stay tuned, we hope this new blog will provide some news from St. Helens, Oregon, Houlton Bakery's town, recipes from the kitchen, cooking class updates and some "back-of-house" tales about bakery life:)
Thanks for stopping by and leaving such a nice comment. I'm glad I could help. Your note was thanks enough...pay it forward, maybe send some baked goods over to your local homeless shelter!
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