4.30 A.M. Rustic Cakes and Teacakes

Four-thirty is the morning’s sweet spot. We’re awake. We’re flowing. We’re hitting our stride and we own the kitchen. There’s no front-of-house staff; there’s no customer feedback. We have no awareness that the egg delivery will be late, the bacon will burn, the meat soup will be mislabeled veggie, and a server will spill a tub of jam all over the walk-in floor literally 5 minutes after he clocked in.

I turn around and look at my morning girls and get lost in a temporary moment of pride. These girls are good and it’s not easy to find good morning bakers. A lot of people come through my kitchen and ask for jobs. Some have spent a small fortune on culinary school; some are fresh off the street with no experience but just want to learn. I generally prefer the latter. Regardless of their background or enthusiasm, most of them don’t work out. They start with good intentions, but eventually the early mornings, the repetition, or the reality that this is real manual labor gets to them and they leave to pursue something else.