Chef Tom's Stuff to Remember

Make it work!

I had a boss once that always said, “Make it work!” He didn’t care that you were having trouble or things were going bad for you. He just wanted it done. I think that was good advice to young cooks. You can usually find a way to “make it work”. Don’t give up. Yesterday, there was a student that had very wet French dough. It wouldn’t work for baguettes like we wanted. So we made it into ciabatta, a very wet dough. It rose well, and we baked it off to great enjoyment. After that, we split one of the ciabattas, covered it in gruyere cheese and popped it back in the oven. Whew, that was some good eating. Make it work and you just might find it’s even better than you imagined it in the first place.