Bonus Baguettes

One of the best perks of a foodservice job is leftovers. I once brought home two roasted beef tenderloins from a catering event and enjoyed hot beef sandwiches with blue cheese and caramelized onions for three days solid. And when I worked at Dean & Deluca in Napa Valley, I routinely brought home sample products, which kept my pantry stocked for nearly a year. I had a wardrobe of a dozen top-quality vinegars. It was dreamy. Dean & Deluca had a rotisserie, and after we roasted ducks one day, I brought about a dozen duck carcasses home to make stock. The smell of the simmering stock was so strong it woke me up at night. It was great stock, but quite powerful. A woman living on her own has only so many uses for two gallons of rich roasted duck stock. I wound up reducing it to a glace and freezing it in ice cube trays so I could easily enrich sauces and stir-fries.

My food haul from Dogmatic seems to be going straight to my belly during my shifts—I can’t very well bring home cold grilled sausages, now, can I? Well, actually, I am the kind of person that would. I recall how my mother once mortified me by stuffing napkin-wrapped oatmeal cookies into her purse from the buffet at a small collage’s perspective students weekend. But the joke’s on me, because the older I get, the more like her I am. I had probably about fifteen pounds of chocolate in my kitchen when I worked at Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker; I’m only now down to my last 9.7 ounces. The thought of actually having to buy chocolate crushes me.

Oh, I’ll cope. In the meantime, I am enjoying baguettes. We serve Dogmatic sausages in toasted baguettes from Tom Cat Bakery. I love baguettes, the brittle micro-veneer of caramelized crust that gives way to a creamy, chewy interior. At the end of the day, we always have a few baguettes around. And since we don’t serve day-old baguettes, they are free for the taking.

The mom in me kicked in. I’ve been brainstorming uses for leftover baguettes: panzanella, savory bread pudding, croutons, crostini...but I’ve held off, for I hope soon the novelty of stale artisan baguettes will fade. My husband and I need to eat more whole grains; our current diet needs no supplements of white bread.

The other day, though, I did give in. I brought a baguette home for our dinner: sloppy joes made with vegetarian grounds (as per my sausagetarin guidelines). We didn’t have any buns at home, and before leaving work I figured a baguette beats a bun any day. I hollowed out two baguette ends by impaling them on the spike, then I wrapped them in foil. At home, I warmed them in the oven before stuffing them with sloppy joe filling, making more of a grinder than a sloppy joe. It was wonderful.

Please understand there’s no love lost between me and squishy white Wonder Bread hot dog buns; it’s just that I enjoy those exclusively when they contain a frankfurter. If I worked at, say, Papaya King, I’d not be clamoring to take day-old hot dog buns home. In fact, I bet I would not be allowed to. Once more reason my job is awesome.