During her college years at UC Santa Barbara, Barbara Hazen and her roommate started their own small catering company providing freshly baked muffins and breads to doctor’s offices in their neighborhood. “It was officially called ‘Al Fresco Catering’, but our families nicknamed us ‘Barbara’s Buns’!” This was a very successful venture! “At the holidays we had the brilliant idea of providing a list of items that the doctor’s could order for gifts. One doctor alone ordered 70 loaves of bread. We had bread everywhere!”
Entertaining for friends and family was a regular occurrence. The two roommates were fans of Martha Stewart and used her Entertainment cookbook almost exclusively. They’d call friends on a moment’s notice to come for dinner. “We did a lot of improvising and short-cutting while figuring out how to cook quickly!”
At the time, catering was a means to and end, a way to pay the rent. But it was also the beginning of a life’s passion for fine food and entertainment as well as a new awareness about the food industry and a career to be had.
All of this experience stood Barbara in good stead later on. After graduation she worked for an antique restoration company in Santa Barbara. One day a co-worker walked into the store with a huge book on Chinese art and furniture restoration. “It was a gorgeous book, and all the staff was agog over it. But I realized that I just didn’t have any emotional attachment to the art form or craft. I asked myself, ‘If I had $20 (this was a few years ago!) to buy any book I wanted, what would it be?’ I knew it would be a cookbook, and I knew then that I wanted to make my living cooking.”
Barbara applied to the California Culinary Academy. “At a certain point in the program, you could specialize, and it was very obvious to me that I wanted to be a pastry chef. What fascinated me was not how to reinvent chicken, but how to redesign a pastry or dessert. It also became apparent that I had the skills for pastry production, that it came naturally to me.”
After a year in Los Angeles at L’Express and then a years stint at the Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas, Barbara was back in the Bay Area, hired by Daniel Malzan to be the pastry chef at the Dakota Bar and Grill in Berkley. “The move to Postrio was my husband’s fault,” she laughs. “When they were hiring for the restaurant, they ran an ad campaign, asking, ‘Can a Wolfgang Puck LA-style restaurant compete in San Francisco with (Jeremiah Tower’s) Stars?’ My husband drove me nuts until I sent Wolfgang my resume. With astonishment I was offered and accepted the pastry chef job!”
The Postrio experience was prestigious and intense, involving management of a large crew and long hours. During this 2-1/2 year challenge Hazen married and became pregnant with her first of three girls. Never intending to retire completely as a pastry chef, Hazen kept in touch with the pastry scene and tried a couple of pastry business concepts on her own. Bringing the same quality desserts into the home that she had mastered in the professional kitchen, seemed like a natural transition.
“Every place I had ever worked we made some version of the French Sablé shortbread cookie. I realized that no one was making top quality cookie dough in rolls to slice and bake at home, so that meal by meal cookies could be baked fresh. I felt that there were so many outlets for this product: smaller restaurants, caterers, airlines, and of course retailers.”
Sablés Gourmet Cookie Dough is the result of a professional pastry chef’s work. Slicing and baking fills your kitchen with the wonderful aroma of fresh baked cookies that are easy to make and delicious to enjoy. “It’s an artisan product, with a gourmet taste. We only use ‘quality ingredients and no imitation flavors.’ It is exciting when a customer seems to ‘discover’ the butter and the other ingredients that make Sablés a qualitycookie.”
On her office wall, Barbara has a plaque that reads: “Some dream of fortunes, others dream of cookies.” She dreams of both!
|
