Page 61
Gabe hesitated.
Mara tapped the page. “Because if she promised a certain number of baked goods, that’s different from promising this exact menu.”
He thought back to what Karina had told him. “The numbers matter more than the individual products.”
“Okay.” Mara shifted closer so they could both see the sheet. “Then what on here is making your life hardest?”
“The morning buns.”
She looked at him. “Why?”
“They need proofing time, they take up a lot of oven space, and we can’t just stack them up waiting once they’re ready. If the timing slips, we lose them.”
“So take them out.”
Gabe stared at her.
Mara lifted both hands. “I know that sounded absurdly simple.”
“A little.”
“But is there a reason you can’t?”
He looked back at the page. There were a dozen reasons why changing a menu the day before an event was annoying. None of them were as important as the reason for changing it.
“No,” he said slowly. “Not if we replace them with something Karina can prep quickly.”
“What?” Mara asked.
“That depends on what she’s got.”
“Pretend she has whatever a bakery normally has.”
Gabe laughed. “That’s a dangerous assumption.”
“You’re the expert.” Mara arched an eyebrow at him. “So use your knowledge and expertise to inform your assumption.”
He began running through possibilities aloud, discarding most of them almost as soon as he said them. Anything complicated defeated the point. Anything too delicate created another bottleneck. “Hand pies would work,” he said eventually. “We can make them ahead, they travel well, and they don’t need the same timing.”
“Didn’t Karina already make pear ones?”
“Pear and ginger.”
Mara thought about that. “Could you make another kind?”
“Of course.”
“What says fall without making everybody do twice as much work?”
Gabe smiled before she even finished the question. “Apple.”
Mara grinned. “That’s what I was thinking.”
His bear perked up. Apples.
Thank you for your contribution, Gabe said. I thought you were napping while I did the hard work.
I heard apples. His bear yawned. I like apples.
