43 - Chapter 39
Sa Bina went up to change for dinner. Though it was a nuisance, she would have to put in the effort to maintain an appropriate noble image. While she was experimenting in the kitchen, it was one thing, but to appear in that state for dinner with her retainers would set chins to wagging and impact her perceived standing within her own household. Though she would put in the minimum effort required, and not spend the time to be fully dressed up. That would take far too long.
It took her around a quarter bell to wash herself and don a suitable cheongsam for dinner. She came down to the dining room to find her retainers waiting for her. She would need to formalise how this part of her day would go if she wanted to make this a regular thing. And she would need to, otherwise she would struggle to stay on top of issues. She would also struggle to direct her retainers in the directions she needed them to take. Her focus was primarily on the bread, so she just asked her team to go through their tasks in short order.
Be Net reported that the recruitment was progressing and they were garnering interest from far and wide as more people learned of their recruitment drive.
Han Ji’s report somewhat mirrored Be Net’s report. They were getting a lot of applications to join their growing team, but there was a concern over divided loyalties and spies as a significant percentage were from the retainers of existing noble houses. For now Sa Bina asked them to exclude that group for several reasons. The first was the risk of spies joining their house. Not that it would stop spies from gaining a foothold, but it should make it harder. It was also because she did not want to start spats with the noble houses directly.
By taking their retainers, she would either anger those houses, or she would recruit people who had an axe to grind against them. In either case it was just additional trouble for not much gain. The situation would have been different if they were struggling to recruit from the unaffiliated, but from the sounds of it, they had enough applications to expand.
When Sa Bina asked why they were getting so many applications, Han Ji told her it was because of the benefits she was offering. Just the fact that the new soldiers could bring their spouse and children was a big deal. The fact that she was offering to educate them for free was the biggest draw. It would give the children the opportunity to go further than their parents. Lastly, the news that the estate was offering jobs to spouses too added even more pressure on the soldiers to apply.
After that it was Lou Sie’s turn. She had made arrangements for the class in double entry bookkeeping, and had put together a list of people who would need to attend the course. She asked when they should set the classes for, and how many sessions Sa Bina thought would be required for the people to get an understanding of the method.
Sa Bina thought it could be taught reasonably quickly, and would require no more than two to four sessions. She also did not want large classes. She wanted to start to make her retainers more self-sufficient, and wanted to implement a train the trainer model. This would mean that she would expect those she taught to then further teach her method to others. That way she could maximise the impact of her training. She could do spot checks on the subsequent students to ensure that the method was being taught correctly.
That led to her artisans to provide reports. They were generally moving in a positive direction, and there was not much to report just yet. Everyone was experimenting with the various ideas she had provided and were seeing some results. The only one with anything significant to report was Pan Deming.
He had been working on a basic design. The plan was for the new restaurant to be designed in the next week, then to get an earth cultivator to come and raise the basic building in a couple of days. That would let them know if the size looked suitable for their needs. Sa Bina had been thinking about the issue of an integrated building, and had changed her mind somewhat. The restaurant would need a large kitchen and storage rooms, but she wanted to build a separate bakery for large scale production. If she was planning on supplying separate shops, and selling wholesale to wealthy estates and other retailers, then she would need a dedicated factory style set up. She did not want everything to be based from one building, as the two parts of the business would operate very differently.
She instructed Pan Deming to look at that as a separate building. The design would be more straightforward, and would consist of a massive kitchen and large cold storage facilities. The only other requirement was to be able to bring carts up to the building for easy unloading of ingredients and loading of finished goods. She asked him to design the building with layers of walls, leaving a space in between that could be filled with sawdust or something similar to provide a good insulation. She also mentioned to the smiths that she would need the ovens that would be built in this factory to a very different design. She was thinking of the potential to create a rotating oven that would allow for the continuous production of baked goods.
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Goa Ye also took note of the changed requirements, as this would mean the formations they were designing would need to to work in a wider range of situations. He mulled over the option of creating a more complex multi purpose formation, or multiple single purpose formations. Sa Bina instructed him to go with the option that reduced running costs. If her ovens were running constantly, then any savings would be multiplied.
Lastly she asked He Mai to start collecting a range of ingredients that were abundantly available. She wanted to start to brew different styles of alcohol. The idea was to create something new from cheap ingredients to give her a product that would be expensive with a good profit margin, though she kept that thought to herself. She wanted ingredients that she could get without hassle too. The last thing she wanted was to find something that worked well, but then she was unable to get the ingredient.
With that her dinner had ended, and she hurried to change again. She then descended to the kitchen once more. She knew this need to keep changing would get annoying very quickly, and that she would need to find a way to make it more manageable, but what methods she could employ to that end eluded her.
Thankfully the first batches of dough that she had started with were starting to reach the required size. The kitchen being kept warm due to the ongoing cooking helped the yeast to ferment faster. Though that was not always a good thing. She would only know how good or bad it was once the bread had been baked.
She worked with the cook, and the helpers to shape and rest the dough. As they worked through all the variations, they were able to return back to the first just in time to continue the process. With the dough ready for the final shaping, Sa Bina went with simple rolls for her first attempt. Her thinking was that it would be a good sized accompaniment for dinner, as well as easy to shape and fast to bake. She would try larger loaves and more complex designs once she had something that worked.
Once everything was shaped she left it to proof at room temperature. She would have loved to leave it to cold proof overnight for better results, but again the lack of equipment stymied her. She took a break and returned to her suite to rest. It would take another bell for the first of the dough to be ready to bake. She asked Dian Fu to remind her in around a bell.
She took the time to just rest her mind, and let her thoughts wander. It was not quite at the level of meditation, but certainly was going in that direction. It allowed her to clear her mind, and acknowledge and address the thoughts running through her head. This was again something she would need to take the time to do. Too much had happened too fast, and she needed to take the time to assimilate and internalise the changes. After a little time, she started to think through her list of urgent tasks. She had yet to find someone who could fulfil the role of a psychiatrist or similar. She had not really focused on that task, and she would need to push to identify a suitable person. She also needed the equivalent of doctors and medics. With the way her numbers of retainers were growing, as well the size of her armed forces, they would need a medical core sooner or later. The time passed, and before she knew it, she was brought out of her introspections by a knock from Dian Fu reminding her to return to the kitchen to carry on her experiments.
Sa Bina returned to the kitchen to see how her dough had fared. The first batch of the dough looked like it was ready. She had the cook get the wood fired oven heated up. She had to test the heat as she still did not have a thermometer for the purpose, she went with both the timing the heat with her fingers method and the flour browning method.
They were both imprecise, but Sa Bina did not have much in the way of options. The first method was to place her hand in the oven, around 5 cm above the base of the oven and count how many seconds before she felt a tingling in her fingers. A slow count of around 3 was what she was looking for. Any faster and the oven was too hot, any slower and it was too cold. The second method was sprinkling flour on to the base of the oven and seeing how long it took to brown.
It took a few attempts, and playing around with the amount of wood to get in the right range. Her kitchen staff had looked bewildered when she had tried out the methods, but soon understood what she was doing. Having used the ovens for a long time, the cook was able to deliver the results Sa Bina wanted, even if she did not understand her methods.
Once Sa Bina was confident that the oven was ready, they started placing the rolls in the oven to bake in batches. As the loaves were small, it would only take around a quarter bell for the rolls to be cooked though, or at least that was her estimate.
The next hour was spent in managing the oven temperature and putting in and taking out batches of rolls, then setting them aside to cool. While they worked, Sa Bina took the opportunity to talk to the kitchen staff about local ingredients. She wanted to know what was available cheaply and easily as well as what was hard to get. She would compare notes with what He Mai came back with to identify her best approach for both ingredients to support her baking, as well as the brewing side.
With the final batches out of the oven and cooling, it was almost time to see the results. From just the look of the rolls, some were more dense than others, with the colour ranging from a light golden to a dark brown depending on the flour used. Again she lamented her short sightedness in only preparing a single starter, effectively ending up with multigrain rolls on her first attempt. Finally the time had come to break open the rolls and see how she had done.