Lobo Culture Culture editor / Hunter Riley
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Thursday February 11, 2009
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Junfu Han / Daily Lobo Gary Cline removes cherry and pecan Danishes from the oven at the Chocolate Cafe and Bakery on Monday.
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Owner of local bakery is living the sweet life by Chris Quintana Daily Lobo
Junfu Han / Daily Lobo Cline fills his croissants with spreadable chocolate and chocolate chips. The Chocolate Cafe and Bakery is at the intersection of Monte Vista Boulevard and Central Avenue.
Five a.m. — The whir of mixers hum while Gary Cline flattens, cuts and rolls chocolate-flavored dough into perfect U-shaped croissants. He works on a long island table in a large back room that smells of chocolate and flour. “I grew up with sweets as ingredients in just about every meal,” he said, before smearing chocolate paste and chocolate chips onto a flat croissant. Cline, the owner of Chocolate Cafe and Bakery at the intersection of Monte Vista Boulevard and Central Avenue, starts his days at 2 a.m. It’s during this time that he balances the books, which includes paying employees and ordering supplies as well as any other administrative duties required for the day. “I find the morning (to be) a magical time for me,” he said. “No one else is awake. It’s kind of neat. You get to see the best sunrises there are.” Around 4:30 a.m. the baking starts. A yellow and bent legal pad with two letter abbreviations directs the flow of activity. Today — chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-dipped strawberries and chocolate croissants are at the top of the list. There’s a common theme here: Cline loves chocolate. “What better way to get it than to make it,” he said while putting the croissants into the oven. “You get
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what you want. I’ve been disappointed (with) desserts in the past.” The croissants are placed in the fourtray oven. Cline pulls a silver cup from a cupboard, a carton of eggs and a bag of flour onto the kitchen countertop. He cracks the eggs with one hand and then uses the shell halves to drain the yolk from the white. He’s making a crème brûlée and explains that the milk has to be heated to the right temperature otherwise it’ll scramble the eggs when he mixes the two. Cline’s knowledge and skills in the bakery come from 38 years of experience from baking in various local shops. While beating the eggs, he puts the crème brûlée mix into the microwave at one-minute intervals. If he runs it for any longer the circuit breaks, and then all the clocks in the shop have to be reset. He adjusts the clocks once, but the next time the circuit breaks, he leaves it alone, so the digital LED flashes 12:00 … 12:01 … 12:02 … and so on. He has owned the Chocolate Café and Bakery for eight and a half years and works 14-hour days. “It’s a pleasure to pass on a skill that’s dying,” Cline said. “This is my life. I have no other life. I have no wife. I have a girlfriend — she lives out of town. This is what I do, and I do it every day.” His trainee this morning, Leanna Lopez, is mixing the dough. Cline tells her the dough sounds a bit heavy. He says his years of experience as a chef helped him become an experienced baker. His arms are marked with
see Sweet life page 14