They lied? - Page 3

I couldn't imagine reading that on a food label from a bakery! I would run so fast, Thier heads would spin!

I absolutely agree, and refusing to tell customers your ingredients is very poor customer service, but my point was that it may not be legally required.

As for propylene glycol, it is a food stabilizer and emulsifier, much like the lecithin in egg yolks, and is present in trace amounts in many products, including icings, cake mixes, ice cream, soda, etc. Many natural and artificial food-grade ingredients have alternative uses -- for example, lecithin is also used as a protective coating for painted surfaces and an anti-sludge additive in motor lubricants. Look it up.

Betty Crocker: Making you and your car go since 1956.

I don't believe the cake mixes themselves contain lecithin, you provide your own anti-sludge additive when you add the egg yolks.

Butter can also be used as a tree sap removal agent. Sugar can be made into an exfoliating scrub, hair gel, or a stain remover. Flour can be a stainless steel cleaner, wallpaper paste, copper polish, and shampoo.

Oh, good grief....

Costumeczar, you nailed it in your first post. Everyone absolutely knows what scratch baking is. There is no question about it.

There are two bakeries that lie in my area and the scratch bakers in the area are very quick to name who is scratch and who tells blatant lies. And those artificial sleeves do count as exactly what they are... artificial. One bakery buys the frozen slabs from Walmart and calls it "Grandma's recipe". And for those bakeries who proclaim that the clients prefer box, it means that your scratch cakes are not as good as abox, not all scratch cakes. Another puts fake sleeves in the centers and covers them in fake chocolate, touting gourmet flavors.

If someone asks, be aware that they may likely already know the answer and are testing you. If I have an interview first, am sure to be very clear on how my cakes differ from the competition and it also justifies my prices. My scratch competitors (we are all friends and refer frequently) do the same.

Lying is just what a few food vendors are allowed to do because they are exempt (for now) from the labeling law, which in many states, includes cakes.

Consumers go to farmers markets, shop at gourmet stores, and pay premium prices at supermarkets like Whole Foods. If they don't want chemicals and artificial ingredients in their family's foods, what right does anyone have to withhold the truth, insinuate scratch, or outright lie?

I personally have no problem with box bakeries as the provide a price point that is much needed in any market. But the only reason to lie is to extract more money out of the customer than they would be willing to pay if they knew the truth.

Be aware that the more scratch bakers that are in your area, the more likely that your customers will be more informed.

I can spot a box mix every time. The addition of artificial pudding and sleeves only intensifies the chemical taste. I have informed people how to spot a box mix. Once you look for it, it isn't hard. It doesn't mean they are not good. It just pinpoints the artificial. After you swallow the cake, icing, filling, etc., there is a lingering taste. This is where the chemicals can't hide and that slight bitterness can be detected. Scratch cakes still taste like just cake after they are swallowed, even the bad ones.

There is no justification to lying to a customer when they clearly have a right to decide what they choose to consume. Although a bakery can lie in some areas by law, it is morally and ethically wrong.

Is it ok for your mechanic to tell you a few more things are wrong with your car just because there is no way for you to know at the time? Those parts may be technically worn and who is to really say what needs to be replaced. Every baker who lies would, in this situation, tell everyone that this mechanic is a thief, not really dishonest, but saying just enough to cause you to spend more.

My daughters work with me. Where will they learn business ethics if not from their parents?

I have posted this many times. I could open a box mix bakery right next to my scratch bakery and do well at both. There are so many advantages to the box and doctored way of baking. I just don't get why bakers cannot be proud of their products and honestly portray them? The customers would appreciate it and your enthousiasm for your product would be contageous. I learned a long time ago in sales just how hard it is to sell something you don't personally believe in. There are price advantages, durability advantages, adaptability to alternate flavor advantages, predictability advantages, and as most people already know, it is a taste that many people were brought up loving the taste. Tell the truth.

I'm happy to also add my voice to the scratch vs box disclosure debate.

It is total BS to start talking about growing and harvesting your wheat to mill etc. Scratch baking is simple. You bake using the simplest form of basic single ingredients. Plain wheat flour. An egg. Milk. Butter. Sugar. Each of these things is a basic element. Flour - wheat, egg - its just an egg, its the way it was made!, butter - milk, milk - milk. Salt - salt. Do you get it? Cocoa - cocoa beans. Vanilla - vanilla beans. Sugar - sugar cane. And so on. You put those sorts of ingredients on a label and there is no way someone is going to scratch their head and wonder WTF it is!

I also agree with scp1127 - there is a market for box mix made cakes. I am stoked that box bakers can also make a living from cake decorating! Each to his own! I am not trying to convert anybody to making cakes the way I make them. Just don't feed me a line about sourcing my basic ingredients in order to be called a scratch BAKER. That's insane. If you think we're all the same, then how about you go to the laboratory to cook up your own antifreeze. Then list each 'element' you put into your ingredients on YOUR scratch list.

Its totally ridiculous. The 'reasonable man' knows what is meant by scratch baking.

Right, and those are found in nature regardless of how you use them. Propylene glycol and its relatives are totally artificial and aren't found anywhere but a laboratory, so why would you add them to a scratch cake, which is what my original statement was. You wouldn't, that's right.

The mill-your-own-flour and eggs-contain-lecithin arguments are just massive rationalizations for people who want to pretend that opening a box mix is baking from scratch. Which they know it isn't, or they wouldn't be working so hard to convince themselves.

These threads get stupid really fast when people start offering the "everything is made of chemicals" argument as a justification of why they shouldn't have to tell clients that they use cake mixes. Use them if you want to, but as the OP said, she was surprised to find out that the person behind the counter lied about it, and that's the point. If you use them and someone asks, don't tell them that you bake from scratch. Simple as that.

Who in this thread has argued that they shouldn't have to tell clients that they use cake mixes?

In any case, I stand by my advice to the OP that in order to get the most accurate info possible the question to the bakery should be if they bake with store-bought cake mixes, not if they bake from scratch.

Bad assumption on your part. If I am a bakery that uses mixes and am trying hide that fact that question gives me an easy out. You ask. And my response is: No, I do not use "store-bought" cake mixes. I don't buy them at a "store," I acquired them at a food distributor. You may think they are the same but I consider stores-bought to be the boxes you buy from Walmart not the mixes I would buy from food distributors.

This is no different than the terministic game you play with your scratch/mix continuum. No one has solely (if ever) milled their own flour (by your standard you should then have to grow it too), produced their own sugar from cane or beats, made their own vanilla, made their own cocoa etc. in decades if not centuries. But this is how you choose to define "scratch" despite the fact that the history of the term does not reflect your conception/usage of the term.

Thus it is easy for me to conceive of a "store" as something that is open to the public where as "food distributors" are not. And in fact the definition of a store supports this distinction. "Stores"are retail as opposed to wholesale establishments. So when you ask do I use store-bought mixes--my answer is unabashedly no.

That's a good point, perhaps a better question would be if the product was made using the bakery's own mix or someone else's mix.

According to Merriam-Webster "from scratch" is defined as "without using a prepared mixture of ingredients", but if a bakery prepares their own proprietary mix ahead of time then according to the dictionary definition that would not qualify as scratch baking.

Of course if you are assuming bad intentions on the part of the bakery it's something of a moot point, since the bakery could simply lie.

On the second page, first response, the poster says if they don't advertise as a scratch bakery, they shouldn't have to disclose anything. How you advertise should have nothing to do with how you respond to customer questions.

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Sorry. I has too much time on hands sumtimez.

OMG. Morgan Freeman is the horse! We must beat him!

Heh heh heh start rationalizing at 44 seconds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FJiDFVoOo