07/18/2026
Quick announcement - The week of July 27-Aug 1, Lincoln and I are traveling to Edmonton, Canada to take a laminated dough course though The Baker's Guild of America. I am proud to tell you that Lincoln Fullwood, a recent graduate of Brownwood High School was promoted from our dish pit where he worked for nearly two years to apprentice baker in our kitchen. We hope that at the end of his first year in this new position he earns his Journeyman's Baker Certificate. At the end of five years employment here or elsewhere if he completes the appropriate study and passes the Master Baker's Exam he will become one of a few hundred Master Baker's in the United States. As you know the Turtle is competitive and likes to stick our fingers into international competitions of all kinds from gelato to wine lists. We are not content to go to work every day unless we are constantly learning something new. We do this for ourselves but also for you. Don't settle for the mediocre!!
So....here's a photo of a recent trial of our danishes. Today they are for sale in the Gelateria at sale prices and there are only a few. We acknowledge there is room for improvement which is why we are committing ourselves to three days of intense instruction at the hands of a Master. We are thrilled to be attending a specialized baking workshop led by the incredible Alan Dumonceaux! With his extensive experience as an international competitor and the Academic Chair of the Baking and Pastry Arts program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), we are looking forward to sharpening our skills under his expert guidance.
The bakery portion of our kitchen is undergoing a complete revamping so that the Turtle Gelateria will be offering breads and pastries at retail to the public. We hope to have the revamp completed by the end of August. You may not know this but currently we do sell our sour dough loaves to go. The same sour dough you order in the retaurant. However, we only bake them once a week and then blast freeze them so it is likely they will be frozen but good as new when you defrost and recrust them in your oven. You can nearly always pick one up.
The sad rectangular danish to the left of the tray in this picture is from a well know competitor. We did a blind tasting with our staff. Even at this stage of the game, whic hstill leaves miles of room for improvement, wow!
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