Squeaky Clean

Today Benjamin was off so Alexandre wanted to do the shaping so he could take note of how long it takes him to shape and divide things. But he’s a demon.

Since he was shaping and dividing and Alex and William were doing the mixing of doughs and shaping, I was at the oven.

So all morning I was baking the bread and did ok except for making a few mistakes like scoring the T80 like the Epeautre which isn’t too bad as you can see the T80 is lighter after baking anyway...but still... and I was so focused on the baking and drying of the pain au lin I only remembered as I was taking them out the oven that half was meant to be pre-cooked...that was pretty frustrating.

But all in all I think I did a pretty good job. After all the baking was done, William helped me clean the glass doors for the oven after I removed them...sweating like a pedo in a Barney suit after that...and picked up a nice burn for my efforts. But afterwards...damn that oven looked sexy with it`s clean windows...how can you not want to bake in that?? I love it when equipment is all clean and sexy looking. Such a pleasure to work in a clean environment.

You only appreciate it when you’ve worked in a shithole before.

Alexandre said when it gets colder we can start burning some of the wooden crates in the wood oven to get rid of them as they don’t get recycled...weird since cardboard and plastic does. Stoked to see that (see what I did there?: p)

Same old same old...

Today was pretty standard, nothing special happened. Except for Benjamin being pretty slow with the shaping so that the fiscelle

were only done by 7am...which is really late. William and I were on the biological breads and  my shaping is really good for them now...when working with a wetter dough,

you can shape so much faster while still building up enough force without tearing the surface, but it’s not easy handling wet dough if you’re not used to it.

Everything else was same old same old.

New kids on the block

Today I just stayed in and did some recipe costing..it’s quite a schlep on the laptop since the mouse doesn’t

work and the track pad is slow to work with...but seeing everything really  nicely lined up feels gooood. I love order with some things, and chaos with others. Weather was crappy and cold so really no motivation to go outside. Can`t wait to get back to Cape Town so I can use my cat as a furry hot water bottle (not by pouring boiling water in her!!, just using her body heat)..

Kind of over Lyon when I’m not working, the social scene is different here. People my age just don’t do the same sort of stuff as they do back in Cape Town.

Just realised I`ve been in Lyon for 3 months now...feels like forever...just under 2 months left to go...so many new, exciting things to look forward to in Cape Town when I get back home.

Today we had a guy doing a stage which will last about 2 weeks...he`s French, but has been working in a French restaurant/bakery in French, USA for the last 3 years and wants to learn a bit more about the baking side (he isn’t a chef or baker). He`s a decent guy but he obviously struggles with shaping and general basic baking things take him a while to do, so I had to carry him this morning while doing other stuff as well. Benjamin, the guy who`s replaced Yann is ok, but he just doesn’t have that second gear yet...he works just a bit too slow.

So this morning I had to run around a bit...but in the end it all worked out fine. We also had a 15 year old kid called Izam/Izzam who`s doing an apprenticeship at the bakery. Nice kid, I just have to speak to him in French, as he doesn’t really understand English at all...but I think I did ok explaining everything to him.

We gave the place a good clean after the work was done and then Benjamin, William and myself went for bagels. I think we were discussing them and Benjamin was saying how they`re not good and William and I were disagreeing. So we chilled and ate and chatted a bit...it`s nice to have down time after work...low maintenance downtime... just chatting, not like dealing with people`s shit at all.

Chillin’ with an old friend

I only went to bed around 5am so woke up around 12 and missioned around buying some odds and ends and cooked up a sick late breakfast of scrambled eggs and thick slices of smoked bacon (long overdue I know) with a poppy seed baguette with some hummus and cream cheese.

Spent the morning cleaning up and packing things away while listening to some wicked chill step and having gin and tonic

 (my old friend missed me)...caught up on some typing as well.

I`ve been invited to a few parties but I`m having a really good time now...having gin and monster so can`t complain.. Really just want to get started on building up my systems for the bakery school. 

I want to get product lists, costings, standardised recipes and methods set up. Looking for a place [residence] is also a bit difficult as some places that I have enquired about have been sold or rented already. 

I suppose trying maybe 2 weeks out from my return would be the best bet...too early and it just won`t make sense.

Teamwork

Oh shit...so even though I slept a decent amount, when I woke up for my alarm today I was so comfortable I decided to not get up...only woke up just before 2am and managed to get to work only about 30min late. Still not a cool feeling though... the fact that the tartiflette last night was so rich meant that I wasn’t hungry most of the day...

I pretty much did all the baking of the breads, with Alexandre guiding me and checking up every now and then. But I did it all which actually means he has a lot of trust in me, as if you f*** up the scoring/baking there`s nothing more you can do...those are the final 2 steps in baking (besides cooling down) but I was owning it. My T80 miches were a little dark but not too much and the pain au lin could’ve cooked a little more, but I think the dough was also too cold even though it was nicely proved. Some of the biological breads were also cold so had to do some juggling but I`m pretty happy with my performance. Benjamin`s shaping was a bit irregular and sometimes he didn’t pleat the couche where there was a hole so some baguettes stuck but whatever...it wasn’t too bad.

It was also Yann`s last day so now hopefully there should be a better interpersonal vibe in the bakery. Although Benjamin was showing signs of lack of motivation and concentration the last few days so hopefully he can pick up his game soon and we will have a killer core team. Nothing gets me more amped than working within an efficient team.

We all helped with the torti crosti and tarelli in the midday so we had a nice factory line going...Alexandre was pretty fatigued so he was joking around a bit…I know that feeling when you`re so tired you really are like f*** it but you still graft hard. You can really produce amazing things if you have the equipment and storage space for it. With only a few people but enough freezers and trolleys and racks you can pump stuff out, but it really is a team effort. No one here says “it`s not my job” as i commonly hear back home. Although at Maison Pozzoli there`s a great symbiosis between employer and employee which I think is important.  Where I`ve worked before, I`ve noticed that the number one influencing factor in job satisfaction is being appreciated. If you feel part of a team, that you are needed and respected and appreciated, you don’t mind longer hours or slightly less pay. Money just can`t buy some things.

I mean, your job is something you will spend doing for the majority of your day if not your life, so if you aren’t enjoying it what`s the point? If you have something that you really like or that makes you happy you can become skilled enough in it to the point where you could provide training or teach others and then you could charge a premium fee, as if there is something you enjoy, chances are there are others who share the same interests as you.

There was a party tonight which is the reason I asked for the day off tomorrow, but I ended up sleeping until 23:00...but it doesn’t bother me that I`m not going out much. I am really enjoying my time at Maison Pozzoli and want to make them proud when I go back and really take baking and bread culture in SA to the next level and help develop infrastructure for awareness and education and eventually competitions and organisations for sharing of knowledge and networking. Just like the actual bread, the knowledge has more value when it`s shared.

Good Food, Great Wine, Gracious Friends

Today was a pretty good day. Started helping Benjamin with the shaping of the pate Blanche and then was with Alexandre at the “fournil” (fournil is the area near the oven, four is oven in French), helping load the breads. Pretty solid with my scoring and baking...it’s just a bit intense when you’re controlling 5x2 separate batches and rotating the dough that’s proving so it’s not proving too slowly/too quickly. My French is also pretty good so in the mornings I serve the customers while imp baking if they want a baguette or croissant and I can understand them as long as they don’t talk super-fast.

After the morning baking was done around 10am I went to help Alexandre and chef with some canapés. There was an order for the chambre des meitiers de meilleur ouvrier de France( MOF ) as well as some other orders so we were pretty busy with them. We made some burgers like last time and some new canapés like foie mousse in jambon cru with black fig, cream cheese with chives, parsley mayo and tuna mayo in a hollowed out cherry tomato as well as smoked salmon filled with asparagus puree and garnished with an asparagus tip... I got changed after it was all done but then got invited to have a glass of wine with “le patron” and Alexandre so I was like ok J had a jambon beurre sandwich with that and then an opera cake

Opera Cake

for dessert...mmm like a crispy biscuit base with crisped rice in it, pralinee (here, praline is the red stuff with almonds, they call the hazelnut paste “pralinee” and chocolate mousse.. I ended up helping chef glaze the canapés even though I had changed... it’s just not natural for me to see my boss working if I’m not.

Canapes

I know my French is improving if I can understand most of what Mr Pozzoli says and actually joke with him J but after a while the wine started to kick my ass so I decided to go home.

I planned to only sleep for a few hours as I had been invited to dinner at Alex’s place with friends but ended up oversleeping and only waking up around 19h00 (when I was supposed to meet) so was over an hour late but it was all good in the end as the food wasn’t ready on time.

He stays in Grange Blanche, which is close to Monplaisir (near the Lumiere Institute). The area has most of Lyon’s hospitals and lots of schools so there are loads of students staying in the area. So for dinner it was Alex, his housemate Hugo (a former Maison Pozzoli employee), Pierre (the baker who works in the afternoon), jean (a baker from the vaise branch) and Laura (his American fiancée).

Tartiflette

For dinner we had tartiflette which is a dish made with potatoes, lardons and a cheese that I forgot the name now but it’s like a lasagne vibe with potato, bacon and cheese. YES PLEASE!!! Soooo damn good. We had that with some dressed salad leaves and some bread and a beautiful 2008 chardonnay that was utterly sublime. Probably the best wine I’ve had here. Soft, deep flavours, beautiful golden hue and not to sharp alcohol. I love how here in France you always have bread and bottles of water with every meal. It’s definitely something I want to continue when I come back to South Africa.

Afterwards we had a tarte pomme fin which was a pate brisee base with sliced apples that gets brushed with melted butter and baked with sprinkled sugar...with some glacé pralineé that Alex made as well as some chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies and oat and orange juices soaked raisin cookies that Laura made with a really good red wine. Can’t remember what. 

Wine Fridge...these guys mean business !

Soft, deep flavours, beautiful golden hue and not to sharp alcohol. I love how here in France you always have bread and bottles of water with every meal. It’s definitely something I want to continue when I come back to South Africa.

Tarte Pomme Fin

Afterwards we had a tarte pomme fin which was a pate brisee base with sliced apples that gets brushed with melted butter and baked with sprinkled sugar...with some glacé pralineé that Alex made as well as some chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies and oat and orange juices soaked raisin cookies that Laura made with a really good red wine. Can’t remember what.

Alex and Hugo have a really cool apartment...and I noticed some GTO comics too J seems like anime is quite popular in France. Only got home around 23:00 so had under 2 hours to sleep but I had a great evening so I didn’t mind.

Teamwork

Teamwork !

Nice day today...sick push in the morning with everyone hands on, Benjamin and I doing the pate blanche, Yann doing bio, Alex doing the viennoiserie, seigle Auvergne, ciabatta, Sarasin, autolyse etc...And Alexandre on the oven. I ended up spending the morning with Alexandre, taking notes about small details when scoring different ways. He told me he knows 30 different ways to score a boule, different shapes just by changing small details, even if it’s still the same amount of scores. And the difference between a baker and someone just chucking some dough in the oven is the finesse and the attention to visual detail. Making sure your scores are all parallel, corners all in line etc...It’s all noticed on a subconscious level.

It made me kind of sad to think about coming home...I don’t want to stop learning. But I’ll have to put more effort into upping my game and trying things out myself. I definitely want to visit Maison Pozzoli again in a few years... or maybe even have chef and Alexandre come visit Cape Town for a bit...I already want to try to organise to get a case of wine to them...

I ended up loading most of the bread today...it went ok, except for a few very borderline bakes...and I let the Sarasin over prove which sucks. It’s a really dense bread and not really responsive...one minute I check it and it feels dense and under proved, 5 min later and I see the surface starting to separate like when dough is over proving and I knew it was a mess. And it bakes pretty long as well...

We had some baking students come in and visit today... like I mentioned before most areas have a baking school but these kids looked young. When I asked chef about it he said most were 15/16 and already studying to enter the service/kitchen/baking area. That’s hectic!! They all looked very smart in formal suits though.

After baking was done I helped the others line crap loads of tins with pate feulletage for the quiches...everyone was involved, even chef and Jean-Luc (the guy who calls me compote) after that we prepped a huge batch of monsieur. Here they put the cheese on top and gratinate it.

Came home and chilled. Yesterday the curtain fell down when I tried to open it (the walls are very old and powdery and the curtain was too heavy. So now I just put them around my bed so I have a curtain to keep light out and heat in since I sleep on the couch anyway. Fatiha and I were joking that it’s like those bed forts you make when you’re a kid J

Working Out

Today was weird. Benjamin was pretty slow and I had to load the bread because Alexandre was doing the pastry and other Alexandre left before 10 for school, and in between I was trying to do autolyse so it was a bit chaotic, but good. Without someone telling me what to do all the time, and knowing I needed to pull my finger out my ass, I did...running around but in a good way. I was the same when I started my stage so I’m not judging...I’m just glad I’ve progressed a bit.

My body also isn’t as tired and I think it’s just because I was so lazy before my stage started. Now, every day before I shower, I do either some push ups, dips, squats or sit ups (unfortunately, nowhere I can do pull ups) and so my body is always a bit sore, which actually makes me feel more awake and like I have more energy. I can easily carry 2 bags of flour (50kg) at a time, so I do...I just treat it like exercise anyway.

I helped make mini burgers for an order...mini beef with cheddar, gherkin and ketchup
chicken crusted in crumbs and seeds, wholegrain mayo, cheddar and thin slices of red onion
salmon and mozzarella with dill,rocket, sesame seed coated chevre, jambon cru and Turkish apricots.

When I got home I was so knackered I wanted to sleep but just ended up procrastinating most of the day, not getting around to writing anything even though I have loads I can do.

Looking forward to Friday though, I have a house warming in the evening and afterwards there’s a bass music party in the 7e arrondismont (district) and I’m not working Saturday so I don’t have to stress...maybe I can walk past there on my way home to pick up a croissant? J

Alma Mater

Owned today!! Pushed out production like machines...ok, it was Alex, Alexandre, myself and Benjamin the new guy (in French its pronounced “bahn-jah-mahn” had no idea at first then I was like oh its BenjaminJ) we were done before 11am. Alex left around 10 as he had to go to school as well.

This month, the special bread that we’re making is with the Sarasin (buckwheat), I still prefer the pain au lin though as the seeds give so much flavour to the bread...

After work I missioned home, had a nice shower and then passed out until about 5pm...Woke up can started continuing on the product list of all the items I’ve made/tried/come across while here in France. I want to combine it with a list of what I’ve done before and have a data base of ideas and recipes.

Really excited about going back to SA and starting the next chapter in my life and career in Stellenbosch, South Africa and with the Hurst Campus. I’ve already started looking for a place to stay and thinking about what sort of stuff I want to make at the school and what I want to teach...

I think the biggest thing for me is if I can help nurture a generation of bakers...which is sorely needed in South Africa and really start growing the industry there.

Possibly help start baking competitions or compete in some if there are, which I haven’t heard of.

Shit’s getting real.

Pizza Party

Today I spent layered up inside and only went out to buy a MASSIVE 4 cheese pizza and a bottle of wine which I had for lunch....was just what I wanted in the crappy weather.J

I used the time to catch up on some writing and do some cleaning and packing away... most weekends I just end up doing nothing as I’m so tired. Alex and Alexandre both also always say they’re tired so it’s not just me...everyone has those dark rings under their eyes. It must just be a baker’s thing

Too cold for comfort

This morning I never really felt fully awake. Alexandre was working at next level speed which left me spinning a bit as I tried to keep up...

Speedy Gonzalez

some of the speed shaping techniques are difficult for me as I still have my old habit/technique that I use just by instinct.

As Alexandre was spending most of the late morning baking things for Pauline’s birthday, I was at the oven baking trolley after trolley of baguettes and could only help Yann clean in-between loading decks of bread. I’ve got a much better feel for all the breads now, how deep to score, space and length of scores etc.

San Francisco Bay Area

After work I met up with an American couple who are from San Francisco, near the bay area and we went for a drink close to the bakery. Claire writes a food blog and we actually follow each other on twitter so that’s how we came to meet. Her husband is going to a conference in Dublin so they decided to spend some time in Lyon on their way over there. A very interesting couple and we had a good time talking about the differences between South Africa and San Francisco in terms of food trends and what people are looking for in the market currently.

There was a student tour of Lyon from about 1pm, but by the time I was finished with my drink it was past 1 and I was almost falling asleep so I headed home and had a glass of wine with Fatiha and her friend Alex and then crashed until 10pm....I was so out of it.

When I woke up I realised that there was a dnb (drum 'n bass) party happening so I got dressed, had a beer and then realised how cold it was and that I would have to walk 30min one way to get there and literally stood in front of the door and said to myself “screw this”, had a nice hot shower, got into my jammies and made some dinner and then layered up and got under my duvet....bizarre but true. I passed up dnb to be warm...it was like 5 degrees outside and I  am definitely not used to that kind of cold.

Don't be a wuss; it's not THAT cold !

Sozzled

Today was good. Standard morning...except for 2 drunk girls who were looking for something to eat at 3am and ended up screaming and shouting and laughing until Alexandre went outside to tell them to piss off. 

Above the street level shops are residential flats so it’s a problem when people are going home after a night off and just shout and scream the whole time...if you wanna drink and party and get drunk, cool, but don’t disturb other people...

In the afternoon I helped Alexandre and Mr Pozzoli make some canapés for Alexandre’s wife’s (Pauline) birthday on Saturday. We used pain mie carre (square pain mie, soft white bread) which was sliced lengthways and then buttered as the base for all the canapés. Little discs were cut out and then the various toppings were put on.

We had a cucumber shell with corn and green peppercorns, a prawn with a piece of fresh lime, a salmon mousse with crab sticks, aubergine caviar with a fried quails egg and lastly a garlic sausage with a piece of confit garlic on top. Afterwards all the canapés were brushed with a sort of jelly to give it a nice shine and also prevent it from drying out.

After work I missioned off to buy my train tickets for Switzerland so I’m going to visit Emma in Lausanne for a weekend in early November so I should be able to have a bit of a ‘kuier’ [ Afrikaans for ‘visit’ ] with her.

I was so exhausted that once I got some I was passed out by 6pm.

Getting it RIGHT !

Today was standard. Good push in the morning...still need to kick it up a gear with the shaping. I guess I’m just impatient to get to that level of efficiency already.

We made bread today with buckwheat, also known as “sarrasin/blé noir”, with 20% buckwheat and 80% T80 as buckwheat has no gluten in it so its suitable for people who can’t handle gluten, but obviously you’d need a recipe without wheat as well...because it had no gluten, it’s not ideal to use for bread on its own and is more commonly used to make pancakes and noodles in other countries.

Possibly a combination of that and maybe rice flour or potato flour would work but I’d have to play around to find out. The colour was a deep, dark colour. Darker than rye and had a slightly not aniseed, but floral, sweet flavour.

I’ve been thinking and it seems like to make alternate wheats/grains more accessible to people who want to try it for flavour and not for allergy reasons, it works best to combine the alternate grain/wheat with wheat flour to give a better texture and volume...as most would end up quite dense without the addition.

Also, for some reason I was adamant that internal body temperature was 32.4....I have no clue wtf I got it from but I was arguing with everyone at work that it wasn’t 37.5 (it all started because the final temp for the seigle Auvergne is 37.5)...I was positive that I had read it somewhere before and that maybe they had it different in France.

We had an order for about 180 brioches a la forme de miche today. So we cooked them in the deck oven at 175...it’s possible to cook viennoiserie in a deck oven provided you give the deck enough time to cool down sufficiently. You have to bake at a slightly lower temperature than you would in a convection, but also for a longer time as you don’t have the ambient heat circulating. Useful for mornings when your pastries are proved overnight and your doughs are only mixed and fermented that morning.

NOTE: with a viennoiserie recipe, when you increase water and lower eggs it will be lighter as the eggs provide extra protein which adds structure to the dough and water creates steam during baking which will obviously aerate the product and make it lighter.

Off Day

I woke up at 4 am even though I wasn’t working today. Stayed up until 8am and then slept again.

After being a lazy ass and eating some 'brekkies' [breakfast] and having a nice hot shower I tried to mission around to find an office to buy a train ticket for Lausanne, Switzerland so I can visit Emma for a weekend,

but just my luck I walked super far in the wrong direction after getting a wrong address from the internet and then saw that they were actually closed today and there was some error message so all the information wasn’t available either.

I then walked back to read and have a beer and on the way I saw that a circus/amusement park/carnival had been set up throughout the area, on the side of the road and in plazas. Fatiha told me it happens in lots of areas at different times for one month a year.

They have small rides and stuff like a hall of mirrors or small obstacle course, lots of claw games or games where you have to do stuff to win a prize. A pretty cool vibe and they don’t mess around with some of the prizes. I saw one thing where you had to shoot a string with an airsoft rifle but you could win beats by dre headphones or a ps3...5euros for 3 chances... hmmmm tempting.

Just read for a bit at the viewpoint and then came home and caught up on some writing.

OCD

Today was normal. Again we pushed really hard and with Alexandre pumping like a beast with mixing all the doughs and helping me shape things were done quickly. I don’t feel as fast as I used to be...I mean that before when I was working in the bakery in Cape Town  I knew all my stuff. Different weights, shapes and quantities, recipes and multiplications. I knew where everything was and what to do and how long to mix and when to do what...it’s a bit frustrating and sad that I can’t really bring my A game in terms of flow buy I just try my best and push as best I can.

One thing I noticed is that I’m a bit OCD with some things in that I want things a certain way and struggle to give myself some leeway and I think this slows me down a bit. It’s not necessarily a bad thing though.

Also, here, it seems that visual aesthetic is more important that volume with some baguettes as they usually come out looking a bit flatter or oval in my opinion due to the scores being longer and closer spaced together. It is a bit more finesse this way and the cell structure is still good but I think more of a balance is what I would choose. Obviously you need to supply the customer/market with what they want but you also need integrity and to stand by your beliefs and philosophies.

It’s a bit screwed up here with the labour laws...I was talking to Alexandre after work while we were washing some dishes and he told me that you can’t really pressure people to do stuff here and most young French people have the mentality that the boss is responsible to make sure the kitchen is cleaned and a lot have that don’t-give-a-f***-ness as Eric used to say.

I used to make people stay and clean stuff properly but it seems that in France, if people leave, even if they resign, the company has to pay some sort of unemployment thing...it’s really stupid. And the pot washer for instance doesn’t always clean properly and even though she signed the contract which was written in French and she does speak French (she is Arabic), if she were to get fired she could go to a tribunal and just say she didn’t understand the contract and she would get money from the bakery. Labour laws are supposed to protect the employee and the employer right? It just doesn’t seem right that unlike most kitchens where you have a strong team vibe and everyone helps to clean, in a bakery it’s almost always every man for himself and I see Alexandre or Mr Pozzoli cleaning dishes. Just out of respect I don’t want my chef to do stuff like that.

People just need to take pride in their work areas and a few minutes every day to arrange things nicely and keep it clean and then everyone can enjoy a nice clean and organised environment.

Working Out...

Starting today, this week I no longer divide the baguette dough in the morning, but divide and shape the biological bread which includes the pain aux 6 cereales, L’Authentic, T80, Epeautre, Campagne, pain complet, seigle Auvergne and pain au lin.

We do various shapes and sizes with the different doughs, ranging from “boules” or round loaves, to “miches” which are a longer, tapered oval shape, shorter than a baguette but much thicker. “Batards” or small ovals, and the large “flutes” as well. Some of the doughs are coated in either seeds or maybe oats or dried maize after shaping. For instance, the pain aux 6 cereales is coated in rolled oats which gives it a really nice almost peanut butter flavour when cooked.

Alexandre showed me some techniques to shape things really quickly and it really is insanely fast at a slight loss of regularity but that’s just because I’m not used to the method and the wetter dough as well. I think within the week I’ll have it down. When you see the movement of the shaping it makes sense in terms of flow and tightness/strength of the shape.

After shaping was done, I did the autolyse for the pate blanche (the base dough for all the baguettes we make)...200kg of dough is no laughing matter...

i lug 4x25kg bags of flour up from the cellar each morning and then have to take all the dough out of the mixer for the autolyse and put back for the final mixing.

Otherwise a pretty normal day. Finished really early so left work at like 10:30...did my weekly grocery shopping and then just chilled.

Tongue Tied

Crappy weather today. Stayed indoors and slept and vegged out. There is a Spanish girl named Natalia staying here who wants to teach Spanish in a French high school. She came yesterday with her friend Macarena (yep, like the song) who is an au pair for a French family in Croix Rousse.

It’s pretty strange that with most foreigners here the only way I can communicate is in French as they have their native language and French and sometimes a little English. So I speak French with Spanish people...yeah never would have guessed that.

Oktoberfest

Today was good...pushed hard and knocked everything out nicely. Alexandre showed me a cool way to do a form like a flower (I forget the name now), but you take a flute and cut off a piece from the front. Then you divide the remaining length into 7 equal pieces and cut them at an angle and arrange like a flower and then the ass piece and the first piece you ball and place in the middle. You can even decorate with poppy seeds by dipping a small end of a rolling pin into olive oil and then the seeds and then the bread. This kind of bread is great for sharing and you can also make a multi levelled piece by using a flute, baguette and fiscelle for descending sizes.

Alexandre also shaped a baguette into a very distinct shape...you can figure out what it is.

After work I planned to go to an Oktoberfest party but no one responded to my invites and I was tired so I just slept.