French Girls

Phew what a stressful day...

Alexandre and I came in at 1am today as we had a big order to get through and wanted to get a head start on the stuff because Benjamin and William wouldn’t be able to help that much. We were pretty productive...although Benjamin wasn’t on form at all today. He was on mixing the doughs but took incredibly long and some of them weren’t made properly (like forgetting to add gluten to the Sarasin)... Alexandre was kicking his ass hard. I think he ended up making Benjamin cry.

I tried to tell him to refocus and concentrate but I don’t know if maybe there was something else on his mind maybe.

With the pain viennoise it took him so long to divide and shape everything that by the time he was done with everything, the dough was ready to be baked. So he took like over an hour for that...and him giving Alexandre more stress doesn’t help anyone. The big order for 350 dejeunettes tool a while to divide, shape and bake so I was overseeing Benjamin and William and helping with baking while doing most of the shaping.

Ah shit and I forgot my Monster at home... L was bleak about that. We gave the whole place a really nice clean today as well.

Oh and we started burning some of the wooden crates in the wood fired oven...it’s quite interesting how it works. Instead of having a hearth that is heated up from underneath, there is a small chamber where you make a fire using small branches (they use 400kg a day like this) as you want a flame and not just heat. The flames go out from a chute inside the oven which you can direct. Basically it’s heated up by the flames which can shoot out up to about 2m which reaches all the way into the back of the oven which is about 2m deep.

After work Benjamin, William and I went for a beer across the road to talk crap and look at French girls J

nice to socialise a bit and talk with people who get the industry. Also, William mentioned that he’s organised for me and him to go to the gastronomic restaurant of the MOF chef who is a family friend of his. Apparently the chef has invited us, so it’s on him...if not I won’t be able to afford it ha-ha....but should be pretty sick. The guy is 72 and still working, or at least overseeing his restaurants...old school French style.

An Australian girl is staying at Fatihas place for a few days so was cool to speak to her and her sister who are both from Melbourne.