Of Harleys, Champagne & Banana Bread Beer…

Was raining this morning as I headed out. So that already puts a damper on your day (see what i did there?). And when I walked into the bakery, Alexandre had already done all the biological breads, boules and miches and charentais...he started at 1am. And he is a beast. Shit, so hopped on the dividing of the blanche... see, I don’t hit the ground running. Usually I have to make sure I have everything sorted out and know what I’m going to do then I go for it. Which is basically what Alexandre does. Back in the day, when I had all my recipes in my head and knew where everything was I didn’t have to think about things. Shit like this frustrates me but also gets me really amped to get back into being in charge of my own baking space and just dominating it.

Ah also, Gazuese peed in one of the containers...J

I had forgotten what cat piss smells like! I think he was just asserting his male dominance or something but the scarey cat (he literally is one) disappeared for the whole day. We only found him at the end of the day when everyone was worried about him...he was in the roof the whole day, probably sleeping. He’s still ridiculously cute though

Today we heated up the wood fired oven again. The flames were so intense I was able to see all the way to the back...it is insanely deep. Basically once you have it heated up, you start loading your bigger breads at the back and start working to the smaller shapes (>boules, miches, baguettes, petit miches etc...) so everything cooks more or less the same. The only restriction is that there is only a small door to load so you can’t load a lot at a time which makes baking the same amount of breads impossible pretty much. Alexandre said you can pretty much only bake the biological in there. And then he asked me “so if we use this oven in December will you stay?” Swak [weak]...he knows I’d want to see and work with that but I can’t.

It was Williams last day with us so he brought a bottle of Louis Perrier champagne Harley Davidson...he showed me a picture of it. I think the model is a Fatboy. And he has the leather jacket and apparently some tattoo sleeves as well. That made me laugh...I can’t really imagine chef on a Harley.

I'll be baaaack!!!

He also showed me some old mixers from the 1800s and some old bakery posters from the 1920’s...really cool to see what they looked like... back in the day the bakers would just work in pants as it used to be so hot in the bakeries.

which we had with some pizza and quiche at the end of the day. And then were just chatting. I found out that Mr Pozzoli has a

After work I went home and chilled. But not before making a boss dish of steak mince, cooked in pork rillettes, because I didn’t have any oil, red wine, and arrabiata sauce. Topped with pasta and a Roquefort and mace béchamel and cheddar. BOOM!! Not bad for student budget and limited work space ;)

Dossed [ hit the sack / slept ] for a bit then woke up just after 7pm and headed down to meet Alex and William at King Arthur pub which is just down the road from the bakery. It was actually pretty small compared to pubs back home. They had a nice selection of beers, quite a few of them home brewed, but we had the banana bread beer J

as it was just so different. Normally I don’t really like banana flavoured things but it was really good. We grabbed a table and watched NZ give it to France hard in some test rugby. They have nothing on Bok [Springbok Rugby Team / South Africa] supporters though: p second round I had a blonde beer. And we ordered some pies!! YAY finally! At like 5euros each papa... we got a chicken and mushroom, a steak and ale and a pork sausage roll. They served them all together on a slate which I thought was a really cool idea. They all tasted really good. Not like the usually Pieman's [local South African pies bought at filling stations] or Mamas pies [cheap supermarket pies] back home. But I’m not hating, the cheeseburger pie is my best friend at 4am

So after the game we decided to head home and I bought some frites and frikkadels

(in this case they were Belgian sausages, flavoured with mace which was really tasty). The frites were beautiful...crisp exterior, soft moist interior and beautifully seasoned.

While walking back to the parking, William bumped into a friend so he and I ended up walking back to where the pub was and went up to a friend’s apartment and chatted there for a while before they all decided to go out but then I headed home as I was already nodding off.

Espionage

Today was normal, didn’t do anything new, but I definitely am getting faster and more efficient at things though. I got to taste a tarte abricot which is pate feulleteille with crème patissiere and tinned apricots which is baked so the edges of the apricots start to caramelise and almost burn which gives them a nice chewy spun sugar taste to contrast the slight tartness of the apricots. I also tried the tarte chocolat which is self-explanatory and a madeleine made with pistachio paste which gave the final product an almost floral aroma and flavour.

I went down the road to do some espionage at another bakery and bought a baguette de tradition, baguette de campagne and a croissant. Both breads had very little flavour and the “aveleoration” or cell structure was very dense with very few large bubbles. You could also see where the seam was from the shaping as a thin line of unhydrated flour was visible which is also partly because the dough doesn’t have a high enough hydration, so during the secondary fermentation it can’t absorb water because the dough is too dry and therefore hard. Croissant was standard frozen, bodiless shit. I’m really glad I work with people who don’t make the most money even though they make a fantastic product but who really care and pride themselves and what they do. That’s the kind of person I hope I am in the future and can pass it on to the next generation. It’s all about the love.

After work I brought a “baguette de gones” home (“gones” is a term only used in Lyon when referring to kids) as well as a miche de multicereals biologique which has a coating of oats which gives it an almost peanut butter like taste which is really unique.

Carlotte, a German girl is staying for the week and Fatiha, Carlotta and I all had some bread with beautiful pork rillettes and fromage a tartiner and some wine from Tuscany...so simple and so good. After about 2 glasses of wine I was feeling sleepy and actually passed out, sleeping from 3pm until 1am the next morning, when I had to get ready for work and Fatiha was only going to bed then.