C'est la vie

Today I just chilled in as per usual and the technician/repairman for the washing machine finally came. Along with the piece and the callout fee, the total was just under 100 euros...still better than 300. But get this, the guy knew he was coming to fix a door, but all he did was open the washing machine and then didn’t even have a piece (gonna explain now) and said that he would only be able to come back next week Monday or Tuesday morning.

I said to him that I’m here every day after 1pm which is pretty early but he can’t make it for whatever reason.... so in France, you have to wait a week just to get a part even though I just paid the guy to effectively pry open the door only. Since I can’t do Monday or Tuesday morning and only midday or afternoon, he’s coming back next wed afternoon. What the f&#!.

I spoke to Fatiha about it and it makes no sense to me that a repairman or whatever can’t come back in one or two days to fix it. In SA it wouldn’t take that long and I don’t think our guys are that organised either. Some things they do here just piss me off....so I just ended up washing the rest of my clothes in the bath, by hand...honestly, what a sac de merde.

A girl from Macao is staying over today; her name is Lavinia which is actually Latin. She told me she is going to travel to Czech Republic and Poland to see the concentration camps... that’s not a conversation you have everyday...

We can DO IT

Today was a very productive day, Alexandre and I just pumped stuff out. I really feel like I’m more efficient and therefore faster now and I can still improve. Alexandre also has the same view about setting up and work flow, gets everything ready that you might need and then you work like a factory, with a system and just pump stuff out. My back also hasn’t been hurting as much so I think my body is getting used to the height as well.

I got to mix the ciabatta, pain viennoise and the kamut. All which were mixed a lot as is usual for the French methods. Yan was “un sac de merde” again today...he keeps telling me to clean or what to do but he’s also new and I just do it for now but soon I’m going to tell him to “mange un bite”. He’s just slow and forgets stuff and you can tell from his body language that he won’t last long.

Today I got to score and bake some baguettes. On about 65% of them my scoring/ “laminé” was ok, but on the rest it wasn’t very good and I was pissed off at myself. I am used to scoring more around the loaf and not down the length of it, with a larger angle between the start and end of my cut. Here, the scores are more done with withe end and tip being maybe 1.5cm apart, but all cuts straight down the middle. Also using the very edge of the lame as if you score too deep it opens up more aggressively.

French people like the baguettes to have a nice thin crispy crust and a soft interior, so the baking time is not too long and unlike larger loaves where you open a vent for steam to escape (well, quite a lot), here you just leave it in the oven like normal until it’s time to take out but you don’t “dry out” the baguettes as they become too hard then. Every day I will score and bake the last 120 baguettes that we do as practice.

After baguettes I watched Alexandre as he laminated the butter into the croissant doughs. They have a different what I’m used to but it actually incorporates the butter a lot more effectively with less intensive folds and also, after folding the dough and before starting with the next fold, the side where the dough folds over is cut so there is less tension in the dough when you roll it out again. Makes complete sense but I never thought about it.

While Alexandre and I were shaping the croissants and the pain au chocolat for the next day, we were discussing different traditional customs and holidays and recipes. We discussed work philosophies and difficulties of staying in the industry and how your life is changed and that the work isn’t just a job any more, it’s a lifestyle that not everyone understands. I dig these long mass prep sessions as they’re a great time to really get to know someone.

Alexandre told me of a trick his father told him about when deciding whether or not to employ someone. While talking about this Alexandre knocked a brush onto the floor which I just picked up and put back as a reaction. That was the test...his father would purposefully drop something to see whether or not a person would react and pick it up or just leave it there. If you think about it carefully this is a brilliant way to weed out the people who are just clocking in and who won’t put in effort.

After work I played with the cats again...vie decided on bonnie for the female, but I felt that Clyde just wouldn’t suit the males personality so I have to think about it some more. They really are so adorable and the male with force his head under my hand when he sees me.

Just another day at the office

Today was pretty standard; it was me, Alexandre and Yan (same pronunciation as Jan). I preshaped the baguettes while Alexandre used the “diviseuse” (divider) and Yan did the pain bio. I’m getting the hang of the shaping but it’s also very dependent on how much or how you flour the dough and surface as like I said before it’s a very soft dough and coupled with being cold (wet) makes it difficult to handle.

I’m definitely speeding up though. Standard stuff charentais, flutes, dejeunettes [170g] (tradition, campagne and multi cereals...roll for sandwiches), fiscelles [150g] (means string in French...Alexandre told me to just think of a g string...; p). I helped shape the kamut and spelt. And also the pain de seigle Auvergne (rye bread, speciality from Auvergne which is the region in France where Mr Pozzoli is from, it has a rye leavain and is mixed on the day and then put in the prover so the dough is warm and then to shape it, you flour the dough in the bowl, flour your hands, all with T85 rye flour, and then form a point with your hands and scoop a piece out, correct the weight and then gently form in a round shape and put seam side down in a pailles. It’s not formed a lot so you have a dense texture and the top cracks nicely...will take a pic soon)

I helped Yan with the pain viennoise and then shaped the baguettes with the machine. I’m also more efficient with that as well, but the height of the table kills my back because to place the last baguettes on the couche I have to stretch far.

I got to score some baguettes and load them in the oven this afternoon which was cool but it was frustrating for me because I’m used to a certain angle of scoring as well as using more of my wrist and here they cut at a much straighter, oblique angle down the middle as it doesn’t affect the regularity of the form during baking (scoring – laminé) on my second batch I improved but it’s about 70% of how it should be. Like most of the different things here, it’s just a habit that I need to get used to.

After the baking they have a special vacuum to clean out the oven, not using a big brush, and it’s long and has a thick PVC sleeve so you can hold it. Only think is the pipe is metal and gets flippen hot...

But generally there isn’t much flour in the oven as they don’t need to use much flour during proving or loading the breads as they have the couches and tapis respectively.

Chef made pate feulleteille which is like puff pastry but it normally has sugar in it and when they make a “savoury (salé)” pate it’s the same but just less sugar. Like most French pastries, it’s mixed for a long time at a lower speed. They made cheese straw type snacks with this, one flavour with seeds and one with spices and cheese. The other day chef made a pastry with fennel (fenouil) seeds that was shaped into rings and baked and meant to be had with an apéro which was pretty cool.

After work I went into the cellar to play with the cat...I still don’t know what to call him. But when he sees me now he meows and tries to attack my shoes and rub himself on me. He loves playing and ends up biting and scratching my arm but when I stop he forces his head under my arm or hand.

Deep Clean

This morning on my way to work there were so many people around...it’s still busy with people just hanging around outside because the weather is so nice and it’s so safe and relatively quiet. I bought a monster from a lil' cafe and the owner was Turkish but spoke to me in German so had a nice short convo with him.

It was just me, Alex and Alexandre...Alexandre and I did the preshaping of the baguettes, charontais and flutes and apres nous avons commence avec le cuisson de le pain “precuits”,charontais et pain aromatiques pour le magasin. While we were busy, Alex started mixing the kamut and spelt breads (kamut et epautre) and ciabatta dough for the pain feulle (bread shaped like a leaf, olive flavour and a dried tomato flavour”.

While Alex did the baguettes, I did the flutes and charontais and then did all the pain vienoisse (fiscelle, chocolat et orange and au chocolat. I then did the pain au chocolat blanc et pain au chocolat noir. (The pate blanche is used as the base). Afterwards I shaped the kamut and spelt.

Alex and I delivered some baguettes and croissants to a restaurant 100m away and then continued with the production. We really pushed hard today and nailed it. We were done around 9am with all the “facconage” (shaping) and on Saturday there is no afternoon baking, just the morning.

It seems also the habit that here in France after people have gone out and want something to eat they just go to a bakery to get a croissant or pain au chocolat or sometimes there are small pizzas ready.

They don’t really make pies like we know in SA as that’s more of a British thing and Alexandre told me that it’s not really a good seller.

Because we finish earlier on Saturday we did a deep clean, cleaning all the equipment nicely, tables, pailles [pron. Pie-jas] (baskets). I cleaned out the other chambres de fermentations and les echelles (proving rooms and trolleys). I don’t think some of the trolleys had been cleaned in 2 years as they were manky...black from the flour and mould. Had to take my jacket off for that as it got messy... Alexandre and I then tried to wash the grills in the sink but they are 20 years old and we only got them *so* clean.

Afterwards I went to the cellar to play with the 2 cats. They’re brother and sister but I don’t think they have names yet. I’m trying to think of some baking related names though....I was just playing with le chat (male) and he was very playful, chasing some paper and play fighting and biting me, la chatte (female) just watched and then after a while wanted to join in. I spent some time just playing with them and stroking them as everything was done and clean for the week and my uniform was dirty anyway.

I went home and slept for a while before getting up and eating just before I headed out to meet Marie in gare de vaise for a joint birthday party of Marion and Chris.

The gare de vaise area has a nice suburban feel to it and Chris stays in a really cool, old big house. There was about 20 people in total and I actually managed to speak to most of them in French, even talking about dubstep and trap music with Robin (guy)... but speaking French hurts my throat after a while as I’m used to the guttural sounds of German and when I try to pronounce some French words it doesn’t come out as smooth as it should.

 They had some cool snacks at the party, pate en croute, quiche Lorraine (Marion made this), saucisson avec cornichons, chevre... and plenty of the peanut flavoured chips (its the French equivalent of plain salted flavour but it just tastes like salty peanut butter chips to me.

I crashed there in the evening, everyone did, but I ended up sleeping under a table as people kept knocking my mattress when they opened the door and it was flippen hard, with some wooden beams in it. I suspect it was a base or something. Chris had a nice old ginger cat, complete with the “I don’t give a f***” attitude that old cats have. He let me scratch his head but when I tried to play with him he kept trying to bite me:p

Marie, robin and I left in the morning and took the metro back, robin to vieux Lyon (he stays near the cathedral), Marie to hotel de ville and me to Croix Rousse. On the way home I saw a band of students playing some music in the town square and it was really cool and lively, all brass instruments and a drummer. It was cute to see all the little kids dancing to the music.

When I got home I was exhausted so I just cleaned and ate and chilled at home.

NOTE: a type of viennoiserie, pain viennoise, rolled into a disc, with some crème, knob of butter and sprinkled with sugar

Pate feulleteille – puff pastry

Laundry

Today was normal, divided the baguettes with Alexandre and then prepared some stuff to be baked for viennoisserie. They prepare most viennoisserie a few days before like the croissants, quiches, chaussons and tarts (the croissants are done the day before) but it’s all frozen when its prepped and then they bake it just from frozen. For the quiches and chaussons they cook them for 45min at 160C and this way the pastry is cooked and isn’t soggy. It’s interesting because I’ve never seen things done that way before but it saves a lot of time, only thing is you need freezer and fridge space for all the shelves of your prepped stuff.

I then shaped the baguettes in the machine and afterwards I shaped the flutes. I used one of the manually operated dividers to divide the various pain aromatiques and after preshaping most into boules we did the final shaping. Each has a different shape or score and there are some cool cutters to make a visual difference. I can’t remember what all the different flavours were as there were about 10 or so and some were similar. These all get precooked and frozen once cool and 2 of each are baked in the morning for the “magasin” (shop).

I didn’t sleep very well last night so I was a bit mentally slow or “tête dans le cul” (head in the ass)...I’ve started from today though to sleep for a bit when I get home after work as its difficult to go to sleep until after 10 as at 7 or 8 its still light and quite hot.

We finished early with the bread so we prepped for the next day, I made the kamut, spelt and rye poolish...the normal T65 flour costs around 80Eurocents/kg, the cheaper flour for working with 45c/kg, the farine biologique (organic, no pesticides, additives, chemicals etc.) around 1.15/kg but kamut comes in at a whopping 3.45 Euros/kg (R45/kg...eureka flour works out to about R8/kg)

I cleaned out les chambres de fermentation and after that Alexandre and I took out the glass windows from the oven to clean. Mr Pozzoli was in the wash-up (la plonge) cleaning the sink and cleaned the windows himself. He’s definitely the kind of person that I can respect and look up to. Leading by example, doing prep and production as well as cleaning. Many people get egos when they rise and think some things are beneath them, but I’m a firm believer in a little humility going a long way. Reminds me of working with George Jardine. If he had to ask me to clean anything now I wouldn’t say no. If the chef is doing it, why wouldn’t you?

After putting the windows back in I got to have a bottle of that beautiful Badoit water with the fine carbonation...that stuff is like the champagne of water for me. It’s not aggressive and harsh on your palate but almost smooth.

There were some burgers left over as well as mille feuilles (lit means thousand leaves, stemming from the puff pastry usage) with crème pat mmmmm and a tarte chocolat...sadly I have a limited capacity for sweet things but they were good.

After work I missioned home and passed out. I found out that to fix just the little door on the washing machine, along with the call out fee and tax (in France, all the taxes are crazy high) will come to around 100Euros...fml. Oh well, c’est la vie.  Merde survenir.

Cat & Mouse…

Today I got up at 1 as normal...walked down. It was nice and warm too... there was another guy there today who was doing a trial, I think his name was jean or something like that. So we had 4 guys working on the bread and viennoiserie so we nailed it today.

I worked on the divider first. It cuts the dough that you put into it into 20 pieces so when the dough is put into the containers, it’s weighed off to a specific amount so when you place the dough in, it’s all even after its divided and at your desired weight (approximately). The other guy did the preshaping.

It was quite hot today so the dough was stickier than usual and we had to push a bit. Afterwards I worked with the baguette rolling machine. You set the thickness of the space between the rollers like you would for a dough sheeter and then you just pop the piece of preshaped dough in and it goes through a series of rollers and comes out in about 10-12 seconds. I know when I times myself it took me about 20 secs at my best to shape a baguette so it’s definitely faster if you’re doing a large volume of baguettes. After they come out we just have to light roll it out a bit more before we place it on the couche. All the baguettes have to be the same lengths as when it’s displayed you want regularity, not the odd loaf sticking up here and there.

I then did the pain viennoise, shaping the natures into fiselles ( a long stick) and the chocolate baton ones into navette ( a tapered cigar shape, which is scored in a crisscross pattern called “polka”, and also shaping 10 pieces into little balls and placing them in a long tin for pain de mie.

The guys sometimes forget that I don’t speak French that well and they just talk super-fast and imp like “lentement...encore”. Especially with numbers because I have to translate it first...after 60, they say 70 as 60(+) 10, 80 as 4(x) 20 and 90 as 4(x) 20 10 soixante-diex, quatre vingt, quatre vingt diex respectively...so for example, 95 is said as quatre vingt diex cinq (four twenty ten five).

They prebake a batch of “pain aromatique” small breads once every 7-10 days and then freeze them and finish baking batches for each day as it’s only about 2 small breads of each flavour. Some flavours are fig and honey, chorizo and walnut, Comte and hazelnut, bacon lardons and blue cheese (a generic blue vein), mixed fruits and nuts, olive. I really like the combinations of nuts with meat or cheese...the flavour of comet is really similar to toasted hazelnuts and so complimentary.

All their extra walnuts and hazelnuts (in French, walnuts are “noix” and hazelnuts are “noixette) they keep in the freezer and they can last for a year like that. When I went down to the cellar (cave [kav] in French) the 2 cats were there and after initially running away with the usual cat look of wtf who is this person I called them and they came to me and I petted them a bit and I could see they don’t get a lot of attention so I will try to play with them a little every day...they’re also both very young, but really good at chasing mice. In the morning they’re darting around our legs and behind the flour chasing the tiny mice...it must be a cats dream J

We get to eat any leftover viennoiserie from the previous day so I nailed a pain viennoise with sugar and emmental...weird but it works.

Alexandre was making pannetone in the morning and he told me they mix the dough for 1 hour at a temp of 24-26 degrees (most recipes call for a temp of 24 ideally as this is for the flavour development). Mr Pozzoli adds citrus peel and pralines to his pannetone. In Lyon there are 2 kinds of praline, the praline concasse which is pinker and used in roulades or brioche and then praline rouge which is a deeper red colour and it used for decoration and tarte praline.

Later in the day I was watching Mr Pozzoli line a tart base and he makes it look so easy...I chatted with him a bit, in French, and actually did pretty well. I found out that he had competed in the coupe du monde de boulangerie (world cup of baking) for 8 years and actually came second!(I don’t know when or how many times)... that’s next level shit..

He’s also one of the organisers or members of an organisation that holds an international baking competition. This year it will be in St Etienne and he said I can go with to watch when it happens....I’m so friggen stoked for that!! He also gave me a book compiled by members of the organisation last year with recipes that they selected. SCORE!!!

Today was good...nice pace, I felt productive and learnt a crap load about baking and French. Whenever I have a question about baking, Mr Pozzoli or Alexandre can give me an answer so there’s never a brick wall. I just sometimes throw in a German word when I'm speaking French without even noticing...

Not much happening today…

I was off today so I slept in late and then went out around 9:30 to L’Atelier de Boulangerie to get something for breakfast. I bought a pizza jambon champignon (ham and mushroom) and 2 petit gateaux, une nutella et une chocolat caramel. They are just the perfect size to have a taste of the cake but not fill you up or put you in a sugar coma. The nutella one had a hazelnut in it and the chocolat caramel had a swirl of caramel in it. (Yeah I’m definitely coming back with a few extra kilos...)

I ate that, had some tonic and the passed out for another 4 hours....I only ended up going out around 4:30pm to meet up with Marion at the pente de vue in Croix Rousse for a beer and we just chatted for an hour or so as she and Chris were at a party on the weekend that I didn’t go to so I wanted all the details J

I came home and then chatted to Marie for quite a long time...until just before 8pm when she left to move to her new, long term place as her studies will keep her in Lyon for 1 year at least.

Got into bed around 9 but only ended up falling asleep after 10 as I wasn’t that tired and there was a lot of activity in the street.

Rough day at the office

Today was my second day at Maisson Pozzoli and I started at 2am, along with Alex and Alexandre. I got to work 30min early so I just sat outside and waited in front of the door. The city is really peaceful but even in the middle of the night it’s not as dark as it is in SA, that’s not including the street lights, the sky itself is really light.

Alex arrived first and we went in, he switched on the oven and the lights and we were greeted by the 2 cats that always seem to be in a playful mood. After we got changed, Alex and I had some leftover viennoise from the previous day for breakys. I just had a roulade with crème pat and pralines and Alex had a pain viennoise au chocolat and a bowl of milk that was almost 1 litre worth...when I asked him about that he said his father is a farmer, specifically cows so that’s what he has for breakfast. I love milk but that’s overkill J

We started by taking out all the dough out the chambre de fermentation and I started dividing that and preshaping it (mise en forme) to be rolled into baguettes. They don’t preshape it into balls because it ends up manipulating the gluten more so it’s more difficult to shape afterwards. Alexandre had come in by this time and was preshaping with me while Alex continued with shaping the brioche into the tresse, boules and navettes.

Alex showed me how to preshape using 2 hands which is not as easy as it sounds. I’m used to doing preshaping of small balls with my hands, but with a piece of dough around 300g it’s not as easy since I have to concentrate more on applying equal force in my left hand and also I have small hands so it’s difficult to keep it all in my hand (I guess it’s true when they say that anything more than a handful is a waste ha-ha). I kinda have it now but I can’t do it as fast as Alex and Alexandre... it’s difficult working with a wetter, softer dough as I seem to need more flour than the others but I guess it’s just practise as I know that with some doughs I have no problem using minimal flour, it just depends if you’re used to the dough or not.

Once the pieces of dough are preshaped they get put into a machine which has these sleeves which are on a sort of conveyor belt so as you fill up a sleeve you rotate them like a rotisserie almost and put the next set in the following sleeve. My back also started to get sore as I’m not used to the height of tables. Anyone who’s worked in a kitchen will know what I’m talking about. You get used to a height on a section and if you move to another where it’s not the same height you feel it. Will probably take a week to get used to it.

I preshaped the charontais which are the big loaves weighing about 1kg and about 70cm long. The flutes and the sandwich baguettes. I was so tired from the previous day that today just seemed really long and the shop also wasn’t as busy because Alexandre told me it was the first day of school so most parents would be with the kids and it only might be busier later that day.

old water pump

cave cellar

charontais

cochonnes avant cuisson

cochon_fin

pain veinnoise au chocolat et orange

pain viennoise au chocolat, coupe polka

I shaped the kamut and epautre (spelt) and also did the ciabatta... the ciabatta they make here has oil in it but like almost all of the doughs here, they mix for longer, about 10-15min.

After we were done with the bread we helped making the “cochon” which are little pigs made out of a Swiss meringue (a normal meringue is just egg whites and sugar, a Swiss meringue is when the mix is whipped over a flame so that its between 60-80 degrees and an Italian is when a sugar syrup at 117 degrees is added in while the whites are being whipped. It has a texture like a liquid marshmallow at this point. Some red food colouring powder is added as a liquid would make the mix sink down. It’s then piped and the ears are added with a flat tip and some white meringue is used for the eyes and a mix of egg whites and cacao powder is used for the nose and pupils. Its then cooked at 100 degrees and left overnight in the oven.

After work I walked home and then chatted with Marie for a while. She stayed last night and tonight at Fatihas place. She’s a business student from Sweden and we chatted for quite a while about differences in Europe and SA and funnily enough about gender equality, racism and tolerance...

Working the strange hours at the bakery means when I go home it’s at the height of the day but I’m so knackered I just eat and then pass the f*** out. 

First day at Maison Pozzoli

Today was my first day at Maison Pozzoli. I woke up 1:50am and then had a nice 25min walk down to the bakery, there were hardly any people around but it was still pretty light and safe, not once since I’ve been here have I felt unsafe though.

I got started on shaping the brioche first, making brioche loaves with 8 pieces, like mosbolletjies, une tresse aux pralines which was first shaped into a loaf, then cut in half and then braided so the cut side is up when it bakes giving it a very cool visual appeal. I also made brioche a tete, which is the brioche with the little piece on top.

I then helped shape some of the baguette de tradition. The dough is made the day before and then put in the chambre de fermentation overnight. The dough is very wet and soft, with most bread having a hydration ration of about 65% which is high. The dough is difficult to preshape but I got the hang of it and I think in about a week I should have it down....its first preshaped into an oval then put onto these sleeves on a rotisserie like machine that rotates the dough, basically facilitating having all your dough preshaped on a board. After they are preshaped they are put through a machine that shapes them into baguettes...remember they do about 450 baguettes, just counting the pain de tradition...the dough is around 90kg...

While Alex was doing that (there are 2 Alexandre’s, but I’ll refer to the young one as Alex and Alex Pozzoli as Alexandre) Alexandre showed me how to shape “charonte” which is about a 60cm long piece of tradition dough shaped into a long ciabatta shape. I did flutes as well, which are kinda like short, fat baguettes no more than 55cm long...

I shaped some pain viennoise into burger buns, navettes and long “navettes”, and some pain viennoise had choc chips and orange peel.

We also did some sort of bread dough with white chocolate inside... I saw they made “pain sandwich” which is a name for the shape which is about a 15x6cm long flat bread, in a turmeric, paprika and cuttlefish ink flavours (cuttlefish ink bread was black...so cool).

The flour in kept in a cellar (cave a francaise) and only comes in 25kg or 50kg bags. In a month the bakery goes through 3 TONNES of flour....that’s THREE TONNES. F*** me...

They also have 2 cats that live in the bakery to literally catch mice...I saw one when I was changing in the morning and one during the day. The cats kinda just hang around and are curious but I guess they are really good as Alexandre told me they used to have hundreds of mice.

Like most of Lyon, especially central Lyon, it’s really old. And the building is no exception.

Mr Pozzoli did the lamenation of the croissant dough when he came in and then he and Alexandre started rolling the croissants and pain au chocolat and Alex and I helped as well. We also made a roulade with crème patissiere and praline...

I will add more tomorrow as am sure I’ve forgotten some as well.

I finished at 12pm and then had to head to OFII (office France de l’Immigration et L’Intergration, basically foreign affairs) in Perrache but I got there early so I had to wait for about 1 hour and then after the medical exam and when I was being processed I realised I had forgotten a page and I also needed to make copies of something so I had to go back to Croix, walking the last bit as I wanted to see if the internet cafe was open, which it wasn’t so I managed to find a stationary shop where I got it done and then headed back and made it with 1 hour before OFII closed. Afterwards I took the tram to the metro but then something happened and the tram and metro wasn’t working or running but they took so long to inform people, most of us were waiting as the tram sign said it was still coming.

I ended up having to walk from Perrache all the way to Croix Rousse as the whole A line was f***ed and because of the delays my ticket wasn’t valid anymore (the basic tickets are valid for 1 hour and can be used as many times as you like in that one hour). Not cool...am exhausted. And the tonic I bought which was the Carrefour brand, is half the price of Schweppes but I found out it as acesulfamine-K, one of my most hated additives along with aspartame...they both leave a shitty artificial aftertaste so now I can’t even enjoy my G&T for a while...when it rains, it snows. Eh Cape Town?

Meeting Fam Pozzoli

Today I met with chef Berthemier at Maison Pozzoli and was introduced to Monsieur and Madame Pozzoli as well as their son, Alexander. Chef Berthemier and Monsieur Pozzoli are really good friends, both of them being MOF Boulangers as well. I got shown around the boulangerie and saw loads of machines that I’ve never even seen before, like machines that shape baguettes once the dough is divided as in terms of quantity alone, they produce 450 (quatre san cinquante) pain de tradition baguettes. They also produce a wide variety of small breads (I saw a fig and honey one) and various other loaves.

There is a separate section in the back where the patisserie is produced and there are also loads of proving boxes (chambre de fermentation) where the doughs are fermented overnight. They also have a machine that produces the levain that is used in almost all of their breads. It has a capacity for 45kg of levain....45kg. Each day they add more flour and water and the machine mixes it and regulates the temperature and humidity. I tasted some of the levain and it had a really smooth acidic flavour and a slightly sweet undertone.

The shop is in a really old building; it has these huge stone blocks in the wall and just feels old. There is even a wood fired oven but unfortunately they don’t use it as I think people complained about the smoke. They have a 5 deck oven for the breads and I watched Mr Pozzoli for a while as he loaded and scored the baguettes. That guy is insanely fast. He comes from a family of 4 generations of chefs with himself and Alexander being 2 generations of bakers.

I start at 3am on Monday, so I will need to wake up before 2am as there is no public transport that runs at that time...back to the good old days.