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