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.

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.