It’s raining snow!

Standard day today, except for the part where Izam made an 80kg poolish O_o  ha-ha is have no idea what he did with the autolyse but there was a layer of flour on the inside of the mixer that just did not get hydrated. Alexandre eventually had to add an additional 7 kg of flour... my guess is Izam probably added 10 litres too much water. Benjamin was ok in that he wasn’t too slow or didn’t make any mistakes.

I helped Alexandre bake some biscuits in the afternoon. A really practical system where you lightly brush a sheet of silicone paper with water then place an inverted cutter mould sheet on top (so sharp edge is facing up) then sheet your biscuit dough and then place over the sheet mould, covered by a silpat  mat and then use a rolling pin to “cut” out the biscuits by rolling over the dough. As Alexandre likes to say “it’s a factory” J

I was feeling pretty tired after work so went down to the cellar and just lay on the flour for like 10 min and played with the cats. I’m going to miss them when I leave...

It’s snowing!!!! I almost couldn’t believe it this morning when is saw the soft white flakes dancing down into the street. So after a nice hot shower and layering up as best I could I ventured out. Bloody hell it was flippen cold. The ground was also slippery as hell. Had to watch my step. Snow is a lot more mystical and romantic when your face isn’t freezing and you aren’t covered in tiny pieces of slowly melting ice.

The houses and trees looked sick with that fluffy white layer on them though. And is walked past a mom playing with her little kid in the snow, making snowballs and throwing them at each other.

Walked around a bit and took some pics, then popped into L’Atelier des Boulangers and bought a tarte tout chocolate, pain au cacao and a mini sandwich with jambon cru and ricotta. The pain au cacao was really cool...a chocolate bread with chocolate chips.  A slice of that toasted for breakfast with bananas and syrup would be sick. Or even a nice orange and ginger marmalade or something like that.

Gonna be brewing some ginger beer tomorrow...representing baby! Really looking forward to sunny South Africa now though...more baking, dnb [drum ‘n bass ] and krav maga await!!

Too cold for comfort

This morning I never really felt fully awake. Alexandre was working at next level speed which left me spinning a bit as I tried to keep up...

Speedy Gonzalez

some of the speed shaping techniques are difficult for me as I still have my old habit/technique that I use just by instinct.

As Alexandre was spending most of the late morning baking things for Pauline’s birthday, I was at the oven baking trolley after trolley of baguettes and could only help Yann clean in-between loading decks of bread. I’ve got a much better feel for all the breads now, how deep to score, space and length of scores etc.

San Francisco Bay Area

After work I met up with an American couple who are from San Francisco, near the bay area and we went for a drink close to the bakery. Claire writes a food blog and we actually follow each other on twitter so that’s how we came to meet. Her husband is going to a conference in Dublin so they decided to spend some time in Lyon on their way over there. A very interesting couple and we had a good time talking about the differences between South Africa and San Francisco in terms of food trends and what people are looking for in the market currently.

There was a student tour of Lyon from about 1pm, but by the time I was finished with my drink it was past 1 and I was almost falling asleep so I headed home and had a glass of wine with Fatiha and her friend Alex and then crashed until 10pm....I was so out of it.

When I woke up I realised that there was a dnb (drum 'n bass) party happening so I got dressed, had a beer and then realised how cold it was and that I would have to walk 30min one way to get there and literally stood in front of the door and said to myself “screw this”, had a nice hot shower, got into my jammies and made some dinner and then layered up and got under my duvet....bizarre but true. I passed up dnb to be warm...it was like 5 degrees outside and I  am definitely not used to that kind of cold.

Don't be a wuss; it's not THAT cold !