Food & Sex

Standard morning stuff...start off with a lil' coffee with some cream coz doc told me I’m 100% healthy and cholesterol and all that jazz is cool so no reason not to. That with a pain viennoise with white chocolat and the day can only get better...

 I helped Alexandre arrange the loaves on the shelves this morning and he explained that all the loaves with a corner pattern on it, like a square or diamond, always arrange it point up, all of them. You have to think about it like a picture. Also, in France, any bread made with biological flour has to be kept on a separate shelf, above other bread as obviously if flour falls onto the bio bread and isn’t bio, you can’t call the bread bio any more...pretty strict.

Around midday I helped Alexandre with the croissants and pain au chocolat again and afterwards, I made a mix for beurre noisette and honey madeleines..We tasted some late in the afternoon and the flavour was amazing...beurre noisette and honey. It definitely was one of those “food is better than sex” moments.

After I made the dough for bread with saucisson cooked in red wine, where you add the wine as the liquid and it also has hazelnuts in it. I think that some sage in the dough would also be cool. And that bread with a nice strong cheese would hit the spot...

Alexandre made pannetone today...the dough is mixed slowly for 1 hour, maintaining a temperature of 24-26 degrees. It then has Lyonnais praline and orange peel added (praline is normally 18% of weight of dough) and proved slowly at a ambient 29 degrees with humidity for 12 hours before it gets baked at 180 for usually 45 min. Before it gets baked, the skin gets scored in a cross and butter is piped over the cross so when you bake it, you put it in for 5 min, and when the crust starts to form, you take it out and pull back the folds and pull them over the edge of the paper and that way, the crust doesn’t impede the rising of the pannetone.

Alexandre scoring pannetones

There was a problem with the pannetone though, this time, Alexandre tried adding praline as 25% of the weight instead of the normal 18%. What happened was the praline melted and the sugar caramelised, creating steam and turning the centre gooey...so even after 1.5hrs the big pannetones were still not cooked in the centre. After cooking, the pannetones are pierced with a double skewer which is joined at the blunt end forming a long U shape. Once the paper is pierced at the base, the pannetones are hung upside down to cool.

Mr Pozzoli made some decorative bread yesterday which I missed out on, but they do new ones every 2-3 weeks so I hope to see it soon. It’s a mixture of rye flour, water, salt, a lil' yeast and egg whites. Next level shit.

 Oh and I named the male cat “Gazuese” [ga-zoos] which means gas/effervescent/gassy as he’s always running around and loves to chase things and play. So its Bonnie and Gazuese...today bonnie jumped onto my lap and just looked at me and waited for me to stroke her...she really likes to just sit or lie somewhere and let you stroke her whereas Gazuese will force his head under my hand and is almost jealous of any attention his sister gets but I think it’s just his playful and bubbly personality.

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...