Good Food, Great Wine, Gracious Friends

Today was a pretty good day. Started helping Benjamin with the shaping of the pate Blanche and then was with Alexandre at the “fournil” (fournil is the area near the oven, four is oven in French), helping load the breads. Pretty solid with my scoring and baking...it’s just a bit intense when you’re controlling 5x2 separate batches and rotating the dough that’s proving so it’s not proving too slowly/too quickly. My French is also pretty good so in the mornings I serve the customers while imp baking if they want a baguette or croissant and I can understand them as long as they don’t talk super-fast.

After the morning baking was done around 10am I went to help Alexandre and chef with some canapés. There was an order for the chambre des meitiers de meilleur ouvrier de France( MOF ) as well as some other orders so we were pretty busy with them. We made some burgers like last time and some new canapés like foie mousse in jambon cru with black fig, cream cheese with chives, parsley mayo and tuna mayo in a hollowed out cherry tomato as well as smoked salmon filled with asparagus puree and garnished with an asparagus tip... I got changed after it was all done but then got invited to have a glass of wine with “le patron” and Alexandre so I was like ok J had a jambon beurre sandwich with that and then an opera cake

Opera Cake

for dessert...mmm like a crispy biscuit base with crisped rice in it, pralinee (here, praline is the red stuff with almonds, they call the hazelnut paste “pralinee” and chocolate mousse.. I ended up helping chef glaze the canapés even though I had changed... it’s just not natural for me to see my boss working if I’m not.

Canapes

I know my French is improving if I can understand most of what Mr Pozzoli says and actually joke with him J but after a while the wine started to kick my ass so I decided to go home.

I planned to only sleep for a few hours as I had been invited to dinner at Alex’s place with friends but ended up oversleeping and only waking up around 19h00 (when I was supposed to meet) so was over an hour late but it was all good in the end as the food wasn’t ready on time.

He stays in Grange Blanche, which is close to Monplaisir (near the Lumiere Institute). The area has most of Lyon’s hospitals and lots of schools so there are loads of students staying in the area. So for dinner it was Alex, his housemate Hugo (a former Maison Pozzoli employee), Pierre (the baker who works in the afternoon), jean (a baker from the vaise branch) and Laura (his American fiancée).

Tartiflette

For dinner we had tartiflette which is a dish made with potatoes, lardons and a cheese that I forgot the name now but it’s like a lasagne vibe with potato, bacon and cheese. YES PLEASE!!! Soooo damn good. We had that with some dressed salad leaves and some bread and a beautiful 2008 chardonnay that was utterly sublime. Probably the best wine I’ve had here. Soft, deep flavours, beautiful golden hue and not to sharp alcohol. I love how here in France you always have bread and bottles of water with every meal. It’s definitely something I want to continue when I come back to South Africa.

Afterwards we had a tarte pomme fin which was a pate brisee base with sliced apples that gets brushed with melted butter and baked with sprinkled sugar...with some glacé pralineé that Alex made as well as some chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies and oat and orange juices soaked raisin cookies that Laura made with a really good red wine. Can’t remember what. 

Wine Fridge...these guys mean business !

Soft, deep flavours, beautiful golden hue and not to sharp alcohol. I love how here in France you always have bread and bottles of water with every meal. It’s definitely something I want to continue when I come back to South Africa.

Tarte Pomme Fin

Afterwards we had a tarte pomme fin which was a pate brisee base with sliced apples that gets brushed with melted butter and baked with sprinkled sugar...with some glacé pralineé that Alex made as well as some chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies and oat and orange juices soaked raisin cookies that Laura made with a really good red wine. Can’t remember what.

Alex and Hugo have a really cool apartment...and I noticed some GTO comics too J seems like anime is quite popular in France. Only got home around 23:00 so had under 2 hours to sleep but I had a great evening so I didn’t mind.

Teamwork

Teamwork !

Nice day today...sick push in the morning with everyone hands on, Benjamin and I doing the pate blanche, Yann doing bio, Alex doing the viennoiserie, seigle Auvergne, ciabatta, Sarasin, autolyse etc...And Alexandre on the oven. I ended up spending the morning with Alexandre, taking notes about small details when scoring different ways. He told me he knows 30 different ways to score a boule, different shapes just by changing small details, even if it’s still the same amount of scores. And the difference between a baker and someone just chucking some dough in the oven is the finesse and the attention to visual detail. Making sure your scores are all parallel, corners all in line etc...It’s all noticed on a subconscious level.

It made me kind of sad to think about coming home...I don’t want to stop learning. But I’ll have to put more effort into upping my game and trying things out myself. I definitely want to visit Maison Pozzoli again in a few years... or maybe even have chef and Alexandre come visit Cape Town for a bit...I already want to try to organise to get a case of wine to them...

I ended up loading most of the bread today...it went ok, except for a few very borderline bakes...and I let the Sarasin over prove which sucks. It’s a really dense bread and not really responsive...one minute I check it and it feels dense and under proved, 5 min later and I see the surface starting to separate like when dough is over proving and I knew it was a mess. And it bakes pretty long as well...

We had some baking students come in and visit today... like I mentioned before most areas have a baking school but these kids looked young. When I asked chef about it he said most were 15/16 and already studying to enter the service/kitchen/baking area. That’s hectic!! They all looked very smart in formal suits though.

After baking was done I helped the others line crap loads of tins with pate feulletage for the quiches...everyone was involved, even chef and Jean-Luc (the guy who calls me compote) after that we prepped a huge batch of monsieur. Here they put the cheese on top and gratinate it.

Came home and chilled. Yesterday the curtain fell down when I tried to open it (the walls are very old and powdery and the curtain was too heavy. So now I just put them around my bed so I have a curtain to keep light out and heat in since I sleep on the couch anyway. Fatiha and I were joking that it’s like those bed forts you make when you’re a kid J