Bunny Chow

Bad Ass Bread

Today we baked the baguette des gones, which is shaped into a batard and then scored with short horizontal scores. The flavour is almost reminiscent of bresoala, with the wine and fat of the sausage coming through in the aroma. With the toasted hazelnuts in it, it really is a meal on its own. I think a nice variant would be chorizo cooked in cider, replacing the saucisson and red wine, and adding thyme or sage and some roast garlic. Once cooked and cooled down it’s tied up like salami and displayed hanging from the piece of ribbon.

A viennoiserie that they make here which is really nice to have with coffee is “chouquette” which is choux pastry that is piped and then sprinkled with hail/rough sugar and then baked. If I see any left over from the day before I nail those guys down!

Tuiles

We also baked tuiles today, in the deck oven which just shows that you have to be able to use your deck oven for pastry/cakes as well as you still have that residual heat there that is available to use so you can save money and also if your convection oven is full you can use it.

Pain Surprise

Chef made “pain surprise” today which is a miche of pain de campagne that is hollowed out like a bunny chow, but you keep the interior intact and then slice it into very thin slices. Each 2 slices you layer with usually 5 different fillings, 2 meat, 2 fish and 1 cheese. Chef used rillettes (pork), duck mousse, smoked salmon and I didn’t see 2 of the layers. Once each layer is completed the edges are trimmed so the round will fit inside, then cut up into 12 pieces each and layered back in... It’s the perfect thing for a picnic or birthday...I explained to chef and Alexandre what a bunny chow is,but I don’t think something like that will take off in France.

Bunny Chow

Some people came knocking at 6am, obviously after a night out, to buy some pain au chocolat and croissants...French bakeries just don’t do filled croissants or pies or stuff like sausage rolls, but they do make small pizzas which is kinda weird but they are popular and pretty good, but not thin crust how most people in SA prefer it.

For lunch today I had a multi cereal baguette with some rillettes and fromage a tartiner (I think its cream cheese)...man the small things are what make life so good.

I miss training. When I get back I want to get back to krav maga and maybe also start weight training.

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Maison Pozzoli

Around lunchtime I helped Fatiha put up some curtains, about 3m up, with only a 2m ladder...because of the rod and the fitting as well as the amount of space between the walls, I had to put one ring up, put the rod through and then thread the 2 curtains on and then put the other curtain ring in. The manual was in French so I just had to figure out how to put the bit in as it wasn’t like the one my dad has. Fatiha also had no spirit level so I had to use her judgement to line the rods up. All in all I was pretty chuffed with myself, considering the circumstances I was working under. It looked good and Fatiha was happy so I gave myself a pat on the back. I literally did give myself a pat on the back.

I met up with Marlene around 2pm and we went to Starbucks. It was my first time, and we both had white chocolate mochas which were nice, but very sweet “tres sucre” and we had a doughnut each and Marlene had a cinnamon roll too which tasted good too but was super sweet. She has a big sweet tooth so it was fine for her but I almost had a sugar coma. She also gave me some beer made from myrtilles (blueberries) which she bought for me at la fete myrtilles outside of St Etienne.

We then walked around and I went past Maison Pozzoli.....It’s a baker’s wet dream.

Maison Pozzoli, Lyon, France

The bread looks so SICK!!!! I am super stoked to get in there and start baking. Marlene insisted on buying me an assortment of some of her favourite viennoiserie including a framboisier, tarte citron, charlotte and something else... we then went to do some “leche vitrine” (lit. “lick windows”, it’s French for window shopping, because you are usually so close to what it is you want to buy that you can lick it).

only the good stuff !

So many people were out that I again asked “when the f*** do people work here?” It was probably around 4pm and there were hoards of people walking around and doing shopping.

Marlene had to leave to go to work around 5pm so we said goodbye and I walked back to Croix Rousse and on the way got a haircut. Like most things in France, you have to wait. So I waited for about 1 hour and just read in the salon. The guy did a really good job and it was a really good price compared to others that I saw (16Euros) and I spoke French with him and we told me about living in France and so it was cool to find out what people living in the city think about it.

As soon as I got home I had to leave for the couch surfing meeting so I managed to eat a kebab Jand then I headed down to meet Marion at the opera house in hotel de Ville. She had some friends from Italy and St. Etienne with her (Kristiana, Elisa, Julia, Fabio and Clement), Clement could very easily be the French doppelganger of François Roux [a high school friend]...I almost thought it was him and he even has similar mannerisms and movements. We took the metro to Saxe Gambetta and then met the other couch surfers at cafe de la Madeleine. I almost downed a pint of penache coz that is so delicious (a shandy pretty much, but the use a lemonade, not sprite).

the Italians...

We played some petanque (boules) and I got my ass handed to me hard-core...my team lost 14-2. The Italians had to leave around 10pm as some were leaving for Italy that night and the others had to go back to St. Etienne so I left soon afterwards. They were all from Florence, but studied in Bologna. I gave them some shit for not really being able to cook and I was like “what kind of Italian girl can’t cook?” but I was just joking so we laughed about it and discussed some specialities of Italy and I taught them some Xhosa too.