Week 1 (Superior Patisserie)

After a two week break, which was filled mostly with work, helping out on a couple of short courses at school (I was missing it, so don’t like to be away too long!), a trip to Vienna to visit a treasured elderly relative and making a few Christmas cakes, the final term started!  We got our schedules a few days before term and I found out I’m in group B again, we’ve been moved around a bit though. Two very good friends have been moved to a different group, which I was very disappointed about. A number of people in the group are the same, and we’ve been joined by the intensive students as well, the new group B seem like a really nice bunch though. The new timetable fits in really well with work luckily, the downside however is that a lot of the days we’re in require us to be there at 8am. This means that there are roughly 20 4am alarm calls to contend with, lord have mercy!!

This week we were treated to no less than three 8am starts! Monday we arrived back at school, got the new lockers (someone had already taken the one allocated to me, I’ve made a note to bring the electric cattle prod next week, to teach the simple moron a lesson), then made our way up to one of the demo rooms. Our shiny new folders were out on the seats, so I thumbed through before the lesson started and this term looks ridiculously intense! There’s a lot more extra work to do this term as well, I’ve already made sure most of the weekends are kept free, I think I’m going to need them! Superior term is set up differently to the former terms, we have modules to complete as opposed to varying lessons each day. For example this week was boulangerie, and next week is chocolate (my two favourite subjects, the term could not have started better!!). We have workshops as well, which involve two lesson slots back to back, to allow us to make more complex items.

Seeing this suddenly made it very real that I'm now a Superior student, the last six months and two terms went scarily fast!

Our first demo was on bread, the chef made three different type; fougasse, cheese bread and ciabatta. The fougasse was filled with peppers, spring onion, olives and garlic. The ciabatta dough was mixed with sun dried tomatoes and olives. They all tasted very nice and the bread master took both lessons and both practicals so it was great to have his input and advice. There is a lot I think I could learn from him, and the other chefs, there’s just nowhere near enough time in the 9 months unfortunately!

Monday afternoon we had the practical. We worked in pairs on the fougasse and cheese dough (I did the fougasse) and did a batch of ciabatta dough each. Luckily these were all made without too much trouble. The ciabatta dough was very wet, so quite difficult to handle. It had to be rested in a plastic tub and given turns, trouble is the dough is so soft/squidgy if you weren’t quick enough, or didn’t have the dough held well enough, it’d slide through your fingers and be a crumpled mess in the box. I just about managed to get it shaped reasonably well! The fougasse and cheese breads both came out well, we filled the fougasse with a mix of olives, cheese, sundried tomato, garlic (sorry dad!) and spring onion. It was a really nice combination of flavours so this quickly became my favourite – I ate 3 rolls on the way home. I’m not apologising, I love bread! Got some good feedback from the chef, I could have folded the ciabatta dough a bit tighter and been a bit neater on the cutting – two of the four loaves came out a good shape (the two cut from the middle of the dough), the ends of the slab let me down from a consistency point of view though. Still, I know what to do for next time. I’d been a bit over excited stretching the cheese breads as well. We had to make three diagonal cuts in the middle and stretch them out, my concern was making sure the holes didn’t close up during baking (they didn’t), but I’d ended up stretching them to the maximum size. All handy information to know!

Tuesday we were back in early for the second bread demo of the boulangerie module. This time the chef made grissini (breadsticks), pain de epi, a baguette, a pain de campagne (country loaf with rye flour) and a 5 cereal bread which was shaped as a flower. Again these all tasted really nice and luckily today we went straight from the demo into the practical.

We were mostly early for the practical so got a good start on weighing out the ingredients. The white dough, for the baguettes and epi was on the machine, and I was halfway through weighing out the campagne dough and the fire alarm went off. All of the machines had to be switched off and out we trundled, a mere 10 minutes into a lesson, where timing was crucial because of dough resting times etc! Still, it didn’t last long and we got back in and managed to make everything without any further mishaps! We finally got to see how one of the gigantic machines in the corner of the classroom works too – a big deck oven, if only my bank account would stretch to one of these, unfortunately it’d take up the entire kitchen and more! My grissini were a tad on the large side, and I could have been a bit more courageous slashing the dough before it was put in to bake (on the baguette and the campagne), aside from that I got good feedback and was very happy with the results!

It was a nice gentle way to ease us in to the term. Looking at what’s ahead there are some major challenges. This is a whole new level to try and achieve!

Wednesday we were in early and this was one of the most important lectures of the term – exam procedures and other bits and pieces we have to do. As well as the practical exam and written exam we also have to produce a portfolio which has to contain a lot of elements, including all of the learning journals, lots of recipes and methods written out (including costings for certain dishes), a research project and a final self evaluation. No pressure! Prior to this lesson we’d been given snippets of information on what we need to do and to say I’d got a bit of a sinking feeling would be an understatement. At the beginning of the week I really started to wonder if I’d done the right thing staying on to do Superior term. However after the head pastry chef explained everything to us and broke it all down in terms of what’s expected and what’s going to happen etc. I’m now feeling fired up and ready to go. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to involve sacrificing most of the weekends between now and Christmas to studying (along with a few work lunch breaks probably!), there’s a lot to do, but I’m ready. The chefs are brilliant as well, so I have full confidence that they’ll guide us through this term!

Three 4am alarm calls down, more than I’d care to count left to go!

Fougasse (on the left), Ciabatta (on the right) and cheese bread (at the top!). My favourite were the fougasse! I was a bit surprised when the chef was shaping the fougasse, I thought they'd be more like the cheese bread shape, but you live and learn. 

Baguette and epi (top left), pain de campagne (top right), 5 cereal bread (bottom left) and grissini (bottom right). I really really liked the pain de campagne, it tasted amazing with some marmite on. The angle of the photo doesn't quite do the epi justice enough, they looked more wheat shaped than the picture shows.