Blow dry

No practical today. And no reply to my email.

Imagine a 3 hour lesson on hygiene rules. Can you? Fun, isn't it?

One interesting fact. In tests, people who washed their hands and then used a blow-dryer ended up with more bacteria on their hands than they started with.

In the bus

I was late the other day after the bus stopped for a Convoi Exceptionnel. These are normally rather disappointing but this one had a triple police escort and was simply huge. Three giant propellers off one of those wind turbines, I think.

Wee update: just sent a stinker to the administrator at the INBP explaining my dissatisfaction with my teacher. Fingers crossed.

One for Mum

In which we get our knickers in a twist

Today I had enough of my new teacher.

I glazed my eclairs in the way we had been taught at Aurillac and he went off the deep-end. He was extremely rude and told me if I did them like that on the day of the CAP exam I may as well just go home. When I asked him why his way was preferable he could offer no reason. Then one of the other students told me I shouldn't seek to ask questions but just do like everyone else.

Well all that combined pissed me off beyond belief.

The most common way to dress an eclair, admittedly, is the way the chef wanted me to do... you puncture three holes in the bottom and use them to fill the middle with flavoured crème pâtissière. Then you ice the top. Now my excellent teacher in Aurillac proposed the following method: rather than inserting the cream through holes, you simply cut the eclair in half and pipe it in...then you glaze the foot of the eclair.

The reasons are very decent: with the traditional method the three holes end up underneath the eclair in contact with its paper sleeve. After only a short while in a shop the cream risks oozing out and soggying the paper. I even had this problem with an eclair I bought in a shop the other day. It wasn't nice. And it makes sense to ice the foot of the eclair since this is perfectly flat so will give you a smoother, neater icing.

So far I know of no reason to do it the traditional way (indeed, my teacher could not give me any) except for the fact it is rather neat.

So he and I had this little debate. Well, I asked him what the advantages were of his way and he got rather peeved when he could not think of a reason and decided to start slagging off the Aurillac school. What he did not know was that my teacher there trained at the INBP so it was really rather feckless. I don't have a preference for either method, after all, I'm a complete beginner - I want to know which way is best and why.

Then, just afterwards, when I was icing my nuns, he told me my icing was too hot. It's meant to be tempered at about 35°c to ensure a good shine. I told him that it was, in fact, at the temperature he had told us and touched the bottom of the saucepan to prove it was handleable. He said he didn't believe me and told me to stick my finger in the pan. He actually wanted me to burn myself. So I shoved my finger deep into the pan and left it there... which wasn't a problem since the bloody icing was at the right temperature all along. He shrugged and walked off.

Well, I've had enough. That's no way to go about teaching and I am writing to the school complain and ask to be moved to a different class. Before I was really in love with what I was doing. With the new chap I can't wait for our sessions to end.

Here is some angry graffiti from around Rouen:

In which we make more choux pastry

Today we continued our adventures in choux pastry, making eclairs and religieuses. The religieuse (which means nun) is a small choux bun on top of a big one, both iced and with a collar joining them of delicately piped crème à beurre. You find them in nearly all patisseries out here.

We also continued working in puff pastry, this time making a galette des rois (sans fève). My pastry was not sufficiently chilled so when I cut out the two circles they both shrank back and went wonky. So I had to chill it and cut even smaller circles out of the first ones ending with a rather miniature galette.

All the different flavoured galettes have traditional decors. You can see this decor on this one is very different from the somewhat similar Pithiviers.

My new prof had criticized the way I had been taught to make puff pastry with my old teacher at the INBP. Typical. So what a delight when his pastry failed to puff properly in the oven while mine was much better (but still not quite spot on).

In which we go to England

I took the day off to go to England for a "visite médicale".

Rather frustratingly I had left my phone at school which was rather crucial for the voyage so I got up at 6 to go back to school and collect it. Then it was a train to Paris which arrived late and a taxi which got stuck behind an accident so I trotted on foot the rest of the way to the Gare du Nord and arrived late but in time for my Eurostar. The trajectory then went St Pancras - Oxford - Reigate - St Pancras, back to Paris where I spent the night with a friend arriving at about 00h30. Bloody exhausted. I nearly missed the Eurostar back again because my train got diverted into London due to the snow.

I got an extremely stroppy taxi driver once I returned to Paris who told me it fucking wasn't worth getting a cab to my friend's address since it was just around the corner. How was I to know? and besides it was raining. He still managed to charge me €6.

For want of a better photo here's a butcher in the Covered Market in Oxford with all his Christmas stock.

In which we make choux pastry

Today we tackled a new pastry of the week in our first practical: ye olde choux pastry. This was also my first practical session with the new teacher since the change of groups.

I was in the interesting position of learning the pâte à choux for the second time since we had already done it when I left the school in Aurillac.

Choux pastry is an extremely humid (moist?) pastry. When it cooks the humidity locked in the pastry vapourizes causing massive expansion. Hence the hollow cavities in eclairs and profiteroles for cramming with creamy calories.

I was very disappointed that the demonstration by my new teacher did not include a lot of the tips I had received from my prof in Aurillac... such as how to spot the curst on the bottom of the saucepan which lets you know when the pastry is sufficiently cooked and a decent method for testing the consistency (i.e. letting the pastry drip off a spatula and checking for a triangle where the pastry separated... you need to see it to know it).

We made chouquettes which are little choux buns with crystallized sugar on top.

We also made an extraordinary and rather delicious tart called a Norman soufflé. This is a sweet quiche with flambéed apple topped with crème Chiboust which is a mixture of crème pâtissière and Italian meringue. It is very light thanks to the meringue but holds its form very well.

The photo is appalling but the tart had travelled all the way to Reigate via Paris and Oxford by the time it got snapped. It was battered.