A Free Friday is not worth a Saturday night

Boulangerie Group A is ok!

I woke up Friday excited to have a weekday off and set out exploring as soon as the markets were open. My first stop was the Marché St. Germain—which has everything! I even got Lebanese food there for lunch and purchased Italian fixings for home. Continuing through the food market farther down St. Germain, I scored yummy cheeses, Bordeaux wines, and lots of beautiful fruits and vegetables; but the coup de grâce was my flower purchase which turned out to be just gorgeous! I have to say the fresh flower markets in Paris rock! The flowers are so much more interesting, and last so much longer than they do in Dallas. Not sure what the secret is, but they are in on it!

Best 90 euros I spent all weekend!

It turns out I really needed the flowers to perk me up, as Saturday was a beat down! We worked like slaves and made so many baked goods it was like we were our own Viennoiserie basket at an upscale hotel breakfast buffet. We made baguettes (again) but with fermented dough, we made whole wheat loaves and we made brioche in two different formats. It was exhausting! But I actually learned a lot and really settled in with my little boulangerie group.

My Saturday baked goods

By the end of the day on Saturday, energy fading, the entire class was eating handfuls of the sugar pellets that decorate the brioche, straight out of the 50lb bag while telling each other our life stories as we waited for the dough to finish rising and be ready for baking. In our group, titled—Boulangerie A—there are 12 of us, and, as you can guess, they they are all super young! My current partner is a great girl from Minnesota who is 24 years old. I adore her, and she is quite talented without being competitive—just my speed! In addition to my partner, the other ten people in A group are from all over the world— India, Malaysia, Spain, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Taiwan, France, Turkey and the Philippines. It is very international! I love hearing their stories of how they ended up at LCB!

Boulangerie A

By the time we were released Saturday night, several of the group had plans to go out, but I nearly crawled in exhaustion to the metro, and was asleep by 10pm after a quick phone call with my husband— who is in Antarctica and fingers crossed will soon join me in Paris. He was having way more fun than I was—it was croquet and wine night at the base there (could I make that up??) so it was a quick call.

Croquet night in Antarctica!

On Sunday I walked down to Shakespeare and Co. and book-shopped for about an hour—coming home with two treasures— a current crime novel ( my favorite genre) and Bonjour Tristesse (obligatory French literature). I then wandered into a Korean beauty products store, strangely attracted to its pink and red, Hello Kitty vibe, and decided to investigate what all the hype was about. I loaded up on all the products the nice Korean lady wanted to sell me. Sadly, now at home, I cannot read how to apply them, nor do I know what they are supposed to achieve. It’s kind of like beauty roulette! Oh well…

I finished off the day with a nice meal at Les Editeurs—a personal favorite for dining alone in the 6th—and a late evening mass at St. Germain des Près. The day went way too fast!

My favorite bookstore in Paris always has a line to get in!

Beauty products galore

Les Editeurs

As fast as Sunday went, Monday came even quicker. Today we traded places with the Boulangerie B group and had a new Chef and a new classroom. Boy, was this a different experience! Chef today was old school! And when I say old school, I mean there were a lot of new rules and a lot more formality. First, was the required “Bonjour Chef” and “Oui Chef” in unison, to every request or observation he made. Additionally, he has a whole host of preferences for the ways things get done—very different from our very laid-back, young chef from last week. This is the LCB I remember!

Chef began with a long talk on how the dough speaks to him and how he does not let it master him. He is the master, and the dough must do as he says. It was kind of hypnotizing—I, like the dough, was totally going to do whatever he commanded.

He is also giving us our first grades! Last week nothing was graded— which probably contributed to Young Chef’s laissez-faire attitude. Now we are in grading competition and Chef is exacting. He measured the length of our baguettes to check if they were exactly 25 centimeters, and he noted the angle of the scoring on the olive bread to see if it was 45 degrees.

Yikes! I think we all took a deep breath and pulled up our big boy pants after he arrived. In some ways it is good though. I am here to learn and I need to know the rules (of which he had many) in order to play the game —so I am ok with our new chef. He is also so quintessentially a bread baker—look at him!

Our new Chef

We made milk baguettes—slathered in butter

Olive bread

Will update you on grades as I receive. Not sure this olive bread was my best effort. I am going to have to step it up now that we have the big man giving us grades!