Jean-sans-Peur

The most prominent historic landmark in the neighborhood where I’m staying in Paris (which is great, by the way, you should all visit) in the Tour Jean-Sans-Peur, or the Tower of Fearless John. Walking by it every day is a little vote of confidence that I have to say I appreciate greatly.

Fearlessness was very helpful for the last few days, my first at Le Cordon Bleu. I’m enrolled in the Intensive Pastry program, which means they compress what usually takes three months into six weeks, so they threw us immediately into the deep end. We got our uniforms and lockers on Monday, had eight hours of classroom time on Tuesday, and our first practical sessions, where we actually bake, today.

They gave us our uniforms on the first day, because we need to wear them every single day. These are not traditional costumes we just put on when the tourists are coming - this is chef coat, little sailor hat, checkered chef pants, apron, tea towel, black safety shoes every day. Students in the culinary program also have to wear a jaunty little neckerchief because they sweat more. Jaunty neckerchiefs are optional for aspiring patissiers.

If you’re not wearing it, they won’t let you in the classroom. You’re not allowed to wear it outside the building, so there’s a little locker room that becomes an absolute madhouse 15 minutes before class starts. I’m one of just a few men in the pastry program, so I naively thought the locker room would be roomy, but it turns out all the boys are cooks and they’re on the same schedule. You get a few of each uniform piece, and they need to be clean and ironed or they also won’t let you into class, so I present to you a scene from the glamorous life of a novice pastry student in a country without tumble dryers:

The classes themselves are fascinating! There are about 60 people in my program, and for the demonstration classes we all watch a chef and his assistants make a bunch of stuff. Yesterday we had three hours of basics - glazes, syrups, extracts - and then three hours of shortbread cookies. They made 5 kinds of shortbread, and in our practical sessions today we replicated two of them.

They gave us a binder for the term with recipes, but the recipes are extremely basic. It’s a list of ingredients and quantities in French and English, and a little map showing what layers go where. That’s it. Everything else - techniques, timings, equipment, etc - we’re expected to write ourselves based on the demonstration. No computers are allowed in the classroom - all hand-written notes. The chef speaks in French and is translated into English, which is really helpful for note-taking purposes since everything takes twice as long to say. There’s a mirror so you can see what’s on the chef’s station and a camera system to allow zoom-ins.

Surreptitious photo - they didn’t explicitly say not to, but it had that vibe

Today we had our first day actually in the kitchen. We started at 7:30 AM, which is aggressive even for me, and not everyone made it on time. The practical classes are smaller - there were 16 in my section today. We had a very brusque chef instructor today, who expects a loud and hearty “Oui Chef” after everything he says. They set out all of the ingredients for the things we were making today, and we went to it. Immediately the challenge of not having any directions on the recipes became apparent - our chef today disagreed with the chef yesterday about a bunch of stuff, which is clearly part of the program. You’ve gotta figure it out. I did ok today - all of my textures were good, and everything tasted fine, but the chef yesterday said to press down on some cookies so I pressed down on some cookies. After I was done, today’s chef said not to press down, since they’d be ugly, but it was too late for me. I learned my lesson - listen to today’s chef more.

Piped shortbread with praline filling, and sablé cookies that I pressed down on and make ugly, which was yesterday’s chef’s fault.

And that’s the rhythm! 3 hours of demo, 3 hours of practical, rinse and repeat. 24 of them and then we’re basic patissiers. I can’t wait.