Sorry, I Can't, I Have To Learn About Flour

Pastry School Chalkboard

There is a lot more homework to pastry school than I was expecting. I’m in the Intensive program, which condenses a months-long program down into 6 very busy weeks. Part of the way they do this is by putting a ton of the material online and expecting us to watch it at home. Some of it is in the form of filmed demonstrations - instead of watching a chef make something live in class we do it, where we can ask him questions, we watch videos of those same chefs making things. We’re spoiled when it’s live by the translators - you can watch the chef while he’s speaking French, and then take notes during the time the interpreter is saying it in English. On the video, though, it’s all English subtitles so you just have to pause every thirty seconds.

In addition to the videos, though, they’ve put a ton of “Theory Course” documents online, which are mostly powerpoints about wheat and dairy production. I mill my own flour and dream about cheese, so you would think that a theory class about wheat production would be right up my alley, but I hit my lifetime maximum on powerpoints some time ago. I am struggling to get through them, but I need to keep cracking because our final exams (!) are coming up pretty soon.

The final is divided into two parts - a written test, which is heavy on wheat and dairy theory, and the practical exam. For the practical, we’ll be sent into a room with none of our notes and told to bake something we did earlier this year. We’ll have the list of ingredients and quantities, but none of the notes on technique. We just need to memorize every step of ten different recipes. It’s all very GBBO-technical-challenge, and I’m excited about it.

I had a decent last couple of days in the kitchen! We’re covered meringue and meringue-based things at the moment, making macarons and lemon tarts.

My piping, which started at “atrocious” and progressed to “terrible” is now just “pretty bad”. Which is progress! I’m aiming for “it’s fine, I guess” by the time I leave Paris.

Tomorrow we’ve got two more fancy cakes - a fraisier, which is a bourgeois strawberry shortcake, and a moka cake. Lots of chances to pipe better, we’ll see if I take them!