Day 2: Not as easy as it looks!

I hope no one skimmed my last post and inferred that I had made those delicious cookies in the pictures-not the case.  Today, as I mentioned earlier, I was charged with the task of baking my own plain batch of Diamonds, but without swirls or anything too exciting.  Even though I didn't fall asleep last night until 12:45am and this morning the alarm started ringing at 6:50am I thought I was more than up to the challenge by the time I arrived in the Kitchen in full chef's gear at 8:30am.

There were 14 people in my group and we each had a work space with all of our own tools.  The chef (who spoke not a word of English) showed us around the kitchen explaining where we could find all of our ingredients including farine, le sucre, le beurre, le sel, les oeufs, et la vanille.  I am happy to report that I felt way above average in my understanding of his directions and explanations even though he was speaking only French.  Once I assembled my ingredients I began forming the dough for my cookies and once the dough was formed I let it rest in the refrigerator, cut it into cookie size circles, and baked them in the over.  Pretty straight forward, especially for me, who is clearly more than a seasoned baker when it comes to cookies, right?  Wrong!

Let me talk to you a little bit about what it means to make something from scratch in a French Pastry School.  Number 1 you can toss out your measuring cups kiddos because every ingredient is measured by weight.  Try exactly measuring your flour or your sugar on a food scale, not an easy task to reach the exact amount you want.  It's one scoop in, half a scoop out until you're finally just sticking a small spoon in there to remove the excess and get to exactly 225g.  Also, if you think you might need that teaspoon for salt or baking powder you can forget that too as small quantities are consistently measured one pinch here and two pinches there.  The number 2 problem with these exciting lessons in baking are the fact that there are no mixers allowed!  The chef uses a lovely Kitchen Aid mixer on Demo Day, but we are left to the use of our hands only!  It is crazy.  So, straightforward cookie dough was not so straightforward, however it was really fun and I feel like I have a completely new skill today.

Between refrigerating our dough and actually cooking the cookies in the oven the chef took us on a tour of the food pantries.  These are closets in the school where all the ingredients are kept for each of the classes.  Pantries full of nuts, dried fruits, syrups, liqueurs, different varieties of sugar and everything else you can think of.  I need to take a moment here to thank Becca (Laurie's cousin) for having me over to her house on Sunday for lunch.  She not only invited me over for lunch, but also gave me a little tutorial of baking in a French kitchen.  She showed me ingredients I'd never heard of and low and behold they were all included on my tour this morning.  Two very remarkable ingredients that I had never seen before were a baking powder like substance and gelatin.  Instead of baking powder or baking soda they use something else that I can't remember the name of.  Instead of coming in a can or a box it comes in individual servings in packets that are the same color as Sweet 'N Low and about twice the size.  The other oddity is gelatin.  It comes in flat strips that look like clear plastic.  They are about 3in by 6in and you apparently dissolve them in cold water and add them to cakes to change their consistency.  I'm very anxious to see it in action!

When we returned to the kitchen we cleaned up and put away our tools while the cookies were baking.  After the cookies were cooled we took pictures of them and packed them away to bring home.  Yes that's right I left my school at 11:30am with more than 6 dozen cookies in tow.  Not good at all.  So far I've given them to the metro workers, some teacher, and the man that runs my apartment.  Hopefully I'll have more people to give them to soon!

And that's it.  Day 2 complete.  As it was our first time in the kitchens and we were still getting acclimated, we weren't graded today.  However, Thursday and Tarte aux Pommes is going to be an entirely different story!  Wish me luck with my apple tart and I'll keep you posted.

Until then Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!