Bon Appetit (5 page)

“No turning back, no turning back”.

L
adies and gentlemen, you hope to become professionals. I do not graduate people from this
école
who are not prepared for the rigors of life as a French pastry chef. I do not graduate bakers who want nothing more than to bake bread or show up late, do their work, and go home”.

Monsieur Desfreres paced in front of the class, all of us at attention, uniforms pressed, chef’s hats firmly on our heads. Five long counters lined the room, and eight of us stood at each one. There were no chairs. The first requirement of any chef was the ability to stand for hours on end without taking a break.

I stole a few quick glances at the others out of the corner of my eye. You’d have thought I’d stumbled into the L’École Militaire instead of the L’École du Pâtisserie. It was that serious.

I was nervous and thrilled. It was my first day of school. New month, new life.

Chef tapped the stainless countertop in front of one sleepy-looking young man. “I do not graduate students merely because they have paid tuition or because their
patrons
have paid tuition. In fact, I consider it a service to the patrons if I can tell them at this early date that one of their employees, regrettably, shows very little aptitude toward becoming an accomplished
pâtissier”.
He looked pointedly at the man, who stopped slouching, but the words rang through to my spine.

“En général,”
he finished, “ten percent of the students who begin this course will, after their exhibition, complete it with honors. Let me make one thing clear—at graduation, you are not a pastry chef.
Mais non
. You are then prepared to become a pastry chef. My name will be on the
diplôme
. You will conform to my standards or it will become clear to both of us that another career path would be a better choice”.

He clapped his hands together, gold link bracelet shimmying on his wrist. “Bon—let’s begin”.

I opened the textbook in front of me. Each of us had a locker, and I’d found mine stocked with textbooks, recipe books, the uniforms I’d be responsible for keeping spotlessly clean, and a slip of paper to exchange for soft-soled chef shoes.

I glanced at the others along my counter. They wore the same
black-and-white checked chef pants I did, the white coat with a double row of buttons on the front, neatly starched and cuffed. I swallowed back a bit of homesickness as I put on my chef’s
toque blanche
, the hat with a thousand folds, and remembered the first time I’d done that at the bakery in Seattle. The journey of a thousand pastries had started with that first step.

The woman beside me looked about twenty-one. She oozed chic. Her watch had the subtle flash of real diamonds around the face, but it wasn’t gaudy. Her skin was polished and flawless.

“Hello,” I said as we got out our materials. “My name is Lexi”.

“Hello,” she replied, her voice neither warm nor cool. “My name is Désirée
LeBon”.
She emphasized her last name, and I got the hint. The LeBon family owned a large chain of high-end pastry shops in Paris. Everyone knew that.

After that initial snobbishness, however, she was kinder. My pencil lead snapped at one point, and she quietly slipped me a mechanical pencil that matched the one she was using. I mouthed, “thank you,” and continued taking notes.

Two haughty-looking men stood at my table, and I noted that Monsieur Desfreres seemed to favor them, along with men at the other tables. He stood so close to them, resting his hands on their shoulders, that at first I worried he might have some unsavory interest in them. But when he stood directly behind me and began lecturing again, I learned the reason.

“The history of pastry in France is noble and long lived. It would not be a stretch to say that the French have developed and refined the palate for the rest of the world. It’s my charge to develop
both your palate and your palette. To teach you to recognize good taste and then to prepare the breads, cakes, tartes, and other products to meet that challenge.

“Some French families”—he glanced at Désirée and cracked what might have passed for a smile if he’d allowed himself such an indulgence—“have been carrying on this noble tradition for centuries.

“I will not hide that I believe men are traditionally better chefs in all areas of food preparation”. He looked at the two smug men at my table who afforded themselves not only a smile but a glance of superiority to the women around them.

“And then there are the relatively young nations, with untamed and undeveloped palates”. He moved closer to me. I could feel his presence at my back. I kept my head held high, but I was aware that the eyes of the classroom were drawn to me. “They eat things such as … McDonald’s. It remains to be shown if such a palate can be developed, and then in turn develop products to meet the needs of France”.

He moved away. Désirée flashed me a sympathetic look, and the other woman at the table grimaced in my direction, then looked away. Well, one person showed promise, anyway. I’d see if I could strike up a conversation with Désirée later.

First though, we listened to a long lecture by Monsieur Desfreres on this week’s topic: baking history and science. Then we broke into foursomes and went to our work stations, measuring ingredients and comparing our charts.

“Baking is not for the sloppy cook, the person who works by taste.
Non, non!”
Monsieur Desfreres lectured from the other half of
the room. “She is a precise art. If we take away some of this, we must add more of that. Otherwise, the entire proposition will fail. This week, we do not look to be creative. We are food scientists. We look to be exact”.

The women from my counter stuck together in a foursome—Désirée, myself, one of the woman who had grimaced at me named Anne, and a recent immigrant from Martinique named Juju.

We pulled out our binders of recipes and blank sections in which we could slip our notes, each page encased in a protective plastic sleeve.

Monsieur Desfreres lectured us about the difference between American and European butterfat contents, clearly favoring European, but showing us how to adjust our recipes when using American ingredients. He looked pointedly at me. We spent the morning measuring cocoa powder, cake flour, and bread flour. In front of each of us was a scale, and we measured not by cup, but by weight, which was more
exactement.

After a lively discussion about the hierarchy in a kitchen and the proper attitude in a hectic pastry shop, we were ready for our first test.

“Look at recipe card number one in your folder,” Monsieur Desfreres instructed, making sure we had each tidied up our weight stations. “I would like you to find the ingredients in that recipe, weigh them exactly, and put them in your mixing bowl. After you leave this afternoon, a small team of chefs and I will bake up the contents in each person’s bowl. You will notice that the bowls and pans are numbered”.

I looked at mine. Seven, my lucky number.

“Tomorrow, when you come to class, you will see the result of your measurement in the form of a cake baked from your bowl”.

For so many people in one large room, it was incredibly quiet. I understood that each of us had a work station here for measuring and sorting, but we would also rotate from room to room. The chocolate room, the cake room, the bread room. “Room” was an understatement—it was more like a huge commercial kitchen, beyond anything I had imagined. It was
fantastique
.

I read my recipe card. Four hundred fifty-five grams of butter—European style. I left my station, ran to the cooler, and took out some hunks of butter, then brought them back to my station and measured the exact amount needed. Leaving the butter in one of my small bowls, I took the rest of the butter back to the walk-in. I measured out 535 grams of sugar and put it into another bowl with a number seven on it. Five milliliters of vanilla—French vanilla, of course.

To my left and right, the rest of the women in my group seemed as intent as I was on getting it right. The room was silent with concentration. We measured the ingredients then used our standing mixers to whip the batter together. At the end of class, we poured the mixture into our numbered pans and handed them to Monsieur Desfreres to be baked.

That was it for the day. In two weeks, we’d start eating lunch together too. The cooking school would provide the main meal, the pastry school the bread and desserts. For now, we were allowed to leave one hour early. Most of us had jobs, and I had to get back to
the village. I’d be at the Rambouillet bakery tomorrow. I was eager to see Patricia again, and Céline. And Philippe.

I said good-bye to my team members, folded my uniform, and locked my locker. I tucked my baking science and history book under my arm, determined to read that night after helping Odette with the dinner baguette shift.

I wanted to succeed here. I wanted to learn to bake like the French, the pinnacle of artistic cuisine. I wanted to prove to my friends and family that I was as much of a professional as they were. I wanted to belong here too.

I grinned at my cake pan, lined up with the others, ready to bake. I couldn’t wait to taste it tomorrow.

The next day I took the early train from the village to Rambouillet, where the school was located. I arrived bright and cheerful, despite the early hour, and changed into my uniform. I fixed my hair, nodding politely to Anne as she dressed beside me.

“How are you today?” Juju asked me.

“Good! And you?”

“Very good,” she said. “I did not eat breakfast. I plan to eat cake”.

I smiled. I’d had coffee, but planned to eat some of my pound cake for breakfast too.

We walked into the classroom and found our places, waiting for Monsieur Desfreres. The cakes were nowhere in sight, but there were
folded slips of paper at our stations. We each opened ours. I watched as Désirée’s face lit with happiness, Anne’s warmed with a smile, and Juju looked content. I read mine, and my face burned.

I refolded my paper, but that was not the end of the matter. The numbered pans were brought out and set in front of us. While most of the cakes had nicely rounded tops, slightly split and sloping to the edge of the pans, mine was flat. Greasy. Sunken in the middle.

And yet, I knew I had measured exactly right. I knew it.

Désirée reached over and patted the back of my hand with her well-manicured one. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “it’s only the first week”. Then she sliced into her own perfect cake. “Want a piece?”
I am not averse to food therapy. Especially when I only had an hour to recover from my public humiliation and make it to the Delacroix bakery in Rambouillet.

I’d declined Désirée’s offer of a piece of her perfect cake, and by lunchtime my stomach was in knots. I walked three blocks toward the bakery and found a small café.

I scanned the blackboard indicating the day’s specials, and chose a salad, some bread, and a
crême brûlée
.

I prayed while I waited.
Lord, let me recover from this somehow. Don’t let me fail at the school or the bakery.

My food arrived. I’d brought my small Bible, realizing I always read at lunch and hadn’t been good about reading my new French Bible, despite promising myself I would. Mostly I’d been thumbing through it, letting the Bible open wherever it would and hoping for a word of inspiration. The “lucky dip” method.

Not so lucky for me. This is what I came up with: “Wail, O ships of Tarshish! For Tyre is destroyed and left without house or harbor”.

Or this one: “Pay your taxes too for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid”.

I knew every word was inspired, but I needed a more methodical way to get through it. But then, God certainly could see I had my hands full here, and He hadn’t jumped in to help or even to chat.

I finished my meal and headed toward the bakery, excited to see Patricia again and perhaps Céline, after school.