by Sandra Byrd
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. Mos
tly 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.
As I turned the corner I saw the bakery. It was bigger than the one in the village, with gold and black striped awnings pulled up from the large front windows like painted eyelids. I pulled open the door. Only one customer stood inside, since this was the dead spot of the afternoon when breakfast was over and the rush to buy things for dinner had not yet started. While there were no tables to eat at, like there’d be in Seattle, there were many cases for pastry and a dozen kinds of bread.
I waited politely for the customer to finish ordering and then introduced myself to the woman at the counter.
“Bonjour, I am Lexi, here to begin work”.
She smiled politely. “Bonjour, Lexi!” Her name, Simone, was embroidered on her Boulangerie Delacroix uniform. “We have been anticipating you. And you’re early! How nice. Let me take you to Patricia in the back”. Already, Simone seemed a vast improvement over Odette.
I saw Patricia before she saw me, and my heart swelled with affection for the sassy pirate. She saw me and smiled too before she caught herself and reaffixed the stern look to her face.
“Ah, bon, it’s Lexi,” she said. “Not a minute too soon”. She kissed me on each cheek, a gesture of friendship I wasn’t anticipating.
“How goes the school? You started this week, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui,” I said. “It’s going”.
“Bon. Because the bakeries are paying for the tuition, I am sure Monsieur Desfreres will send a report now and again. My papa is looking forward to meeting you”.
Ah, yes. The family patriarch, Monsieur Delacroix. I swallowed. “When will he send a report?”
Patricia waved her hand, as if that didn’t matter. “In a few weeks, probably. Come, let’s get to work”.
She showed me to a station where she’d already made some lemon tartes. “You remember how to candy the lemon slices to go on top, non?” she asked with a sly grin. I grinned back. In Seattle, it had been my pointing out the lack of candied lemon slices on her tartes that led her to agree to my working for her in the pastry kitchen.
“Oui, I remember,” I said.
“Bon. You will candy the slices and make the dipped chocolate coffee beans for the mousse au chocolat. Also, today, I will have you make something very special for Céline. Les chouquettes, for her goûter. I have a wedding cake order and cannot get to the chouquettes”.
I hid my smile, knowing that to smile too often in France is to not be taken seriously. But the fact that she was allowing me to make the goûter, which means “to taste,” for Céline’s afterschool snack was an honor.
I put an apron over my plain uniform and began candying a hundred or more quartered lemon slices. An hour later, I cleaned up and found the recipe for the chouquettes from the big book in the prep room. I mixed the ingredients together, dipped them in large-grain sugar, and put the pan into the oven. If I ever wanted a recipe to turn out, it was this one. For Céline. And for me.
Chouquette Recipe
Ingredients:
12 Tbsp butter, cut into 1 Tbsp chunks
1¼ cups warm water
½ tsp salt
1½ cups all-purpose flour (not bread flour)
4 large eggs
sugar or hail sugar (also called pearl sugar)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a heavy saucepan, melt butter. Pour in water and then add salt and bring to a boll. As soon as the water bolls, reduce the heat to medium and pour in all the flour at once. With a wooden spoon, beat the flour into the liquids till the flour is incorporated and the entire mixture is sticky and pasty. It will pull away from the sides and bottom of the pan into a large lump. This should take only a minute or two. As soon as it pulls away and is incorporated, remove from heat.
Take the dough out of the pan and put in a bowl. If you have a standing mixer, you can put it in there and use the whisk attachment. Otherwise, put it in a large, glass bowl and get your mixer out. Beat in the four eggs, one at a time, on high speed. Make sure each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next.
The dough will remain pasty, but will be glossier now, and smooth. Drop lumps of dough onto a cookie sheet, lined with parchment if you like. The lumps should be about a tablespoon in size. Twelve lumps fit well on a standard pan, leaving them room to “puff”. Drop sugar on top of each puff. The best kind of sugar to use is “hall” sugar, because it doesn’t melt while baking.
Bake for about 30 minutes, watching carefully. The chouquettes will puff up nearly triple in size and become golden brown with slightly darker brown edges. Take out of oven and allow to cool.
Optional: insert the tip of a Reddi-wip can into them when cool to make mini-cream puffs.
Makes 12–18 chouquettes.
While the chouquettes were in the oven, I went to the front of the bakery to look at the case and see if the coffee beans were completely dipped or half-dipped. I scooted behind Simone, who finished helping a customer and turned to me with a motherly smile.
“The pastries are different here from in America, eh?” she said with obvious Gallic pride.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “In every way. The selection,” I waved my hand over the dozen or so offerings, “the beauty, the craftsmanship. The taste. Pastries in the United States are often made with …” I struggled for the word. “Préservatifs”.
A look of horror crossed her face. “Les préservatifs?”
I nodded. “Yes”.
Her face drained of color. I smiled weakly and went to the back to check on my chouquettes.
How strange. Of course, I didn’t agree with putting preservatives in baked goods either, but it wasn’t as horrifying as she seemed to think. Sometimes the French took this food thing a little far.
I opened the oven and reached in with my well-protected arm to pull out the pan of chouquettes. I knew the bread bakers would soon need the oven to bake the evening batch of breads so they would be available when people stopped by on their way home from work.
Holding my breath, I banished thoughts of my greasy pound cake and pulled the pan out of the oven, setting it on the counter. I put the chouquettes on a cooling rack and, a few minutes later, popped one into my mouth.
Perfect! I smiled, put two on a plate, and walked into one of the cool rooms where Patricia was icing and assembling the wedding cake.
“Voilà,” I said, passing her the plate.
She ate one, then the other. “A little eggy,” she said, “and they could use more sugar on top. But good enough for a child’s goûter.”
“Merci,”
I said, backing out of the room. I knew from working with Patricia that was high praise.
I piled the chouquettes on a plate to wait for Céline. Then I busied myself dipping coffee beans into slick, inky chocolate.
“Lexi!” A young voice ran through the front of the shop and back to the bakery.
“Hey, Céline!” I said. “I have something special for you”. I held out the plate of chouquettes.
“Merci,” she said, popping one into her mouth. “Mmm, very good. My favorite”. She took another one and set her school bag on the floor. Then she ran back to see her tante Patricia.
A few seconds later Philippe walked in and smiled at me. He let his kindness shine.
“Bonjour!” he said. “How
is the new chef doing?”
I grinned. We all knew I was not yet a chef. “Good days and bad,” I said. “Mostly good”.
“What did you do for your weeks off?” he asked. “Conquer Paris?”
If only he knew!
“I did visit Paris, but only for a few days”.
“Did you visit any museums?” he asked. “The Musée d’Orsay?”
“No, not yet”. I hesitated. “The Musée d’Orsay is at the top of my list. I love impressionist art”.
Philippe walked over to the peg board where the evening’s orders were posted and took off some slips and a few phone messages. As Monsieur Delacroix was not in residence, Philippe was in charge, and he walked like a man confident in his domain. I found it appealing.
He walked back toward me. “Then why haven’t you visited the musée yet?” He looked at me, so genuinely interested, not just making small talk. I felt I should tell him the truth.
“When I went to Versailles, it fulfilled a lifelong dream. I loved it. But there was no one to talk with about it, and it cut into my happiness. I’ll have a friend at school—I already have one woman in mind—and then go places with her and share the experience”.
“Ah,” he said. “That makes perfect sense. Happiness shared is doubled and sadness shared is halved, we say”. He smiled again and as he did, he looked younger and sweeter.
“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s exactly what I mean”.
Céline came running back into the room, pulling Patricia along with her.
“Taste the chouquettes, Papa,” she said. “They are délicieux”.
Philippe bit into one. “Very good,” he said, “if a bit eggy”. He looked at Patricia. “You’ve been out of practice in the United States”.