Bon Appetit

by Sandra Byrd

  “So very beautiful,” I said.

  We walked only two floors, aware of Céline’s little legs and flagging interest. But at every turn, one of us was able to point out something marvelous for the others to see.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t see it all,” Philippe said as we left the rare air of the museum and exited into the late blue afternoon light.

  “I’ll come back another time”.

  “Yes, you’ll live here a long time. You’ll be able to see this and more,” he said.

  A long time. I looked at the Parisians reposing on the sides of the Seine, and it brought to mind my favorite painting of the day, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte by Seurat.

  “What are they doing?” Céline pointed to men and women lining the banks of the Seine with paintings by their side.

  “Selling their original work,” Philippe told her. “Watercolors, mostly”.

  Both Céline and I looked longingly at the paintings as we walked by on our way back to the car park. I nearly pinched myself. I could hardly believe I was here, strolling along the Seine, looking at artists hawking their wares. In Paris.

  We drove back from Paris in the early evening, via the Champs-Elysées, and talked comfortably all the way home. When we got back to the village, Céline and Philippe walked me to my door.

  “Thank you for a lovely day,” I said. “It was much more enjoyable to have someone to share my thoughts and feelings with”.

  “It was our pleasure,” Philippe said.

  “It was our pleasure,” Céline copied, appearing very grown-up and very small at the same time. I laughed and ruffled her hair as she stood between us.

  They walked back to the car, and I waved as they drove away. Before I closed my door, I saw the lace in Maman’s sitting room window jiggle. I walked back into my house, looked at the chalkboard, and set out my Bible so I wouldn’t forget to read Jean chapter three sometime soon.

  First, I called Tanya. She didn’t pick up, so I left a message.

  “I went to the Musée d’Orsay today,” I said. “It was great. I think I may have found one kid in all the world that I like”. I mentioned nothing about Céline’s dad, but I knew Tanya would ask.

  Then I e-mailed Dan back and hesitatingly told him I’d like to see him in November and that he should send more details when he got them. I signed it, Yours, Lexi.

  The next week at school, bread week, was fantastique! We rolled up our sleeves and kneaded dough until our hands ached.

  I was stationed next to Désirée and across the huge work table from Anne and Juju. Anne’s breads, in particular, were lovely.

  “Your breads are so nice,” I said once when we were alone, cleaning up our station. “The dough is always pinchably plump. And why are your raisins so moist?”

  “Haven’t you seen me soak them?” she asked. “I put them in a cup of warm orange juice instead of water for about twenty minutes before I add them. It softens them and plumps them, and the orange flavor makes the bread even tastier”.

  “No,” I said. “I hadn’t seen you do it”.

  She put her last mixing bowl into the sink and pulled down the industrial overhead faucet to rinse it out. “Désirée saw. She did it to her loaves yesterday”. I heard an edge in her voice.

  We went back to our table and began rolling loaves for baguettes. I’d helped Luc with bread in Seattle, but here it was Philippe and his guys in Rambouillet or Kamil’s crew in the village who did the breads. I didn’t expect to specialize in breads, but I knew I had to be better than proficient in order to get and keep a job. So I rolled dough, watched the others, and learned from their strengths and mistakes.

  One day last week Juju’s loaves came out nearly flat. I thought she was going to cry.

  “Did the yeast bubble before you added it?” Désirée had asked, trying to help.

  “I think so,” Juju said.

  Désirée shook her head. “Maybe not. If it didn’t bubble after three or four minutes, maybe your batch was bad”.

  I’d said nothing, but that didn’t make sense. We all drew yeast from the same tins. If I’d had a death wish, I’d have asked Monsieur Desfreres, but I knew a report would be going out to my patron that week, and I didn’t want to draw negative attention to myself.

  We placed our baguettes in the oven. Today, both mine and Juju’s came out perfectly plump and tanned. We ate lunch with the cooking school—they were providing soupe and salade, and we were providing the bread. All of the school instructors and administrators would take note.

  We removed our chef’s toques blanche and took our bread to the dining room, then sat at tables for eight. It was fun for the baking students to mingle with the cooking school students.

  “The bread smells delicious!” one of the cooking students said. “Nicely done!”

  We bakers smiled. I looked at the table. “Is there butter?” I asked.

  The rest of them looked at me quizzically.

  “You baked it,” a cooking student pointed out. “You know there is no butter in bread”.

  “Of course!” I commented, remembering the French didn’t put butter on their bread. I wanted butter on my fresh bread. And a Coke.

  But the soupe and salade—to-die-for. The French definitely won there.

  After school, I asked Anne if she wanted to have coffee. We walked to a café and sat down.

  “No work today?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I have to work on Sunday this week, so I have the afternoon off”. I ordered café crème and she ordered an Orangina. No ice.

  “Did you go to your Anglican church last Sunday?” Anne asked, tilting her face to the autumn sun. The people at the table next to us were engaged in a heavy argument complete with finger wagging, shrugging, and unprovable accusations. I smiled. They must like each other. It was the French way.

  “I did go,” I answered, moving forward like a woman walking on freshly frozen ice. “I liked it. And I saw someone I knew there”.

  “Non!” Anne said. “Another American?”

  I smiled and took a sip of my café crème. “A Frenchman”.

  “At an English church?” she asked incredulously.

  I nodded. “He’s the baker at the Rambouillet bakery,” I said. “Philippe Delacroix”.

  “Ah,” she said. “One of the owners. What was he doing there?”

  I explained about his late wife being English and her desire for their daughter to learn the language. I sipped my coffee slowly. In France, there are no coffee refills, so if you want to stay and chat at a café, you have to draw the drink out.

  “I wish I spoke better English,” Anne said. “It would make it easier to get a job. I could go to other places in the EU and work. As it is, if I don’t find a job after school, I will have to go back to Normandy and live with my parents again, and be cooped up. My father and mother both smoke. If I stay in that household, I will lose the sense of smell I need to be a good baker”.

  I sensed there was more than that going on, since most of the French bakers I knew smoked, but I said nothing more about it. “You could come to the English class with me at church,” I said.

  “Non. “ She shook her head. “Church is not for me”.

  “But that’s not true,” I said. “I’m reading the book of Jean right now, and it’s all about bakers”.

  She scoffed. “It can’t be!”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I was just reading it last night. Jesus said, ‘C’est moi qui suis le pain qui donne la vie. Celui qui vient à moi n’aura plus jamais faim, celui qui croit en moi n’aura plus jamais soif.’ ”

  I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

  “Bah,” Anne said. “That’s not for bakers”.

  I grinned, and she grinned back.

  “How about we practice English at the café one day a week,” she said, “when you’re not working. And I’ll help you with French. So you ca
n avoid the faux amis”.

  I’d told her I’d made a few faux amis mistakes, but hadn’t told her exactly which ones.

  “Bon,” I agreed.

  Désirée walked over to the table, having spied us, I suppose, as she left school.

  “My two friends!” she said. “Can I join you?”

  It would be nice to have two friends, I thought. Wouldn’t it? But the thought of Désirée as a friend unsettled me somehow.

  Friday was our bread test. We spent the first few hours on the written test, covering everything from what happens when we overmix to what happens when we underproof. We filled in the blanks for missing recipes, including approximate weights of ingredients. Then we made them. Each of us was assigned one recipe from a selection of what we’d learned that week. Juju got pain à la bière, and the men across the table were assigned sweetbreads. Anne was assigned a couronne, and I was assigned brioche. Désirée got croissant.

  “I’m going to the restroom,” Anne said to me as we gathered ingredients. “Do you need anything from the prep room? I’ve forgotten the salt”.

  “Non, merci. “ I shook my head.

  The bread room hummed quietly; no one talked. While breads were not the most difficult thing we would learn, it’s hard to imagine anything else more central to French baking. I liked brioche—it was eggy, my specialty! I grinned. I knew I’d do okay.

  I gathered everything at my work station, weighed it out, and then, when it was all in front of me, weighed it out again. I combined the ingredients in just the right measure and let the dough rise. I didn’t leave while it rose, as I wanted to watch it the entire time. We’d be serving these for lunch, and I wanted the brioche to be perfect.

  I finally put my dough into my number seven pan and delivered it to Monsieur Desfreres’s assistant, who gave me a benign smile and put it into the oven.

  I went back to our table. Désirée had delivered her croissant dough to the proofer and was now pulling it out and taking it to the ovens. Juju grinned over her creation, and indeed, it smelled great.

  Anne, however, was close to tears.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, coming alongside her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It never rose”. I looked at the flabby, flat lump of dough slumping in the bottom of her mixing bowl. “I kept thinking maybe it needed more time, but it never rose”.

  Juju joined us. “Maybe it was the yeast, like my problem the other day”.

  Anne shook her head again. “I used the same yeast as the rest of you”. She pinched the dough and put some in her mouth. “Try this”.

  Désirée appeared and pinched off a piece of dough. “Too much salt,” she said authoritatively after tasting it. Then she walked over to talk with the men finishing up their sweetbreads.

  Juju took her bread to the oven. Anne’s eyes followed Désirée as she walked away. “I measured the salt exactly,” she said quietly.

  “And that wouldn’t cause it not to rise, anyway,” I said.

  “Unless someone added salt while my yeast was proofing,” she said. “Then it would kill the yeast”.

  My eyes widened. She was right. And she wouldn’t have noticed, as long as it had happened after the bubbling began.

  “Did you see anything happen when I went to the restroom?” Anne asked.

  “Non,” I said. “But I was concentrating on my own bread, so that may not mean much”.

  “Perhaps we’d better keep an eye on everything from now on,” she said, watching Juju and Désirée.

  Monsieur Desfreres arrived. He looked at Anne’s bowl and sniffed. “This, Mademoiselle, is not a crown,” he said, referring to the shape couronne bread was supposed to be. “It is, instead, a flat tire”.

  He marked some notes in his book and kept walking.

  Thankfully, my bread turned out perfectly, and I whistled “God Bless America” all the way to the bakery. Then I whistled “La Marseillaise”. I was a true Franco-American.

  Simone was tidying up the pastry cases and using her hand broom to brush bread crumbs from the bread cases before they were loaded for the evening bread rush.

  “Can I help?” I asked, watching the chair she stood on wobble a bit too much for comfort.

  “Merci!” she said. I held it steady, and she completed her job.

  “Perhaps you should get a stepladder?” I suggested. “In case I am late tomorrow”.

  She smiled kindly. “I guess this chair is a little shaky. I just haven’t wanted to make a fuss”.

  How different from Odious. Unfortunately, I had to spend the day with Odious on both Saturday and Sunday. Fortunately, Maman was letting me help with the bread since I’d had my bread course this week. I planned to bake up a little surprise for Odious. I grinned at the thought of it.

  “Lexi, come here!” Patricia barked from the back. I stood, stunned, for a minute. Simone caught it too.

  Patricia had called me by the familiar, friendly form of the verb, not the formal form she’d always used before.

  “Get going!” Simone shooed me through the door.

  Once in the back room, though, things were all business. “I heard you whistling up the street five minutes ago,” Patricia said. “What took you so long?” I saw the softness of her face. She was truly pretty when she let her guard down.

  “I was helping Simone,” I explained.

  “Well, I’m leaving in one hour for the train to Provence, and I need to give you instructions for the rest of the day. Too bad you’ll be at the village bakery this weekend”. She looked at me intently. “Philippe will be here all weekend, and he could use the help. But you’ll see him at church on Sunday, I suppose. He’ll have someone come in early so he doesn’t miss”. By her sniff, I could tell she did not approve of his choice.

  “What about Céline after school?”

  Patricia nodded. “That is the problème, isn’t it? She’ll be at my tante’s house. Simone will be here to watch her today, as Philippe and my papa are looking at the building in Versailles to see if it’s suitable for the next shop”. She paused. “How was your schooling this week?”

  “Bon!” I said, glad to be able to share the truth. “I made brioche—eggy, and just so”. I grinned. “Everyone at the lunch table said it was tender and delicious”.

  “Bon. Today you will make brioche. Place the dough in the cooler overnight, and I will leave a note for Philippe to bake it in the morning. Make enough for ten loaves, as many people buy brioche on Saturday mornings”.

  What if I made a mistake? The bakery would have no brioche at all. I got the recipe card out and studied it, and began to measure bit by bit. I stationed myself at one of the huge dough mixers. “Can I use this?” I asked one of the bread crew.

  “But of course!” he said.

  I turned on my iPod and began the Paris Combo playlist. The jazzy, sensual music filled my ears as I began the yeast sponge, making very certain that no salt got in at this point.

  I noticed, now that I was alone so much, that I talked with God more often, especially in the past couple weeks. In the morning, because there was no one else to converse with. To ask His opinion later in the day. To share my personal thoughts. Never before had it only been me and Him. I’d always had other people to turn to first.

  Lord, please help Anne, I prayed as I mixed. She looked so dejected after the failure with her bread today. And help me too. I don’t want to let anyone down with the brioche.

  I envisioned Philippe coming in the next morning, taking out my dough, kissing his fingers into the air at the glossy, perfect sight of it, and baking it up brown and beautiful. Many customers would comment on the perfect, eggy texture. I grinned.

  I supposed it was equally possible that Philippe would come in, shout, “Quelle problème!” at the greasy, flat tire of dough in the walkin, and have to profusely apologize to his regular customers, who demanded a nonexistent loaf of their Saturday brioche.

  I tried to keep that thought at bay.

 
Céline came in a few hours later and grinned at our two mascots, the shrunken apple heads, perched on the shelf above the dry goods. I turned off my iPod so I could hear her better.

  “Goûter?” she asked hopefully.

  “Ask Simone,” I told her. “I’m busy baking”.

  “Baking, beurk,” she said. Yuck. She walked forward to get her treat, and I finished up my dough.

  At school, I had let the dough warm-rise in a few hours. Today I’d let it slow-rise in the cooler so it would be ready tomorrow morning. I beat the butter into submission, slapped the dough, wrapped it, and put it in the walk-in. Then I went to the office to talk with Patricia.

  “I’m just leaving,” she said, looking vibrant. “I’m going to get my hair done before I catch the train”.

  “So you’re very pretty for Xavier,” Céline teased.

  My eyebrows raised, but I said nothing. I knew who was the low employee around here.

  “Xavier is my … friend,” Patricia explained.

  “Her boyfriend,” Céline said in a singsong voice.

  “Back to work for you,” Patricia told her. “If you are not getting the highest marks in all areas, you are not studying enough. I will be looking at your progress reports very soon”. She tried to be stern but fooled no one, I think.

  She closed the office door behind us and handed me a list of things to prep before I took the train home that night.

  “Have a good time,” I said.

  “I will,” she said. “I’m best in Provence”.

  I wondered if that had to do with it being her family home or with Xavier. I simply nodded.

  “I have known Xavier a long time,” she offered without my having to ask. “He was so happy when I came back from Seattle to stay. He is ready for someone other than his maman to cook for him,” she said a little wistfully. “But he will not leave Provence”.

  Because she’d opened the door a crack, I tentatively offered a question. “And you do not want to move back to Provence?”

  “I’d love to,” she said, but nodded her head toward Céline, busy practicing her printing on the other side of the office window. “But who would take care of her … and Philippe?”