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A visit to my new school

Posted on by Bee Stewart

‘A visit to my new school’ was first published on bee-bakes.com, September 16, 2014

In less than two weeks’ time I’ll be leaving for pâtisserie school: exciting! I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not nervous—I’m not one of those people who think you must say everything is like, super-fantastic all the time. It’s not a good idea to dwell on the negative things, but it’s also not a good idea to pretend all’s dandy when it’s not, either! It is what it is; a spade is a spade etc. So there you have it: I’m nervous…and well excited, too! Bring on piping!

A couple of weekends ago Nick and I took a journey into Auvergne, the region of France I’ll be studying in. It was our second Big Fat Greek Wedding Anniversary (BFGWA)* so we thought we’d have a weekend away and check out the countryside. Last year for our first BFGWA we drove ten hours to south of Bordeaux, ate at the only place open, McDonalds, crashed in a hotel in an industrial park, got a speeding fine driving back to Lyon the next day—all just so we could pick up a gorgeous wee puppy. So now it’s the BFGWA and the AFA (Arrival of Fortescue Anniversary) weekend.

Anyway, I digress. Nick and I stayed in Le Puy-en-Valey which is down the road from my new school and home of Puy lentils, in case you thought it sounded familiar. For anyone who plans to visit France and wants to see more than the usual tourist sites in Paris, Provence and the Côte d’Azur, I would really recommend taking a road trip into this part of the country. It was once a volcanic area, but has been dormant for several thousand years. The result of the volcanic activity is that there are now kilometres of rounded hills called ‘puys’ and volcanic craters which make for amazing viewing. The first time we drove by Le Puy-en-Valey I thought we had somehow teleported to South America or anywhere but Europe. There were chapels and a giant statue of Mary teetering on the top of rocky outcrops and the undulating countryside wasn’t what I’d expected to find in France. Now I’m going back to this region for five months!

In less than two weeks’ time I’ll be leaving for pâtisserie school: exciting! I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not nervous—I’m not one of those people who think you must say everything is like, super-fantastic all the time. It’s not a good idea to dwell on the negative things, but it’s also not a good idea to pretend all’s dandy when it’s not, either! It is what it is; a spade is a spade etc. So there you have it: I’m nervous…and well excited, too! Bring on piping!

A couple of weekends ago Nick and I took a journey into Auvergne, the region of France I’ll be studying in. It was our second Big Fat Greek Wedding Anniversary (BFGWA)* so we thought we’d have a weekend away and check out the countryside. Last year for our first BFGWA we drove ten hours to south of Bordeaux, ate at the only place open, McDonalds, crashed in a hotel in an industrial park, got a speeding fine driving back to Lyon the next day—all just so we could pick up a gorgeous wee puppy. So now it’s the BFGWA and the AFA (Arrival of Fortescue Anniversary) weekend.

Anyway, I digress. Nick and I stayed in Le Puy-en-Valey which is down the road from my new school and home of Puy lentils, in case you thought it sounded familiar. For anyone who plans to visit France and wants to see more than the usual tourist sites in Paris, Provence and the Côte d’Azur, I would really recommend taking a road trip into this part of the country. It was once a volcanic area, but has been dormant for several thousand years. The result of the volcanic activity is that there are now kilometres of rounded hills called ‘puys’ and volcanic craters which make for amazing viewing. The first time we drove by Le Puy-en-Valey I thought we had somehow teleported to South America or anywhere but Europe. There were chapels and a giant statue of Mary teetering on the top of rocky outcrops and the undulating countryside wasn’t what I’d expected to find in France. Now I’m going back to this region for five months!

After checking out Le Puy-en-Valey and nearby Polignac, we headed to my new village, Yssingeaux, and had a two hour tour of the facilities at the château school, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Pâtisserie. Yes, that’s right people: my school is in a château—oh là là! There were several kitchen labs stocked with Kitchen Aids and industrial mixers, more stainless steel benches than you’d see this side of a stainless steel factory and lovely looking stone bench tops for pastry. Classes were ‘practising chocolate drizzling’, choux pastry was baking in the oven, prize winning sugar sculptures graced the windows and student work lined the hallways. The air was heady with the scent of sugary goodness as we peeked into freezers that provided a glimpse of the intricate cakes I’ll soon be making. Student’s miniature wedding cakes stood proudly in the foyer, while a staff member’s giant sugar sculpture design was constructed in one of the teaching rooms in preparation for the MOF**… In short, it was all happening.

The village itself is quite small with around 7000 people living there. Apparently the locals love the students because they bring so much business into the town, which is a good thing for me with my bad French! The Programs Manager from the school warned me that it will be a bit of a culture shock moving to a small place where everyone knows what clothes you wore to the supermarket the night before. He warned me that it will take some getting used to as all the shops close early. When I pressed him to define what ‘early’ meant, thinking 16h or similar, he said 19h…seven in the evening. Even though it’s been a few years since I lived at home, after growing up on a farm in rural Australia near a town where the shops closed at 17:30h and shopping happened fortnightly or weekly, at the most, I think I have a fair chance of surviving. Especially after living in the UK where there are odd Sunday trading laws that result in 24h supermarkets closing early on Saturday night to be able to re-open late on Sunday morning, making impromptu Saturday night BBQs impossible. A place where department stores open half an hour earlier on Sunday for ‘browsing’ time before you’re allowed to buy. With a little bit of effort, I think I can adjust…

There was an air of business and purpose about the château patisserie school, even though I was assured that it was a ‘quiet time’ because most of the students had gone out for an industry field trip. The staff and the chefs were extremely friendly, helpful and courteous and answered my long list of questions. At the end of the tour I asked Programs Manager what I could do to prepare for the course, meaning what should I read up on, buy, study etc. His reply was: I’d say prepare mentally and physically for the course… After that, there’s only one question left that no one can answer for me but time: just what have I got myself into?

 

*We were married twice: once in Australia and once in Greece six months later, hence the differentiation between wedding anniversaries!

**Meilleurs Ouvriers de France is a prestigious award given to artisans and competitions are held every four years. See the movie Kings of Pastry to get a taste of the action.

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What’s in a name?

Posted on by Bee Stewart

‘What’s in a name?’ was first published on bee-bakes.com, September 1, 2014

The French language can be difficult for some people to learn—like me, for example. After a lifetime of love and interest in the English language: reading novels, reading about language, participating in grammar discussions, making mistakes and generally enjoying the workings of my own language, you would think that I’d pick up French easily, but nooo. My French tutor, Joëlle, assures me this is quite common, but I think she’s just trying to make me feel better!

As with most languages there are tiny differences that can make all the difference. Anyone who’s learnt a language will tell you that the slightest mispronunciation of a word, the change of a single letter, can mean that instead of asking for bread at the bakery, you’ve asked for something obscene. So, I just wanted to do a quick post on the words associated with my new career. So here goes and hopefully I’ll get it right!

 

Pâte [pat]

Pastry, as in I’m making pastry for the apple tart.

 

Pâtisserie [pat-iss-rie]
A cake shop, or in some places bakery covers it all, as in I’m going to the bakery to pick up a birthday cake for Mel.

 

Les pâtisseries [le pat-iss-rie]

Pastries, as in I really like baking cakes.

 

Boulangerie-pâtisserie [boo-lon-gher-rie / pat-iss-rie]

A bread bakery and cake shop in one, as in I’m going to the bakery to get some bread rolls and lamingtons.

 

Pâtissier [pat-iss-i-ye]

A male pastry chef.

 

Pâtissière [pat-iss-i-yair]

A female pastry chef.

 

As you can see there is a difference between the words Pâtisserie (shop) and Pâtissier/Pâtissière (chef)—very slight in writing, but very different in pronunciation.

So there you have it for today’s French lesson: I am going to be a pâtissière and one day I might work in a pâtisserie making lots of pâte.

 

 

In the beginning there was cake

Posted on by Bee Stewart

‘In the beginning there was cake’ was first published on bee-bakes.com, September 1, 2014

I love baking: it’s in my blood, it’s part of my family. I don’t mean that my father is a Michelin star chef or my mother writes culinary books—though she probably could—I mean that baking forms part of our history.

I grew up in my mother’s kitchen, in Australia, watching her make recipes from a long line of bakers: ginger biscuits from Great Aunt Emma, Gran’s honey rolls, five types of Australian ‘sponge cakes’. Mum baked from home, creating treats using many of those recipes and it’s this experience that gave me a love of baking. I measured ingredients, prepared tins, packed biscuits into bags and watched the smiles on the people’s faces as they took goodies, sometimes a dozen cakes at a time!

Tales of baking and food abound and weave themselves into our family folklore. It only just clicked that I’m a fifth generation baker! Turns out my Great-Great-Grandfather was actually a town baker sometime back in the 1800s. His son then went on to make the bread and cakes for the family and so it was passed down. Many of our tastiest recipes come from my Great Aunt Emma—legend has it that when she passed away aged 99 she still sported a sizeable muscle in her arm from years of hand beating cakes. I can’t even imagine whipping cream by hand as my Gran did in the early days of her marriage in 1930s Australia, or how she churned out hand beaten sponges for local charity events. She stored milk and butter in a refrigerator my Grandfather made for them (the engine was outside the house so it wasn’t too noisy inside).

And then there was me.

So along comes me on the verge of a career in French pâtisserie in France. How did I get to this point?  Well, here’s the short version: as the ‘baby of the family’ with two sweet-toothed parents, I grew up on a farm in Victoria surrounded by fresh produce and good ol’ fashioned country cooking. But I wanted to get out and see the world, so I left at 18 and went to uni, moved to the big smoke and tried to forge a career in online editing. Then in the mid-2000s, like all good Aussies, I traded it all in for the even bigger smoke of London, where I ended up living for seven years. Somewhere along the way I met and married Nick the Greek from the Peloponnese, Greece. I backpacked around Europe for a few months on my own and then travelled with Nick or with friends, taking note of local dishes, pilfering recipe ideas where I could and savouring local foods.

Meanwhile, to fund all this travel I sat at a computer working as a web editor, a copy writer and sometimes what felt like a data entry assistant. I daydreamed of having my own business one day, of being creative with food instead of websites. I always went back to cake though: I organised bake sales for fund-raising events, made birthday cakes and arranged afternoon tea at my house for friends, allowing me to try new and old recipes. After seven years tied to a desk in fast paced London, I began thinking of going part-time and starting my own business—I looked into renting kitchens and at market stalls in North London where we lived.

Then it happened: France.

When I was an Arts student I wrote a ‘bucket list’ of things I wanted to do in my life and on that list was: move to France and paint. Though I don’t paint as much as I used to, when my husband, who is a scientist, was offered a job in France, was I going to say no? Mon Dieu, NON!  So we moved to Lyon: food capital of France, some say Europe, with around 1500 restaurants, pâtisseries on every corner, Michelin stars bouncing off gloriously coloured buildings, multiple markets every day of the week…oh my, the markets…

So, here we are in Lyon, 2014, and I’m about to start training to become a French pâtissière (pastry chef). I wouldn’t say it’s been an easy road to get to this point, nor is the path ahead looking that smooth but it’ll be an adventure!