L'Art du Blog
December 4, 2009 -
The Proof is in the Pudding
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The moments right before class begins at 6:45 am at The French Pastry School are usually calm—we recline outside the door of our kitchen classroom and, hazy-eyed, discuss our weekends or the recipes we are about to learn. Today, however, is an exam day and we’re lined up attentively, silently holding our tool bags like armed soldiers waiting for battle. The written portion of the exam will soon be finished but the practical will span the rest of the week, a test of both our technique and our powers of organization. L’Art de Pâtisserie program is divided into four sections that last about five weeks each; at the end of each segment we are tested in the two to three topics we’ve studied in that time. Today my class is starting its third exam—sugar candies, ice cream and plated desserts—and, by now, we have a lot of things figured out. Firstly, we know that the hardest part of this week will be stopping ourselves from helping our classmates, a concept totally foreign to the rest of the program in which we are encouraged to go out of our way to assist those who may have fallen behind in the day’s tasks. During the exam, there are rules in place that demand us to work strictly alone: no sharing product, no asking or answering questions, and no doing favors; no, nary a dish can be washed that is not your own. I’ve spent six hours of every day for the past five months with these people, we work exceptionally well together and we enjoy doing so—it’s a test of confidence to suddenly perform alone. Thankfully, we’ve become much more comfortable with our environment since the first exam when we all ran around the kitchen bumping into each other with an unreasonable look of terror in our eyes. Today our early morning intensity is a result of concentration rather than nerves: we know our way around the space, we know how to communicate with each other, and we know that we’ve been taught well. All these factors help us, not only to prepare for exam week, but also to know that we can recover if not everything goes perfectly according to plan. With the right organization and care, however, we knew we could all finish in that time. Working with our table partners, we plot a schedule of when we will be working on certain products and what equipment we will need. This exam, with so much candy, is heavy on the induction stove, so, for example, while I work on boiling sugar, my partner, Autumn, will mix and roll her dough on the other side of the granite countertop. We’ll dance around each other through this staggered schedule all day, checking in with one another periodically to offer encouragement and to make sure we’re both staying on track. Just because we’re working alone doesn’t mean we’re not a team anymore. By the time I’m done, I and my friends will inevitably have mussed something up but these are where all our favorite stories come from, especially since we’re not allowed to throw away any “ruined” product without first informing the chef. It’s not exactly a walk of shame but it is certainly hard to admit you accidentally put salt rather than sugar in your delicate meringue crackers, formerly known as cookies. This rule is in keeping with the spirit of the food service industry where waste of product is a capital offence—as students, we are forced to form the habit of troubleshooting, to think of everything we can do to save the product before we call it rubbish. I, for one, have gone to some lengths to resuscitate my more minor muddles: in the petit fours exam I broke a miniature tart shell and was unable to make extras. Instead of giving up and showing chef, I puzzled together the broken pieces into the tiny tin, poured in the filling, and baked it so the custard set like glue. Granted, I felt a little like Dr. Frankenstein, but in the end, I put forward a presentable and, if I do say so myself, delicious product. Throughout the course, I’ve realized that mistakes like this are one of the best ways to learn and it is just as important to make them during the test of our knowledge as it is in our acquiring of it. Learning is a never-ending process, and I’m always analyzing how I can make my product better. During the entremets exam, I made an acceptable but slightly deflated mousse and knew the next time I wouldn’t over fold it; in the bread exam, I realized that I should have mixed my dough a little less and proofed it a little longer; in this week’s exam, I made what should have been a chewy candy hard by boiling the sugar a hair too long. Even Chef Sébastien Canonne, M.O.F. the co-founder of The French Pastry School and one of about one hundred Meilleurs Ouvriers de France in the world, insists that he has never made anything he considered to be perfect; “No matter what, there are always ways to improve something or reinvent it. You can never stop thinking about what to do next.” Though these three days are a little more stressful than an ordinary class, they are by no means the final tests of what we have learned; rather, they are the first of the many hundreds of trials we will face throughout the rest of our careers and the first step toward improvement.
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