Hermé for Hermès

Christmas time at Pierre Hermé is just crazy. I have very little time and it is hard to post new articles for the blog. However, "chose promise chose due", I went last week rue du Faubourg St Honoré to do a little window shopping for you and here is the picture of Hermès ' Christmas show window that I previously wrote about. In November, at my work, we were asked to make a series of small edible ornaments: macaron pyramids, differently shaped marshmallows, royal icing and pastillage decorations. We had very little time and everything had to come in 13 very precise colours. We had been given painted samples of what Hermès wanted and had to create exactly the colours desired; there were three shades of red, five shades of green etc. Let's admit it, it was hell not only getting the different shades but also getting the same shades with different products ; some of them having to be baked, others whipped and other left to dry. In fact, because of the colour problem, we had to make some of the ornaments over many times. At the end, I felt both happy and proud; the result in the window was very much in the Christmas spirit. I simply was a bit disappointed that so few of the many, many ornaments we had made had been used by the decorator for the display.
JOYEUX NOEL !

bye bye cupcakes

Here is a link to a November article from the New York Times about the renewed interest in pies in the United States. It is called "Pie to cupcake: time's up".

The article suggests that there is a new fashion for pies, that it has aroused great enthousiasm and may soon replace the cupcake hysteria.

Will the fashion for cupcakes soon fade ?

These last few years in Paris there has been a real craze for British and American pastries like novelty cakes, decorated cookies, and especially for cup cakes. Not only have a series of new pastry shops opened, like Synie's (on the same street as the Ecole Ferrandi, by the way), Cupcakes and Co, Berko, Chez Bogato or Coupefoudre and Sugarplum, but well-known pastry shops have also followed step : Ladurée (in a more elaborate style), the bakery at La Grande Epicerie du Bon Marché.
Some of these new shops are quite gifted from the marketing point of view. The stores are usually cute : they are nicely decorated, the display is lovely, often in a sweet, girlie way ). Mostly they seem to know how to catch media attention and manage to get a lot of coverage in the press.

Chez Bogato is the place I like best and probably the one which has attracted the most publicity. It was in charge of some of the deserts at la Fondation Cartier for the opening of an exhibition on "Graffiti" in 2008. Also, Chez Bogato has managed to provide its decorated cookies at Glou, a restaurant in the Marais I particulary like and where I had lunch recently in November.
Rose Bakery, however, has become since November the caterer for the café of the wonderful art foundation, La Maison Rouge, (Rose Bakery is not "into" cupcakes but still it provides a very English or American type of desert). Rose Bakery, as one knows, is probably one of the oldest bobo brunch places on rue des Martyrs in Paris 75009.

This cup cake fashion is refered to in the press as the "cakista movement". And indeed the shops that make this kind of deserts are almost all owned or managed by women. The customers they seem to want to draw are young or less young females, Hello Kitty fans, and upper middle class families with children, if one is to judge by the cakes and the other products sold in the shops. Indeed, next to the cupcakes, which come in all sorts of delightful colours, they sell a wide variety of knick-knacks also in all sorts of delightful colours: pastry gadgets, cupcake ear-rings, macaroon keychains, éclair charms, bibs, ... in pink, lavender, buttercup yellow...

One has the feeling, when one enters these shops, of stepping into a a girlie girl world since they are all "sugar and spice and everything nice".

But these shops probably don't think of themselves as real "pâtisseries" since the cakes they make are not made by real "pâtissiers" (the know how for baking a cupcake is really minimal) and most of these "cakistas" have never really worked in pastry making and come for the world of advertisement, fashion etc. The tastes the "cakistas" cater for are those of the kindergarden and not of the serious pastry eater who knows his baba au rhum and his Paris Brest, who has tried and compared the different kougelhopfs or tartes au citron in Paris;

So time will be up one day, I think, for this playful type of nursery food; and the nice ladies who manage these shops will have to think of what will take the customers' fancy next. Pies, as the New York Times' article says? Maybe.
So: "A vos tartes, ladies!"

PS : watch the video "How to make a perfect pie crust" on the site of the New York Times' article. At first, the way the perfect housewife in the video lines her pie left me non-plussed , then thinking about how Yukiko (my friend, the "tourière") would react if she saw it, started to laugh.

Addresses :

Berko, 23 rue Rambuteau Paris 75004. Tél : 01 40 29 02 44

Chez Bogato, 7 rue de Liancourt, Paris 75014. Tél: 01 40 47 03 51
www.chezbogato.fr

Coupefoudre, 39 bis rue de Montreuil, Paris 75011.

Cupcakes and Co, 25 rue de la Forge Royale, Paris 75011. Tél : 01 43 67 16 19

Glou, 101 rue Vieille du Temple, Paris 75003 . Tél : 01 42 74 44 32

La Maison rouge, 10 Boulevard de la Bastille, Paris 75012. Tél :01 40 01 08 81

Rose Bakery, 30 rue Debelleyme, Paris 75009. Tél : 01 49 96 54 01

Rose Bakery, 46 rue des Martyrs, Paris 75009. Tél : 01 42 82 12 80

Sugarplum Cake Shop, 68 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Paris 75005. Tél : 01 46 34 07 43

Synie's, 23 rue de l'Abbé Grégoire, Paris 75006. Tél : 01 45 44 54 23

How's school by the way? When Pastry makers change into caterers.

For the exam of the BTM (Brevet Technique de Métier), students are asked to bake and present all kinds of different products such as individual pastries, "entremets", Danish breads, a "pièce montée", a "pièce en sucre", a chocolate display, bonbons, sweets and also SAVORY classics. Thus as an exercice our class was told to prepare for a catering session. We were totally throne into confusuion.One must keep in mind that as apprentices in pastry making, most of us have absolutly no clue about "fond brun", "pâté en croûte", "fromage de tête", "saucisson brioché" and other famous French delicacies. Moreover there is a kind of half serious silly and biased tradition of mistrust within the French pastry makers for other artisans such as bakers,cooks and caterers.

Some of us were quite frightenened and already imagining themselves in a butchers's or a "charcutier"'s kitchen, in other words, in a real blood bath.

Despite our fears, our teacher treated us very gently. Moreover I believe it actually went pretty well and I had so much fun making my fast food canapés.

Here is what we were asked to make:


- puff pastry for the 12 "bouchées à la reine" and a big "vol au vent" in the shape of a fish ( I used green food colouring and flavored the butter with Provence herbs to give it a little funky switch)

- "brioche" for the "saucisson brioché",for a "brioche Louis XV" (on the picture it is set in a glass vase, "it has the shape of a "brioche mousseline" cut in slices and garnished with lether pâté)and finally for 20 "navettes" (small oval shaped "brioches" used for mini bites "petits fours")

- flaky dough or pâte à pâté (no joke it really exists) for a quiche loraine anda "pâté en croûte"(dough and stuffing and all )

- pizza dough for 1 big pizza and 4 individual ones

-white sandwich bread for 40 canapés of 5 different sorts

-whole wheat bread for a "pain surprise"

After going to the FNAC (the bookstore) and looking into a lot of main stream, non profesionnal crap like How I Became a Host Goddess or How to Make Your Kids Enjoy Brussels Sprouts, I decided to make an international fast food mini bites buffet (instead of the dull traditional "canapés").

On the picture above from left to right :

- Nordsee curry shrimp sandwich (for those who are not familiar with Nordsee don't worry you can continue leading your life as it is). Nordsee is a chain of fish "restaurants" mainly existing throughout Germany.

-a classic club sandwich (all my regards to Lord Sandwich)

-a Californian roll

-a mini cheese burger (a slice of ham" jambon de pays" replaces very nicely the usual meat steack)

-a bruschetta (my apologies to the Italian community; sorry, I know bruschettas don't really fit in the fast food category but you had to be represented somehow and I am not actually sure they don't serve "bruschette" at "Mezzo di Pasta" and other pasta fast foods)

-a New York hotdog

I hope this post may help other members of the anti savory club look at catering differently and maybe enable some try out "un dîner presque parfait".

Yours always,
signé : "le saucisson brioché"

matcha tea guimauve

Guimauve and a few remedies against winter's grumpy mood

November has arrived bringing grey and chilly weather, short days, many grouchy and rude people on the streets of Paris, runny noses, blisters, grey complexions, slipery side walks etc.

Petite baisse de régime pour l'apprentie pâtissière.

I feel tired, a bit depressed and that is when I usually start whining and get aggressive : I don't feel like doing anything, school is dull, work frustrating, books boring, friends iritating, parties always the same and moreover, from where I stand, Chrismas just looks like the freakin' Himalayas.

After seriously considering hibernation as a solution, checking the prices of private islands on Sotheby's, attempting to avoid people who say how much THEY just desperatly need THEIR Chrismas holidays I decided to
1 make matcha tea guimauve (god knows at that time of the year you never get too much of that antioxidant business)
2 double my portion of daily cream "infiniment vanille"at PH my work.
3 buy myself an absolutly lovely and outrageously over priced coat. Hopefully that can't be disappointing, can it?
4 stay home and watch a very intellectual and high quality show like Cake Boss or Ace of Cake.

So this recipe might come in handy for those who just like me feel a bit low.

Matcha tea guimauve

120g of water
80g of glucose
400g of sugar
120g of egg whites
20gof sugar
1 pinch of salt
15g of matcha tea powder
20g of water
22g of gélatine sheets soaked in 6 times its weight of water

1)Place the sugar in a heavy saucepan with the glucose and water. Attach a candy thermometer to the pan and bring to a boil over high heat.
2)Place the egg whites in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whip attachment .As the temperature of the boiling sugar approches 110°C begin whipping the egg whites with 20g of sugar and a pinch of salt.
3)When the syrup has reached 117°c, remove it from the heat and pour it into the whites (pour it between the sides of the bowl and the beater) just like for an italien meringue.
4)Immediatly add the sheets of gélatine.keep the beater on high speed for a short time
5)Add little by litlle the matcha tea previously diluted with 20g of water.
6)Pour the guimauve in a rectangular cake frame store at room temperature overnight.
7)Cut the guimauve and sprinkle it with a mixture of confectionner's sugar and potatoe starch(50 50) so that it doesn't stick.

bourdaloue

I used to dislike the Bourdaloue pie before I started pastry making. I recall having it as a child for desert at the school cafeteria. I thought it was too sweet, too heavy and overall hated the texture of canned poached pears. I kept for years the idea that Bourdaloue was old fashioned,"étouffe chrétien" and that one shouldn't bother trying to make something good out of it. It was only many years after that I discovered that Bourdaloue could be such a tasty and versatile desert. It was only after tasting several wonderful Bourdaloues such as Gerard Mulot 's, my former chef, Carl Marletti's or l'Ecureuil s'(lovely presentation, check their site by the way) or even simply having pears poached in wine with spice that I realized how one could make great deserts with poached pears. The possibilities of great deserts with pears are so numerous: roasted, tartar, poached, as chips, in a mousse, as a compote or as an insert in an entremet , although I am not quite sure pears really stand deep freezing well .

But let's stay focussed, shall we, and let's not forget the theme of this post: the lovely Bourdaloue.

First of all, for your concern (common knowledge) in the same way that Gustave Flaubert never created the choux pastry Salammbô, Louis Bourdaloue, the famous 17th century preacher, never pondered over the subtle flavors of pears and almond. Louis was probably way too busy at his time giving sermons in front of the French court. The name of this tart was simply given after the name of an eponymous street in the 9th district of Paris in which in the 19th century was established the pastry maker Mr Fasquelle to whom we owe this classical desert. At the time Mr Fasquelle, as to honour the famous religious orator, decorated his tart with a cross made out of macaron crumbs. One must note that what was called "macaron" at the time is what we nowadays refer to as "macaron de Nancy" but I will have to check further on that . Anyway, pastry makers have long forgotten about this macaron cross and nowadays the pie consists in a tart shell (sweet pastry dough or flaky dough ), almond cream or frangipane (Ahh! l' ancestrale polémique. Quelle provocatrice je fais ! Mais nous soulèverons cette question une autre fois ) , poached pears and, for decoration, almond effilées, glazing or confectioner's sugar.

As I said before, this pie can very easily be screwed up and fall in the range of horribly heavy disgusting and boring deserts. Bourdaloue is like a slightly tacky fashion accessory (take Hermès* bright pink Kelly bag, for example) ; if worn well it can look wonderful, if worn with the wrong things and the wrong way it is outrageously overdone. Beware of the "fashion" faux pas!

First of all, I prefer to use "pâte à foncer" (more than sweet pastry dough it is less sweet (the tart being it self very sweet) and I love its cripsy flaky texture in contrast with the tenderness of almond cream. For my Bourdaloue, I have used Gérard Mulot's "pâte à foncer "and , as Yukiko , the tourière (dough maker in a pastry lab) there, once told me, the dough almost tastes like "biscuit apéritif". You can find great recipes in all sorts of books and I will be giving you one below.

For the almond cream you can use any recipe you like as long you use good ingredients and flavor it with rum.

Then, last but not least, the poached pears. One must be very careful and picky about the quality and the variety of pears used : "commices" are great so are the red "William" and the fabulous "passe-crassanes". The pears must be ripe but not too soft since they will have to stand being cooked twice, right ? (once when they are poached, and then whent hey are baked in the oven). Personally, I have used "commices" and poached them in vanilla syrup flavored with Williamine (a pear alcohol).

*About "Hermé for Hermès ", new post coming soon !

recipe for the "pâte à foncer"

250g of flour
10g of sugar
200g butter
4g of salt
1 egg yolk
25g of milk
In a stand mixer with a paddle cream the butter.Add the eggs and milk saltand sugar. Finally add the flower (make sure not to over mix the dough).

recipe for the poached pears

4 pears peeled cut in halves seeds removed
1/2 lemon(cover immediatly the pears with lemon jus so that they won't darken.)
syrup
1 vanila bean split
1 tablespoon Williamine
1/2 liter of water
250g of sugar
poach until the tender



- Gérard Mulot 76 rue de Seine 75006Paris

-Carl Marletti 51 rue Censier 75005 Paris

-Lecureuil 96 rue de lévis 75017 Paris

these boots are made for walkin

Summertime and the living is easy. It just feels great not to have anything to do really and to just be able to relax after all the pastry making of this year . It seems right just to put my security shoes away for a while and be able to wear any extravagant high heeled, flat tennis, casual, suede, fuck me, anything shoes and lead a more"normal" life than usual.

My shoes are made for walking. My shoes are made for pastry shopping (sugar cravings never stop) My shoes are made for lazy bicycling My shoes are made for late going out.

And they will soon lead me to a new pastry shop.
Pastry adventures to be continued.

Food for thought

To be downloaded on the internet the special issue on food of a magazine which is not usually devoted to food, Mode de Recherche, n°13, Janvier 2010. The issue is entitled "Gastronomie, cycles de mode et consommation.

The Institut français de la Mode (which has at its head Pierre Bergé) has devoted its January issue to gastronomy. There are 6 articles which are all interesting in their own ways : "Sur l'idée de nouveauté en cuisine" by Bénédict Beaugé; "L'esthétisation de lappétit ou le développement de la cuisine par la mode" by Luca Vercelloni or "L'alimentation résiste-t-elle aux tendances?" by Olivier Assouly etc.
Cooking and baking seem to be rooted in "terroir", history, patrimony whereas fashion feeds on newness, the change in tastes, the globalization of consumer practices, designer labels. But recently gastronomy has come to resemble fashion very much in how it promotes and markets itself. This very interesting issue of Mode de Recherche studies and explains why and how this has happenned.
Food for thought, as they fittingly say in English. De quoi réfléchir, donc.

A Fat and Sugar High Diet

Forget about meals, avoid proteins, neglect fibers and, above all, despise vegetable oils. Focus on the real things : sweets and nothing else. Here are a few rules which, associated with a physical activity like working in a pastry lab, seem to work out fine for me: FIRST of all eat mainly BETWEEN and not during meals, EAT things only made with SACCHAROSE and PURE BUTTER and -this is not negotiable- NO TRANS FAT.
As an apprentice in pastry making who gets up at 4.45 and finishes at 3.30 in the afternoon I follow a special diet, the one my job dictates. It is quite at the antipodes of the ones fashion magazines and health books recommend, but who cares.
4.45 A.M. : At home: tea and a piece of bread with jam or honey (jusque là tout va bien vous me direz)and off to work. I reach the bakery after a half hour walk in the night. But I enjoy that part (i.e. passing by the same empty places seing the same delivery truck, meeting the same people:the woolen hat jogger and the lady opening her café).
6 A.M. : I say hello to the whole team, grab a "pain au chocolat" on the viennoiserie shelf and start my work by selecting which cakes will be "restored" and put back in the shop and which ones will "restaure" us for lunch (i.e. the broken up ones, the infirms and ugly ones; they will be delicious, mis-shapen as they are).
By 7. 30, I am already starving but lunch is hours away at around 1.30 I nibble a piece of "mille feuille puff pastry" ( with a layer of "crème légère" (made lighter with a third of whipped cream, mind you)
9 A.M. : my stomach is still rumbling. Just passing by le poste "petits gâteaux", I eat the remainders of a delicious pecan "praliné feuillantine" used for the montage of the Swan (that's the name of a cake) and realise that the more I eat the more hungry I feel.
10.30 A.M. :While preparing for the montage of the "Miroir des elfes"(N.B. that's another cake and I am not responsible for the stupid names given to the cakes ) I nibble, no let's be honest, I stuff myself with the delicious "abricot financier". It is just imposible to stop and I feel I won't survive until lunch.
11.3o A.M. : Just a taste of the Swan's chocolate mousse since I still feel a bit hungry but lunch is in two hours and I should stop eating sweet things or else i won't be able to eat anything at lunch
12. A.M. : colleague friend of mine offers to share a "tatin tart". I love "tatins", so yes. After all, "les bonbons valent mieux que la raison."
1.30 : At last! Our lunch break. The "communard" (that's the name of the person who prepares lunch for us) has arrived and has fixed a lunch for the team: bits of the left overs from the caterers, a dubious meat with rice and mashed potatoes (the mashed potatoes being the only vegetable part of the meal). We have very little time for our break and hardly ever sit down. We pay for the food, mind you, and it is lousy. I pay and and I don't eat because I don't want to eat the brownish thing they call meat or the soaked damp and unpleasant looking "tourtes" (meat pies). So I decide to skip lunch and instead to choose a more than decent desert, i.e. what will suit my fancy among the cakes from the day before : "tarte poire pamplemousse", a piece of "charlotte" or a "delice de Ninon". I keep telling myself I should bring a sandwich of my own, a salad or a fruit. But I never manage to be able to do it. The fruit would be easy ; but not the sandwich nor the salad, I can’t see myself preparing lunch for the next day (it would not be fresh) and I can’t prepare lunch at 4 o’clock in the morning, it would make me slightly nauseous. So because I am lazy or disorganize, or because my stomach refuses in the morning that I cook anything else but breakfast, and because the lunch my boss intends for us is bad, all day I get alternately to starve and eat pastry.
2.30 : It has just been an hour since our lunch break but can't resist when I see the small pieces of pistachio "pain de Gênes" style biscuit ... yum yum...
3 : Soon I will be cleaning up if no one asks me to do some extra work
4 : It’s over. I don’t know whether I am hungry or full. I will think it over later. I leave work and head for the swimming pool where I swim for 3 quarters of an hour. Ah, the times when there is no one and I can do my laps without bumping into anyone. Well, that is bliss !

December/January: The jolly period of revelry

The jolly period of revelry or how I survived Xmas, New Year's Eve and the Epiphany.
Mulot Dodo , Mulot Dodo.
The month of December seems to have gone very quickly and at the same time to have lasted for ever since we have worked such enormously long hours. It has left many memories, good ones like the sight of the customers in the shop looking at the "logs", unpleasant ones like the back ache I felt at the end of the day and the many hours of sleep I still must catch up with. As everyone knows, Xmas time is the busiest period of the year in a pastry shop. Beforehand, one can feel both anxiety and excitement. "Will the work we provide be sufficient? Is the team ready? Will the customers come and buy our Xmas cakes ?" On the other hand, one is truly enthusiastic to see finally that the "logs" we have prepared and put in storage are now ready to go out into the world and are about to fulfill their essential role, that of pleasing the customers.
Our work during these days is quite tedious and tiring : it consists mainly in three things :
1-getting the "logs" out of the freezers on the second and first floor and bringing them down to the basement 2- glazing them, cutting them, decorating them (in the basement) 3-bringing them up to the store on the ground floor.
Let me tell you that I have never climbed up and down so many stairs and carried such enormous weights in my life. I even fell down the stairs on the 25 th of December."Y'a d'la casse?" asked my chef. "Non, y'a pas d'casse à part moi", is what I answered. O, silly me! Silly apprentice ! I thought. The "bûche" before the apprentice !
Within the team the atmosphere also changes during these few weeks : personal hatreds vanish and there is a sort of team spirit, Xmas bliss and tension due to exhaustion. People are so tired they are drinking themselves crazy with coffee, they are so hungry and unaware of what time it is that they eat their lunch sandwiches at eight in the morning.
I am glad it is over but I am also glad I experienced the whole thing. And let's admit, after all this I am pleased I am not now slaving away for the Epiphany "galettes".