Cheese and Bread Make the Cheeks Red

Today was Day 3 of our third block of classes.  This time around, we're learning about BREAD and VIENNOISERIE, which is essentially the category of breakfast pastries.  And I think I'm in love: with bread.  

There's something that feels so natural and rustic about making bread.  It's the oldest man-made food, and even after thousands of years, we're continually refining our technique.  Granted, I've actually only been involved in one day of bread production, and even though we just made baguettes and white sandwhich bread, I'm more than a little bit the smitten kitten.   

Our newest chef is a happy and approachable guy with a voice that makes me homesick and a Victorian mustache.  Even in his clogs and chef's toque and apron, I can still transpose on him a pair of coattails and a dapper silk top hat in my imagination.  In contrast to 2 of our 3 former instructors, Chef is smiley and not the least bit intimidating as he tells us stories in his worst female British accent and excitedly relates the properties of yeast, guru that he is. 

As opposed to the blood, gore, and fast-paced tempo of a culinary kitchen, our bakeshop is cool, calm, and drowsy almost.  Bread is so fragile and delicate, and the process is slow and methodical, not to be rushed.  Meaning, there is a fair amount of down time while we wait for our dough to ferment, rise, and proof.  One episode of Grey's Anatomy compares the pastel-colored dermatology wing where people give each other massages and serve the patients fruit-infused water to the scary chaotic mess of surgery, trauma, and the emergency room.  Here in the bakeshop, we're dermatology, and we are not ashamed.  Nothing has eyeballs or bones or blood -- the only thing that is alive is the yeast.  We don't use our knives to sever and crush and tear.  Rather, we use our hands to put things together.  It's so much more intimate.  The dough is alive, and we're working with it.  It's poetic, almost romantic, even. 

And now, here we are at the part of my post where I can't write anything without incorporating unnecessary analogies, because everything needs to be compared to something else -- bakers are like doctors; dating is like dealing a deck of cards or playing a game of tag; meeting new people is like walking on stilts;  my personality is like Camembert cheese; and bread is like a baby.  I know, I know, I'm being dramatic and silly-headed, but even after only 3 days, I feel like something has awakened my seemingly forever-dormant maternal nature.  In a weird way, I get so proud of my dough.  I just want to hold it, once the gluten has adequately developed, and pat that little boule with the gentle tenderness of a newborn.  I can't tell if it's creepy or not creepy that once the dough has risen, it feels so soft and smooth, like baby skin.  After the dough has fermented, we gently "burp the baby" to get all the gases out, and then we softly shape it into little rounds and "tuck it in" underneath a plastic sheet so it won't dry out while it rests.  It's like tucking our dough in for a little nap.  The yeast needs a warm place to eat and grow, but again, none of it can be rushed.  As I rolled my white pan bread dough into cylinders and gently laid them in their loaf pans, I had the distinct feeling that I was laying a baby down to sleep.  Maybe this is getting weird.  I don't know. 

"A bakeshop was a different kind of place.  A white patina seemed to cover everything, softening the room, making it almost dreamlike.  It was gentle here.  Cool.  Calm.  Poof, flour into the mixer.  Puff, the croissants rise.  Shhh, the dough is resting...Cooking is a mad dash.  Baking is different.  Baking is regimented.  It is disciplined.

As in all matters of food, there was an intellectual and spiritual correlation.  [Bakers], I had learned, came to [baking] not to fulfill a desire, but rather, by chance, to fulfill something already in their nature...They were different.  I have no doubt that there are people in this world, toiling away, in offices and backhoes alike, who are fundamentally unhappy because they never tried working in kitchens.  And many are likewise unhappy because they are, by nature, bakers." 

--- Michael Ruhlman, "The Soul of a Chef"

Anyhow, I'm pretty positive that if when I gain weight in school, it most definitely be from bread.