Pre-test#2 - Quite possibly the worst day of my life

...at school.

But it's quite funny now that I think about it.

For our first dish, we had to make allumettes au fromage which are simple, BUT you need time to make a puff pastry.

Flashback from the beginning of the semester:


There's a technique to it in terms of mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, and then incorporating the butter into the dough without it ever "leaking out" of the dough itself. You also have to roll the dough, fold the dough, and turn the dough a certain way, and then let it rest. Then you do it all over again. The turns and resting results in the pastry dough puffing up and having many layers.

Long story short, we were all running late in putting our allumettes in the oven. I didn't even have time to foncer my allummettes, let alone do enough turns to have them rest and then puff up correctly in the oven. It was terrible. Everything about today was terrible. I was 100% dans la merde. And it was quite the same for everyone else. Chef was not too happy today, to say the least.

Let's just say Pre-test day#2 resulted in:

"Stupid !"

Slamming the oven shut... throwing a pan here or there on the plaque.
"Putain de merde !" (Context translation - fucking shit, I suppose)

Mix that in with a few looks of death.

And then my chef looking at my dish, then looking at the other chef, pointing to my dish, and then having that look. You know the "can you believe she is serving this shit?" look.

Then the:

"Joan, the poubelle (trashcan in French) is over there."

Followed by "Everyone, there is a poubelle here, ok?"

Ah, classic.

And to top it off, I was the first to serve both my dishes today. So basically that means I get the most shit (everyone else's didn't work out too well either but you can only yell so many times). Also, I think I got a lot of shit because the first time I made them, they rose pretty well and my chef mentioned for me to keep the technique up. The ones I made for the pre-test were rushed, flat, leaking cheese from the sides, uneven, and just plain ugly. The shitty-ness of my first dish overshadowed whatever I made for my second dish. Chicken something? I don't even remember.

But anyway, I knew it was completely shitty. But at the same time, I don't think it was the best idea to have a timed test with a puff pastry recipe that requires turns, time, and more turns and time. Regardless, I was quite disappointed in myself and how the day turned out. But it's okay. C'est comme ça.