From March 3 – 7th, the worldwide bakery exhibition, Europain, was hosted in Paris-Nord Villepinte. It’s an event that happens every 2 years with over 80,000 visitors.
But what’s more exciting is the competitions that take place at Europain. There is the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (Bakery World Cup) and Mondial des Arts Sucrés (International Confectionary Art competition).
After Wednesday, it will have been a month since I started working at Guy Savoy. I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone by. Slowly, they’ve let me make more recipes for various components of their desserts. So far, I’ve made the clafouti, biscuit sachet (thin cake base), crème de marrons, tuile cacao, tuile citron, papier coco, cheesecake, marshmallows, and bergamot candy.
Pierre Hermé recently came out with a new line of pastries celebrating one of his signature creations, Ispahan (a raspberry, rose and litchi macaron). The red from the raspberry and pink from the rose make these pastries perfect for Valentine’s Day.
Last Saturday night, I finished my first week of work as a stagiaire at restaurant Guy Savoy. It’s been exciting, stimulating, and refreshing. For the moment, I work 9-5pm on Tuesday to Friday and 4-12am on Saturdays.
Just as everyone who’s gone through the transition has warned us, working is very different from school. The first few days involved a bit of an adjustment. There’s the language barrier, unfamiliarity of a new kitchen, and the much faster pace of work.
So I finally had my OFII appointment to get my carte de sejour (residence permit). Even if you have a VISA to stay in France, it’s not official until you get this stamp in your passport. During the appointment, you take a medical exam (lung x-ray, eye-sight, general health), hand in some additional documents (proof of address in Paris), and buy a timbre (stamp) for 55 Euros (student). And this has to be done within the first 3 months you’re in Paris or you’re technically not legally allowed to stay. Oops!
Our final baking exam was pretty straight forward. I actually almost missed it because I was feeling quite sick that day and I thought the exam was the next day. It’s a good thing I did end up convincing myself to go to school.
For our exam, we had to make coffee eclairs and an apple tart. We all passed, yay! Here’s my final baking products of the year.
For 3 days, we worked on our final chocolate egg sculptures. These felt like the longest 3 days out of our entire program. We had double classes so we were at school for 12 hours. And I also had the unlucky job of dish duty that week. Let me tell you it is the worst week to have to do the dishes.
