Bon Appetit by Sandra Byrd Page A

we underproof. We filled in the blanks for missing recipes, including approximate weights of ingredients. Then we made them. Each of us was assigned one recipe from a selection of what we’d learned that week. Juju got
pain à la bière
, and the men across the table were assigned sweetbreads. Anne was assigned a
couronne
, and I was assigned
brioche
. Désirée got croissant.
    “I’m going to the restroom,” Anne said to me as we gathered ingredients. “Do you need anything from the prep room? I’ve forgotten the salt”.
    “Non, merci. “
I shook my head.
    The bread room hummed quietly; no one talked. While breads were not the most difficult thing we would learn, it’s hard to imagine anything else more central to French baking. I liked brioche—it was eggy, my specialty! I grinned. I knew I’d do okay.
    I gathered everything at my work station, weighed it out, and then, when it was all in front of me, weighed it out again. I combined the ingredients in just the right measure and let the dough rise. I didn’t leave while it rose, as I wanted to watch it the entire time. We’d be serving these for lunch, and I wanted the brioche to be perfect.
    I finally put my dough into my number seven pan and delivered it to Monsieur Desfreres’s assistant, who gave me a benign smile and put it into the oven.
    I went back to our table. Désirée had delivered her croissantdough to the proofer and was now pulling it out and taking it to the ovens. Juju grinned over her creation, and indeed, it smelled great.
    Anne, however, was close to tears.
    “What’s happened?” I asked, coming alongside her.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know. It never rose”. I looked at the flabby, flat lump of dough slumping in the bottom of her mixing bowl. “I kept thinking maybe it needed more time, but it never rose”.
    Juju joined us. “Maybe it was the yeast, like my problem the other day”.
    Anne shook her head again. “I used the same yeast as the rest of you”. She pinched the dough and put some in her mouth. “Try this”.
    Désirée appeared and pinched off a piece of dough. “Too much salt,” she said authoritatively after tasting it. Then she walked over to talk with the men finishing up their sweetbreads.
    Juju took her bread to the oven. Anne’s eyes followed Désirée as she walked away. “I measured the salt exactly,” she said quietly.
    “And that wouldn’t cause it not to rise, anyway,” I said.
    “Unless someone added salt while my yeast was proofing,” she said. “Then it would kill the yeast”.
    My eyes widened. She was right. And she wouldn’t have noticed, as long as it had happened after the bubbling began.
    “Did you see anything happen when I went to the restroom?” Anne asked.
    “Non,”
I said. “But I was concentrating on my own bread, so that may not mean much”.
    “Perhaps we’d better keep an eye on everything from now on,” she said, watching Juju and Désirée.
    Monsieur Desfreres arrived. He looked at Anne’s bowl and sniffed. “This, Mademoiselle, is not a crown,” he said, referring to the shape couronne bread was supposed to be. “It is, instead, a flat tire”.
    He marked some notes in his book and kept walking.
    Thankfully, my bread turned out perfectly, and I whistled “God Bless America” all the way to the bakery. Then I whistled “La Marseillaise”. I was a true Franco-American.
    Simone was tidying up the pastry cases and using her hand broom to brush bread crumbs from the bread cases before they were loaded for the evening bread rush.
    “Can I help?” I asked, watching the chair she stood on wobble a bit too much for comfort.
    “Merci!”
she said. I held it steady, and she completed her job.
    “Perhaps you should get a stepladder?” I suggested. “In case I am late tomorrow”.
    She smiled kindly. “I guess this chair is a little shaky. I just haven’t wanted to make a fuss”.
    How different from Odious. Unfortunately, I had to spend the day with Odious