Level II

We're starting level II pastry with breads.  This may sound crazy but bread baking is one of my favorite pass time activity.  The process of transforming simple ingredients such as water, flour and yeast into a great variety of breads is such an organic process - I find the "back to the basics" nature of bread baking very appealing.

So, on day one, we made an Provencial Olive Bread.  It's unfortunate that unlike in the bread kitchen (where I previously learnt to make artisanal bread), the pastry kitchen is equiped with convection oven instead of steam injection oven.  The convection oven, though great for pastries, does not produce as nice a crust as the steam injection oven when comes to baking artisanal bread.  Except for thin crust, this bread has very good flavour and texture. 

Provencial Olive Bread

The level II kitchen is very small and the layout is very awkward.  Chef Christopher's instruction & organizational style is also quite different from Chef Jeanne's in Level I.  As you can see, I have some "getting used to" to do around the kitchen... I am thinking of adding a tube of burn cream to my tool kit.... and maybe my own personal oven mittens!