mango on an apple

Bubbly bubbly tour

on Friday 21 October 2011

in paris

Tasting a 2004 vintage at Pommery Estates

The best part about planning for Terence’s visit to Paris over Canadian Thanksgiving and his birthday, was the day trip to the Champagne region. The region is not too far away from Paris. The drive to Reims, the main hub for champagne winery visits, took about an hour and a half. We eagerly booked a car with unlimited mileage, and found enthusiastic participants to pile in and use up the seat belts with us for the day.

One word about going to Champagne – book desired winery tours as far in advance as possible. We were rejected by Ruinart and Veuve, even though I emailed/called about two weeks in advance for a weekday visit. Left with fewer choices, we started the morning at Taittinger.

Taittinger is actually known for its history-rich tour. Set on an old monastery site, there are still traces of the demolished building in the cellars. The lady who showed us around was very knowledgeable about the history of the area, and from her attitude we could tell she was really passionate about her job. We wandered through the cellars, amidst hundreds of thousands of meticulously stacked bottles sitting there to age.

An idea of how deep the stacking goes!

After listening to the champagne-making process, I have full appreciation for why each bottle of bubbly is as pricey as it is. Honestly, this stuff takes time, and work! To drain the bottles of yeast, the wineries employ manual labour to hand-turn the bottles daily, for at least a month straight (can’t remember the exactly number of days). Each worker on average turns 18,000 bottles only each day, so yeah, that’s a lot of work, and a lot of people involved, to manage the millions of bottles sold each year worldwide. From what we heard from the wineries, the final aging period for champagne is 15 months minimum, while some of the higher-end vintages age for at least seven years.

Door from the 13th C. in Taittinger cellars, and stone carving in the quarry from the monastery remains

We stopped in the town centre for lunch. By then, the weather had turned dramatically from foggy and rainy in the morning to sunny with clear blue skies. We sat out in the sun for a while after lunch, then wandered over to the Notre Dame in Reims. “The other Notre Dame” was glorious. It was not as crowded as the one in Paris, but just as majestic inside. I daresay it’s even better than the one in Paris, because there are three panes of stained glass in the back of the cathedral done by Marc Chagall! It was so neat to be able to see a famous artist’s work at that scale up close, without any crowds.

After our self-guided wandering of Reims city centre, we drove to Pommery Estates. We had tried to squeeze ourselves in to Ruinart earlier, but the security guard at the gates was unable to assist us because our French really wasn’t that spectacular to explain our hopes and dreams for a day-of cancellation since nobody answered the phone when we called ahead to check. That, and the tour staff were at lunch, so he couldn’t get any answers for us.

Pommery is definitely all about the art!

Pommery Estates turned out to be the most fun winery tour ever! The outside is quirky, like a fairytale castle, but once inside we could tell immediately that art was a huge focus. Aside from the colourful bottles decorating the walls, there were some interesting art installations in the big open space just outside the cellar entrance. When our guide showed up and began speaking, I got a case of the giggles. The tour guide was tall and all arms and legs, which reminded me of an uncoordinated baby deer. His French accent was so strong that even though he was speaking English, I could barely understand him…hence the giggles.

Inside the cellars, we learned about the eccentric Madame Pommery who inherited the estates from her husband – he passed away shortly after starting the business. She’s the one who infused all the colourful personality into the business, and grew the brand so quickly that they went from selling a couple hundred thousand bottles a year to millions within a few years of her taking over. Nowadays, the focus on artistic differentiation can be observed through the amazing art installations on the tour.

There were at least 10 to 15 installations along the way, some really modern-arty and difficult to understand, and some just downright funny. I don’t have pictures of the most memorable ones, unfortunately. The best one was the microphone at the bottom of a champagne bottle with speakers to amplify the noises champagne makes…it’s hilarious! It sounded like Dory speaking Whale from Finding Nemo, except in a much louder and more obnoxious nasal voice.

An automatic band using instruments built from different pieces of recycled materials & original stone carving

A really fun installation was the super-tall swing in one of the areas which might’ve been a quarry at some point. We all got to take a turn on the tire swing, which was pretty neat.

Precious vintages locked away…

The worst art installation on the tour was the one that made me scream. The pieces of art were all automatically activated by motion sensors, and there was one from a dark, unused “cave” that imitated dogs barking at night. I sauntered ahead of the group with my friend, past this “cave”, and screamed when the angry dogs began barking to my right. My friend jumped. Everyone behind us laughed their heads off at our expense.

At the end of the tour, we tried the 2004 vintage champagne. The good thing about Pommery was that we could pick which champagne we wanted to taste with our tour, and the prices ranged accordingly. We chose a vintage because at Taittinger, everyone got the same basic champagne that’s produced annually. As soon as we tasted this, I knew I loved it. It was much smoother and a softer texture than the previous one. It wasn’t acidic at all, but crisp nonetheless. I then enabled Terence to go buy a 20 euro glass of the most prized vintage, the 1999 Louise named after Madame Pommery. That, was amazing. I would highly recommend a tour of Pommery Estates, and even more so, a glass of this delicious champagne. It is actually reasonably priced per bottle compared to some of the “big names”, and for the taste, the price is definitely worthwhile, in my humble opinion.

All in all, it was a successful outing to the Champagne region. We drove through the smaller towns on our way back for the “scenic route”, but everyone in the back fell asleep on this beautiful drive. I would like to try the scenic route again, though, because there were lots of small champagne producers along the way, and I would’ve loved to stop in some of them to sample the different champagnes.

We ended the night with some heavily seasoned Chinese food in Paris to offset all the delicate sweetness from drinking champagne all day. Alex was extremely glad to have survived driving in Paris, and now we’re excited to do more driving trips outside of Paris!

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Brioche

on Tuesday 18 October 2011

in paris

Brioche Nanterre

After all that kneading at the end of our delicious croissants practical class, we put the dough to good use for some brioche. We watched the demonstration chef make all types of brioche variations (how many different ways can you shape buttered bread dough?) and the best part of the class was that he was in a fantastic mood. Our typically stern chef who can send my nerves into a tizzy with one sardonic look was all smiles and smirks. He shared jokes and stories with the class as he worked away merrily, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he burst into song at any point. Since he taught at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa prior to coming back to France, he was wearing a chef jacket adorned with a red maple leaf at the neck that we had never seen before. Towards the end of class, chef passed the loaf of brioche nanterre around for us to smell the sweet and light yeasty aromas, and someone took a piece off and ate it. When the loaf made it back to the chef and he tried to piece the two ends back together for his display platter, he noticed that the two pieces obviously didn’t fit together.

Normally we would’ve gotten a very stern talking-to. He lectured for probably a minute on proper etiquette and respect for other students and for the chef, and then went right back to his smiling self. Amazing!

That same afternoon, we had our practical class to make our brioche. We made a large brioche à tête, two small brioche(s?) à tête, and a nanterre loaf which is basically 6 little balls of dough squished together to rise. With the leftover dough, we rolled out raisin rolls, which was a bit sad for me. I wished we could’ve rolled out the dough, brushed on butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar to make a little taste of home. Alas, it was the French way: pastry cream and lots of yellow sultana raisins. Bah.

Although I kept my fingers crossed to have the demo chef so I could witness his indestructibly happy bonheur in person and not be frightened by him for once, we got the overly angry/happy chef. He wasn’t really into watching us make these breads, though, as he was busy shaping his own dough into random shapes and baking them off. Thanks to the previous class, I had some good tips on making sure my little brioche à tête worked out well. The little breads all rose well with the heads in the middle, but at the last moment, I think with all that moving in and out of the proofer, and the pastry brushes attacking constantly with egg-wash, they all fell a little bit to the side.

The loaf rose well, and I squished in 8 balls of dough instead of the usual 6, because the pan size was a bit longer than usual. It was interesting to try everybody’s bread at the end though – one girl in my class ended up with a super light and airy brioche that I just loved. Comparatively, mine tasted much denser. Since I wasn’t a big fan of this bread anyway (if you had to squish half a pound of butter, by hand, into this dough you wouldn’t be either), I left most of my brioche at school. I brought home two raisin breads that were promptly devoured by Alex and Terence (no photo opportunity existed for those little discs), and the loaf for making French toast later in the week.

I’m glad to have kneaded this dough by hand to know how to do it, but I doubt I will be busting out this recipe on a regular basis any time soon. It is just too heavy for my liking, and I think I’d only make it for special occasions, or maybe to test out a cinnamon roll with this dough. Also, I may try it again to see if I can get that lovely airiness that my classmate achieved!

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Croissants & Pain au Chocolat

on Sunday 9 October 2011

in paris

Finally, we reached the “pastry” part of the course. That is to say, “pastry” as it is known to North Americans: pain au chocolat and croissants, the must-have staples if you were expecting French pastries for breakfast.

I was so excited for this class, even though we had no break between the demonstration and the practical class for me to digest the information. In general, the method of rolling out the dough is quite similar to what we did for those lovely palmiers, except the dough for croissants had 24 hours to ferment and rise with the addition of yeast. The demonstration chef, my favourite overly angry/nice with a “big mama belly” (he said so himself), made us a bunch of variations on the recipes provided by the school. He is great for demonstrations because he is like that kid who tried really hard to go above and beyond in all of his high school projects – if you needed 3 variations on a theme, he’d do 6. He made us little apricot tarts, raisin danishes (offensive), and best of all – kouign-amann.

Kouign-amann (pronounced queen-aman) is a pastry from Brittany that is absolutely to die for. Imagine the croissant dough with flaky layers, sprinkled liberally with sugar between each delicate layer, and caramelized at the edges when it bakes and puffs up. We shamelessly asked the chef for the large squares he cut off for photos, rather than the sample-sized bites he cut up for the class. I ran away with a big slice with the crispiest, loveliest caramelized edge ever, and refused to eat all other samples given out during that class. It was so worth every buttery calorie.

[No photos of kouign-amann available because I was too busy eating.]

Then in the practical, my sugar high quickly deteriorated. Disastrous class #2.

The butter chunk that I had to roll into the dough was softened, but not soft enough, and as soon as I began rolling I could feel it. I’m proud that I felt the error right away with my hands, but there was nothing I could do. I asked the chef if there was something that may help, and he said no, if I make a mistake, problème forever. In fact, problème was his favourite word to use.

Great…I had an everlasting problem to deal with 5 minutes into the class. After I finished the second turn on the pastry, we were supposed to chill it. I put the dough on the parchment-paper’d sheet pan I had prepared, but it was really warm because I left it by the stove and there was a culinary class before us so the stovetops were still quite hot. I put everything in the fridge, thought about it, and panicked about the warmth and the damage it could do to my dough. So I asked the chef if I could chill my dough in the freezer instead. Obviously he then wanted to feel the dough to see why I would ask that – and he shouted “C’est une catastrophe!” as soon as his hand touched the tray.

I’m pretty certain it’s not a French quirk to shout “C’est une catastrophe!” randomly. I was so taken aback and felt myself shrink to pocket-size right away. The chef helped me move my dough into the freezer onto a cooling rack, shaking his head all the while, and I was nervous and jumpy the whole time. After the dough chilled for a few minutes, chef took it out for me and beat it a bit with a rolling pin and refrigerated it for me again in my fridge.

By this time I was a messy anxiety-laden wreck, and I tried to gather myself as much as I could when it came time to finish the croissants and pain au chocolat. The rolling took a while because the dough was a little elastic from not resting well, but once I got it to the right shape and size, forming the pastries was easy and fun.

First up was the pain au chocolat. It’s a easy enough task to roll it up, but if I were to do it again, I would do it slightly differently. Since I had a couple of visible chunks of butter from the “problème” I created in the beginning, the pain au chocolat I made with that piece of pastry looked completely alien. I ended up with half of my pain au chocolat looking absolutely delicious, and the other half looking rather strange.

Look at all the deliciously flaky layers! The small things make me happy these days :)

I loved my croissants though – they looked so beautiful when they came out, that my heart gave a little jolt of joy. All was not lost! When the chef came by at the end of class to critique our work, he was really pleased with my pastries. He even used the word “impeccable” to describe the way the croissants were rolled – phew! Disastrous class #2 had an uplifting ending, thank goodness.

We spent the rest of the class (at least 45 minutes) kneading brioche dough in preparation for the next class on brioche bread. It was a painfully long process where we started by integrating eggs and flour. When the two ingredients finally combined, we added sugar and salt, kneaded some more, then added yeast, kneaded until the dough became super sticky everywhere, and persevered until it got un-sticky again. THEN we worked in a whole boatload of butter, squishing the fat everywhere, got the dough all sticky and gross again, and finally, almost an hour later, when my dough stopped sticking everywhere and lifted off the marble surface neatly, I was done. Phew!

Kneading so much after a long day had a curious effect on everyone, though. As we kneaded people got punchy and lighthearted, and there were a lot more jokes and conversation flowing back and forth between an otherwise serious group of people. Kneading dough definitely relieves stress. I thought it was really nice for everyone to be so cheery at the end of a Friday night, and if kneading does this to people, then perhaps we should’ve started the session on breads because it is such a good icebreaker! It also helped that while we kneaded, we enjoyed the awesome smells of freshly baked croissants and pain au chocolat. Yum!

Next up on Wednesday – brioche! I’m not a huge fan of it because of how much butter it uses – I like my breads simple, like a baguette. However, I will be taking indulgence to the next level by making some cream cheese and jam filled French toast with my brioche loaf! Stay tuned :)

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