Under the Table (24 page)

W
e had all made it through the midterm more or less intact. I had been penalized five points for helping Wayne truss his chicken, but I didn't regret it, not really. Wayne would surely have failed without the whispering encouragement I had given him, and while I did not nab the top honors, my 92 final grade had placed me squarely in the middle of the top few of us in class. Good enough, especially with the wicked hangover I had been battling that day.

We were to begin Level 3 shortly, which meant both new brigades and a new curriculum. At long last we would be cooking for the school's restaurant, aptly named L'Ecole—two dishes every day, one from the advanced course book and one of our own choosing. This opportunity to stretch our wings a bit and use our culinary imagination was beyond exciting, and many of us had been planning our meals in each station for weeks. But before we were assigned our new brigades and stations, we would all be spending a week in the bread kitchen taking an intensive course in artisanal baking.

The bread classroom was across the hall from our old Level 1 kitchen, and I remembered how eagerly we had observed the “bread students” in our early days—it seemed like years ago. They always seemed to be making something delicious, and the intoxicating scent of just-baked baguettes wafting down the hall every morning drove us all to distraction. Now at last it was our turn.

I couldn't wait to feel the leavened dough squish between my fingers, to taste the sturdy, dark brown crust from a
pain de seigle
of my own making. We had moved, in our last level, from merely
relearning the basic skills of the kitchen to becoming extremely proficient at them. While I could dice a carrot into minute cubes with a few expert whacks from my knife, and I could even debone most of a lamb's carcass without the flicker of an eyelid, these tasks had quickly become monotonous routine. My soul was yearning for something more creative, more comforting, closer to fulfilling the basic needs of why we cook in the first place. The visceral pleasures felt from making and eating bread, that most elemental of foods, would surely give my soul the respite from routine it so badly craved.

The bread program at school was run by Chef Helmut and Chef Tina. Chef Helmut—or Chef Hel, as he was called—was an extremely taciturn man who wore not the traditional toque of a classically trained French chef, but a small cotton cap that fit snugly over his salt-and-pepper hair. His chef 's jacket was dusty with flour, and the sleeves were always rolled up to the elbow, a startling informality that suggested that Chef Hel's work was manual labor, another difference between him and our other instructors. On the inside of his forearm was a large tattoo, an intimidating-looking thing that only seemed to reinforce the steely aura surrounding him, from his erect posture to his bushy mustache, which seemed to be in a state of permanent bristling. I found out later that the tattoo and Chef Hel's rather military bearing came from the same place—Hel had spent most of his youth shipping around the world with the German navy, returning to his father's small bakery to learn his trade only when he had been mustered out. The tattoo was a German compass, so that Hel never lost his way home.

Chef Tina, on the other hand, was all rounded curves and smiles to Chef Hel's stiff angles and lines. This was a woman who enjoyed carbohydrates, who reveled in their doughy appeal. Chef Tina was always nibbling on a bit of something, from a crust of the morning's freshly baked
boules
slathered with creamy unsalted butter to the crispy tail of a croissant that had not been quite beautiful enough to be served. There were often crumbs nestled in the folds of her
chef 's jacket, and her dimpled smile was warmer than the heat of the ovens. Chef Tina wasn't fat, not even excessively padded—it was just that she reflected so exactly the appeal of the dough she spent her time with, even down to her coloring, a rich, burnished tan, like the crust of a
pain de campagne,
and eyes of a warm caramel, so much like the warm puddle of melted butter and caramelized sugar on a plate of hot sticky buns.

The week in the bread kitchen was not going to be a piece of cake precisely, but it was regarded by everyone, even the faculty, as a bit of a breather for the students after the rigors of the midterm had passed and before we buckled down once again for the second half of our schooling. Everyone knew that it was going to be quite a leap from Level 2 to Level 3, especially after hearing the stories about Chef Robert, our new instructor for the advanced level. He seemed particularly fierce, and though we were all hoping that it was a case of the bark being worse than the bite—as had been the case with our other instructors—my own experience with “Bob the Bastard” at Toad Hall had not been reassuring. As a matter of fact, I couldn't think of a more unpleasant person I had met at chef school—and that included Mimi and Assistant Chef Cyndee, and that was truly saying something. So our week in the bread kitchen would be especially sweet, if Chef Hel wasn't as mean as he appeared.

We needn't have worried. Though his countenance was forbidding, and his German accent lent a faint ambience of rigid discipline to all our lectures, Chef Hel was a total pussycat. Like Chef Tina, Hel loved, loved, loved his métier. Bread was Hel's passion, his joy, his entire life. He loved the dough, the soft, yielding feel of it in his hands, the slightly tangy taste of it before it was baked. He loved the powdery softness of the refined white flour, the gentle coarseness of the rye and wheat flours, the sound of the giant Hobart bread machines churning away, the damp clamminess of the “proof room” where the racks of formed loaves went to rise before being baked, the heft of the giant wooden peels used to pull the just-baked loaves
from the heat of the ovens. Most of all I think Chef Hel loved his state-of-the-art, steam-injected, superpowerful bread ovens. Two banks of them took over an entire wall of the classroom and were the pride and joy of Chefs Hel and Tina and the whole school. They were prominently displayed, with a grinning Chef Hel off to the side (he could smile!), in a large, glossy photo in the promotional materials the school put out.

All of this bounty would be ours to share in for the next week. And all the bread we could eat, too. Heaven. My very best intentions in those dark days of carbohydrate consciousness was to be obdurate, to stand firm against the tide of crusty warm baguettes that emerged from those lovely ovens in a delicious flood every few hours or so. Not to let myself be seduced by that heavenly yeasty aroma of loaves ready for the ovens. Not to even look at the gorgeously pale glistening hunks of melting butter smeared so suggestively on the chins of my companions. This willpower lasted all of fifteen seconds after I walked into class—Chef Tina chirped an obscenely happy hello for a Monday, and handed me a hunk of fresh baguette, saying, “Welcome to Bread.” It
was
heaven, and Tina was an angel.

Both she and Chef Hel had already been at school for hours, getting the ovens revved up for the week and proofing this first round of baguettes. Bread makers get up early—Chef Hel told us that he would regularly be at his ovens before four in the morning to prepare for the morning rush, filling large orders for restaurants and getting the first batches ready for impatient, bleary-eyed housewives. The steady pace of baking would continue for most of the day until the afternoon began to wind down.

Bread, and particularly baguettes, when made in the time-honored way with no preservatives, last only a few precious hours before they begin to go stale. A baguette made in the morning must be eaten by lunch. Breads made with a mixture of flours like whole wheat and rye seem to have more backbone and can stay fresh for hours, sometimes even a day or two, before they begin to go stale.
But chewing my freshly baked, crusty breakfast, feeling the crackle of the crust yield reluctantly to the tender crumb honeycombed with tiny air pockets, I thought the earlier it is eaten, the better. Bread is infinitely more delicious fresh out of the oven. France's national obsession with the state of bread was instantly clear.

Since the 1970s, France as a government has waged a war of law on the makers of industrial, tasteless, artless mass-market loaves. Led by Lionel Poilâne, now considered the patron saint of the artisanal loaf, a few bread makers began making bread in the traditional way, full of the rich flavor of liquid
levain,
natural yeasts, and unprocessed flours. Soon the French consumer was once again discovering the joys of a proper loaf of bread, and the government took notice and action. Bread is now one of many foodstuffs and agricultural products that are carefully regulated by the French government, from chickens to fine wines to sausages and salt. I was rapidly beginning to feel the lure of a more socialist approach to government—anyone who wanted to make it harder to produce things like the abomination of Wonder Bread was fine with me.

This we learned in our first morning in the bread classroom, as Chef Hel gave a brief lecture on the history of bread making, judiciously sprinkled with anecdotes about his many years as a baker before coming to teach at The Institute and liberally garnished with more servings of baguette with fresh butter. As we put away our books and wiped the crumbs from our chins in preparation for the actual work to begin, I couldn't help the wide grin I could feel spreading across my face. This was going to be wonderful.

That was before the class was divided into two groups. I managed to end up without Imo, Angelo, Tucker, Ben, or even Amanda. Instead I was in the other group, with Mimi, my arch nemesis, and Penny, whose high-maintenance antics were certain to dampen my native enthusiasm for the subject of bread. Oh, well, it wouldn't be all bad—my group also included Jackie, a darkly beautiful girl who spent most of her time in the back of class, hanging out with her
Level 1 partner Wendell “call me Wendy,” a boy with big brown eyes and blond hair he wore fashionably long, but his handsome face was marred by a weak chin. He was from my home state of Virginia, and he had managed to flunk out of UVA, the Virginia Military Institute, and even community college. Philip, the ex–bond trader fleeing his previous life on Wall Street, was also in my new group, as well as Ravi, a tall, dark, and handsome guy from India via Berkeley. He'd fallen under the all-consuming spell of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, and after working in several restaurants out west in high school and college, decided to come east, get a
grand diplôme,
and break into the four-star echelons of New York chefs.

Ravi and I had become friends during Level 1, after I had idly picked up his knife from his cutting board one day during break. Big mistake. Chef Jean saw me do it, and before Ravi could snatch the knife out of my hand and replace it on the board, Chef had intervened in the situation.

“Never touch another chef 's knife. No matter what!” Chef said, waggling his finger under my nose. “Ravi, you will have to teach her the lesson.” That sounded ominous. Reluctantly, Ravi took the knife from Chef 's hand and dealt me a stinging smack with the blade of his knife. A tiny line of blood appeared across the knuckles of my hand, and as I stood there in shock that someone had actually knifed me, in chef school, on one of the
first days of class,
Chef chuckled and said, “It doesn't hurt too badly, does it? Ravi was easy on you. Now you will never forget, eh? Never touch another chef 's knife!” It was true, I had learned an unforgettable lesson—learning etiquette in the kitchen comes from the teachers and the other students who have spent time in kitchens. Ravi and I became good friends after the incident. I was looking forward to getting to know the other students in the class better—people whom I had never worked with before, and might yet be working with in our new level.

We began by learning to make baguettes—which, along with the beret, are more than anything else the national symbol of France.
They were also a staple offering in the breadbasket at the restaurant run by the school and staffed in the kitchen by Levels 3 and 4. Though now widely regarded as being Viennese in origin, the baguette nevertheless is an integral part of every French meal, and we were going to learn to make them the proper, French way. Aside from the traditional construction of a baguette—long and skinny, with a diameter not much larger than the circle made between thumb and forefinger, with seven long diagonal slashes scoring its golden brown top, never six and never eight—a baguette is distinguishable from other kinds of bread by its ingredients. They are of the utmost simplicity, and therefore uphold a basic tenet of French cuisine: It isn't really what you start off with that counts; it's what you do with it that matters. Baguettes are made with white unbleached wheat flour, sea salt, water, and leavening. That's it.

We would learn to make three types of baguette, and each one had a slightly different taste and texture because, in addition to the fresh yeast that would cause the bread to rise, we would also add one of three other types of leavening as well—liquid
levain, poolish,
or
pâte fermentée.
Each of these leaveners added a different nuance to the finished product, and we would experiment with all of them to see what was more delicious to us, and compare them to the “straight” baguettes we would be making as the control in this delicious tasting experiment. Unlike pastry, bread making is not quite an exact science—there is room for a bit of personal determination.

As we broke into our new groups and began measuring out our dry ingredients, I found myself in line to use the scale behind Ricki, who had earned the official highest score on the midterm. While we had all congratulated her on her fantastic grade, I had noticed that since the announcement, Ricki stood a little apart from the rest of us. Perhaps it was more a case of us all standing a bit apart from her. I tried to decide if I was really jealous of how well Ricki had done. In my heart, I knew I was. I determined not to let that nasty feeling of jealousy get in the way of our friendship. Still, I found I had
nothing more to say to her than the occasional “Hey there” or “Are you done with that?” Now was no different. As Ricki gathered up her measured portions of flour and salt and yeast, I failed to make eye contact and only mumbled, “Scale free?” Ricki answered in the affirmative, and as she walked past me, for a moment I thought I smelled, very faintly, the sweet-sour tang of bourbon. Booze? On a Monday morning? On Ricki? I must have been mistaken.