Baking School Diaries #8

A guest chef, cross-laminated bow ties, and maritozzi.

The Baking School Diaries is a series about my three months as a student in the Intensive Professional Program in Bread Baking & Viennoiseries at Ferrandi Paris. Bienvenue!

Maritozzi adorned with kumquats

The scent of mandarin orange and passion fruit confit filled the air.

Whipped white chocolate ganache circled the bowl of a stand mixer.

Apple compote burbled away in a bath of deep brown caramel.

Our first baking school demo—a two-day affair with a esteemed visiting guest chef—had arrived!

Love everything about this 🥹

Below, you’ll find:

• 🥐 Mouthwatering details about everything I baked this week,

• 🇫🇷 The highs, lows, and takeaways from this week’s classes, and

• 🎬 Daily video updates for the full play-by-play.

On to today’s letter!

Einkorn loaves. In the first half of the week—before our guest chef arrived—we focused on the world of bread, including loaves made with einkorn (a low-gluten, heritage wheat variety) that we baked in Pullman loaf pans to lend structure.

Pain de moule and einkorn loaves

Pain de moule au levain. We made two versions of this sourdough bread: one refrigerated before shaping, the other refrigerated after shaping. It’s always fun to compare and contrast the results of these side-by-side tests—and to see the many creative ways you can structure a baking workflow.

Pain blanc sur levain liquide. This recipe was identical to our usual one for baguettes, with one major twist: it used zero commercial yeast. And with this sourdough-only version, we learned the necessity of being much more gentle with our shaping skills. Nobody wants a flat baguette!

Let the fancy viennoiserie adventures begin!

Viennoiserie with our guest chef. Day one of our two-day stint with Chef Maxence Lelait was hands-on; day two was a demo day in which we watched and learned.

Chef Maxence is a master of flavor pairings, jaw-droppingly beautiful viennoiserie, and creative shaping techniques. All told, between Chef Maxence’s handiwork and our own efforts, here’s a sampling of the treats we made:

• Cross-laminated bow ties,

• Cinnamon-tinted bicolor croissants,

• Long, thin pain au chocolat stuffed with eight (!) chocolate batons,

• Maritozzi (Italian brioche buns stuffed with cream), and

• Tarte au sucre with fruit confit and lime zest.

If this week’s bakes sound appealing, check out the videos below! They offer a look into each step of the process—including the finished product. Plus, they offer extra context, like how we structured our mixing, rolling, shaping, and baking schedules each day for maximum efficiency.

The great stuff

• Polishing my elevator pitch. We switched up our schedule this week, and one morning—instead of our usual 7am lab—we arrived for a career prep session to help us with our upcoming internship interviews. We got lots of helpful hints, including cultural tips about interviewing in France specifically, and prepped and presented our own elevator pitches for constructive feedback.

• Making photoshoot-ready pastries…literally. There’s a reason we busted out the white tablecloth and a million iPhone cameras for the final day of our demo with Chef Maxence. Everything looked too pretty to eat! (Though, obviously, we ate it.)

Cinnamon-colored croissants and tarte au sucre

The hard stuff

• Schedule shifts. By now, I’m used to my early-to-rise, early-to-work baking school schedule. But this week brought later start times—and with that, later end times. If I’m being honest, this just about broke me! Coming home close to bedtime was a nightmare for my sleep hygiene, and by the time Friday rolled around, I was flattened (and my apartment was a mess). This weekend’s agenda? Rest, recovery, and life admin.

• The weight of my commitments. We’re eight weeks into the program, and my to-do list has expanded in volume like it’s an active sourdough starter. French lessons! My internship CV and motivation letter! Prep for my final exam! Please send thoughts, prayers, and another pound kilo of coffee.

Mesmerizing bicolor viennoiserie

Lessons learned

• There are never too many cooks in the kitchen. At least in one sense: every time we work with a new chef, we learn lots of tips and tricks to apply to our own work. Finding our own personal style as bakers, it seems, will most likely happen by picking and choosing between all our chefs’ idiosyncrasies and preferences.

• Even the pros have to readjust. Inviting a guest chef into our space meant asking him to work with different ingredients and equipment. On day one, our croissants had less volume than he would’ve liked, so he tweaked the recipe for day two—and voilà, they were perfect. Even a well-tested recipe behaves differently when you use different inputs! It was fascinating to watch a professional approach this troubleshooting work.

Every school day, I’ve been posting a video recap as a Note on the Substack app.

Here’s a roundup of this week’s baking school vlogs from Tuesday through Friday (or, more accurately, du mardi au vendredi!).

And with that, it’s on to le weekend!

Warmly,
Maddie

Breakfast Club is a newsletter about pastries with a side of personal growth, from an ex-financial planner turned baker. If you savored this edition, click the ❤️ (or share with a friend!) to help new readers discover it—and subscribe to get each letter fresh from the oven.