Baking School Diaries: The Final Countdown

Weeks #12-13: A sourdough and panettone extravaganza.

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!

Panettone: the culmination of 24 working hours

Well, it’s finally happening: my three-month boulangerie program is coming to an end. Cue the waterworks!

Writing these weekly dispatches, as well as filming and editing each daily vlog, has been a true labor of love. It’s required a lot of time and energy, both of which were in short supply after long shifts in the lab, but these newsletters and videos are the permanent record of one of the most special seasons in my professional and personal life. I truly hope you’ve enjoyed following along, and that you learned a thing or two along the way.

Today’s recap includes my final stretch of regular classes. For those keeping track at home, that’s weeks 12 and 13. (This was followed by our final exam—a test of both skill and creativity—which I’ll cover next time.)

Below, you’ll find:

• 🥐 Mouthwatering details about everything I baked,

• 🇫🇷 The highs, lows, and takeaways from class, and

• 🎬 My last batch of daily video updates for the full play-by-play.

On to today’s letter!

All the sourdough. Week 12 culminated in a two-day sourdough demonstration with a rep from Moulins Bourgeois, Ferrandi’s flour mill. We tackled a long list of different types of sourdough bread together, with Day 1 focused on mixing doughs and Day 2 focused on baking them. Because these days were led by a mill employee, it was only fitting that his recipes included a bunch of new-to-us flours (chestnut, hemp, Rouge de Bourdeaux…) and lots of special ancient grains. We made madeleines, too—my namesake pastry—just for good measure.

The products of our sourdough demo

All the other breads. We prepped for our sourdough demo by making semolina-dusted breadsticks, spelt baguettes, pompe à l'huile, and a gluten-free loaf made with rice and buckwheat flours.

Kouign-amann and galette des rois

Kouign-amann. In some ways, this was the moment I’d been waiting for, as kouign-amann is my all-time favorite pastry. (That fact has been documented in this newsletter.) This caramelized treat is laminated with butter and sugar, and because sugar is a magnet for moisture, our dough became wet and sticky within minutes of folding in the sugar…even though there wasn’t a drop of water in sight.

Pizza and panettone

Panettone. Much like Week 12 featured a two-day sourdough marathon, Week 13 featured a panettone marathon. Panettone is an Italian sweet bread stuffed with candied fruit, and because it’s made with a very fragile milk sourdough—one that requires multiple feedings and lots of pH readings along the way—it was the single most time- and labor-intensive product we tackled during class, hence its position as the capstone of our program. We babysat our panettone over the course of 24 classroom hours spread out over two days.

More products of our sourdough demo

Pizza, kugelhopf, stollen, einkorn loaves, and galettes des rois. What does this arbitrary list of baked goods have in common? Almost nothing, except for the fact that we made all of them while killing time on our twelve-hour panettone days. When you’re waiting around for multiple hours while your panettone proofs, why not whip up a batch of inverse puff pastry, fill it with almond cream, and score the top of the resulting masterpiece in fabulous, painstaking detail?

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

• Special baking opportunities. Outside of our classroom setting, I can’t imagine having the opportunity to work with so many specialty flours or make panettone, and certainly not within the span of one week. Neither of these things would be impossible to achieve at home (or within the context of a full-time baking job), but it’s an uncommon experience that I’m wildly grateful for.

• The relationships. ❤️ Long school days + the impending end of our program = our tight-knit group of classmates having way more fun together than usual. (Fortunately, our chef was lenient about the peals of laughter that carried through the lab.) We did impressions of each other, shared the latest iterations of inside jokes, and enjoyed a lengthy, impromptu English-pronunciation lesson with a classmate from South Korea. I’ll never be able to hear the words “tomato” or “tornado” again without thinking of these bittersweet final days together.

Kugelhopf!

The hard stuff

• Balancing the end of our program with its attendant wrap-up logistics. Our school days were longer than usual, and we had to juggle a lot more than attending class: we had to adjust our final-exam recipes, run around the city to source hard-to-find ingredients, send emails (in French!) related to our internships, prep for the resulting interviews, secure our internship paperwork—a document called a convention de stage—and find housing in the appropriate arrondissement for our next chapter. And that’s not even an exhaustive list. Honestly, I’m tired just typing it out!

More products of our sourdough demo

Lessons learned

• Play big. As I’ve mentioned before, this three-month program can be followed by an optional bakery internship of up to three months. As I considered my internship possibilities, my initial instinct was to play small, by which I mean “applying to bakeries that don’t intimidate me.” But when I saw my talented, ambitious classmates shooting for the stars, I was inspired to ask myself where I’d apply if I weren’t letting fear drive the bus. That question nudged me to aim higher, leading to an outcome that I couldn’t be more excited about. (I’ll share those details soon!)

• Class may be over, but this isn’t the finish line; it’s the starting line. Yes, I learned a ton in school. Yes, it was an invaluable investment in my new career. But I don’t see this program as the culmination of my education; rather, it will serve as the foundation for a lifetime of self-directed learning. Baking school may have introduced me to a wide variety of doughs, fillings, techniques, and best practices, but now it’s my job to go deeper on anything and everything that piqued my interest. Let’s go!

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

Here’s a roundup of my final baking school vlogs:

And with classes finished, it’s on to our final exam! If you’re curious what that entails, stay tuned for the next dispatch…it’s going to be a fun one.

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.