Going To Hell With A Handbucket

Well, my days with Darth Chocolate are over, alas. (I'll post those final pictures as soon as I have the chance.)

I never thought I would say I enjoyed working with chocolates and confections, but I really did, and feel much more confident in both areas. Darth Chocolate himself was both a terror and a treat as a chef, though fortunately for Mandilicious and me his arctic wrath was usually directed elsewhere.

Of course, I now stand on a new precipice.

Specialty Breads.

I've already been yelled at by my new bread chef (alas, not der Brotmeister, but his younger counterpart, whom I'll call das Brotmeisterchen, partly because it means "the little bread master," partly because it sounds funny and partly because it's mildly insulting).

I was one of the lucky people picked to have a baby this weekend. Specifically, to babysit a starter or other product that needs to be fed before class starts on Tuesday. Our group leader told us to show up at the breads bakeshop at 11:50 this morning, so we did, at which point Chef began yelling at us for showing up ten minutes early. Uhm, okay.

In any case, I was lucky in that, when he finally deigned to speak with us, I got one of the easier assignments: a big bucket of grains and seeds that I need to presoak for use in a batch of multigrain bread on Tuesday.

From there it all goes downhill, though.

We have to wear hairnets under our toques (it's been optional in all but one other class). Not a big thing, except that my hairnets never stay on and, since I always wind up bending over to get something or reach into a mixer, invariably they fall off through the open top of my toque and into the product. Great.

Also, bread is what I am the worst at (even worse than I ever was with chocolate!) and have the least interest in, unless it's eating it. I have no feel for kneading or proofing, and can remember many a day when der Brotmeister just shook his head as he stood watching me.

I just downloaded all das Brotmeisterchen's course information, which is taking up about 1GB on my computer thanks to his addiction to PowerPoint. Among the gobs of files I just dumped into my laptop is a "Pre Day One Quiz." Yeah, we have to take a quiz before the damn class even starts.

Speaking of the class starting, it's at five freakin' a.m. every morning, which means leaving my apartment no later than 0415 most mornings, and at 0345 on the mornings Mandilicious and I are food stewards.

Yes, I know, boo hoo, my life is so hard, and while I'm just doing this for three weeks, das Brotmeisterchen does it day in day out the whole year. But still. As someone who is a morning person in the same way Paris Hilton is a rocket scientist (in other words, not at all), I can't even fathom how I'm going to get through this.

And poor Wiley. He's already balking at going walkies in the predawn because he's afraid of the dark. I can't imagine how he'll feel about having to pee in the witching hour.

Pray for us both to the deity(ies) of your choosing.