Out of the Dough Divider, Into the Deck Oven

I was trying to think of a geeky baker parallel to "out of the frying pan and into the fire," but the above is the best I could come up with given my 0300 wake-up time and a too-long production day where I feel like I learned absolutely nothing. But Specialty Breads is done.

Good.

The whole reason for the dough divider/deck oven title, however, is what I have to look forward to on Monday and Tuesday: my fifth term practical.

Last year, before externship, we had our second term practical, a two-day, timed exam where each of us was totally on our own and had to prepare several items to exact specifications, such as eclairs that were all three inches long.

It's the same idea this time around, only the items are different: three loaves of challah with braiding variations, 50 hand-dipped dark chocolate Grand Marnier truffles and two raspberry mousse cakes with tempered chocolate decorations.

Although I did well last year, scoring an 89.5 out of 100, part of it was luck and part of it was having it graded by an adorable French chef who, I think, went easy on us. We also practiced the items more in classes leading up to that practical.

This time round, we did the mousse cake once with Chef Tony Santa, the truffles once with Darth Chocolate and, well, we sorta did the challah a couple times in a half-assed way where some people made the dough, others pre-shaped it, some braided it and others egg washed it and still others baked it, so when they came out of the oven looking like crap, we had no idea whose was whose or why one had bubbles, one was half the size of another and so on.

Argh.

So yeah, I'm a little, well, I wouldn't say nervous, but concerned about pulling this off. This weekend I'm going to work on timing, mise en place and exhaustively detailed checklists like the ones I made for last year's exam, which I took in the early evening.

I expect I'll need those lists that much more as I'll be starting the practical each morning before 0545.

Pray for me.