Survived my first night at the bakery...

actually it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed myself even if it was late at night and we baked till the early morning. This was my first night to learn about baking at Boulangerie Nantaise, a quaint little French bakery in "Belltown" district in Seattle. I got a small taste of working in the retail portion of the bakery, Saturday morning. It was a neat learning experience to see the whole process on how their artisan organic bread is made. I learned how to set up and prep up the pastries (croissants (raspberry, marionberry, cinnamon and of course my all time favorite - pain au chocolat), for baking. I learn how to make those delicious Almond Croissant, day old croissants are sliced, dipped in sugar syrup, piped in with a almond meal butter sugar mixture and sprinkled with sliced almonds and re-baked. Delicious!


The task of baking staff at night is to bake off the pastries made by the pastry chef in the day time and to make and bake off the breads. Everything is down to a science, the temperature is taken of the flour and the water is calibrated to produce a dough at an ideal temperature. Each step is followed precisely to obtain a consistent quality product.

I learned how to hand roll dough and use the special rolling machine that rolls the dough into sausages that we shape into making baguettes and batards. All in all, it was a great learning experience, the staff is excellent and made every effort to make sure I have an awesome internship at their bakery.