Making Croissants

Shortly after we found out we'd be moving to Paris, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to take a class to learn how to make croissants. I figure, I love a croissant, especially pain au chocolat, and how fun would it be to actually know how to make it! Well this weekend I finally got the time and chance to do that. People have told me that it's a very long process and a complicated one and that it's much easier to just go down to your local boulangerie and buy one there. But I didn't care. Even if I never make croissants on my own, I wanted to learn how I could if I wanted to.

So I recruited two of my girlfriends, Amy and Jacalyn, and Saturday morning we headed over to La Cuisine for our 3 hour lesson on making croissants.


Now we did learn that making croissants does indeed take a long time. There are multiple steps that require waiting for 30-60 minutes before moving on to the next.

Here we are making our dough

Then through the magic of having dough that was prepared earlier, we moved on to the step of adding the butter. It's all about getting a slab of butter and basically wrapping the dough in it and rolling it out. But to get the butter thin and ready, you have to pound it with the rolling pin.

Once you've got the butter combined with the dough, we are able to roll out the dough.

And create our croissants. We made three kinds. The regular croissant, pain au chocolate and croissant aux amandes (croissant filled with almond cream).

 

Here is my croissant aux amandes

And the pain au chocolat which are ready to rise and then bake

And yet more croissants

And then voilà!  Yummy croissants!

Now the question is if I'm actually going to make these on my own. I would like to try it just to see if I can do it. And imagine your very own kitchen smelling like a boulangerie! So perhaps one of these days, when I have a whole weekend free, I'll give it a shot. Until then, the boulangerie will continue to get my business....happily.

Oktoberfest Take 2

It’s that time of year again where the tents go up in Munich and it’s a crazy party for 2 weeks. After our lesson from attending Oktoberfest on opening day last year, we decided we’d take a day off work and go on a weekday. We headed to Munich a week ago on a Thursday after work and had our first beer in hand by 9:30pm. And wow did it taste good. I’ve been drinking mostly wine here in Paris and it made me forget how good beer can taste....especially when it’s German beer straight out of Germany. We had a delicious German meal that night and met up with our friends Stacey and Alex. They were with us for the craziness of last year so they were also ready for a more successful Oktoberfest. Alex surprised us saying that he did the impossible and at the very last second was able to get us a 4pm reservation on Friday in the Paulaner tent. I don’t know how he did it but it was great news!!! We now had a guaranteed spot in a tent.

This year we also decided to change it up and truly participate in all of the festivities.  That’s right, we decided that we needed a dirndl and lederhosen.  And that’s what we did on Friday morning....we went out and purchased ourselves a genuine Oktoberfest outfit.  Eventhough it was the last weekend of Oktoberfest, we were lucky enough to at least find something in our size.  We were now ready to head to the tents!!!!  We first went to the Augustiner tent and found a spot at a table quite easily.  We made friends with the people we sat next to and enjoyed a few liters of beer.  Before we knew it, it was time to head to Paulaner for our reservation.  We got our table for 10 (at that point there were only 4 of us), sat down and were immediately bombarded with people who wanted to be our new best friends.  Along with our Paulaner beer we enjoyed some delicious roasted chicken (almost as good as that fried chicken from Jazz Fest) and good ol’ German potato salad.  

Before we knew it people were on the benches dancing and we were having a great time singing along with the band.  There were a ton of drunk people (I know, shocking) and things were starting to get a bit crazy.  The tent was packed.  If people weren’t packed into tables then they were standing in any empty space.  It was all really fun but soon it got to be time to leave.  Afterall it had probably been almost 8 hours since we had arrived and that was plenty of time to be there.  

The next day we met up with my friend April who had run the Berlin Marathon the weekend before and was in Munich before heading back to San Francisco.  We headed to an outdoor market near Marienplatz which had a huge outdoor seating area in the middle of the market.  The weather was perfect and we found ourselves a spot at a table, ordered some beers, some sausages and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon hanging out.  Before we knew it, she was off to catch her plane and we met back up with Stacey and Alex and a few of their friends.  Had a nice dinner in Munich and said goodbye the next morning.  

So overall I’d say it was a successful Oktoberfest this year.  Lesson learned....attend Oktoberfest on a weekday.

Stockholm

It was another one of those weeks where I traveled to Zurich and Oslo for work and Nate was in Helsinki so we figured we’d take advantage of being in the Nordics and visit one of the cities up there for the weekend.  Since Nate is up there quite often, I asked him to pick the best one out of Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm.  He suggested Stockholm eventhough he said all of the cities would be great choices.  So after my travels to Zurich (which was strange and familiar all at the same time but felt so great being back) and Oslo, I was off to Stockholm Thursday evening.  I worked from our Stockholm office that Friday and met up with Nate Friday evening.  It was finally the weekend!

The weather was a bit chilly and rainy all weekend but we were off to make the best of it.  Friday night we explored a bit of the old town on Gamla stan, grabbed a drink and had dinner.  One thing about Stockholm, and the Nordics in general, is that speaking English is never a problem.  Everyone there knows English and they speak it very well.  So from that perspective, it was a bit of a language vacation for us as well.  

Right outside City Hall

Saturday we were up and off to City Hall for the tour.  Stockholm is the home of the Nobel prize awards ceremony. The ceremony takes place at Stockholm Concert Hall and the banquet takes place in City Hall.  While we were on the tour of City Hall we saw the giant hall, which they call the “Blue Room”, where they host the big banquet dinner.  We also saw the “Golden Hall” where the dancing takes place.  It was pretty cool to see and quite pretty both inside and out.  City Hall sits right on the water which makes for lovely views.

We were then headed back to Gamla stan to check out the Nobel Museum (pretty cool....it highlights all of the Nobel prize winners and talks about Mr. Alfred Nobel himself, the founder of the prize), Stockholm Cathedral and the Royal Palace.  We walked around, shopped and had dinner in a nice local neighborhood and before we knew it, were on a plane the next morning headed back to Paris.  

It was a quick but very pleasant weekend and was a good chance to get a feel for Stockholm, check it out and enjoy some Swedish meatballs.  I think it’s a beautiful city and it feels very “European” to me with the buildings and cobblestone streets.  Nate says I should join him back there again in February when I can get a true sense of winter in the Nordic region.  Uh, yeah....meet you there babe!