This was a class that Eric found for me since I like to bake and it was the same kitchen from our earlier cooking class together. I got so much more out of the class than just croissants. 🙂

Lucy is well-organized and kept us on track throughout the afternoon. We made the dough first, using scales for measurement versus cup & spoons like at home. Eric has already said he has a scale on his wish list.

We measured and mixed the dough first, with Lucy giving us plenty of opportunity to see (and touch) the various stages, allowing us to see differences. Two important things for the dough – use the best ingredients you can find, especially for the flour and the butter. The dough chilled while we flattened the butter. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds.
We spent time folding the paper to get used to how we would be folding in the butter.
Words cannot easily describe the folding, but luckily Lucy drew pictures on the chalkboard for remainders. One thing she said to always keep in mind, the outside fold should be on the left, like the spine of a book.
Before rolling out the dough, the ends need to be pressed to ensure that butter doesn’t seep out the ends.
Then continue rolling out the dough. One neat trick she shared was to press an indentation in the middle of your dough when rolling as it helps keep the ends ‘square’. I can definitely use that when making cinnamon rolls.
Next steps include cutting the dough and rolling up the croissants.
After proofing, an egg wash was added before going into the oven.

Ahhhhh, but we were not done. Using the same dough, we made ‘pain chocolate’ (chocolate croissants) and another pastry with apple roses.
I just have a few photos of the pain chocolate and you can’t see the baking chocolate that is already wrapped inside the dough.
Our third ‘bonus’ with this dough was our last pastry. We made the apple roses first by thinly slicing (with a mandolin) apples, micro-waving the slices to soften the fruit before wrapping them in a roll…………..which ends up looking like a rose.
The left over pastry was cut into squares, two ‘L’ slits were created, then folded to the opposite corners. A dab of apricot jam was added before placing the rose on top.

And the finished pastries………….. top rows (6) are the pain chocolate with the croissants below.

There were four of us in the class and we divided up the finished pastries.

I think my favorite was the apple rose Danish. 🙂
LOVED the versatility of the chalk board. She gave us paper copies of the recipe to take home.

The time in Lucy’s teaching kitchen was time well spent. I won’t be buying any more frozen pastry from Pillsbury.










Drumroll please…………………….
No French meal is complete without a cheese course, of which some were from the morning’s market purchases.






Our van driver was our tour guide and resident wine expert. We had 3 Beaujolais wines, one of which was white. I didn’t know that white beaujolais existed. There is something pretty special about drinking wine in the morning, on top of a hill in France with a really old church in the background. (BTW – it’s kind of hard taking a selfie with the sun in your face).







Upon meeting our tour guide, we once again drove 45+minutes until reaching a place to taste wines.














While no photo of the menu, it had much of the same entres as the previous one. Wine always starts our meal and this night was no exception.
We started with the ‘small plates’: cole slaw with salt cod (surprisingly good), lentil salad and pork terrine. I tried them all, but the cornichons (small pickles) were the only thing I could eat on the item at the bottom of this photo. Of course, Eric loved the pork terrine. Again, at least I tried them all.





Two hours later, we were in Lyon. It was suggested to take Lyon’s subway to our flat, but for our first time we got a taxi. Eric found this place when he was initially looking for cooking classes and one review mentioned the studio flat above the school: 49 Rue des Tables-Claudiennes will be home for six days. The owners of the flat run a cooking school on the first floor of the same building.






We shared a fromage and meat plate………
……..and then Eric added a dozen oysters that were sold outside the bistro, but a part of the dining experience. Cant believe it but I had 3 of the 12 bi-valves.
We found several city parks tucked into corners and also walked across one of the two rivers that are part of Lyon.
You never know what you will walk upon and we found numerous plazas, some of which had running fountains.
They also have some covered passageways, much like in Paris, but these are strictly to keep a person dry, not for shopping.
After picking up some fruit, croissants and seltzer water, we were set for a few days. So far, Lyon looks very promising.


It’s mostly used at breakfast having available a variety of foods:






























We all headed to our Jack & Jill bathroom for the next 1 1/2 hours until the majority of the bad weather had passed. Once in a while we peeked out the windows to see the rain going sideways and listen to the howling wind.
We saw something interesting on the garage door. One of our plants we brought inside the garage had a chrysalis on it and a monarch butterfly came out. Being inside our garage definitely expanded its life since it was protected from the hurricane force winds.

Jasmine vine came off the trellis:





