It wasn't an easy week, that's for sure. My knowledge of doughs is rather limited as is, evidently, my French. Each morning I rose before the sun at 5:00 AM to sleepily wolf down some cereal and sip lukewarm tea. 30 minutes later I was out the door to catch the second train of the morning to work. No one is remotely awake at that hour, so I had the whole city to myself.

For those of you who make dough, whether bread, pie, or pastry, you know it's a science. The measurements must be exact and conditions just right. If you're water is too hot, it will kill the yeast; too cold and your pastry will never rise. Let the yeast sit with salt or sugar and it will gorge itself to death and die a rather tragic death. Then there's the temperature in the room. It must be just right or the dough will be challenging to work with. And it's also a good idea if you speak the same language as the people you're working with. Otherwise you end up in heaps of trouble like I did.

But before I share my nightmare-ish tales of humiliation, let's talk about what we made. Each day, I measured out the ingredients for croissants, brioche, pâte sucrée (sugar pastry dough), and feuilltage (puff pastry). But in my recipe, I was weighing out 24 kilograms of flour (approx. 50 pounds) or 10 kilos of butter. Add to that a kilo of fleur de sel, two kilos of eggs, and five kilos of water. All of these different ingredients were hoisted into huge mixing bowls - I could fit in one - turned into a shaggy mass and then put through a huge rolling machine until just the right thickness. The production was immense and made my head swim at times. I should also add that I'm developing a nice set of upper body muscles with all the weight I'm lifting.

With three of us working nine or ten hours a day, we turned out hundreds of croissants, pain au chocolat, almond croissants, brioche, bostock (brioche dipped in a sugar syrup topped with almond cream and sliced almonds), and various sizes and flavors of pastry crusts. At the end of the day, we looked like ghosts, completely covered in flour and various baking ingredients.

But I don't feel like I learned that much this week. Normally I'm a fairly smart individual, but this week has put some serious doubts in my mind. It seems like everything I touched was wrong, from the way I filmed a baking sheet with plastic wrap to the way I cut the brioche into slices. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get things right. The day was filled with mistakes which only added to my humiliation and shame.

Up until now, I haven't had a major problem with the language. For the most part, I'm able to understand what people are saying to me. Okay, maybe I don't understand 100 percent of the things they say, but I do get enough to understand. That was not the case with Steve (of course his name has been changed). A young twenty-something chef, he's quite gifted. Not only is he fast and efficient, but the end results are beautiful and perfect. Doughs come together effortlessly and croissants rise to the perfect height.

But for the life of me, I couldn't understand a single word he was saying. I'll spare you the details, but in a nutshell, I got instructions completely wrong, I weighed the wrong quantity of ingredients, I didn't put the finished product in the right place, etc. Needless to say, it made for a very frustrating day for both him and me. Most the time my face was flushed in shame for getting something wrong. When I could actually understand what he was saying and did what he asked, it turned out that I misunderstood. It was an endless cycle that left me watching the clock, desperately wishing for the end of the day. There are times where I just wanted to give up. But I didn't, and I endured. I'm more humble now.

At last it's the weekend and because everyone is off the Monday after Easter, I have two days of rest. Tuesday I'm headed back to the macaron team for two weeks - a prospect that excites me. Not only can I understand them, but I like the work and the people I work with. It will be a relief to get back to something familiar and that I know how to do.