A day in the life of... Pavol Gesper

How does your day start?

First let me introduce myself to you all, my name is Pavol Gesper, I work as a baker  and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about my working life as in many ways it is completely opposite to most people.

The alarm goes off and I wake up at 7PM when most people are finishing their day. I am lucky in that I live with my sister and so when I get up, she has cooked an evening meal for herself to end her day and I can eat with her to start mine. Yes, I have dinner for breakfast! I am supposed to start work at 9pm and so if the tube is on time, I have a chance for a coffee, if not then it is straight into the bakery and on with it!

What are your responsibilities?

I carry out the work of the Petrin who is responsible for the mixing and turning of all of the different types of dough during the production cycle.

Take us through a typical night’s work?

I start the first mix of 170 kg of dough and  then get all the echelles (trolleys) ready by which time the mixer is ready to unload: this I do by hand with a metal scraper (coupe pate). (We have a competition in the bakery to see who can unload the dough into the patieres the fastest: currently I hold the record at 1 minutes 25 seconds.) After this I start to bake the fougasse, egg wash and snip the brioche and cramique, start 3 new mixes of 170kg each (2 ancien and 1 campagne), then knock back and do the turns on the existing doughs in the patieres. After the dough has been unloaded into the patieres, it has to be turned to oxygenate and promote the fermentation every hour over a four hour period. At 11.30pm I start to bake the brioche and cramique. This now takes until 2am as in total on an average night there are about 400-500 separate pieces.

Sounds like hard work? Do you get a break?

I will then normally take a break, then I start to prepare the mixes for the second turn and to give the day shift (who normally start at 7am) a head start. This will take me up to about 4.30 am at which point the Faconeusse is starting to wind down as well.
 
What’s the next stage?

The only person left with duties at this stage is the Fournier who is loading sandwiches onto the tapis (setter) as fast as he can. The risk is that his partner working the other side of the belt, who is ‘signing’each loaf of bread with his razor blade, for all he is worth, will mistake the arm of the guy loading for a piece of bread. So far this has not happened and we hope it never does!

We will then start to clear and clean up the area which looks like a bomb has hit it. Regardless how tidy you try to be, everything gets covered in a thin layer of flour. The Faconneuse even has it in her hair and looks old and very grey!

Tell us about your colleagues?

While we all are working in our own areas, we try to keep an eye on what is going on in the other parts of the bakery and to lend a hand if anyone starts to fall behind, in the same way that if I start to sink a bit I can normally expect someone to come and offer me a hand.

One of the best things here is that there is a good sense of team spirit and I get on well with my colleagues.

How does your day end?

When all the cleaning is finished, we go and get something to eat in the staff room and catch up. It’s very easy at this time to become philosophical about things as you feel tired at the end of the day and it is just starting to get light outside, but with some coffee and food reality hits and it’s time for a shower and the trip home.

I usually get home at about 8am. At this stage it is light and I feel psychologically as though I have just got home from having been clubbing! I take the opportunity to check e-mails, write letters etc before going to bed to sleep at about 10am, hoping that the bin men are not going to be late again and wake me up.