Preparation May Be As Much Work As Application

It is now Monday & I'm blogging about Friday...me-oh-my where has the time gone? I actually have an answer to that question. Friday was a very chill day in class. We made pizza dough in the morning, took our written test on our bread section & spent the remainder of the day making pizza sauce and baking off pizza. Not so bad...it felt so relaxed.

At the end of class we were given an outline of our practical exam, three days, 13 recipes...go! OMG, I was in complete & utter overwhelm. Along with making sure I had everything organized in my head Chef wanted an hour by hour time schedule of what we were going to do for the next three days!?!?!?! Are you kidding...great tool I'm sure but putting it together was somewhat difficult.

I spent the weekend typing up all my recipes, creating my time schedule, putting together a to-do list for each recipe and making sure I knew all baking temps, baking times, intricacies of each dough and recipe which we'll be making, and now its Monday and I am hoping I'm ready.

We ended up getting a three day weekend because I asked to switch our scheduled day off from Thursday to Monday...the extra day made such a significant difference in planning out my exam. I was able to rest some this weekend, play some this weekend, work some this weekend & get everything ready & organized for the exam.

Our pizza's Friday were great. I made the sauce for my "team" and completely over salted the onions but didn't realize until they were added to the tomatoes...Chef tasted my sauce at my request to help me fix it, and turns around & asks, "don't you cook?"...uh, does it taste like I cook? NO.....I wish, sometimes I did, but I'm definitely a recipe follower and if left to free form cooking then my prayers go straight to those who are about to chow down on whatever I've made :(

We tweaked the sauce somewhat but not enough though once it was on the pizza and baked you really couldn't tell. Everything worked out great!!! This is the pizza I made with sliced bell peppers, caramelized onions, sauteed zucchini, & either shredded mozzarella w/ parmesan or the shredded gruyere:


I stuffed my face full of these for about 30 minutes straight. Topped one, baked it off, stuffed my face, topped the next, baked it off, stuffed my face...in total I probably ate three of these small ones. The dough was the perfect amount of crispy, cooked all the way through so it wasn't doughy but it wasn't like a cracker either. The dough also tasted really clean...nothing fancy or annoying in the dough, just a clean, well made pizza dough. I was very pleased with how these turned out.

I Never Would Have Guessed There Are This Many Types of Bread

What a fun day in class today!!! We finally got to bake our Red Wine Shallot bread and we also made doughnuts today but I was looking the most forward to learning how to make birds and animals out of our bread dough. Chef wrote on our agenda that we'd make "birds, (something else I cannot currently remember), and guys"..."just guys?", I asked. I was determined to figure out how to make a girl, but first I had to learn how to make a guy, and a bird...

This was quite a funny moment in our day. Chef rolled out the body of his bird and then made its head and then called it a bird but there was no way I was seeing a bird. I saw a long piece of dough with a ball of dough on top of it. He thought I wasn't able to see a "bird" because he hadn't made them in so long he might have done something wrong. Turns out he just had the sheet pan upside down and once we got that figured out I thought the birds were so cute. We even made wings for them, which Chef hadn't previously done. Oh and someone encouraged Chef to make a beak too. These are my four birds, all of which had beaks before proofing and swelling so big their beaks got sucked back into their head...otherwise they look great:

So now that I know how to make a guy I figured a few extra steps would give me a girl...pull here, make a bow there, etc. etc...then I had all this extra dough and wasn't sure what to do with it. I generally come up with very basic ideas to fill "creative space" with and so I made a flower pot. Not that it isn't cute but surely it isn't very inventive:

I'll let you figure out which one is the boy & which one is the girl.

You can't see it very well in this shot but she's got a bow on top of her head. One student commented how fat I made them...not that I knew they were going to turn out this fat...practice, practice, practice. Then I took my tray to Chef to show him how to make a girl and her looks at her as if her plump belly were the top of her and asked me if I made a hippopotamus. OMG, are you serious??? You're killing me. He was completely serious...while the angle I had on his bird made it look unlike what it was supposed to be, the angle he had on my girl made him see a hippopotamus.

I had to include this next photo because I love it. I was actually trying to sneak a pic of my friend Breanna because she was embarrassed to have her pic taken and I ended up getting a great shot of Chef showing a couple students how to shape their bread. I just love the teacher/student dynamic caught in this photo...

From left to right this pic includes Dannica, Breanna & Chef Yves Fournier
(our instructor)

For our red wine shallot bread we made rolls and smaller loaves. All in all I think this bread had an aroma that exceeded its flavor though I do think that as a compliment to a meal; sandwich bread, dinner rolls, etc. it would be a great. It just didn't do it for me standing on its own. Gorgeous though:

Last item on the agenda were Berliner Doughnuts. Chef told us that for Mardi Gras, and throughout the month of February these are made in every bakery and are very popular in France. They are a yeast doughnut with lemon zest in 'em...Mmmmm lemon. At Chef's request I tried one and they were so light and airy. I'm not a big fan of fried things and I'm really not a fan at all of doughnuts but that fluffy-ness and lemon suckered me in and I must've eaten four of them before leaving class. I gave all the rest of mine away. Here they are all sprinkled and pretty:

This is what they look like before the powdered sugar hides all the detail work:

Tomorrow is Friday...yay!!! Next week is our test...we get Thursday off from school then next Friday we begin Cakes, Tarts, and Pies. Very interesting. However, until then I'll keep rolling my baguettes, making sure all the butter is evenly distributed in my croissant dough, make sure my croissants are rolled properly and that I am present and thinking thoughts all the way to their end point.

Take Care!

Baker's Truly Have A Gift

Today there was a pretty loose agenda. One of the breads we planned to make, a Red Wine Shallot Bread, ended up needing to preferment overnight so we had one less bread to make today. We, of course, made croissants & baguettes (of which I have good news) and we also made a Tabatiere which translates to something similar to a cigar box. I think once you see it you'll recognize it. Then...a surprise for all of us. But first...

Today I got my one-on-one with Chef on how to roll a baguette. Turns out the largest portion of my struggle was in the rolling process. Getting that seam to seal on the bottom of the loaf and making sure the entire loaf is the same size was really getting more difficult for me rather than easier. Just for effect, here's yesterday's baguettes:

Lumpy & bumpy, tiny centers with bulbous ends...

And now I give you today's baguettes:

Wow, what a difference...don't you think? Chef rolled two of these four and of the two I rolled I only, slightly, jacked up one of them & you'd probably have to search out which one I messed up on. That's because I only "slightly" jacked it up :) YAY!!!!
Now if only I can pull this off for my test next week. Please, lets bow our heads & pray...

With our Tabatieres we made a fairly basic bread dough, it was a White Wheat Lean Dough, which we made rolls out of last time. We used 1,000g of flour, which for us was a lot. For an average recipe we generally scale out 500g of flour each. Obviously it depends what we're making which determines how many items 500g of flour gives us but consider that we use 500g for about six of the tomato rolls, 5-6 of the walnut bread rolls, and about 12-15 croissants (depending how we cut them up). So in comparison 1,000g of flour is a lot for us.

I jumped right in a took my dough divided it in half to make two tabatieres, which Chef later told me was going to make really big tabatieres. While I didn't make them "perfect" I truly appreciate his attitude around experimentation; that most everything can be played with, toyed with and manipulated. Chef explained to us early on that this is a continual learning process and if you've done something a particular way for your whole life & someone can teach you a more efficient way then why not change? I was under no impression what I was doing offered a "better" way I just didn't read the recipe as thoroughly as I usually do. So he allowed me to keep my dough in these huge balls and bake them as gigantic breads...I thought that was pretty cool ;) Oh, so here's a tabatiere:

Have you seen these before? They looked familiar to me once I saw them baked. How cute are these???

Wait...not as cute as these...first though, Chef was playing around with a student's dough and asked her if she wanted to make a turtle with her tabatiere dough & she said yes. Chef showed us how and allowed those who wanted to make turtles. I think I took a picture of everyone's but here are two to give you an idea of what they created:

Absolutely amazing, don't you think?

Tomorrow Chef said that we could also learn how to make some birds & other animals. We, as a class, did learn a big lesson on baking bread today. These tabatiere and turtle bread were very large and we waaaay undercooked them and tried to pull them off as done & ready. Now we didn't do this on purpose, none of us were being sneaky but we definitely weren't paying close attention to the product as a whole. We put them back in the oven and baked them to perfection, my concern was we were going to burn them which we didn't! And now we know.

Tomorrow we get to bake up some of that Red Wine Shallot Bread, I think my friend Rico is going to go nuts over that. I'll have to put it in his bread care package. Then this week I get a couple more practice rounds of baguettes before our test, Friday we have a written test & Monday-Wednesday is our practical exam...I'm nervous/excited/ready/unsure/excited!!! :)

Getting Back On Track

Ooops, I missed a day didn't I??? It was nice last night to veg out, watch some TV, I had ice cream for dinner, and crashed out pretty early!!! It was a busy day in class..yes, yes it was. I'll separate Tuesday & Wednesday's posts...here's Tuesday's:

My favorite item of the day was Tomato Bread...OMG!!!! On Monday we sliced and roasted tomatoes and garlic then Tuesday incorporated these wonderfully aromatic delights into the dough. The kitchen smelled wonderful!!!

I could barely wait to eat one of these. I sliced one up while it was still warm...Mmmm
Mmmmmmmmm

Look at those slices of roasted garlic and chunks of tomato (granted, you may have to click on the photo to get a close up view, but if you do it may be worth your while):

We played with lots of Brioche Tuesday also. Chef asked that we make six of the Brioche de Paris and one Crown while allowing us to make six additional pieces of our choice. Though not particularly fancy I chose the chocolate filled brioche...yummy. "Cheese":

And then there's the ongoing struggle I've been having with baguettes. Why do mine look like this?

In case you're a kind soul & aren't certain what's so wacky about these check out how the centers are thinner than the rest of the baguette, or on a different side of the same coin, note how the ends bulge out, thicker and more bulbous than the rest of the bread. I have tried to remedy this a few times and I keep ending up with the same results. Chef said the problem is in how I am shaping the loaf & that he would show me on Wednesday how to properly shape and roll out a baguette. I was hopeful that my one on one time with him would pay off for me.

The last item we baked was Walnut Bread. These are pretty cool, if you're into walnuts (because there are lots of them). While I haven't even tasted this bread it sure did bake up wonderfully:

Seeing as I'm behind on these entries I'll call this one complete and get started on Wednesday's...it was a slower day and quite scrumptious :) I feel I should also mention that for the croissants we made Tuesday rather that plain chocolate, of which we've had no complaints, we made chocolate coconut croissants....I love the chocolate we use in class, in fact I've eaten more chocolate in the past couple of week than I've eaten in months and months, and I like coconut these didn't do it for me. However for the right person I could see how they'd be great...shredded coconut mixed with butter and flour, topped with gooey chocolate wrapped up in a flaky croissant. Good stuff!

Death By Baguette

Today was out of character, and I like that! We had an agenda of bread; poolish baguettes, walnut bread, tomato bread, and croissants (yes, still). We're bumping along our day, prepearing the tomatoes for our tomatoe bread & mixing up our autolyse for the baguette when all of a sudden the drains in our kitchen start to back up. Something not-so-nice is coming up the drains making small puddles throughout our kitchen. Chef calls the Roto Rooter guy to come & we get a very extended break...after everything bread related gets taken care of. As stated once before, "yeast bread waits for no man" :).

It was some nice bonding time for us students, not that we all bonded together. We've begun splitting into our clicks, which most people thought wouldn't happen as we are only eight people, though clicks tend to develop more so based on personalities rather than the number of people involved. Still, it was nice to sit outside, gab with one another and enjoy a slow moving Monday.

The only item we baked today was our baguettes. We used a different dough than we've been using and as if I wasn't struggling enough with shaping my baguettes with the sourdough starter dough I really struggled with this dough. It was so dense I couldn't get the seams to bind when I rolled it and they opened up in the oven which split my baguettes right down the side & bottom....ahhhhh!!!! And I broke one open to taste it and it was gross...Chef said the whole problem was how I made my dough. Ahhhhhhhhh! Try, try again tomorrow.

We have a written test on everything bread this Friday and then a three day practical exam next week...of course there are going to be baguettes on this exam & I'm getting more and more nervous rather than more confident each day we make them. Not the end of the world, I'm certain, though I wish I could at least figure out what the hell I'm missing here.

No pics today :( Tomorrow we'll finish making the walnut bread and tomato bread, and oh we preped some brioche dough for tomorrow also....yummy yummy!!!

Baker vs. Pastry Chef

There has been such a high degree of experimentation this week in class. Today is was with croissants. This entry will be croissant heavy so if that doesn't interest you much then go ahead and slip out now...really I won't mind.

Yesterday we folded our butter into our dough differently than usual & today we set out to tell if there was any real difference. Yesterday I was pleased with the new method because my dough was so much easier to roll. This matters a lot when my shoulders have been tight for three weeks now from rolling and I have, consistently, sore hands from all the pressure on the rolling pins. There was no difference in cutting these and they proofed just as well as the others, which really has nothing to do with how the butter is incorporated...and then we baked them.

I made regular croissants & the binocular shaped chocolate croissants:

Now these are pretty good croissants, right?

However something just wasn't working for me about these croissants. They didn't look as alluring as the croissants before. What do I mean exactly? Well allow me to offer you an example:

These are the bitchin' chocolate croissants I was bragging about a couple of days ago:

Can you see how the dough pulls up & away in thicker layers with each smaller, in between, layer also separating from one another?

If you compare this pic to the first, regular croissant picture (where the layers of dough just sit and rest upon one another) there's a significant difference. But all in all what truly matters is taste. So I sliced open my croissant and got to chomping. Buttery. Flavorful. Doughy. But what's this...what's going on here...what the heck happened to my croissant???:

THIS is the inside of my croissant. What the...?!?!? Where are all the layers, the flakiness, that crispy crunch I've been falling in love with all these weeks? This looks like freakin' bread on the inside, not a croissant.

THIS is what I'm looking for inside a croissant:

This is buttery layer after layer, this is crispy, flaky greatness...THIS is croissant!!!

When I brought this up to Chef he said that the former croissant is what would be considered a "pastry chef's" croissant while the latter would be considered a "baker's" croissant. See a baker specializes in breads, obviously (you knew that, right?) and a pastry chef may, or may not, dabble in bread making. Therefore the art & detail & delicate nature of breads is generally found in those products created by a baker. These past three weeks I have been, heart & soul, a baker.

Today we also played with some more brioche. Three new kinds we haven't made before. First we made Sombreros (which I'm certain isn't any sort of official name as Chef told us that's just what his dad called them & are usually made with halved apricots but I preferred pears and that resulted in a less sombrero-like sombrero), a crown, and a loaf (which I'll be making french toast out of this weekend):

Now if you look closely at that loaf it may look a little bit lopsided but I'd like to go on record saying, first that it is, but more importantly that its not my fault.

My teammate in class was removing it from the pan and it got damaged (or "busted" as I've been calling it). I double checked with Chef that it wasn't anything that was done incorrectly before heading into the oven. That loaf is actually little dough balls which have been squeezed into the loaf pan next to one another, tightly fitted. They come up only about an inch from the bottom of the loaf pan and then they rest in the oven area of our kitchen, where its really warm, and proof until they are popping out & over the top of the pan. Then we bake them to that beautiful golden color and eat them up (preferably in the form of french toast)!!!

The crown is cute too, sort of looks like a big doughnut:

There's supposed to be a hole in the middle there but I struggled with gaining any degree of grace in how to shape it so my edges proofed, then baked together, closing up the middle.

The last items we made today were more baguettes, which I am just not getting! They're ok but in a week I'm going to be tested & and I do not feel comfortable with my baguette shaping skills as of today. I hope we make more next week...I gotta focus. We also made a Fougasses, a french bread, from the south of France, which is a baguette flat bread and scrumptious!!! It was my dinner tonight :) It's made with a prefermentation technique called a Poolish and we develop its gluten not by mixing and mixing and mixing it, which is what we've done to all our other breads, but by allowing the flour and water to sit & rest together over a period of time. While its completely contradictory it definitely worked. My dinner was gluten-tastic! We brushed it with olive oil (similar to a Focaccia) and gave it toppings (I did herbs on one and minced jalapenos on another) and while I do not have pictures just know it was as beautiful as it was tasty.

Off to my weekend...yay!!! Long week, lots of stuff got learned and I'm still having a BLAST!!! :)

Oven? What Oven? Are We in a Baking Class or Something?

Wow! What a day. Of course we made croissants...mine are getting better & better each day. Again, I was the last one done rolling mine but I'm focusing on making each croissant consistent in size. Today they weren't all the same size but I'm getting there. And...we burned them!!! Ha ha ha. (Wait, we burned them or we burnt them?) Yesterday I told Chef that he might have to let us burn them to get people to focus & learn to multi-task and today was the day. They didn't come out blackened and a complete waste but they were quite brown.

With our danish dough we made Bear Claws. Now very little that came out of the oven today was perfect. The bear claws weren't burnt, they were actually under baked Chef pointed out, but the filling was a bit too thin and melted out of the bear claw onto the sheet pan. Here's a pic of two, fairly decent bear claws:

And here are the rest of my bear claws:

They kind of look like webbed claws...

We also made pretzels today. I was totally freaking out over the use of lye. Granted it is food grade and it's been used to make pretzels for a long, long time but the idea of it completely freaked me out. Chef got me gloves and wrapped a towel around my face, like a handkerchief, because I just kept going on and on about it.

The lye is what changes the color of the dough to the famous yellow which we know pretzels as. We followed the lye recipe as it was written in the book & the pretzels started getting really yellow and golden and when we baked them they got so brown, so so so brown I didn't even recognize them as pretzels:

I think this photo even makes them look lighter than they were in person.

Chef hadn't worked much with pretzels so a lot of what we did today was newer for him as well. Overall we did pretty well, it was just a learn-as-you-go type of recipe...good thing we have nine people all doing the same recipe. If you're finishing last, sometimes that means yours will be the best.

One other thing we tried in class was a new way of incorporating the butter into our croissant dough. Normally we cut a block of butter and a block of dough, line the butter up on one half of the dough and fold the other half of the dough over the butter, roll it all out and begin doing the folds to incorporate the butter and make all the layers. Today someone mentioned they'd read about a different way to incorporate the butter so Chef said we'd try it & see if we like it. So for this new way we've spread the butter on top of the entire surface of the dough, only now we've got to add extra turns. Thus far I really like it simply because the dough seems much easier to work with, though what really matters is how it bakes up so tomorrow I'll let you know.

I am ecstatic tomorrow is Friday. This week went by very quickly, which is a good thing. I'm learning so much and getting in such great practice, and I'm completely ready for a two day rest & rejuvenation period :)

You Gotta Check These Out!!!

I'm posting a picture of today's chocolate croissants simply out of pride...

Look @ all those layers...mmmm mmm mmmm.  Today we made these with chocolate which had choco nibs in it...shut up!  OMG, they were freakin' delicious :)

Again in class this morning Chef gave us a time limit to make our croissants within.  Before he established a time limit I was making a syrup for the whole class, it was maybe a 5-7 minute project.  Once he gave us a time limit I freaked out...yesterday my croissants suffered greatly because of the time limit I had to work under.  I asked chef 

if I could stop making the syrup & go work on my croissants.  Now, normally I would never try to get out of one task because I felt another might suffer.  I would just work hard at getting them both to be awesome but I'm telling you this whole time limit thing is throwing me a huge curve ball.  After I asked to switch projects Chef looks at me and says, "no, you can just do your croissants in 25 minutes, hee hee hee"....WHAT?!@?!  Freak out!!!  I completed my croissants in 30 minutes and as you saw, they turned out wonderfully delicious :)

We made some new, and some old, brioche today.  We made, again, the Brioche de Paris (the super cute ones) and mine actually came out 

worse today.  They are rolled and smooshed and tucked and smoothed and are to remain in one piece through the whole process and while I only broke one, which wasn't too big a deal, there was incorrect smooshing in my technique.  They looked quite busted and not nearly as cute as they did yesterday:

These guys are actually all leaning on one another, well except for the one guy that looks like he's leaning (on the right), that one's standing upright & the ball on top is spilling over. 

The two other brioches we made today were a Raisin Loaf; brioche rolled up with pastry cream and raisins, (a.k.a. Escargot):

Mine aren't rolled as tightly as they could've/should've been.  I am finding I often do not roll things tightly enough...there's a skill I never thought of refining.

And we also made a third brioche called Brioche Saint Gengoux, this is an area of France where these originate from (or are at least very popular):

The pink is a praline wrapped almond (I do not know why it is pink) which is also stuffed inside the bread:

Not the best photo but I wanted you to see...

These are super sweet.

Tomorrow we're making more danish, so I'll get more practice with rolling dough, more croissants (guess who's not taking on an extra task beforehand...), brioche, and...oh, pretzels (that'll be fun).  Dude, why is lye used in the making of pretzels...that seems totally jacked up to me...who first decided to make food with lye?!?!?  What the...?????  Yea, so I get to play with lye tomorrow, and while I'm not looking forward to that part I am excited to rock my Thursday!!!!

**I'm not sure what's up with the font on this blog.  Just typing this sentence I've had to adjust and re-adjust about 5 different times...WTF?!?!?!

Brioche....Need I Say More?

Tuesday was a bit slow to start.  I wasn't feeling well today though I have to say I fared pretty well, considering.  This morning while reviewing what we would be making today Chef informed us that we'd have 20 minutes to make all of our croissants...ALL of them?!?!?  What the...?!?!?!?!  On a good day it takes me 30 minutes and most days aren't the good ones.  Ok so I'm just beginning to get it, someone mentioned yesterday that there's an actual difference between the croissants I make now vs. the ones I made in the beginning, and I was left only to figure out how to cut them more consistently...and NOW I've got a time limit to work under?  My croissants today definitely suffered.  I don't think any two on the baking sheet were the same size as one another.  All that and I didn't even get done within the time limit...ahhhhhh!

Yesterday before leaving class we made a Biga for Ciabatta bread.  A biga is a pre-fermentation so we combine some yeast with some water and flour, mixed it all up and let it set overnight.  I think mine more than doubled in size.  When I put my biga away yesterday it was a fairly tough, dry chunk of dough and this morning it was moist and sticky.  The ciabatta dough was super wet, the term for it is 'bucky'...I don't know why but it is.  You have to be gentle with it so as to not release all the air in the dough.  Here's a peek at my two loaves, they're monstrous:

This was a great loaf of bread.  I'm beginning to wonder if I can ever eat pre-packaged, over processed bread again?  I've had ciabatta bread once or twice before and I remember the crust being nearly unbearable, so tough and difficult in getting to the great bread underneath.  This crust was crusty, for sure, though I was able to eat it with the bread...it was warm too.  Mmmmm, warm bread!

We played a lot with Brioche today.  Finally we got to bake our brioche!  I'm going to guestimate the names of each of these molds as best I can...first we have Brioche de Paris:

Aren't these just the cutest?  I even think they tasted the best because they are so fabulously adorable.

We also made chocolate rolled brioche, which is simply chocolate (good chocolate) rolled up in brioche dough, and yes, it tastes as wonderful as it sounds.  And we also made a brioche which originates from the area in France where Chef grew up (and I'm still not clear on which area that is) but their flag has a cross on it & therefore so do many of their pastries.  These are Croix au Sucre (Sugar Cross) and I'm not posting a close up photo of these as mine look dreadful and you'll derive little joy from staring at them.  They are made up of brioche dough rolled up with pastry cream in it, sliced and baked in the shape of a cross and then dunked in granulated sugar.  They are quite tasty also.  Here's the whole gamut of brioche:

While I continued to feel "not-so-great" throughout the day I was proud that I didn't spend too much time complaining about it and suffering with it.  I wanted to be where I was and so it mattered more to me that I learn what there was to learn and to rest when it was time to rest...and guess which time it is now?  Resting time...just like the bread, cover me up and let me rest (and let's hope I don't double in size). 

Yeast & Sugar & Water & Flour & Salt, Oh My!

While this glorious Monday was nonstop from beginning to end it did not feel nearly as busy as the last few weeks.  Some degree of routine and adjustment must be settling in.  I even felt energized and motivated at the very end of my day, after class and work, and while this is my final task of the day I am not left feeling exhausted.  These are all great things!!!

Bread, bread, bread...anyone know how or why bread and money are linked in our society?  Money=bread & dough.  I gather from this at some point bread was of great value.  Then again I always though bread was more common among the very poor since all they could afford was the flour.  History lesson aside today was about many different types of bread; we made more croissant dough (to be baked off tomorrow), more baguettes (which we cut differently), a white wheat lean dough (of which no one really knows why its called a lean dough), and we started a batch of bagels and a batch of Cibatta.

Each of these doughs is of, mostly, different textures, there are different ways of handling the dough, each getting folded at different times, and rolled out in different ways.  While there was much to soak in the only thought that kept running through my head was, "how come with all this bread making we don't have to knead the dough?".  I thought bread making required lots and lots of kneading.  I knew in my heart of hearts that with all the information I've learned up to this point I probably already know the answer but after hours of wondering if what I thought might be the answer was correct I just asked Chef.  In the technological age we have the gift of stand mixers with dough hooks and so there's little to no need for kneading.  There is always the option to mix the dough until blended and then knead it to the proper consistency but I like living in this wonderful technological age and so I say Viva la Stand Mixer!!!!

The only things we baked today were our baguettes which we made somewhat differently:

I think its the cut that's called Epi.  Its either that or the loaf is called Epi when it's cut this way....slight difference & I'm not sure which is correct.  Either way I really like this cut on the bread.  This was just my first try so the more I practice you'll get to see what it's supposed to look like :)

Now, how about some baked potatoes (random right?), well check these out:

You may, or may not, be surprised to learn that these are NOT baked potatoes.  They are, in fact, my white wheat lean dough rolls.  What the hell happened to these little buggars?  Good freakin' question.  When I asked Chef he said it was a result of something going wrong with the steam in the oven, or how it was applied.  

While I hung out in the background of class today I did not put myself in charge of baking any items.  I made space for others to step up and learn and practice.  There was a slight mix up, though, regarding which type of bread was to be baked in which oven.  Considering these rolls were not baked in the proper oven and the steam wasn't generated correctly I give you "potato bread"???

Off to bed I go to begin again tomorrow.  G'night!

A Good Good Friday

Friday was busy and fun and quite exciting as we were all extremely ready for the forth coming rest of the weekend!!! Thursday we baked up a batch of plain croissants and refrigerated them overnight. With the now day old croissants we made Almond Croissants. OMG!!! I'm debating going into what makes these so scrumptious but since over the Internet you're unable to indulge I may have to crack the facade and tell you what's in them. But first take a peek:

We took the day old croissants sliced them in half (like a sandwich) & soaked each half in a syrup which has been steeping oranges, lemons & vanilla. Then we filled the croissants with almond cream which is creamed butter & sugar with some almond powder. Another layer of almond cream atop the croissants, sliced almonds and powdered sugar for show and voila...Almond Croissants.

Now I have a tendency to eat more than one of our croissants at a time...they are quite scrumptious, however I've only had one of these almond croissants. They are super heavy, simply imagine all the butter in just one of these delightful snacks.

Again we made chocolate croissants, plain croissants, and the almond croissants. I'm getting much better on my rolling technique with croissants. They are coming out less chubby and with more layers. By accident the other day someone flipped a heater switch on our proofer and not only did our croissants proof really, really well but it was so toasty in there the butter began melting out of our pastry puff. Our croissants still came out quite good and Friday we upped the temp to a safer temp and we had some great results. Chef said we've made our best croissants to date:

We worked on our Danishes also. Remember, we are using the croissant dough only we're rolling it differently than we roll it for croissants. The missing elements when using croissant dough for danishes is that there are no eggs and less fat. We made apricot and pear danishes and over all I think mine came out fairly ok:

When I rolled my dough before cutting the slices I rolled it too small. Had I rolled out my croissant dough to have been wider, more than longer, then these danishes would've been larger around. No harm, no foul. They were quite delicious!

Of course we made baguettes and I'm still not getting them rolled properly. My baguettes continuously come out a bit loose & while they still taste great they aren't up to French baguette standards. A co-worker told me yesterday that my baguettes have just the rest crustiness in their crust...not to tough with great texture. Last night I was @ Henry's Marketplace and they have baguettes at the checkout line and so I stuck my hand in one of the bags to feel the bread and they were super duper crusty. The crust on them was rock solid...seriously. I definitely do not like that in a bread, even a baguette, so the compliment my co-worker gave me was great!

The surprise of the day was Hamburger Buns. When we made the agenda for the day hamburger buns weren't on it but at the last minute Chef realized we had some extra time so we got to make these. Initially I wasn't overly excited about making these, though I figured the practice with bread dough would be good for me. However, once we got them on a sheet pan and ready to proof I was in love with them. You'd understand if only you could see them:

Look how monstrous these are!!! I altered my dinner plans to make sure I was able to dig into, at least, one of these. I enjoyed them so much I'll be making hamburgers again tonight!!!

We did not make any brioche today. The dough wasn't taken out of the freezer in time and so we're going to make brioche on Tuesday. Fine with me, as long as it gets made :)!!!

I don't know much about next week's agenda. That's fine by me, I've still got a lot to process just from this past week. I'll be typing up recipes most of this weekend (after all we made a lot of stuff this week) and then I'll go into recharge mode and get myself ready for Monday morning!!!

Enjoy your weekend!

Flap Flap*

I could be on the road to a whole new life full of bread making.  This is so much fun!!!  I truly didn't anticipate enjoying bread making as much as I have been.  This morning we started off with...yep, you guessed it, croissants.  We learned a third way to roll out chocolate croissants.  I really liked this way, perhaps even more so than yesterday's binocular roll:

A key factor with this roll is to make sure all the chocolate bar is inside the croissant, otherwise it looks like something not so pretty.  All in all I think these look pretty good.

My croissants were much better today than they have been.  They are full and all the layers are puffing up and today they were almost baked perfectly:

Look at all those flaky layers...just fabulous!!!  

It was a bread crazy day!  After our croissants were made we made another round of baguettes...yes we're actually making baguettes and not batards anymore.  As we continued learning and practicing we are now able to roll our bread to full baguette size.  No pics.  

We also began our Brioche....ohhhh I've been waiting for this since before class even began.  Tonight the brioche dough is resting in the freezer; we're stopping the fermentation of the yeast, and tomorrow we'll get to play more with the dough. 

Until I can cut you a slice just check out the beauty in this dough:

Amazing!

As I was adding the butter towards the end it began smelling almost like cookie dough.  All that butter and all that sugar...yummers.

And the crowning moment of my day...Focaccia...oh me, oh my!  Whoa...for hours after baking this, and eating a lot of it, I was singing, "focaccia, focaccia, focaccia".  We baked this at the very end of class so I was practically on my way out the door when it came out of the oven.  I wrapped it up and headed off to work.  The bread was warm and soft, the onions were sweet, the tomatoes added great texture (probably the first time I've EVER considered tomato's texture as a benefit), just a hint of garlic, and all the salt and crunch of the baked parmesan cheese.  Oh me, oh my!  

Tomorrow we're rolling out more croissants, because I love them, and we're finishing up and baking the brioche, and we've made an extra half batch of the croissant dough to make danishes.  "Croissant dough to make danishes?!?!", you might be asking.  Yes.  Chef swears we won't be able to taste the difference.  We aren't rolling the dough the same as croissants though the missing ingredients are going to be eggs and...I'm thinking...that might be the only difference.  I'll check with Chef tomorrow to be certain and I'll let you know if there's a difference between the two doughs.  I am quite the fan of danishes & I've become quite the connoisseur of croissants so I'll be on the top of my game!

Bonsoir.

*I titled this entry "Flap Flap" because Chef says certain breads are done mixing when they go "flap flap" in the bowl.  Make some bread, keep it mixing for awhile and when you hear it go "flap flap" then its probably done mixing.  It's a very distinct sound :)

The Last of the Pastry Puffs...Please Bow Your Head in Prayer

This morning we finished off our Pinwheels.  Check these out, they are sooooo cute!!!

Basically they are pastry puff with pastry cream in the middle topped with half an apricot.  See, I told you they were cute :)

We learned a new way to do chocolate croissants today.  Yesterday when we made them we rolled the croissants like normal with two sticks of chocolate inserted the top of the roll.  Today we did something completely different and I am definitely a fan of this version...

We were joking around while Chef was making these and he said they look like binoculars...that they do Chef, that they do!!!

My croissants, while looking much better on their exterior aren't so fancy shmancy on their interior.  Today the chocolate ones rose better, with more layers, than yesterday's but the bottom was still under-cooked, which isn't due to the baking process, it's because of the proofing process.  I'm going to have to stand firm in class tomorrow and insist that mine proof longer than other people's.

These plain croissants were proofed for an hour and forty minutes:

They are so poofy and I think they baked better than my chocolate ones but I haven't sliced any of them open and at this point in the day I've already given all my take-homes away.  Oh well, we have tomorrow.

I don't have a picture but I mentioned yesterday I was going to score my baguette deeper in hopes of getting a more defined puffing of bread on the top.  I did score much deeper today and I definitely got the results I was going for.  I also added waaaaaay too much flour to my "country" bread and it looked ridiculous...tee hee hee.

The other item we made today, for which I also have no photo, was Pain de Mei.  These were our first bread we've made in a loaf pan so I actually now have a loaf of bread.  I just had two pieces toasted with the jam we made the first week of class and its pretty good.  I enjoyed it toasted more so than not. 

Tomorrow we'll get to make Brioche..yummy, yummy!!!  We've run out of pastry puff dough so I have no idea what I'll do with myself.  I have learned about myself that I do enjoy the inverted pastry puff more than the classical pastry puff.  I mean really, inverted comes with butter on the outside, how is this not going to be a favorite?!?!?  Plus we made palmiers out of it and I might have to say those are my favorite things we've made since day one!  

Right now I'm craving hot & spicy foods...must be a necessary contrast to all the sweets I'm consuming daily.  My sister said today that being in pastry school may be my equivalent of a pregnancy considering the potential weight gain ahead...