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).
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