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 :)