I have to admit I didn't think there was any way we were going to make everything we planned for today in class, but we did. First we fed our sourdough starter, which is beginning to smell like beer now that the yeast is turning to alcohol. It's staaaanky! After this we began making scones. Now I don't know about you but I never eat scones. I find them to be waaaaayyyy too dense and generally hard, I've never had a not-hard scone. I figured that's what made them so great for dipping in tea, as I believe the British do. So I go along and follow the instructions with full intentions of donating my scones (you can tell where this is leading, right?).
I decide on a dried cranberry variation on the basic recipe. This recipe has no butter in it and is made with cream & milk. Others in class made a dried apricot & ginger variation. If I enjoyed the taste of ginger I think these would be tasty. After the scones are cooling I over hear a student discussing with Chef how these scones are dense and that she prefers scones made with butter. I walk past her station and notice her scone is crumbly. I stop walking and ask Chef if this is how they are supposed to be....and he says "yes". Oh my, do you know what this means? This means I might actually enjoy these little buggers. I rush to the back of the kitchen and pull my tray of scones off the cooling rack and immediately take them to my station. As I place them on the wire rack one small piece of one of the scones breaks off in my fingers and I use this opportunity to taste...to taste what is now one of my favorite quickbreads!!!
Afterwards we made a Zucchini Bread. When we put together all the ingredients for a recipe each person in the class scales a different ingredient for everyone in class and an additional set for Chef. Once everything is ready he'll demonstrate the recipe and then we'll head off to our individual stations and do our own. All of us in the class, except for one person, is still getting used to scaling ingredients in grams and milliliters (using the metric system) and sometimes we set the scale incorrectly, like say to ounces instead of grams and everyone's recipe is off. In the instance of the Zucchini Bread our flour was weighed incorrectly and during Chef's demo his Zucchini batter was almost as stiff as the scone batter. Luckily we were able to re-scale our flour so that each of our individual recipes were mixed correctly (at least ideally, for some reason some of us had good, runny batter, while others still had thick, stiff batter).
With the slight discrepancies of some people having runny, smooth batter while other had batter which was more stiff we're beginning to see the impact of technique on the quality of our finished products. With the Zucchini Bread there was a very specific manner in which the two types of flour were supposed to be introduced into the batter and even how long the dry ingredients were supposed to be mixed together before being integrated with any of the others. These are all reasons to read the recipe two or three times before putting anything together!!! While I sacrificed my Zucchini Bread to the folks at my office I did have a taste of someone else's and they were so moist & delicious.
Cranberry Scones & Zucchini Bread:
I especially have to note that while these scones are not made with butter they have an amazing buttery flavor and texture. I have no idea how this is but its GREAT!
Before lunch we made Carrot Cake Loaf. This recipe was interesting because we whipped the eggs for 8-16 minutes before adding any additional ingredients. The eggs completely altered their texture (obviously with all that air being incorporated), color (they became so light yellow, almost white), and to know they were ready you could pull the whisk out of the bowl and spin the dripping eggs over the top and when they laid atop in a ribbon layer then they were done. I tried to take a photo but it didn't come out well enough to show anything. Whipping the eggs like this gave the cake such a light, airy, almost spongy texture. While in the photo my cakes look as if they might not be cooked all the way, Chef even sliced one of my muffins open because they didn't look done, I assure you they are done and done well:
I tried to take a photo of how perfect the inside is but was unable to get a good shot. Trust me, they looked much nicer on the inside than this outside does...and they tasted soft, moist, spicy, and mine was warm...mmm mmm mmm.
After lunch we made a Pistachio Marble Pound Cake and while I don't much care for pistachios & even though most of them are now potentially able to kill you with salmonella poisoning this was a fun cake to make:
Ok, now see all the holes in the loaf, some are larger & deeper and some are a bit smaller...that's a sign of gluten formation. It means that our batter (I say our because I made this pound cake with my classmate Bob) was mixed too long once the dry ingredients hit the wet ones. This is going to take some practice for me. Once those dry ingredients get incorporated only mix them until blended, then get 'em outta the mixer...or you got yourself a gluten catastrophe, oh my.
That was alot for one day. Tomorrow is Puff Pastry (lots of hard labor involved in this one) and with just the puff pastry dough we're going to make Croissants...I love this life!!! My feet are excruciatingly sore and my body is crazy tired (I've been on the couch since coming home and I'm so ready to sleep) but didn't you hear me...puff pastry and croissants!!!!
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