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!