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:
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 :)
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 :)
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