Today was great mostly because there's a sense of routine setting in...just barely. As a class we're getting more organized in the kitchen and developing systems that will have us be more effective. This is all right up my alley!!!
This morning we baked yesterday's croissant dough. We made half of our batch plain and the other half chocolate. Mmmm, chocolate croissants. Not only are we getting great practice in how to roll these little buggers but also great lessons in proofing them. Proofing is the method of placing them in a humid box for a period of time during which they puff and grow (did I already tell you that?). If you just baked them without proofing them they'd be really flat & dull and who wants that in a croissant? While my croissants were puffy they hadn't cooked all the way in the middle, even though they were quite dark & crisp on the outside, and there was a huge gap on the inside between the top & the bottome, there was practically no middle to my croissant. Chef said that this is due to a lack of proofing...so even though we proofed today for quite a while we'll proof tomorrow for even longer. I do not have a pic as I figured I've already whet your appetite with croissants and never thought to snap a pic while I was chomping them open with my hungry, hungry mouth :)
More batards today, though this time I made city bread:
If flour makes it Country Bread than I am left to assume that no flour makes it City Bread.
Also, I could probably benefit from scoring these just a bit deeper. When we put them in the bread oven we throw a bowl of water onto the hot floor of the oven to create steam which aids in the bread between the sliced tops to puff up and out. If my cuts were a bit deeper it should enhance this feature. Tomorrow I shall give it a whirl. I am glad we're making bread every day this week; first off I'm enjoying bread making way more than I thought I would and second there's such a skill to develop in rolling them correctly and all the same size.
Next, today the mystery of the Arlette was solved. While the beauty of a palmier is that its rolled and rolled and rolled in granulated sugar, half the beauty of an arlette is that its rolled in powdered sugar. In addition the pastry puff dough is rolled up and sliced, then rolled out and baked, so you can see the layers & circular pattern from the dough in the pastry:
I haven't tried these yet, hang on they are in my dining room...while I haven't found religion in them they are pastry puff so that's always a good thing in my book. The powdered sugar isn't as scrumptious as the granulated sugar, that's what I think is so different.
After school I usually go into the office to work and drop off a bunch of pastries to everyone I work with but today I had some work to take care of outside the office and never made it in. As I was parking my car by my house my neighbor also pulled up, a neighbor I've seen plenty of times but never met. So I'm standing there with an arm full of pastries and the batards I made today and I just walked up to him, explained I'm a pastry student and asked if he & his wife would enjoy some fresh baguettes? Now I'm just pawning breads & pastries off on anyone I see. He gladly took them and so now he & his wife are on my radar as people whose tummies I can fill with love & pastry!! Whoo Hoo. I just have to find more like them ;)
Here's a sneak peek at one of tomorrow's projects:
These are called....can you guess???
PINWHEELS
Go forth & be well!
Love ya.
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