Final week of bread

The last week of class was packed full of many new products including making our own sourdough. We didn't have to do our production items this week, so we had much more time to squeeze in additional projects. Pictured above is Pumpernickel Bread that was made using a portion of my sourdough starter, which had rye flour added to it. It was deliciously rich and dense.

Currant Scones. These were okay, but you can see that they are rather flat, and didn't rise like other scone recipes I have made in the past (see cranberry scone post in November). Also, they were too sweet, almost more like cake than scones.

This was my first sourdough loaf using my own starter. To be technical, this was a "first-build starter sourdough," which means that it didn't come directly from my original sourdough starter, but from a starter I started from my original starter--confused??? Simply put, it is made from a baby of my mother starter. I love the marks made on the crust by the banneton baskets and the color of the crust turned out perfectly. The crumb was nice as well with a variety of small and large air pockets. I was very happy with the results, but best of all it tasted wonderful! It was a very mild tasting sourdough compared to many sourdoughs I have had where there is so much acid that it is almost hard to eat!

This was my second loaf of self-made-starter sourdough. It looks almost the same as the first, but it is a "second-build starter sourdough"--the mother starter's grandchild!

We were required to make 4 pie crust recipes so we could practice getting it right. Best note to take here is to not add too much water (add a little at a time to ensure this doesn't happen). Also, always work with cold ingredients and don't overwork. I have used the same recipe for years for my pie crusts, but after making this one (and learning the perfect method) I think I will switch! The product was a really crisp and flaky dough, but not too tough.

We were required to make an apple pie and the above photo is a double-crusted Apple Pie, which I accented with dried cherries. It was awesome!

Our second pie could have any filling, but had to be made in a blind-baked crust--a crust that is partially baked without a filling. I made a Pecan pie, which was really good. I have made lots of pecan pies, and never blind-baked the crusts, but the end results were fairly similar.

Our final project was making puff pastry, a process which took two days worth of kneading, rolling, folding and fermenting. The dough had to be rolled out and turned (folded) 5 times, with an hour fermentation time in between each. The photos above show one turn. After the dough was ready it was divided into 18"x26" (full sheet pan size) sheets, one recipe made four sheets. At this point the puff pastry can be used for a huge variety of items depending on the fillings, additions and shape. Below are several items I made with puff pastry.

These are Palmiers, which are a piece of puff pastry rolled with sugar or cinnamon sugar that is then folded, sliced and baked so that the sugar caramelizes. An amazing cookie and my vote for the best use of puff pastry.

Apple turnovers. Prior to baking and then after being baked. Wow, these were good!

These were hollow shells that I filled with pastry cream and placed a blackberry on top. These would have been wonderful filled with something savory as well.

Cheese straws. These were really good and very addictive. I made them with parmesan, sesame and poppy seeds.

The bread/dough class has been a really great experience, however I am excited about moving on to pastry. The next three weeks will be "butt time" sitting in the classroom for three lecture classes--nutrition, cost control and human resources. I am looking forward to the project we have been assigned where we have to create our own bakery!

More Bread!

Amazing how much I have learned about bread, and amazing how much there is to learn about something categorized under one word--bread! In an attempt to get caught up on the last two weeks of my bread/dough class I am going to make this post short and carb-filled (that is rather than sweet!).

Our production item this week was Danish. This is a bread many of us are familiar with as a morning pastry. The dough is made in the same method as croissants are made, a laminated dough which is rolled out several times with butter, creating all of those flaky, buttery layers. The center is traditionally filled with a fruit filling or something sweet. We used strawberry and apricot fillings, which were both pre-made, but the best Danish were those with cheese and apple-cinnamon filling, both of which we made.

Caramelized Onion and Fresh Oregano bread. This was made with pate fermente, which is a pre-made batch of dough, which is set out overnight to ferment (called pre-ferment). This is used to give a deep, developed flavor to the bread.

Cibatta. One of the best breads yet! This was a very strange dough to make, as it was very light and sticky and couldn't take much handling, but the product is worth it! There are huge air pockets in the crumb, which is very tender.

The cibatta made wonderful grilled sandwiches. This one was steak and blue cheese--I am nostalgic just remembering how good it was.

Our last production item of the class was making baguettes. Above is a photo of several prior to baking. Nothing beats a good baguette with a chewy crust and tender crumb!

Pane di Como, a white bread that was made with biga, a pre-ferment from Italy.

Pane Pugliese, these were great little guys for sandwiches. A rustic looking bread with a crusty and flour dusted outside and a tender crumb inside.

One week to go with bread making! Next week will be filled with sourdough made from our own sourdough starters which we have been nursing for over a week. Just like a baby, the starter has to be fed and changed everyday! Half of the mixture is discarded (so that it doesn't grow out of control) and then water and flour is added. Can't wait to taste the results!

I'm a Carb-a-holic!

I live and breathe bread! For the past 4 weeks I have been making and/or eating bread 16 hours a day, and for the other eight hours I am dreaming of eating or making bread! My apartment counters are covered with loaves of 1/4 eaten loaves and neighbors and co-workers are begging that I stop giving them the leftovers (it seems that Mr. Atkins has really given bread a bad name).

This week started off with three days of making Butter Braids--simply a butter rich dough that is formed into braids. We did 3, 4, 5 and 6 strand braids (I could handle up to 4 and then my brain shut down!). I also made a star braid, which used a 4-braid (in photo above). It was fun making these shapes, although I didn't care for the density and texture, which was almost cake-like and the flavor of the product.

As for special projects, this week we made many varities of rich doughs. Rich doughs are doughs that contain more than 10% butter. First we made Brioche, both as individual "a tete" forms, meaning that they have a "head" (shown above before baking) and in loafs (no photo).

Here is a photo of the individual "a tete" Brioche after baking.

Chocolate Croissants are a laminated dough, which means that butter is rolled into the dough in several "turns" or separate rolls. First the dough is made and a "butter block" is made, which is creating an even layer of butter the width of the dough so that it can be folded together with the dough. Both dough and butter are chilled and then the butter is added on top of the dough and the rolling begins! Between "turns" there is an hour chill period in the fridge, then the dough is pulled out again, rolled again and so on. The whole process takes quite a long time, but is very rewarding in the end! Above are the chocolate croissants produced from this process. I also made plain and almond croissants (no photos). I now have the official right of passage into the pastry world after having made croissants from my own dough!

On of the most decadent projects were our sticky buns! A rich buttery dough filled with sugar, cinnamon, raisins and pecans! Really sweet, but as a carb-a-holic I couldn't stop eating them! In the past I have always made them in individual muffin tins, but I liked baking them all together in a cake pan so that they pulled apart from each other and shared the sugary glaze.

Lastly, we made a Babka Coffeecake (no photo), which is a traditional Eastern European coffeecake made much like the sticky buns, but instead of cutting the log of rolled dough, it is coiled onto itself in a cake pan and baked whole and topped with streusel.. This coffeecake had a perfect texture, not too moist or dry and was not too sweet. Some of the more devout Seinfeld watchers may even recall an episode in which Elaine states "you can't beat a Babka" and, yes, she is referring to this most delightful coffeecake!

That's it for now. I continue to eat my way through loads of bread, croissants, sticky buns and coffeecake, just as would be expected of a carb-a-holic!

Week Three of Bread Making

Our bread/doughs class works on a rotation of 6 stations, which I outlined in a previous post, where each student works on each station for three days straight. This is a great way to learn each method of bread making and work through the challenges of each. My first assignment this week was focaccia. Each day we experimented with different flavors. Above shows two of the most popular flavors--focaccia pizza with mozzarella and pepperoni and the other was fig, walnut and goat cheese (this was my favorite).


These are fresh mozzarella, tomato with fresh basil (back) and apple with blue cheese and walnuts, another delicious combination!

Along with the focaccia our special projects included Rye bread (not pictured, but looked same as above photo), as well as an Onion Rye (pictured above). I was interested to learn that in using different types of flours in bread, a portion still must be white bread flour because the bread will not hold up with many of the other flours. This is why we don't see 100% whole wheat or other whole grain breads often. The gluten in the bread flour is very important to create a desirable texture.


Another project was Jalapeno cheddar rolls, which were filled with jalapenos, red bell peppers and cheddar cheese. They had a beautiful color, but the texture was gummy (maybe not baked long enough) and the flavor was not my favorite.



This is Pane Siciliano, a bread made with semolina. Of course this comes from Sicily, an Italian town that knows semolina well because of all of the pasta they make! This bread has a wonderful crumb and texture.

The last project of the week was pizza! Our chef instructor called it "student appreciation day" as we all made 2-3 pizzas and ate them for lunch! Considering the quality of the cafeteria food we are served (terrible!) we were really excited about today's lunch! Above are two pieces of my cheese pizza. We were required to make one with cheese only and the other pizzas could be topped as we liked. I am typically not a huge fan of cheese only, but the quality of the dough and sauce were so good that no other toppings were needed!

The end of the week we moved to the Levain production station. Levain is a bread that uses a natural leavener in the place of yeast. The natural leavener is a starter, which was initially made by Peter Reinhart, the author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, 14 years ago while he was a chef instructor at CCA. Each day the starter has to be fed (flour and water) and changed, just like a baby!!!

Levain is a great bread made with a little whole wheat flour, but overall it has a slight sour taste. The interior is soft and chewy and the crust is hard--a perfect combination of textures. The dough is formed in a banneton, which is a reed basket that makes the beautiful lines on the bread. It is then baked directly on the deck of the oven making a thick, dark, semolina coated bottom. In one batch we added raisins and walnuts to the dough and the result was delicious and beautiful purple colored bread due to the reaction of the dough with the walnuts.

A Cake to Celebrate 60 Years

Over the weekend of Jan 19-21 I made a surprise visit to Southport, North Carolina for my mom's 60th birthday! It was my chance to try out all of those classroom skills and make a birthday cake like never before! I packed my suitcase filling it with with all of the essential cake decorating equipment--I can't imagine icing a cake without my offset spatula. I also brought a bag of Meyer Lemons, which I knew I would never find in small-town North Carolina! Very few people outside of California have even heard of these wonderful lemons which are a cross between a lemon and tangerine.

The cake was a 4-layer Chiffon (a school recipe) layered with Meyer Lemon curd (my own recipe) and frosted with Lemon Italian Buttercream (based on a school recipe). The decorations were leaves and lemons all made from marzipan that were brushed with a luster dust and which I made the week prior and brought with me. The 60 was piped with royal icing and the other piping was done in the Lemon Buttercream.

The cake was delicious, light and lemony. My one critique was that there was not enough buttercream on the outside layer. On many cakes there is too much frosting on the outside, but in this cake because the Lemon Buttercream was so tasty everyone wanted more! Overall, a wonderful cake I would gladly make again!

The ovens are full

Indeed the ovens are full and yielding lots of good, fresh bread! Above are baguettes baking in a rotating rack oven, which produces very even baking as it rotates the product as it bakes. We use these in baking most of our breads.

Two weeks ago I started the 6 week doughs segment of the baking and pastry program. In this class we work in six groups, each of which is assigned one of six production items. The six types of bread each use a different method of bread making and shown clockwise in photo above they are baguettes, ballons (soft rolls), pain au levain (like sourdough), danish, focaccia and butter braids. Each day of our first week of class we learned one or two of these six different methods. We also had to learn to work in a much more fast paced environment than we experienced in our cakes course and to manage and juggle time.

In the second week of doughs, along with making one production item each day, we were assigned a special project to complete. These special projects were one time recipes that help reinforce the six basic methods we use to make the six production items. The first project was Honey Whole Wheat bread (shown above) and we formed it in loaves. We also make Pain au Lait, which looked the same as Honey Whole Wheat, but was a white bread. They both made great toast and the Pain au Lait made awesome french toast this weekend

Another of the projects was Soft Pretzels, which were fun to make, but not my favorite as they were too chewy, likely a result of over-working the dough.

We also made bagels, which was really exciting because although I love bagels I have never made them before. I now know how to make my own and they are so much better than those doughy versions they sell at Einstein/Noah's!

Lastly, we made Maple Oat Rolls, which were a slightly sweet dinner roll. I didn't get a picture of them, and I am finding that the pace of the class is allowing a lot fewer opportunities for photo taking and observing. The pace of the class is very intense and much different from the cakes course. I like having the opportunity to make the same item several times, as we do with the production items because I felt that the biggest downfall to the cakes course was that we made everything once and were not able to learn from mistakes by doing it correctly the next time. I am feeling a bit over loaded on bread!

It takes the cake

As promised, I am sharing a cut picture of my practice wedding cake. I have to say that it did feel somewhat like a ceremonial moment, cutting my first wedding cake! I decided that after seeing what it does to all of the beautiful decorations, in future occasions where my creations are being cut open, I don't want to be the one that has to do it!

The outer most white layer is fondant, which I quickly learned is best if peeled away and thrown out--it can make a good cake terrible! The second layer is marzipan, and the cake is a very dense fruitcake. It was tasty and rich, however wouldn't be my wedding cake of choice, but this is how the English do it, and they invented the wedding cake!

Hard to believe that our cakes section is over and we are now in our 10th week of classes. January 8th we returned to make our last two cakes. We reviewed and taste tested our practice wedding cakes (shown above), make our final wedding cakes and making Opera cakes. Above is a photo of all of the wedding cakes from our class on display.

This is my final wedding cake. This wedding cake was assigned by our chef and I was told to do the exact same cake, working on making the flowers thinner and the drop string piping (the swags) more even. Although that was quite a challenge, I had hoped that I would be assigned to do something much different from what I had done in my practice. I had to come up with something that I was happy with at first and make it even better, and it ended up being a good challenge.Everyone was instructed to make a two tiered cake with one 9" and one 6" tier. They had to be poundcake made with shortening in place of the butter, so that they could be preserved into eternity. There was a crumb coat done with a shortening/powdered sugar icing combo and then the entire cake was coated with fondant. This is the type of cake that would be great served at your worst enemies wedding! The main focus here was the presentation and decoration.

The flowers on my cake were made of gum paste, and I brushed the inner part with gold shimmer dusting powder, which is edible. I added two leaves to each side of each flower, which I didn't have in the practice. The leaves were brushed with pearl shimmer dust, as was the snail trial piping detail at the base of each tier.

I wanted to do something on the top for this cake, but something simple. I made a slightly larger flower than I used on the sides and wired six together to create a bouquet. I was very happy with the result and the flowers. The most difficult part was the drop string, which I struggled to get even and smooth.

Our last cake was a pavee, which is a very thin cake (should be about 1" thick) with many layers. This pavee is called an Opera Cake and the layers consisted of nut joconde, mocha cake syrup, mocha French buttercream and ganache, which were all topped with a poured ganache and decorated with the word "Opera." It was very good, although ours turned out a bit thick and the poured ganache was way too thick, didn't coat well and had slight blooming--that's what happens when rushing too much! Regardless, a delicious cake to end with.

So, that is the final blog on cakes! Next week I will be moving into doughs, so there will be lots of bread to come, but for now...let them eat cake!

Christmas in San Francisco

This was our first California Christmas, and I have to admit that I didn't miss the chilling winds or the snow--I can still think about a Chicago winter and and get that cold shivery feeling, so it doesn't feel all that far away yet. And with the scenes that they create in Union Square, in downtown San Francisco (pictured above) you would think you were in a winter wonderland!

This is a scene from one of the Tiffany's windows on Union Square. They were the best windows of all of the stores, however the wreaths in the windows of the Macy's building (above) were spectacular!


Here is our little tree on Christmas morning. I received lots of fun culinary tools and books that I am sure will lead to many new adventures in the kitchen! I am especially excited about the ice cream maker!

I thought we were doing Christmas dinner the easy way, with a Honeybaked Ham, but then built a menu full of sides to cook, but it was fun! Since we were doing ham I put a southern twist on the menu. The ham leftovers were wonderful for the week following, which we used in numerous sandwiches, omeletes and Terry made us HLT's (ham, lettuce, tomato), which were out of this world!

Our Christmas Dinner Menu:

Honeybaked Ham
Scalloped Potatoes
Macaroni and Cheese
Baby Brussels Sprouts with Buttered Pecans
Oven Roasted Carrots
Sweet Potato Biscuits

Dessert:

Saffron Eggnog
Apple-Raison Bread Pudding with Cinnamon and Pear Caramel Sauce

The brussels sprouts were my attempt to re-try a vegetable that I didn't like as a kid. I have seen so many great sounding sprout recipes lately that I was convinced I was missing out on something good. This dish did it for me! I am a convert! I first boiled the sprouts for a few minutes and just before everything else came out of the oven I popped them into the skillet with some butter and diced garlic until they where browned on the outside. Lastly, I tossed them with the toasted, buttered and salted pecans--yummo!

Of course I had to mention the bread pudding! It was really good and custard-y and the sauce (which I bought) was a really good match! I made them in 8oz ramekins, which ended up being too much for one person after a big Christmas dinner, but we enjoyed sharing in the name of the Christmas spirit!