Baking & Pastry - Day 11

Today I took the early class as we were leaving to go to South Carolina for Thanksgiving and I wasn't able to make the late class.  Chef Tingler demoed how to make the cream puffs and eclairs, we made them and topped them with a chocolate ganache and confectioners sugar.. YUM!

Cream Puffs and Eclairs

Baking & Pastry - Day 10

Today we made apple pie, pumpkin pie, and fruit tarts.  What a fun class! Take a look at the pictures. 

Chef demoing the pies and tarts:

My production - apple pie, fruit tart and pumpkin pie...

Baking & Pastry - Day 9

On Monday in class we prepared pie crust, pate sucree, apple pie filling and pastry cream.  This was all in preparation for making our pies/tarts on Tuesday.  Chef demoed the crusts, filling and cream, then we had student production.

Baking & Pastry - Day 8

On Thursday we had our first practical exam.  The practical consisted of making a braided bread, single knot, double knot and figure 8 rolls, chocolate chip cookies and biscuits. 

Baking & Pastry - Day 7

Today (Wed.) we had our first quiz of the class... an easy 10 question quiz... Then Chef demoed different ways to prepare the French bread we had made the day before. Then we prepared ours, let them proof, baked them and voila! here they are.....  

A baguette and a pain de epi                              A Fougasse

A decorative bread - bunch of grapes and chef putting a dusting of flour on top of the French Bread

And here is my production - A bagette, a pain de epi, and a fougasse:

Baking & Pastry - Day 6

Today we made croissants, danishes, cinnamon rolls and bear claws from the danish dough we made yesterday.  We also added to our yeast starter for our french bread production tomorrow.  Here are some of the pictures from the chef's demo and my own production:

Baking & Pastry - Day 5

Today in class we made danish dough and french bread dough.  Chef demoed the danish dough first, showing the techniques for preparing the dough, letting the dough cool properly, then rolling out the butter, (make sure the butter is very cold), rolling out the danish dough, placing the rolled out butter on half of the dough, folding it into thirds and rolling again.  After this is done the dough is put into the cooler again for about 15-30 minutes to chill, then it is rolled again and folded into thirds.  This procedure is done a total of three times, then the dough is left in the refrigerator over night.  We prepared four fillings for our danishes - hazlenut, cinnamon, almond and butter pecan filling.  On Tuesday, Day 6 we will make danishes into different shapes and fill them.  We made the yeast starter for our french bread dough which we will make into our bread on Tuesday as well.

Baking and Pastry - Day 4

Well, it's Sunday and I am just now writing about Thursday - day four in baking and pastry.  I truly love this class.  I think my real passion is in baking and pastry, although I LOVE to cook as well.   Tonight we made braided bread and knotted rolls.  They were so good.  Here are some pictures of tonights production:

Braiding the bread and making knotted rolls...

What a beautiful roll!

Baking & Pastry - Day 3

Day three of baking class was all about cookies - we made brownies, chocolate chip cookies, butter tea cookies and I had some extra time so I made some peanut butter cookies.... A fun night.  A few pictures from demo and production tonight...  brownies are in the cooler for finishing tomorrow...

Chef Jeffries demoing the butter cookies

My cookies.....

And, last but not least, we cannot forget MIKE....  yes, Mike..... we love you!

Baking & Pastry - Day 2

Oh, WOW!  I love this class... probably because I love to bake as well as cook!  The pace of this class is much different from the others.... a little bit slower which is good!  Tonight we made biscuits, muffins and banana bread... Ya know, I have made biscuits a lot.... but this biscuit is by far, the best I have ever made.. like I said before, it's the folding method that causes the layers of flakiness..... it is SO good.... here is the recipe... it's all in pounds and ounces, not cups.... a little bit different than what I am used to!!!

1 lb 4 oz bread flour
1 lb 4 oz pastry flour
.75 oz salt
2 oz sugar
2.5 oz baking powder
14 oz butter
1 lb. 10 oz. milk

Sift together all the dry ingredients.   Put in a large bowl... cut in the butter and mix with your hands until the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal... Add milk just until a soft dough is formed. Do not over mix.  Put the dough on the table, work into a rectangle, adding flour as necessary.   Form into a rectangle.  Fold in half, flatten out, rotate 90 degrees, flatten out again, then fold in half.  Repeat this about 6 times, incorporating flour as needed. The dough should be soft and slightly elastic but not sticky.  Dough should be almost an inch thick before cutting...  Cut into biscuits.  Put biscuits on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Make sure they all touch each other...Bake at 400 for about 15-20 minutes.

Baking & Pastry - Day 1

Ahhhhh, it's finally here... baking, my favorite!  I LOVE to bake... Now don't get me wrong, I love to cook too, but my real passion is baking!  The first day was pretty much an introduction to the class, tour of the kitchen and supplies, outline of class content and expectations, then the chef demoed and made biscuits... Now, let me tell you, they're not just any biscuits, they are the BEST biscuits.. the trick, my friends, is how you fold over the dough about 6-7 times to get that flaky texture.... pretty amazing if I do say so myself... and, they were DELICIOUS!

Day 24, Foundations III

Whew!  Last day of Foundations III.... A great class.  We learned a LOT!  It was fun and challenging.  We took the final exam, then made omelets (we have to have something to eat!!) then we deep cleaned the kitchen...  And... I got an A... sweet!!!  Here are some pics of my team...

Day 23, Foundations III (One day to go!!!)

Well, fellow classmates, we have almost made it to the end of this class. One day to go!  Tonight's class was easy, fun and a little challenging... First we had to fabricate a chicken - cut 8 way, then fillet a red snapper.   Then we had to prepare two plates... 1st plate was chicken fricassee with tourne purple potatoes, 2nd plate was sauteed red snapper, rice pilaf, spinach concasse and butter sauce.  Sounds easy... but it takes time.  After the chicken and the fish are fabricated, it's cleaning up, then preparing the rest of the dishes!  All in all it went pretty well, but I have to admit I used almost the full two hours!  And, the photos.........