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!