All Hail Butter

This week, Butter was king.
Rich, wonderful butter was featured prominently in all recipes, used as much for texture as for taste. Sunday night’s class began by baking our pre-made Brioche dough (from way back when- Tuesday night). They came out of the oven golden brown and delicious, and most prominently ended the reign of Yeast Breads. Onto bigger and better and Buttery-er things.
We began with Croissants and Danish dough that same night- both are in a family called Laminated Doughs. Why such an odd name? Because the layers of dough are insulated and separated by, layers of butter. To do this, we pounded out a pound block of butter into a thin sheet- about a quarter of an inch thick. We then rolled out our dough and wrapped the butter in it like a business letter. We rolled out our dough, sandwiching the butter and folded it again. Roll out thin and repeat. The layers of dough and butter multiply exponentially until you have about 80 layers of alternating dough and butter-impossibly thin and impossible delicious.
Monday night’s class was devoted to rolling out our croissants and making a dozen or so fillings for our Danishes. Apple, prune, cheese, raspberry, chocolate, almond, crumb and so on. There were endless flavor combinations and endless shapes you could make your Danish into. As for the croissants, we stuck to the basics and the universally familiar- crescent shaped plain croissants, chocolate croissants and, optionally, ham and cheese pocket croissants. I opted out of the last one. Interestingly, chef recommends making the croissants with part whole wheat flour. “Wont that make them taste healthy?” I asked. She looked at me like I had said something ridiculous, which I guess I had- the idea of a healthy croissant is laughable. Chef explained that the whole wheat gave the pastries a deeper flavor.
When we took them out of the oven, they were puffy, and flaky, and golden brown (the French like their croissants a dark brown on top, Americans prefer golden) and sizzling slightly around their edges where the butter had oozed out and melted. The kitchen smelled heavenly. Making the laminated dough is a long process from start to finish, and require strength, endurance, patience, perfection and a deep love for butter. Anyone up for helping me practice?
Onto Tuesday night. Finally, the class I had been waiting for- PIE
We didn’t actually bake pie this week, but we made pie dough and other baked good using similar doughs and similar methods. Pie dough is a type of Pate Brisee, literally meaning "broken dough" in French. This is because the butter is broken up in the dough, and when baked properly, produces a flaky (broken) crust. Other baked goods using this method include biscuits and some scones- they too are best when flaky and buttery. A similar dough, called pate Sucree, or mealy dough, has you break the butter up into smaller pieces, until it ultimately looks like corn meal. Scones, tart doughs and short cakes use Pate Sucre- it has a finer texture than Brisee.
As Chef introduced this topic, I got so impatient to begin I literally couldn’t sit still- I began to play with the bowl of flour sitting in front of me. I tried hard not to finish Chef's sentences for her and allowed others to ask questions and attempt to answer hers so as to not give away my pie-freak tendencies. After what seemed like ages but what was actually about a half hour demo, we began making our dough. Thankfully, we weren’t asked to do this with a partner- I very much doubt I would have allowed my teammate to touch our (my) dough.
Begin with flour (a mix of all purpose and cake flour) and a bit of salt. If you have no faith in the leavening ability of the butter (I will explain soon) you can also add some baking soda. But this is for the faint of heart! You see, the reason you must keep the butter cold and in large-ish chunks is so that when it bakes and the butter melts, the water in the butter creates steam. The steam pushes the dough apart and then the protein structures from the flour form around these air pockets, creating the flaky result- no chemical leavener needed! Back to the ingredients. To the flour mix, quickly add the butter and try to break it up into small pieces- around the size of a cranberry. Once this is accomplished (if your warm hands and the heat of the kitchen hasn’t already melted your butter and ruined your dough) add in cold water and mix just until the dough forms. Don’t over mix! Gluten will form and butter will melt, and that can only lead to heartache later on.
We froze our dough, to be used next week when we prepare, fill and bake PIES.
The second half of class was happily and hastily spent making quick breads- the genre used to describe scones, biscuits and short cakes. They are a really a mix between a cake and a bread (and cookie of you over bake them), the word “quick” is used because they use chemical leaveners and not yeast to rise, making them much quicker to make than bread.
My team made chive cheddar biscuits and currant scones, both of which I am eager to try on my own, swapping out the currant for chocolate, of course.

-Sarah Baer, Flaky and Proud

Bakin' with Bacon

HI!
It has been a very long time since my last post- I’m sorry about that. A lot has happened culinary-ily wise, and I’ll do my best to fill you all in now.
First of all, I made the best looking focaccia I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t too greasy, it wasn’t too hard or crunchy. It was fluffy and soft, with just the right amount of good olive oil pooling in its nooks and crannies, rosemary baked right in and caramelized tomatoes and onion on top. Hungry yet? Just wait.
Sunday night we made home-made pizza. It was the most cooking we’ve one in class- and the most we’ll ever do to be sure. That class started with more knife skill drills (and onion chopping). Chef was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use my school knifes at home to practice, due to my kosher-ness. You can guess what this said about my performance in class. Alarmed at her deep concern and how close I got to chopping off my thumb, I promised to practice in class to make up for it. We made all sorts of pizzas and calzones in class, with a dozen or more topping to choose from. These toppings included (though weren’t limited to) three different variety of meats. Pepperoni, sausage and…you guess it, BACON. I was surprised at how weird I felt with all the meats- I just wasn’t comfortable or used to cooking with them. I think I literally stared at the bacon for three minutes straight. The sausage wasn’t nearly as fascinating, and pepperoni just looks like little slices of salami, or really more akin to the play-dough ones I used to make when I was younger. That bacon, though, was mesmerizing. And watching people put real meat on a cheese pizza? Fascinating. The most exciting moment of that class was when I discovered that the goat cheese was kosher. Suffice it to say that I have had enough goat cheese to satisfy any craving I might have ever had for it (which is to say no craving at all).
Monday night was bagel/bialy/soft pretzel night. It was also the night of the Sour Dough.
Let me tell you the sad sad saga of the sour dough. You are all probably sick of reading about this pre-ferment by now, and believe me so were my classmates and I. No one wanted to look at the stuff anymore (or more accurately, smell it anymore). We had the option to make either white, whole wheat or rye based sour dough. Feeling adventurous, I went for the Rye. That was my first mistake. As we were all kneading our dough, I noticed that mine wasn’t getting as bouncy and firm as everyone else’s- my gluten wasn’t developing. And so I added more flour. The dough was still sticky. More flour. The dough still wasn’t elastic. More flour. Mistake number two. After twenty five minutes straight of kneading and nearly double the amount of flour, I gave up and put my dough in the proof box along with everyone else’s, and moved onto bagel making (cinnamon raisin!).
After two stretch and folds and proofing sessions, it was time to form our loaves. Due to the nature of the rye (it just doesn’t get as firm as regular flour- it doesn’t have as much gluten), I couldn’t make a free-form loaf and instead put in a cast iron pan. Mistake number three. You see, things baked in cast iron will bake at a different rate as the loaves put directly in the oven. This is obvious to anyone, and should have been obvious to me, to chef, and to any of my classmates. But there were bagels to be boiled and pretzels to be consumed. When we took out bread out of the oven, mine looked great, and so I didn’t check for done-ness. Mistake number Four. I should have used a thermometer to read the internal temperature (bread is done at around 180 degrees). Can you guess the mournful result of all of these mistakes? I could have made some play dough pepperoni with the inside of my loaf. At least my bagels were good. But it was last night, doughnut night, that I shone.
First I had a written exam, which went about as smoothly as my sour dough. Kidding! It was fine. And then we made dough for brioche (both regular and chocolate)- to be baked on Sunday night. Then we moved on to the doughnuts, or in my partner and my case, zeppole (Zeh-Po-Lee).
Zeppole are Italian style doughnuts. They are made using a batter, as opposed to a dough like a doughnut, making for a very fluffy end result. They aren’t shaped like American donuts, but are free-form dropped in oil and end up looking more like fritters. They are very similar to funnel cakes, just roundish. I was told that they were the best things made that night. Who doesn’t like deep fried dough covered in sugar?
We are all sick and tired of yeast based dough and are excited to move onto a new topic- one that required less fermentation.

-Soured by Sourdough Sarah