Paisley Appeal

I have only two more days of culinary school.  This is a disturbing fact for two reasons.

a) I misread "baking powder" last night and instead added baking soda to my batter- a HUGELY rookie mistake and

b)  I love culinary school and have no desire to graduate.

True, I still have three months of interning to go before I can call myself a pastry chef, but it sure feels like its over.  Next Wednesday night, I will get a real chef's hat (no more of this comis hat nonsense, and then poof, done  (That is, unless they decide to fail me because of the silly soda/powder snafu).

In a week's time I will be cleaning out my locker, which is currently strewn with culinary paraphernalia and school debris, and inhaling the butter/sugar aroma of the classrooms for the last time.  How sad.

I should note that I am basically the only member of my class who feels this way.  My classmates will be sad to loose the camaraderie and friendships, but for the most part they cannot wait to get out of school.  There has been much grumbling over the late hours and less-than kind instructors, the lugging of equipment back and forth and the fact that we all need to start earning money.  Not me!  I take comfort in the fact that I will (hopefully) learn loads at my internship, get bossed around by the executive pastry chef and not earn a dime.

As for what I am currently learning in school- more about wedding cakes.  People earn their living doing nothing but bake and decorate wedding cakes, so the least we can do is spend three full weeks devoted to the art.  At the beginning of the process I was just making gum-paste flowers with abandon, without a plan to follow or a clear idea of what my final cake (note- the final cake is our final exam) would look like.  Two weeks in and I have a weak idea...that I altered last night.  Have I mentioned that I'm a go-with-the-flow type of chef who inst great with "planning".  School has taught me to stick to recipes and think one step ahead, but wedding cakes require one to look seven steps ahead and that takes some practice.  Much of what has to do with professional baking is scheduling and proper time management, and this is one of the things I most look forward to learning and experiencing at my internship.  School had attempted to teach this, but when we are given our schedules and told what to bake when, it is hard to master the skill.  Real life will be much more demonstrative.

I had at first the vague notion that I would pipe some pretty floral medallion-like designs on the sides of my top tier using royal icing (egg whites/meringue powder, powdered sugar, lemon juice, whip until stiff. If you have ever eaten or made a gingerbread house, you're familiar with it).  Chef seemed excited and encouraging about this plan of action.  But in my usual half daze in which I normally travel home, my mind wondered back to my cake and I discovered that more than anything, I wanted paisley on the tier.  Why?  It’s more fun and whimsical than my previous "uptight" design.  Yes, cakes can be uptight. I barreled into class last night, told Chef about the paisley plan and she faltered.  Not such a good idea, apparently.  Royal icing is hard to pipe onto the vertical rounded sides of a cake, and paisley is time consuming and requires a lot of detail.  She was worried that the cake would look like "a five year old had piped the designs." To test this hypothesis of Chef's, I took out a cake pan and began piping paisley on its sides last night.  As it turns out, it looked like a eight year old had piped it using her left hand -she is a rightly.  I don’t want to give up, and I am exploring options.  Chef's advice was to practice at home and then (I could have sworn she said this as she walked away) forget the paisley and go with a nice floral. Will I give into Chef's  (founded) lack of confidence in my piping abilities? Had this not been my final practical exam we were talking about, I would probably throw her warnings to the wind and go with my odd paisley fetish. (Admission: I own NO clothing with a paisley pattern.  I don’t even like paisley all that much, but im really feeling it for this cake.)  Because the cake will affect a large portion of my final grade, there is no telling what I will do.  As per my usual MO, both options are on the table and I look forward to exploring them both before I (most likely) settle on a third option (herringbone? plaid? who knows?).  I have two classes to cover my cakes in fondant, place my flowers on top and design the sides.  I have some half-dazed thinking to do.

-Sarah (I'm not a chef yet but you can all call me that if you like)

ps. please note that I caught the baking powder mistake moments after adding it and knew (thanks to ten months of school) that two are NOT interchangeable and threw out the batter, avoiding a wedding cake disaster

I will continue to update you all about my externship and tell you how my measuring and peeling skills are progressing in a real-life restaurant experience, but as this is my last post as a culinary student, I want to take the time to say Thanks.

Thank you to the many important people, both family and friends who have allowed me to grumble about my schedule and sleep on their couches throughout my time in school, feeding me dinner at midnight and enabling me to get to work on time in the morning. 

Apologies the friends and family members who have had to put up with my schedule and with whom I haven’t been able to spend enough time. Please note my schedule is about to change but wont be any better- sorry in advance.

Unlocking the Artist

Spending hours are spent learning how to make a basket weave design and creating flowers out of clay-like materials may sound like arts and craft at camp, but it actually the second half of module four.  Advanced cake decorating is where artsy people shine.  No-one cares that you cant bake a cake when you can make fondant roses and buttercream fleur-de-lis.  It is interesting how those who were trailing in other modules really shine now.  The skill set involved is different that the one required to make fudge or caramel sauce, similar only in the attention to detail that they both require (caramel goes from amberly-delicous to burned in split seconds). 

The class is structured very differently now.  We mainly work by ourselves and are sitting at the worktable while Chef walks around and corrects us, or else tells us the ins and outs of being a special events cake decorator.

Fact:  These flowers are so labor intensive to make that big-name wedding cake purveyors would employ dozens of people and pay pennies so that they could churn out enough azaleas to engulf a six tiered cake, creating gum paste-flower sweat shops.

Fact: depending on your exact design preferences, grand wedding cakes usually begin for about $10.00 a slice, and depending on how many peonies you demand, the price goes up from there.

Fact:  Most wedding cakes with this amount of sugar work taste terrible due to the fact that the cake is baked a week in advance and left out so that the sugar coating (fondant which is essentially preserving it) doesn’t get condensation from sitting in a refrigerator.

That being said, the cakes that are being made are beautiful.  Many cake decorators are trained artists who decide to go into the business, using the same techniques but swapping clay and paints for edible mediums. 

I am enjoying the module so far, and my only complaint is that the heat has been on in our workroom.  This means that working with buttercream is like a race against the clock.  If it sits out too long (it seems like twenty minutes is the limit) it begins to melt and wont hold its shape.  It also means that by the end of class, our pores have opened up and butter has seeped in, mingling with sweat, sugar, and luster-dust. (Incidentally, I LOVE luster dust- It is what we use to add some color and sparkle to marzipan fruits and gum-paste flowers.  Did I mention that it’s called LUSTER DUST?).  The heat also makes working with modeling chocolate (melted chocolate + corn syrup = tootsie roll like substance, once cooled) nearly impossible.  Warm modeling chocolate melts in your hands, smears on your worktable and droops.  The rose I made out of it looked like it was sad and dying (though the fact that it was dark brown probably helped with the death references).

I go back tonight to continue work in our sweat-shop. But dont worry, I wont be trading in my chefs jacket for an artist's smock.  If nothing else this, module will have taught me the devotion, fine motor skills and patience required to work in this line of pastry and reinforced that I lack, at the very least, the patience to keep it for long.

Sarah, Lover of Luster Dust

Below see pictures and prices, based on labor and sense of entitlement felt by all Pastry Chefs when forced to sell their art to the masses:

Lemon cake with orange buttercream, buttercream weave and marzipan fruits. $49.75

Butter Cream Rose Cupcakes $8 each, or $25 for three.  They are small.

Marzipan Easter Roses (NOT kosher for passover) $29.50 Each

Tootsie Roll Death Flower. $25 a dozen

Please note that i am not actually selling these confections; the prices and names for these items have been made up

Temperamental Chocolate

Welcome to Module 4 of culinary school!

Mod four is all about chocolate making and advanced cake decorating, with some fancy sugar-work mixed in.  It is my last in-class module (mod five is my externship- which I have thankfully secured!) and I am trying to savor it as best I can.  The fact that we have been working exclusively with chocolate for the past three weeks or so helps to appreciate the sweetness of the experience.

The first thing to know about chocolate work is how to temper it.  Well, really it's the second thing- how chocolate is made is actually both interesting and surprising but I will leave that to the experts.  Not tempering, though- I will attempt to explain that.

It is very important to temper chocolate (unless one is baking with it- then it doesn’t matter).  The word (in the culinary world) refers to slowly heating, then cooling the chocolate in order to ensure proper crystallization.  The result is smooth, shiny chocolate that has a nice snap when cooled.  Un-tempered chocolate is usually dull, streaky and sometimes even lumpy.  It melts in your hand (unless it has a candy coating!) and has an "off" texture.  If you have ever tried just melting chocolate down and making/dipping anything in it, you will understand the difference between that and properly tempered chocolate.  There are three methods for tempering chocolate, but they are technical and I wont describe them here.  There are exact temperatures and thermometers involved.  Gloves are often worn.  It’s pretty impressive and intimidating, take my word for it (if you don't want to take my word for it and want to learn more about tempering chocolate, read THIS article)..

Working with chocolate is extremely dirty work.  It is nearly impossible not to get splattered with it, or find that you have dipped your sleeve in a bowl of it, or find that there are crumbs of it near your mouth. I have hit that trifecta many times.  Luckily for people like me, plastic aprons are provided, ensuring that in the very least one's torso remains clear of brown stains.   These aprons are reminiscent of the plastic lobster bibs that I often see on Red-Lobster commercials.  I am usually the first in the class to don a plastic apron, and I can be found at the beginning of every class routing through the day's equipment pull to find my prize.

So far we have made dipped delights, butternut crunch, rolled truffles and molded chocolates.  To round out our chocolate module and to Wow our loved ones, we made chocolate showpieces.

Have you even seen a Food Network Challenge, where participants are expected to create a showpiece from start to finish, five feet high, and then move it across a field, through a moat and up a mountain?  You must have missed that one.

We were given three or four classes to complete our sculpture, a modest 18 inches high, and were told to move them to the conference room down the hall.  I feel confident in telling you that the two experiences, that of the one on Food Network and my own, are parallel in ever way but one:  We worked with a partner. Note that when attempting to make your own chocolate sculpture, only use tempered chocolate, otherwise there will be disastrous results.

The piece I worked on with my partner had a vines and leaf theme.  Sadly for me, it was another group who created a rising phoenix (can't make this stuff up). Why didn’t I think of that first?

Impressively yours,

Sarah, the chocolate splattered Apron Queen

BaerFoot Contessa: Gingersnap Cookie Recipe

BaerFoot Contessa: Ginger Snaps

The Good Cook's Gingersnap- Adapted!
(In my opinion, these taste almost like Pepridge Farm's Ginger Bread Men, which is the highest compliment i could give a recipe)

All Purpose Flour- 9 oz.

Baking Soda- 2 tsp

Salt- 1/2 tsp

Ground Ginger 1 1/2 tsp.

Ground Cinnamon- 1 tsp

Ground Cloves- 1/2 tsp

Allspice- 1/4 tsp

Butter- 6 oz.

Sugar -8 oz.

Egg- 1

Molasses- 2 oz.

Coarse Sugar for rolling- Optional

Cream butter and sugar together untill fluffy, then mix in molasses.

Add egg and molasses and mix untill combined.

In a seprate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices and combine. Sift (I think sifting once is enough).

In three additions, add in the dry ingredients.

Scoop out batter into small balls- about half an ounce, leaving two inches between the cookies (they spread!).  If you like, you can roll the balls in coarse sugar before placing on the pan. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes untill slightly crackled on top.

Happy Trails to You!

Last week we had a final exam and completed module 3. The practical portion was to bake, fill, frost and decorate a three layer cake. Simple, really. I mainly got points deducted because of my chocolate cornet handwriting. The "H" of my "Happy" (we each had to write "Happy Birthday + our name") was too different than the one in "Sarah". It was as if one was in Times New Roman 12, and the other looked more like Arial 14. Seriously.
At this point in my coursework, we are simply given a list of ingredients and measurements, then a baking “method” at the bottom. For example, 3oz. X, 2Tbs Y, 5 eggs. High ratio method. We are expected to know in what order and in what way to mix the ingredients so that they result in an edible concoction, one that is a close replication of what Chef had demoed at some point during the module. I wont bore you with more exam details, as you have heard about them in older posts. Let me tell you about Trailing.
A trail is the culinary world’s equivalent of an interview. Though I cannot tell you how trails work across the board, I cant tell you about one of my experiences and let you assume that this is standard practice.
I arrived at my first trail at a predetermined time. To the trail one wears interview clothing, which is quickly changed for a chef’s jacket, silly checkered pants, an apron, comis hat, side towels and orthopedic shoes. In addition to a change of clothes, basic equipment is brought to a trail. I chose two knifes, a peeler, spatulas, measuring spoons, zesters and other small implements and toted them in my knife roll. I witnessed another girl on her trail who brought her entire pastry kit in a large duffel- unnecessary and unwanted in a small kitchen with very limited space (she made me look great, though!). Upon arrival, I was introduced to the Chef, shown around the kitchen and given five minutes to change (I think that my coat was in this entire time, making my “nice interview clothes” completely irrelevant). Then the fun began.
I walked up to the chef and asked her where to start. You see, at a trail you must perform whatever task the chef tells you to do. Over the course of my trails, I peeled, chopped, mixed, baked, rolled and sliced. Any simple task that I couldn’t mess up too badly was asked of me. While nothing was too daunting, I still managed to screw up rather splendidly. After peeling a dozen pears, making cheesecake and rolling out rum balls, Chef asked me to make graham crackers that are crumbled up and used in one of their plated desserts (why not use Nabisco? Because these graham crackers are just plain BETTER. More of a mix between a gingerbread cookie and a packaged graham cracker). I jumped at this opportunity to bake something instead of just prepare the ingredients for Chef. I was using the recipe, measuring everything out and dumping it into the Hobart. A Hobart is like a massive stand mixer, about five times the size of your run of the mill kitchen aid. I was making a lot of graham cracker. After measuring everything and mixing all of the dry ingredients together (simple one step mixing method) I glanced back at the recipe. The recipe was given in grams. I looked at the scale. The scale was set to ounces. My heart sank. (To clarify why this was so horrifying- in professional kitchen we don’t usually use measuring cups to measure ingredients- they aren’t accurate enough, especially on a large scale. Instead we use kitchen scales to measure everything, and they have different settings- ounces, liters, pounds, grams….) Now do you understand why this was such a problem?
I admit, for a moment I wasn’t going to say anything, just play it cool. The dough would bake, and maybe even look right! After all, they weren’t gong to use my graham crackers until after I was out of the kitchen- maybe they would never find out it was me! This may be an obviously bad move to most of you, but really, would you want to fess up to something SO dumb on a job interview, when you could likely be spared the embarrassment, judgment and annoyance of Chef? Don’t worry, I admitted my mistake, sparing dozens of diners a terrible dessert experience...but I was close to just walking away.
I tapped Chef on the shoulder and got it over with (I replaced the look of feigned confidence I was sporting for an apologetic and defeated one and said something a long the lines of "Chef? *grimace* I made a big mistake..."). I think we had to throw out a couple pounds of flour and various other ingredients in the end. But I started over and mercifully got it right the second time.
Trailing is difficult for many reasons, but that particular trail was hard because I had n idea when I could leave. Chef kept asking me to do more things. Five hours passed. Six. Seven. Finally, eight hours after I arrived at the restaurant I was told that I could leave. I changed back into my “fancy interview clothes” and spoke to the Chef- for about five seconds. “We’ll be in touch” she said.
Needless to say, that while I have been in touch, she hasn’t responded to my emails.

-Sarah (Palatino Linotype 12)

C is for Coco Butter

Hello!
My, it’s been ages since I last posted here, and I apologize for that. The last two months or so have been very busy, and many a pastry has been baked in that time. Now, I could use this post to give you all a quick overview of the last dozen or so classes, but instead I will pretend that I have not been remiss in posting and simply tell you about last week’s classes.
I’m not sure how familiar you all are with the different components of chocolate. Good, basic chocolate has four ingredients. Coco solids, Coco Butter (the two combined are called Chocolate Liquor- don’t worry, there is no alcohol in it), Sugar and Milk (or oil/other substitution for parve Paskesz lovers). The percentage you find on commercial chocolate refers to the amount of Chocolate liquor – 70% bittersweet chocolate has only 30% sugar added, Baking Chocolate is 99% liquor and 1% sugar (don’t make the rookie mistake of eating baking chocolate- you’ll regret it). White chocolate, it might surprise you to know, has absolutely NO coco solids in it. It is made of Coco Butter, Milk, and loads of sugar (some foodie snobs claim to hate it and make snide remarks, refusing to call it true chocolate. We all know they have a stash of Hershey’s Cookies and Cream bars under their beds. But I digress).

Now that I have provided the background knowledge, let me set the atmosphere for my embarrassing story. Last week was Cookie Week. My classmates and I baked dozens of different types of cookies, making thousands of cookies in all. 0% exaggeration and about 150% sugar. There were loads of ingredients strewn around the room, with and without labels, and we were working double time to finish in time for Milk and Cookie Night- when we were allowed to invite friends and family to eat the cookies.

A running joke in my class is that while I don’t sample any of the baked good we produce, I eat more than any of classmates anyway- the raw ingredients that is. Oranges, figs, bananas and chocolate- ALWAYS chocolate. I was happy, on this Sunday night- the production frenzy night- to find every type of chocolate available. Bittersweet, semisweet, milk and white. As the night progressed, no one was surprised to find me snacking at the chocolate bags. To be tricky, I’m sure, Chef hid a small container of small white chips at the bottom of the pull box (for definition of “pull” see an earlier post, not sure which). Nonchalantly (I always “play it cool”) I dipped my hand in the container and popped a handful in my mouth. And then I chewed. Then I chewed some more. They were smooth, had an initial crunch, were NOT melting and had NO flavor, but were kind of oily. These were not white chocolate chips. I had no idea what I had just put in my mouth, which I risky, as they could have been a) something so rancid that had no discernable flavor or B) something not kosher (gelatin pellets? Did those exist?) In any case, I spit them out and continued my work, hoping no one would find out.

Finally, Cookie and milk night arrived. After days of crazy production, we made gingerbread, linzer cookies, chocolate chip, rugalah, ice box cookies, lemon bars, brownies, white chocolate macadamia, macarons, macaroons, spritz cookies, rum cookies, ginger cookies, snicker doodles and MANY more. Avi brought Trader Joe’s Cat Cookies (chocolate) and we snaked in the back and watched people sample and box up their holiday cookies. It was a truly great party.

The next day (two days after the initial incident), I was still pondering about these odd mystery chips. On a run to the equipment closet with Chef, I slyly asked her, as though the thought had just occurred to me, what the white small chips were. It took her a moment and then she said “Coco Butter”.
I had eaten pure cocoa butter. The stuff used in hand lotions. Apparently, it is one of the most stable fats, used as an emulsifier in baked goods. Again, it is also used in its pure form in Hand Lotion.

Happy Chanukah,

Sarah, the ultimate food snob who will only eat pure Coco Butter, none of that adulterated, sugary “chocolate” made for the masses.

PS. Fun Fact- Those poor souls who are allergic to Chocolate cannot eat White chocolate, even though it lacks Coco Solids- the butter is enough to elicit the allergic reaction. Learned that the hard way, Dad, didn’t we?

Sarah Goes to the Hospital and Other Thrilling Tails

Hello Everybody!
Due to my schedule insanity, this post will have to fill in the gaps of the last (two? three?) un blogged about weeks. If only I could fill in the gap on my finger…but I’ll get to that shortly. I believe I have already blogged about making two types of laminated dough (doughs with layers of fat rolled into it and folded in onto itself to create hundreds of layers of dough and butter/lard/shortening) namely Danish and croissant. The crux of the last few weeks has been a third laminated dough, the most widely used dough in a kitchen.
Lauded for its transformative properties, its abilities to straddle the line between savory and sweet and its visual heights is the Puff. Puff pastry is something found in many home cook’s freezers. Why would you make it yourself when you could easily find it in your grocer’s frozen section? Because chef tells you it’s a must. And then she tells you it’s actually more cost effective to buy it in most cases because it takes a long time to make. Truthfully, if you want really astounding height and even rising, you should make it yourself- but for what you would mainly use for, you could BUY IT. Being the fancy pastry students that we are, we made puff pastry three ways; a fast puff, a classic puff and a machine puff. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of making puff pastry because it is very similar to making croissants, just without the yeast. Besides, I have more gruesome tales to share.
One classic dessert you could make with puff pastry is a napoleon. Napoleons, for the uninitiated, are layers of crisp puff pastry, layered with pastry cream and sometimes berries, topped with either powdered sugar or glazing fondant. They are generally regarded as delicious (by me and my family) and are a cinch to make. They are not, however, a cinch to cut if you want to maintain the beautiful and delicate layers. To do so, you need to use a long, sharp, serrated knife. I was packing up a classmate’s napoleon for her as she washed dishes- (who wouldn't swap cutting napoleons for dishes?), when I carelessly cut my finger. I had cut myself before, and no one was surprised to find me heading to the first aid kit. Luckily, I have two ex-nursing students in my class and they were able to place bandaids on my finger like pros. Chef spotted some blood on the floor before I was able to clean it up and insisted I remove the bandages and show her my cut, then hailed in another chef to ask her opinion. The consensus? HOSPITAL. I put up a fight until chef held up one of her fingers and told me how she no longer has feeling in it because she didn’t make it to the hospital in time. A classmate gave me a lift to Bellevue (a lovely hospital) where I was super glued back together (literally- I didn’t want stitches and asked instead for Derma-Bond. I would recommend stitches). I came in my uniform and was asked by no less than five members of the hospital staff why I hadn’t brought them any treats- they are used to seeing people in the culinary field and were disappointed that I had left my napoleon back at school.
My finger is on the mend, and I was back in school this week in time to make Sfogliotelle, Cannoli and Breton. I would describe these foreign treats (Sfogliotelle and canola are Italian, Breton is from Brittany) but my half hour lunch break has expired. Suffice it to say that Sfogliotelle are as interesting to make as they are to spell, and require lard -Look out for an upcoming experiment using Crisco and butter as substitutes. Cannoli are awesome and probably the next trendy sweet treat and Breton is pleasant enough but not all that exciting (I hope I haven’t offended those of you hailing from Brittany).

-Power Puff Girl

Fun fact: I was not allowed into the adult wing, but was made to use the children’s emergency ward because I wasn’t yet 25. A special thanks to my Mom for picking me up!

Strudel Elves

Hi!
I took a pretty long hiatus from this blog, over two weeks since my last post, I believe. This isn't to say that I haven't been baking treats, just that I have been to tired to report about them, busy celebrating various holidays and doing all of that other stuff that fills my time in between culinary classes. In my last six classes, we have made pies and tarts galore. There have been pie fillings in nearly every imaginable flavor (alas, no banana cream) and have experimented with different doughs, from the flaky to the sweet and back again. When it came time to roll out and bake traditional pies (I was assigned pumpkin) I crimped and rolled my dough-a Pate Sucre this time-with gusto. I know you will tire of hearing this, but making pie is fabulously fun and I would be more that happy to bake some with/for anyone who asks- after all, I need that practice.
My personal favorite type of pie was a galette. Galettes are rustic pies baked without a pie pan, free formed on a baking sheet. The filling simply placed in the center of your dough, which is rolled into a rough circle, and then the edges are folded in onto the filling, leaving some peaking out. Brush with cream, sprinkle with sugar and bake! Chef described it as an open faced pie (bad description chef- all pies without a top crust are "open faced". I would just describe it as a rustic pie, which I did only a few sentences ago.)
Last Tuesday night, we made something unusual and incredible to make- Strudel. Good old fashioned, old world strudel. The old world I am referring to Austria, or perhaps Hungary. Though we haven't all hailed from such places, chances are you have all probably eaten/seen strudel before. It is a flaky pastry filled with either cheese or apple and topped with powdered sugar. If you are lucky, whipped cream is served on the side. They are very very tasty. To make strudel, you make a pretty basic dough with flour, water, eggs and the like. Then, once it comes together, you form the gluten by slamming the dough against the counter. 100 times. No exaggeration, I was in charge of counting for my team. You pick up the dough, throw it hard against the counter (floured, naturally), fold it up and repeat until the dough is smooth and pliable. Then, once the dough has rested (and recovered from the brute treatment), the real fun begins.
Roll out a clean, think white table cloth and cover it with flour. The dough at this point is about an eight by eight inch blob, four inches thick. With the help of two or three classmates, this changes fast. You begin to stretch the dough, from the center out. Palms down, with the back of your hands (fingers poke holes) bring the dough from the center outwards. The goal is to get the dough so thin that you can read a paper through it. The eight by eight inch blob becomes a five by five foot blob that you can, indeed, read through. We made it through the process with only minor tears (it is very hard to remember to stretch with your palms down- reflexes tell you to stretch it with your fingers!). Then, brush the entire thing with melted butter and sprinkle with either bread crumbs or cinnamon sugar, depending on your filling. Place filling on one end, and then using the table cloth, roll up the filling over and over in the paper thin dough. Imagine using a sushi mat to roll up a California roll, only infinity larger, flakier and butterier. (i'm getting awfully annoyed at spell check for insisting that butterier isn't a real word). Brush with more melted butter and bake. Once cooled, sprinkle with sugar and slice. Though I couldn't taste it, the cross-section of this thing was enough to tell me how flaky it was.
Chef claims that there are old women in Europe who can do this process by themselves. These super human woman apparently have a huge arm span and the ability to fly; strudel elves. Would you doubt anything Chef says? Neither would I.

-Sarah, das strudel stretcher

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

Braiding Bragging Rights

Good Evening!
Last night I came ten minutes late to class. As a result, I had no partner, and instead of grouping me with another pair, Chef had me work alone for the first part of class. While I really do like my classmates and enjoy working with them, this was a rare treat. I should come late every night! What freedom! Unshackled by my anxiety of being bossy and controlling, unfettered by fears of screwing up not only my own product but a partner’s, I began baking. [ Note: doing things by yourself is more time consuming and often more confusing than it is when doing it with a partner.]
I made my own soft bun dough and my own Biga starter (this pre-ferment was a lot thicker and drier than either the sour dough or polish, but it should make for some good Ciabatta next week). Because I was working alone and Chef didn’t want to over load me, I didn’t make hot cross buns. I had never seen, let alone eaten a hot cross bun, but I did offer to play it for Chef on my recorder. I wish I was making that last bit up, but I did tell her that. When she stared at me blankly, instead of letting it go, I continued to explain how we learned to play the recorder in the fourth (?) grade. Then, to my horror, I started singing it…except the only words I know to the song are “hot cross buns” and I was forced to just hum the rest. Thankfully a classmate backed me with her own elementary school story and I was spared further embarrassment.
What hot cross buns actually are, are small sweet buns with a thin dough/paste piped on top in an X (or cross depending on how you hold them). Once they come out of the oven, the whole thing is basted in a light syrup. They looked delicious. I believe they originated in England, which makes them even more endearing.
Because I didn’t make the Hot Cross Buns, Chef gave me the great honor of feeding her sour-dough starter (yes, I’m STILL talking about that sour dough starter/pre-ferment. The hurricane threw everything off, and now we aren’t baking our sourdough until Tuesday). When I feed my own starter, I don’t measure anything. Apparently, we are supposed to use only a pound of starter and add eight ounces high gluten flour and nine ounces water. I only know this because I looked it up in a panic after contemplating messing up Chef’s pre-ferment, and after feeding hers I went right back to my hap-hazard ways with my own pre-ferment. Old habits die hard.
Soft bun dough is different than the other dough we had been making in that it has fat in it- Eggs and oil. For someone such as myself who has only ever made bread with an egg dough, this wasn’t so strange, but classmates were exclaiming over how smooth and springy the dough was. Chef demonstrated how to shape the dough- either into braided loaves (read: Challah) or small rolls that were shaped like garlic knots (read: challah rolls). The dough itself wasn’t quite the same as challah dough (which is more similar to brioche dough) but it was close enough for me to segue into my own experience and rhapsodize about it to both Chef and classmates. Now, I have attempted to make challah many times to various degrees of failure, but this time was different. Normally they come out misshapen and doughy. While I cannot vouch for the taste of my loaves from last night’s class, they looked great- large and round and nicely brown, shiny from the egg wash. A classmate took them home to her mother.

-Sarah, the Recorder Prodigy

Dead Roses

Good Morning!
We returned to school last night, sour dough starter in hand, ready to make some baguettes (not with the sour dough starter, but with the Poolish pre-ferment from last week- don’t you remember?). Baguette dough is very sticky (there is more liquid in it than in regular old white bread) and this helps makes the inside airy and light with a nice crisp crust. After the dough went into the proof box, we had a salt tasting. Chef laid out four different types of salts (table salt, kosher salt, Flur de Sel and another one that I can’t remember) and the proceeded to claim that she could taste the difference between all of them. The only difference that I could discern was texture- ranging from fine to chunky to flakey. They all tasted salty. Pastry chefs rarely use Kosher salt in baking because of its coarse texture; it doesn’t melt or incorporate as easily as a finer salt, so there is a risk of biting into salty parts of a cake or over kneading/mixing to help incorporate it. Chef then casually mentioned the following anecdote. After seeing Alton Brown (of Food Network fame) use kosher salt while baking, she was intrigued. Did Alton Brown, foodie/Chef extraordinaire know something that she didn’t? She quickly called Alton’s food scientist (who is featured on his show regularly) to ask about this phenomenon. Do you know what Alton Brown’s food scientist said? That Alton doesn’t know any better and doesn’t really care about baking. Absurd! I’m going to need to rethink my Chef heroes (Don’t worry Ina, you’re safe).
Back to class. Once the baguette dough had its first tuck and fold, we began mixing dead dough.
In stark contrast to our precious sour dough starter which we struggle to keep alive and well, feeding it so that it thrives and grows, dead dough is…dead. It has no yeast, or leavener of any sort for that matter. The point of dead dough isn’t to be eaten, it is to be decorative. It resembles (in consistency and taste) play dough. We made two colors- “red” and “yellow”. The red is more of a reddish-purpley-brown, and the yellow is more of a vomit green (beet powder and turmeric were our dyes). Fancy pastry chefs make elaborate bread show pieces with bread, akin to the chocolate and sugar showpieces many of you know from watching Food network challenge. There is also an international bread competition called the The Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (the French usually win) where amazing bread sculptures are made. We attempted to make roses.
Chef demonstrated how it was done, then after our first stretch and fold of our baguettes, we started making our own. This is a lot of fun to do. The whole class sits around a table, rolling and pinching dough, chatting and comparing our products. Midway through our roses, we are called by Chef to form our dough into baguettes. As you know by now, bread rises and poufs up when it bakes. There is a risk of the loaf shape changing even after it has been shaped, (especially during oven spring) and so the dough must be slashed. To retain the baguette’s thin, long shape, a series of straight lines must be slashed in at an angle. Using a very sharp razor, you move down the log slashing very quickly (so as to not tear the dough). I slashed my thumb on the last loaf. Thankfully, I spared the bread and quickly ran over to the sink before I could get my blood anywhere. As I was losing copious amount of blood, I was thinking that if could only add it to the dead dough, perhaps we could actually achieve a true red color. Ill attribute this thought to light-headedness induces by blood loss.
A classmate helped bandage me up, and I though I resisted slashing any more bread, I did help load them into the oven, and of course I resumed rose making. One thumb down, making the roses was a bit harder, but I rose to the challenge. Pun not intended.
-Nine Fingered Sarah

Our Science Project

HI!
Last night was lesson two of ten completely devoted to bread. We made sourdough starter (I will explain soon), poolish starter (ditto) and either walnut, pecan, raisin or olive bread. I was in the Walnut group. Everyone was given the same basic dough and told to add in their ingredient, dispersing it evenly throughout the dough. For any of you who have worked with elastic bread dough before, you know how difficult it is to knead in nuts. It’s like trying to add three pounds of chopped nuts to ten pounds of stiffly chewed gum. They simply won’t incorporate. The more you try, the springier the dough gets, forcing you to double your efforts and put in A LOT of energy into kneading this unwieldy lump of dough. Between the hand beating/whipping from last module and the kneading of large batches of bread from this one, my upper body strength is going to have to triple.
After ten minutes of this, most of the nuts were in the dough and we let it proof before doing the first “tuck and fold”, also known as “punching”- a gentle knead. As the dough rested (and the gluten thankfully relaxed) we went over baker’s percents- I won’t go into detail about this, as it is silly math that I don’t find interesting and don’t see how it will actually be useful in the kitchen. After the first (of three) tuck and folds, we began both of the starters, also known as Pre-ferments.
Sounds gross.
And it is exactly what it sounds like. To add to the flavor and texture of the bread, you make some of the dough days before. For the poolish, you just mix bread flour, water and yeast and let it sit refrigerated at least over night. On Sunday we will mix in the rest of the ingredients and make it into baguettes. For sour dough starter, it’s a bit more complicated. It starts with a mixture of rye flour, water, honey and either grapes or chopped onion. We let it sit out uncovered for an hour to attract the wild yeast spores in the air. Doesn't this sound like science class? Every day, you measure out a pound of the starter (throughout the rest) and feed that pound with more bread flour and water- and don’t refrigerate it (remember, we want it to ferment). The longer you do this, the better tasting the end product. There are bakers who keep portions of the pre-ferment going endlessly. Ours will be baked on Tuesday, giving it a week to mature. We all took home our starters and flour to feed it over the weekend. It felt like we were taking home the class pet for a week.
After the pre-ferments, we did another tuck and fold on our walnut/pecan/raisin/olive bread. Chef showed us how to shape each of the loaves- most of them were standard except for the olive bread. This was made into “Fougasse” or ladder bread. It only rises about an inch and has slits in it reminiscent of ladders. After a final proof, all loaves were loaded into the oven to bake (all but the Fougasse got the steam treatment, naturally).
My job this week was cleaning out the ovens. In module one the job didn’t really exist- things in pans don’t make messes. However, when we bake bread the loaves don’t go into pans (at least not free form ones) and are instead thrown into the oven via pizza peels covered in corn meal. Burnt cornmeal smells bad and makes a mess in the oven (so do raisins and nuts that fall off during baking) and so the ovens need to be swept. The brush used to sweep ovens is very long. The broad head has soft bristles that are never to touch the flour and the handle extends six feet. And because your back is towards your classmates as you sweep the hot ovens (due to time constraints, this happens soon after the bread is taken out and the oven are still about 400 degrees) it is hazardous. I accidentally poked a classmate or two. It is going to be a popular job, second only to dishes.
-Sarah, the oven sweep

Is that clear to you?

Good Morning!
Last night was the first day of Module 2, and we jumped right in. I walked into the room to find others busy measuring and sifting—fifteen minutes before class started. Not to be left out, New Chef (I’ll start calling her plain old Chef from here on in) asked me to find the bread proofer from another classroom. I had no idea what a bread proofer was and failed at my mission, but at this point (seven minutes before our first class) Chef didn’t know my name, so I didn’t mind.
Chef introduced herself briefly (read: she told us her name) and began making bread. Because bread making is a long process, we needed to begin right away, otherwise we wouldn’t have time for the bread to bake and risked going home empty handed! Once she demo-ed a large batch of country white bread (to be made into 30 or so loaves), and we began our small batch (to be made into 15 or so rolls) and everything went into the proofer, she began to talk. Chef explains things clearly and has no discernible accent. She must be American (though she never told us anything about her background. There is a chance she is Canadian.) Every other sentence she would slip in “Is that clear to you?” or “Do you get that?” but I think that was first day nerves and will become a less frequent phrase.
Chef is more into homework than Old Chef, and has given us work for tonight’s class- one of the things she did tell us about herself is that she is on the homework committee at school (I don’t think it’s actually called the ‘homework committee” but that’s the gist). Five points to the person to read up on and explain baker’s percentages and the maillard reaction to me.
Learning how to bake bread is entirely different than other types of baked goods. With bread making, everything you do is towards the bettering of the gluten. Gluten is king in bread, whereas with most other baked goods you try to avoid gluten at all cost. Gluten is responsible for the chewiness and texture of bread, but wouldn’t it be awful to have a chewy cake? Chewy pie crust?
In bread making, your schedule is determined by the bread. If the bread needs more proof time, give it to the bread. If it is ready to be kneaded, drop everything and do it. If it needs steam, you had better go take care of it or else a disaster of monstrous proportions will occur- namely, weird bread. A word about steam. It is very important to keep your bread dough hydrated throughout this process- dry dough will yield dried out bread. This is true even when the dough goes into the oven. The first stage of the baking of the dough is Oven Spring, where the yeast in the dough is still alive and is still making the dough rise. It is important not to let the crust form at this point, because otherwise there is no room for the bread to expand and weird tumor-like things will grow out of the bread. How can you prevent the outer layer from baking in a 475 degree oven? Steam! Professional deck ovens have steamers that do this, but at home you can put a cup or two of water into the oven along with the bread to keep things moist. About halfway through the baking, once the yeast has died (140 degrees internally) you want to start crust formation and so you stop adding steam. Crust forms, the inside cooks (to around 180 degrees) and the dough has turned into a beautiful, golden brown loaf of bread.

There will be a lot more production in module two then there was in mod one- we made thirty loaves of bread and 75 rolls last night. The first ten lessons are devoted to bread, which is nice, but I get impatient. Breads are slow, and the more time you give them the better. Chef kept contrasting bread dough to pie dough- which is faster. By the end of class it was clear to her that I have a thing for pie, and she directed all pie questions to me. “Bread dough needs to be kept warm. What about pie dough? Why keep it cold?” What do you do to pie dough if it is browning too quickly- add steam?” and so on. I know my pie. Bread? Not so much, but I guess that’s what the next ten lessons are for.
- “I’m in it for the Pie” Baer

Mission: Precision

Hi!
Exams are over (for now) and I am a quarter done with my course! Last night went as follows: When we walked in, Chef gave us our schedule. No one wants anyone opening their oven while their soufflé is baking, so we were each given a window of time to use an oven. My soufflé had to be in Chef’s hand at exactly 8:07. The last person to go had to have hers in Chef’s hand at 9:45. I’ll describe this in more detail in a moment.
The first forty minutes of class were devoted to our written exam. It wasn’t too difficult, only one or two tricky questions. After the first ten minutes, though, my hand started to cramp (I was over enthusiastic and wrote very quickly) which worried me, as my hands were going to be invaluable to the practical portion of our exam. Don’t Panic! Perhaps a lesser being would allow this to get to her and ruin the rest of her life, but not me. Like a pro, I shook it off and continued, catastrophe avoided. I finished the exam a little bit early and began to prep for my crème anglaise.
There are not enough induction burners for all sixteen of us (remember, we usually work in groups of two), so we were grouped into Group A and B (Group A people presented their products to Chef first). As the Group A person (me) was prepping for her crème anglaise, the group B person would use the burner to melt the chocolate for her soufflé. Once A finished her crème anglaise (which can sit out for a bit and needs to chill anyway), she would melt her chocolate and prep for her soufflé. Once her B partner was done with her crème anglaise and chocolate melting for soufflé, the A would swap out the burner for a stand mixer and continue on with making her soufflé. All the while, Chef was circling and taking notes on technique and cleanliness. It sounds complicated and seemed like it would never work, but class actually flowed like clockwork. We were courteous to our partners and there was no complaining about anyone hogging burners or outlets. There were seven minutes allotted between every person’s soufflés, and so every seven minutes from 8 until 9:45 Chef was sampling another chocolate soufflé. I was impressed with his eating abilities.
Back to my own harrowing experience. Like I said, my soufflé had to be in front of chef at 8:07. Every part of the process had to be timed precisely, and I made myself a schedule. It had to be pulled out of the oven at 8:06 to be transferred to a plate a dusted with powdered sugar. It had to go into the oven at 7:53, so I had to start beating the egg whites at 7:37…I am not a precise person. I don’t like having to time things to a T. If, for some reason, the egg whites take longer to beat than the five minutes I have allotted, then I am going to beat them until they are just right (ironically, I under-beat them. Nerves.) Anyway, I manage to get my Soufflé and Crème Anglaise to Chef sometime between 8:07 and 8:08. We each made three soufflés and chose the best one to give to Chef (just like they do in cook offs). Chef critiques your product right then and there. My crème anglaise was very nice and smooth (“just like your Chef”) but my soufflé could have benefited from a grain or two more salt. The flavors weren’t “punchy” enough. All in all, not terrible. I also got a point or two deducted from my presentation due to the sides of the ramekin having some shmutz on it (I used dirty tongs when transferring the piping hot ramekin to the plate. Oh well). Once Chef pointed this out, everyone in the class who went after me (nearly everyone) made sure to use clean tongs. You're Welcome Class!
By 8:11 I was done. In the end, the exam was actually a lot of fun. Inst culinary school great? Even the tests are a treat. Module two begins on Monday.
-Sarah Baer, for all your Creme Anglaise needs

Whining (not Dining)

Hello!
Our Externship Workshop session was last night. An enjoyable four hours spent listening to externship coordinators and experts in the field stress us all out about Trailing, Volunteering, Experience, Resumes, Cover Letters and Pitching. The first two hours were about Trailing.
Trailing is the equivalent of a job interview in the culinary world, only the two experiences are so different that the comparison is laughable. A trail begins as an ordinary interview would, in business clothing and resume in hand. Also on your person should be your uniform, a lock, knives and tools. Arrive fifteen minutes early for what will be a 7 to 12 hour interview process, in which you will be another kitchen hand, doing whatever task the chef asks of you, as well as the standard interview questions. You must spend an entire shift there, straight through until clean up. You must trail at least three different restaurants. You must devote your life to landing this externship.
Who has three entire days to spend in kitchens? Answer: People who have Saturdays or People who don’t have full time jobs. If you recall, I don’t have Sundays off entirely, as I have class on Sunday night (shifts routinely end at midnight). I need to begin my externship within fourteen days of ending class or I get kicked out of the program. This is problem #1.
Problem #2: My totally lack of experience. Most people in the class have no experience, only most are also in the position to get it. To gain experience, you need to volunteer at charity events, or “stage” (pronounced Stodge) which is basically an unpaid internship you don’t get credit for that lasts at least 6 weeks. I could make it to some volunteer events (some means maybe one or two), so maybe it’s not hopeless!
Problem #3: Even if I had all of the time in the world to volunteer, stodge, trail, network and wash my uniform, I don’t have any place where I really want to work. I mean, how many upscale kosher bakeries do you know of in the area? How many four start kosher restaurants are there? Even the “fancy” restaurants aren’t known for their desserts. For one thing, they usually have to be parve, which limits things A LOT. If anyone has any ideas, any desserts you were impressed or excited by in any restaurant or bakery, let me know!
As you could imagine, we left this session stressed out. As of yet, my classmates and I don’t have the skill set to make it in any restaurant or bakery kitchen, and the thought of doing this in just two short months is daunting. No time to dwell on it though, as our exams are tonight. Sorry for the short-ish post, but I have studying to do in my remaining lunch break time!
-Sarah Baer, Extern Extraordinaire

Resume Dismay

G’Morning!
Last night’s class focuses, once again, on Pate Choux. I’m not complaining- cream puffs, éclairs and profiteroles are fun to pipe fill and eat. I’m just a tad disappointed, you see, because I thought we were all going to make a croquembouche. Croquembouche is a tower of small pastry cream filled pate choux stuck together with caramel. A cone of caramel colored wonder. But with all of the other things we had to do in class, we ran out of time. Instead Chef demo-ed making a small version of one, just to let us see how it’s done. Chef, I watch a lot of food TV. I’ve already seen a trained professional make one- I wanted to do it! Granted, now that I know how to make all of the elements and have seen it done from a foot away, it will be easier for me, but the disappointment lingers. And I don’t even like croquembouche (I find that the individual pastries get soggy and break when you try to remove them from the “tree”).
I think Chef believes that I have an unhealthy obsession with croquembouches. I was the only one who watched the entire demo (after all, it is pretty repetitive. You glue one cream puff with sugar to another. Repeat endlessly. It is mesmerizing). I also chatted with him throughout our four hours together about how best to serve it, how to prevent sogginess, possibilities of gluing them with chocolate and not caramel. Chef might right about the obsession.
Now that I have told you what we didn’t make last night, I will take you through what we did bake. Little cream puff shells, profiteroles (larger shells, filled with ice cream and covered in a chocolate sauce- the rich man’s ice cream sandwich), cream puffs (filled with whipped cream/Chantilly cream), more éclairs that we topped with fondant. Fondant is boiled sugar and water, folded onto itself as it cools over and over again, making it white and shiny and hardened. It is just plain sweet, though you can add colors and flavors to it. It is often rolled out and used to decorate cakes due to its pliable and transformable nature. We heated it a bit and thinned it out with simple syrup so that dipping would be easier.
Chef got all of us nervous for our practical by going through the procedure on Tuesday. I’m not sure why, but he can make even the simplest things seem so complicated. He truly has a knack for it. I had obviously gotten some information mixed up- this isn’t entirely my fault. I was fasting when it was announced and so clearly NOT paying attention (though this doesn’t explain why I regularly get details mixed up). Moving on, the day practical and written exam are to be on the same day. Exam fest is on Tuesday and tonight is internship awareness night. We need to bring a culinary resume and a list of well researched possible internship sites. As of 1 pm. I have neither (and my lunch break is quickly slipping away). If I could only do one, should it be a list of sites or a resume?
You should note that while I have a regular resume at hand, I have NO culinary experience to put on a new one …unless I could count soufflé night.
-Sarah Baer, Power Puff Girl (remember them?)

Flare for the Eclaire

Morning Everyone!
As promised, last night we made Pate Choux. And with the Pate Choux we made pastry cream. And with that Pate Choux and pastry cream we made éclairs and Paris Brests. I will describe these in a bit, first I will describe the process.
If any of you have ever eaten an éclair (and I sincerely hope you all have), then you know that the pastry shell which holds the dough isn’t terribly sweet or flavorful. Pate Choux recipes don’t always call for sugar, and if they do it isn’t much. Admission: I do not like Pate Choux, and I never have. If you cover it up with enough cream its fine, but on its own I find it hard and plain and waxy. It is a very rich dough, made with a lot of eggs and butter and when baked it is sturdy enough to withhold cream (the more the better in my opinion, as the cream is the redeeming part of the éclair/cream puff.
The recipe in our book was off. Each team was instructed to make a large batch of pate choux, which called for 20 eggs (not a typo). First you boil water and butter in a sauce pan. Then add flour and cook it off until you are left with a paste (a panade if you want to get technical). Then, you add eggs one at a time until you come to the correct consistency. The thing is, some groups dough was ready after 16 eggs, others after 18. Word has it that one group used 21!
I was SO good when we were preparing the dough. I let my partner do most of the work, and said nothing when I thought she should be doing things differently (read “correctly”). I think the fasting had a lot to do with my weakened will to boss and take the lead (though this laziness also meant that she still had to do the bulk of the prep work).
The dough is soft and loose. It is place into piping bags and piped out, the éclairs into uniform strips and the Brests into fat circles. One must take care to leave room in between the dough, because as the high heat of the oven (400+) degrees) cooks the dough, the water in the dough steams and they puff into chubby logs and rings. Paris Brests are named after the famed bicycle race from Paris to Brest, Brittany. They are shaped like bicycle wheels (which is to say that are circular) and slit in half, filled with cream, like éclairs.

The pastry cream is a starch bound custard (though some call it stirred) and is very thick when cooled. After making the cream, we chilled it quickly in the blast freezer. Unfortunately, this worked a bit too well and when we tried to use it to fill out pastries it was too thick. To make it more manageable, my teammate and I added Grand Marnier (I might have added a wee bit too much) and then we piped this into the éclairs. The cream we added to the Paris Brests was butter cream mixed with praline- this looked delicious. To decorate the tops, we dipped the éclairs daintily into a chocolate sauce and powdered sugar-ed the tops of the Brests. I don’t know what goes into the chocolate sauce, as it was then that I ran out of class to stuff my face and break my fast. I also missed the different ways one can fill éclairs.

Chef didn’t notice my absence, but upon my return I asked what I thought was a good question but had previously been answered during my gullet-stuffing seven minute dinner. Don’t worry, I managed to parlay the bad question into something less embarrassing (I hope. It’s best not to dwell on these things).
-"there is no such thing as a bad question unless its already been asked" Baer

da-Bombe

Good Afternoon All!
Monday night's class began with a review for next week's written exam. What, you didn't know that we were having a written exam in addition to our practical? Me neither, shame on us all. After our review, chef gave us our schedule for next week. Exam on Sunday, Practical exam on Monday and internship meetings with advisers on Tuesday. This schedule is subject to change once I talk to my classmates and find that I have gotten them mixed up. Next week will mark the end of Module One, and I will be a quarter done with the course! On a sadder note, we will be getting a new chef instructor (you wont notice, I'll be calling him/her Chef as well). This last piece of news wont be greeted with such regret by some of my classmates. Chef's instructions have become more and more confusing over the last few classes, and last night's was no exception.
We were making Pate a Bombe, a French mousse-like concoction that is later frozen into a mold. The end result is like an ice cream, but not as hard or cold. It is part of a genre called "Static Frozen Desserts", static because as it is frozen it is not churned, like ice cream. It does not freeze into a solid ice block, however, because of the high sugar content and because of all the air that was beaten into it (remember, mousse is beaten egg whites combined with a base flavoring and beaten whipped cream. That's a lot of air). You line molds first with one flavor, then with another. Un-mold, cut it open and surprise! Two flavors! My partner and I made raspberry liqueur with raspberry mousse flavored bombs. Then, decorate with melted chocolate. Beautiful. Since we had time after un-molding, Chef followed this with a demo of what we would be doing in tonight's class. Pate Choux.
Pate Choux is the base for cream puffs, éclairs and croquembouche. It is a dough that puffs when baked, resulting in an outer crispy shell with an air pocket in the center...perfect for filling with ice cream, pastry cream, caramel... I have made pate choux and pastry cream before, but learned a lot during the demo, none the less. I LOVE making cream puffs, and I will do my best to allow my partner to help me out in tonight's class. This is something that I've noticed; Unless I actively try to control myself, I often take over whatever my partner and I are doing. I wind up doing the majority of the active work and allow my partner to do most of the annoying prep work- this does NOT make for a good partner. Some of you may have baked with me in the past and have noticed this yourselves- I am bossy in the kitchen and distrusting of helping hands. I tend to take over. I need to learn self control, and to this end I will attempt to be very sensitive to allowing for 'teamwork' tonight. I will let you know how it goes tomorrow.
Sorry for the late and short post, but I'm getting hungry and tired (and if we weren't making pate choux tonight I might have just skipped class altogether).
-Bossy Pants Baer

Having Souffle and Eating it too!

Before I begin describing last night's class, I must tell you all about Soufflé night at my cousin Wendy's. Since I need to practice for my practical final exam and since soufflés are fun and fancy, I decided (at Wendy's urging) to make flour based chocolate soufflés at her apartment. I had the help and critical taste buds of six others to find out how I was progressing in my culinary skills-particularly in the art of the soufflé, and found last night’s activity very useful-and delicious! My soufflés were not quite A material, but weren’t bad, and now I know what I have to tweak (custard base) and what I am comfortable with (French meringue). Thank you friends! Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Continuing in the frozen desserts theme, last night we made sorbet and granita, with tulips to go along with them, acting as cones and sorbet receptacles. We made the granita in groups of four. Granita is kind of like flavored crushed ice. You add water, flavoring and some sugar to a large shallow pan and freeze. After a half hour, you crunch up whatever has frozen into a slush. Re-freeze. Re-crush. You do this four or five times until the whole thing is frozen and crunched up into small icy bits. My team made coffee flavored Granita, which of course was the worst tasting flavor, but it froze better than the pomegranate, chocolate and margarita flavors, so there! We began with the granitas, but as it is a long (albeit simple) process we sampled it last, after it had three hours of freezing and slushing. On to Sorbet.
Though my teammate and I were assigned banana flavored sorbet, we disobeyed. We couldn’t go three days straight making the worst flavors in the class- it’s bad for the moral when no one wants to eat your products. We decided to make grapefruit instead! I worked up the courage and boldly told chef what we decided to do…and he didn’t care. Sure, whatever you like, he said. Triumph! We made our grapefruit sorbet base by mixing grapefruit juice (fresh) with simple syrup for sorbet- water, sugar and sorbet stabilizer or gelatin. Obviously I chose to use sorbet stabilizer, which is basically pectin- you remember Pectin, right? See the Pat De Fruit post if not!
For the citrus flavored sorbet, we also had to add some Swiss meringue (Swiss meringue, not French because it is more stable than French. Not Italian because that takes too long and we were in a rush). This helped add some body to the very watery sorbet base and turned ours from translucent to a pretty pale pink. You churn sorbet the same way you do ice cream- by putting it in that really cool machine!
As some groups base was being churned into sorbet, we made Tulips, which are very thin cookies that are malleable when taken out of the oven and can be used as cones or decoration for plating. Nothing terribly exciting to report about that- I am no better at plating sorbet than I am at ice cream. This sad discovery was made worse by the fact that as we were plating, Chef was coming around with a clipboard grading us-though I’m not sure for what (hopefully for getting along well with others).
And now I will tell you about the best part of class.
Scene: Chef was about half way through churning the class’s Sorbet flavors. He had just finished Orange, so I jumped in there to offer up Grapefruit as the next flavor to be churned. Also around this time, the tulip batters were complete and people were milling about with nothing to do, so Chef decided to give a demo about making the batter into beautiful thin cookies, using stencils and piping bags. Chef had the rapt attention of the class, with the exception of myself. Our sorbet was in the machine with no one to watch it! What to do? Chef said that if it churns too long, it will become rock hard, impossible to extract! So I step up and man the machine myself, testing for doneness and extracting it at precisely the right time. Or, more exactly, a minute or two early due to over eagerness and nerves. Boy, was it fun. As Chef was still busy at the front of the class once our sorbet was done, and the Lemon team wanted to make their base into sorbet, I took the reins again, but even more expertly this time. By the time I had almost completed extracting all of the lemon sorbet, Chef came back and shooed me away. My five (to ten) minutes of fame and glory over, I returned to my mediocre sorbet plating with the knowledge that I need an industrial ice cream maker. Need.
-Sarah, the (self appointed and self imagined) Sorbet Queen
Shout out to Wendy, Naomi, Arielle, Sara, Vive, and Rivky, my Souse Chefs and Soufflé tasters! Also a special thank you to Wendy, who bought the perfect sized ramekins!