Day Twentyone

And now it’s time for the Blog update of Doom and Destruction. Yesterday there was no update because I was sick and didn’t go to school. But today, I am glad to announce, that I was able to almost completely catch up. Yesterday the class made Danish dough. Danish dough is like puff pastry or croissant dough. I made mine today while the rest of the class was turning theirs, so tomorrow I get to go and do my turns.

Then I made the sorbet that they made. It was super easy, sugar, powdered glucose, and water in a pan and bring to a boil. Then add fruit purée, we did strawberry, and some lemon juice. Bring that to a boil, and then cool in an ice bath before setting up in the fridge. Then put in an ice cream machine and enjoy.

After that all I had to do is make vanilla ice cream, it was just a large batch of vanilla cream sauce. It sits up in the fridge and then gets churned in the ice cream machine. Hopefully we are going to serve them for dinner on Thursday, can’t wait.

That was all we did today because we had to go to a presentation by some of the students who went on this trip to California and visited a bunch of vineyards and farms and stuff. The only other thing the class made yesterday that I didn’t was sandwich bread, but chef bgave me a small loaf to take home, which dad ripped right into. Chef says that it is a super easy thing to make so ill give it a try sometime this weekend.

Also I am curious about who is reading this blog, can i get a sound off or something?

Day Twenty

Ok quick night, first we had to prep for another open house. We finished topping a bunch of little cakes and brownies, plated them, and set them up in the auditorium. It’s kind of fun because we work quickly in a down stairs kitchen while groups from the open house walk by on tours and gawk at us threw windows. It feels like we are in a zoo.

After that chef showed us how to cut and roll our croissants, and how to make chocolate rolls and other stuff out of them. Then we took the tuile batter we made last week and put them on baking sheets. Tuilies are a French cookie made with just sugar, flour, and a few other ingredients used to bind together something like chopped almonds or coconut. You use your fingers to flatten them into disks before baking, then after a short time in the oven, they come out and go on a curved cooling tray. They harden in a taco shell shape and are ready for eating. I have to say I really liked them and they seem easy enough to bake.

Chef waned to keep out croissants for the morning class to eat, but we took some home to try, and they were good too. On Monday I’m going to the 2010 Southwest Foodservice Expo, and I will tell you all about it.

Day Nineteen

All right, tonight I did some stuff, want to hear about, here it goes. First chef showed us three ways to do stuff with our brioche dough. Mostly it involved rolling it into balls. So we made balls with little balls on to, balls in a loaf pan, and balls that got flattened and rolled up. They all have French names but I don’t seem to have brought my notes upstairs so I can’t tell you what they are. Those went in the proofer and rose up a whole tone. After they baked they looked super awesome, and some of them came out in crazy shapes.

Some brioche that looks like Hippos.

We also worked on our croissant dough. Just like puff pastry you roll it out and put your square of butter down. Then fold the butter up in the dough and give it some turns. Remember what a turn is? It’s when you roll out the dough and then fold it up, turn it, and roll it out another way. This time instead of doing it by hand we did it all on the sheetter.

We also made some more pastry cream, Boo, and some Flawn, Super Boo. Flawn is made like pastry cream, all the dry ingredients get whisked with egg yokes, milk and cream come to boil, temper the two together, put back on heat and whisk the hell out of it for ever hoping it does not burn and that your arm does not fall off. We made a but load of flawn too and it was so hard to whisk. Amazingly enough mine did not burn.

Colleen whipping her flawn.

Day Eighteen

Tonight, tonight, I cooked some stuff tonight. So first we made marble cake. Half of it was chocolate and half of it lemon, and all of it looked good. It’s a recipe I am excited about because of its simplicity. If it tastes good I can see myself cooking it a lot. The one thing I did not like about it was having to mix the coco powder with the milk before I added it. I kind of knocked some out onto my apron and it was there all night.

Marble Cake

Next we made a savoie biscuit, which seams to be a type of heavy sponge cake. It was fun to make at first because you mix the yokes and the whites at the same time in two different kitchen aids, but they the horrible truth is revealed. You have to fold in the flour and corn starch into the yokes and it dries them out so much that working with it is a big pain in the butt. But once that is done you fold in your whipped egg whites and the moister returns and the batter becomes wonderful again.

After that was an exciting time in my life, for when I looked on the white board and saw what was written there my heart gave a little jump, croissants. Everyone loves croissants, and everyone wants me to learn how to make them so that they can eat them. But my excitement was short lived when my eyes found the page with the recipe on it. Two butters needed to be prepared, the first at 200 grams, the next at 830. 830 grams of butter, which could only mean one thing, the dough would be layered with the butter like puff pastry. That’s a lot of work, which is a lot of rolling. Well the prepared the dough as a big group and mixed it in a big mixer. Chef taught us about measuring the temperature of the dough, which is a way to make sure when your dough comes out of the mixer it is the best temperature to prove. The formula goes as follows.

Basic temperature – (Room Temp + Flour Temp) = Temp for liquid

So you subtract your flour temp and room temp from the basic temp and it gives you the temp that your liquid should be when you add it to the dough, pretty cool right. Chef Phillip talked about this last week in theory class but I didn’t really know what he was talking about. Chef Kris talked about that two weeks ago when he told us that we would not understand what we learned in theory class until we used it in the kitchen, and that is why he doesn’t like to teach theory class. Now my dough is sitting in the fridge waiting for me to come back and do something to it.

Next we worked on Brioche dough. Brioche is a highly enriched French bread, whose high egg and butter content give it what is seen as a rich and tender crumb. It has a dark, golden, and flaky crust from an egg wash applied after proofing, at lest that what Wikipedia says. It was an interesting dough to make because it is in the mixer for some thing like 30 minutes. You add the butter a little at a time and when it’s all over your kitchen aid is burning hot and you have a very sticky dough just waiting to go into the fridge for the night, which is where we parted ways.

Now that is about the end of my night but I want to take a little time to introduce you to my new Lab partner, Jessica. Jessica is a very industrious student, always ready with equipment and always ready to help get ingredients ready. She prepared all the ingredients for both mine and her croissant dough’s while I cubed all our butter, which took a really long time. So far I like working with her and I hope all goes well the rest of the week, and I do nothing to piss her off because I gave her the address to this blog tonight too.

Jessica and I

Day Seventeen

Ready Ok. So the day started by making pastry cream, something I have made before, then we made almond cream with the pastry cream, done that before too. Then we cut up some apples and cooked them in butter and vanilla sugar, also done before but is still the best smell in the world. But then we took half our apples and used a food processor and turned them into apple sauce. Mixing the apple sauce together with the cubed apples gave us a filling for apple turn over’s. Apple Turn Over’s, the best, but wait we ain’t there yet.

First chef showed us how to take our inverted puff pastry dough and make a kings cake, which is a circle of dough with a spiral of almond cream piped on it. Then another slightly larger circle is placed on top and the sides are sealed. A small cookie cutter is used to cut off parts of the sides so it kind of looks like a sun and a fancy design is scored onto the top before egg washed is washed over it. This cake is pimp because it cooks straight up. We only saw chefs cooked but I will take pictures next week for you to see.

Then a small circle cutter is used to cut out dough for the apple turn over’s. They are filled and sealed, and egg washed, then cooked. We tried some when they came out of the oven, super good.

Then we took a 5 inch strip of puff pastry dough and lined each of the long sides with a 1 inch strip of dough. In the space between we placed some almond cream as a moister barrier and then spread the remainder of our apple mix on. Then we cored, peeled and cut in half some apples, which were then quickly thinly sliced and put in rows on top of the apple mix. We did not cook these but chef called them something like a strip tart. Will be interesting to see how the come out.

Next we piped some whipped cream onto our cheesecakes from the other night and put some fruit on top. These were plated for dinner. Dinner was wonderful, I will spare you the details, just enjoy this picture of grilled cheese sandwiches, which I ate with gazpacho.

Grilled cheese sandwiches filled with Provolone and Mozzarella sitting next to fresh made potato chips.

Now it’s time for me to make up for slacking in other parts of this blog, namely introducing my lab partners. First is Jennifer. Jennifer is the best at knowing all the movie quotes and any song I am whistling. She always knows what I’m talking about when I explain something vague and say, “You know what I’m talking about?” She was my lab partner last week.

Jennifer

This week it was Moe. Contrary to her name Moe is a girl, or more to fact a lady, or a woman. I would probably say broad, or chick, but how ever you classify her she is pretty awesome. She is always helping me with my ingredients and she takes way better notes then me. Moe was a great partner with a great sense of humor. Can’t wait to see who it will be next week.

Moe

Day Sixteen

Ok so today was a busy day and it all started with cheese cake. First we took our graham crackers to a food processor and processed the crap out of them, then we mixed them with butter and sugar and molded out crust into a baking ring. Then it was as simple as mixing all the ingredients in a kitchen aid and pouring in. chef took a blow torch to his kitchen aid bowl while he creamed his cream cheese. He said it makes it cream better, I believed him so I did the same thing. Those cooked for like a hour, low and slow is what it takes to cook a cheesecake.

Then we moved on to our cookies from the week before, if you don’t remember I prepped some madaleines and some financiers. Those got piped into some silicone molds and baked as well. Then we prepped some almond tuiles and coconut tuiles, tuiles are a type of French cookie. We mixed them up but didn’t cook them; they await me in the fridge this minute. After that it was time to make some muffins. We made a basic muffin recipe, but it called for berries, but we had no berries. Chef said we could flavor them with what ever we wanted, the hunt was on. Moe, who is my partner this week, she and I talked it over and decided to do a marble muffin. She made the muffins and I set up a double boiler and melted some dark chocolate. Then we split our dough in half and we mixed the chocolate into one of the halves. Each muffin cup got a little of both and when the cooked they looked super cool. Not that I think back the other half really wasn’t flavored and I wish I had put some vanilla in them.

After that we took out inverted puff pastry dough to the sheeter in preparation for Thursday, and then chef graded our cakes we made last week. Then it was time to have dinner (super good) and go home. I took my left over cake to Gary and headed home.

here is a video of Chef filling the molds.

Day Fifteen

Today was interesting, and to know why you need a little background information. My ankles and part of my leg are covered in chiggers right now, as I type I can barely not scratch. So at school all day I tried to keep busy so not to focus on it. But alas today was kind of a slow day. First we started with a quiz, we were all worried but then it only had 6 questions on it. Then we learned how to roll out our puff pastry dough on a sheeter. A dough sheeter is a big machine with a conveyer belt that moves back and forth under an adjustable rolling pin. So you pass your dough under it and lower the pin till you get a thin long piece of dough. We cut that in 4 and Chef Sebastian showed us 4 ways to make it.

1. Elephant Ears – so these are puff pastry rolled out into a rectangle and coated in sugar. Then you fold 2 sides in to the middle and then fold it in the middle. Then it’s sliced and baked on its side so it puffs up to look like, well you know.
2. Royal Fingers – are puff pastry covered in royal icing and crushed almonds and then cut into squares and baked. They puff straight up and look kind of cool.
3. Sacristan – another pastry covered in sugar, this time cut into thin strips and twisted before baking.
4. Cheese Fingers – these are puff pastry covered in parmesan cheese and paprika then folded over and cut into strips. The strips are then twister and placed on a baking sheet to cook.

It took all of class for all of us to make all of that. They were all good and we had a tone of them. Tomorrow we get started on the inverted dough and 4 new ways to make out puff pastry. I got some pics too but my phone is dead so I will put them up later.

Day Fourteen

Ok quick post tonight because not a lot happened. We finished turning our puff pastries and we took a test. The test was a practical test; one none of us knew was coming. It was over the charlotte Cecile cakes we made the first week. Just going to give you some high lights, my lady fingers came out awesome and I was super proud of them. My mousse set too fast and chef had to show me how to re-melt it and go from there. My Bavarian cream was amazingly thick and wonderful. We ran out of time and didn’t get to finish, so that sucks. We reheated some tarts we had in the freezer and presented them at dinner that night, that is to say I presented them. That is all.

Day Thirteen

Ok so a lot happened last night. First we prepped some Madeleines, it was normal stuff, eggs, flour, sugar, honey, butter, trimoline. Then we added some almond extract, we poured it straight from a big bottle, and I got it all over my hand. It smelt good. We put the batter in the fridge and moved on.

Next chef showed us how to roll out our puff pastry. First you take your dough, which is called de trampe, and you roll it out from the center, leaving the very middle untouched. So you roll it out into a cross with a tower in the middle, then you roll out the sides to turn it into a square. Then take your frozen butter and put it on you tower so that it forms a diamond to you square dough. Then fold the points of your dough square over the butter and seal it. Now you have a dough envelope with butter inside all ready to be rolled out.

Speedy Delivery, it's and envelope of dough filled with butter.

So start rolling, roll that sucker into a long strip of dough then fold it into thirds. This was my first fold, or turn. We then wrapped them up in plastic wrap and got out our inverted puff pastry dough. Remember that with this one the butter is on the outside. First you roll your dough out to a little larger then half the size of your butter, then take half your butter and join it to you dough. I’ll let chef show you how.

You do that to both sides and then roll it out and fold it like the one before. When working with the butter you put a lot of flour down so that nothing sticks to it. each of the pastries needs to be turned 6 times, we only got two in because the kitchen was so hot that we had to refrigerate between each turn.

Next was lemon cake, lemon cake is so easy it hurts. Just a basic cake dough with lemon vest and juice added in. every thing is tossed in a kitchen aid and mixed on high for a few minutes, then added to a pan, like you would bake banana bread in. then we took a knife and cut a line long ways across the top of the batter, then we filled the line with melted butter, that way when the cake cooked, the top split right in the middle in a nice line.

Then we took out our pastry dough for another turn.

Then we started on Financiers, which by all indications seem to be some sort of small cake. We only got to the batter stage but the important thing is we learned about brown butter. Brown butter is also called Noisette, or hazelnut butter. It is made by melting butter in a pan until it turns brown and smells and tastes a bit like hazelnut. Then it is strained into a bowl to get out the burned bits, but low and behold some of the tiny burned bits got through, what ever will we do? Well toss your bowl into an ice bath and bring it down to 40 C, this way when you pour your butter out all the burned parts have stuck to the bottom in the cooled butter. Sweet trick and props to whoever figured it out.

Then it was time to clean and go to dinner, on the menu was frog legs, and yes I tried them. Was not impressed, don’t see what all the fuss is about, but they are not disgusting.

Frog Legs

Not Now, I'm Tired

Got lots to share but my feet hurt and i need to chill for a while, big post for you some time manana.

Day Twelve

Ok no messing around, I got my neckerchief tied around my forehead and I’m ready to go, and I am super tiered. First we what ever tart dough we could find in the freezer, easy enough, then we prepped recipe 3.01, Puff Pastry. Puff pastry in flour salt water, and about 800 grams of butter, that’s right, more then four sticks. You cream the butter, then roll it out into a parchment paper envelope thingy and put in the fridge. Then the rest is mixed up into dough that also goes in the fridge.

After that we cut some of our spiced oatmeal cookie logs into cookies and tossed in the oven. Then we made some tart filling, pecan tart filling that is, liquid gold, Texas pecans. Well the next thing you know we fill the tarts and bake. Chef was supposed to keep an eye on then but somehow mine burned. Was it because the tart was poorly formed? Was it because it was high and in the back of the oven? We may never know, lets move on.

Next we prepared graham cracker dough. It’s a lot of flour and stuff mixed together and tossed in the fridge for a bit. We rolled it out and cut out disked to e cooked in the oven, I believe for cheese cake, we can only hope.

Then we prepared inverted puff pastry. Well I know what you are thinking, Jon, you say out loud, what is the difference between puff pastry and inverted puff pastry. Well with puff pastry the dough will sandwich all of that butter, but in inverted puff pastry the butter sandwiches the dough. You heard me, butter sandwiching dough, what the hell right. Chef says that some people claim it gives a better flavor or a nicer color, he thinks those guys are full of it. He also says that no one really makes puff pastry because the time it takes to make it and the inconsistency that comes with making it by hand does not out way the awesome convenience of just buying it. it preps very similarly to puff pastry only the butter gets some high gluten flour in it to help it hold together. That’s all I’m writing tonight, I really need some sleep, I will post some photos in the morn. Peace.

Day Eleven

Ok I can do this, it’s midnight, I got some Raul Midon playing and a full night of baking to tell you about. So first we made some royal icing for the top of our apple tarts. It was just egg white and powdered sugar. That had to sit aside until our tarts thawed a little. Then chef told us to make some sponge cake for a Roularde, and once we prepped the ingredients he was about to show us how to do it when some one told him that we already made Roulardes. He was shocked, and did not remember us doing them. It was understandable this was Chef Sebastian and Chef Rudy was the one who took us through them last time. So we made our sponge cake, which was much easier this time around.

Then we made chocolate chip cookies. It was a real easy basic recipe, but it was sure fun to make. We baked them and then we ate some. Chef had us put a bunch on a platter and I carried them to the café. While I was there I poured myself some milk and enjoyed on more cookie. When I got back to the lab we were making spiced oatmeal cookies. They have golden raisins, all spice, and nutmeg in them. We got to grate the nutmeg ourselves, it was kind of cool. The dough was super thick and jammed up my kitchen aid for a little bit. Then we made it into long logs wrapped up in parchment paper and into the freezer they went. Two notes at this point, we got a new freezer, at the beginning of class it was at 1 degree and everything was super cold. The other note was Chad, a fellow student, was writing everyone’s names on the parchment paper rolls and was ending each name with a funny suffix. I wish I could remember what it was, but alas I can not.

Another note at this point, we had different eggs today. They were super big and I got double yokes like 3 times. Have a picture of a double yoke.

Next we made a Grand Marnier Soufflé, that’s right, you heard me. Soufflés are just pudding or custard with meringue folded in and baked. What you are really doing is selling air, as one of the other chefs put it. This one was flavored with Grand Marnier and a little lemon juice. We took the ramekins they were to go in and sprayed them with Pam and then sugar, so when you pour the sugar out a bunch is stuck to the side. This is called Chemiser, this is so the soufflé has a caramelized coating around it when it’s baked. We then chopped up some leftover cookies and put them in the dishes before filling them with the soufflé dough. Those baked and rose and then we put them out for dinner. That’s all I feel like writing now so… so … that’s all I got.

Day Ten, also known as the Day of the Tarts

So today was Tarts, Tarts, tarts. First we took some dough we made last week and made 4 tarts and I don’t mind saying that I could do it. I could make the tarts without any of the usual problems I have with tarts. Am I growing as a person, or as a chef, or maybe I just got enough practice? Will we ever know the answer, probably not, but let’s not get cocky because this story will take a bitter twist.

I then got a chance to finish my apricot and streusel tarts from last week while my new lab partner, Sherisha, started on some pastry cream. Then we made almond cream, but in a different method then we used before. This time the pastry cream was an ingredient in the almond cream. We filled our 4 tarts from earlier with almond cream and then cut up some pear to put on top. We took a pear half and halved it, then sliced it into thin strips but still kept it together. The pear was then picked up using a small spatula and placed on the tart. When enough pears were on the tarts we covered them with sliced almonds and baked.

Apricot Struesel Tarts

Sherisha, my new Lab Partner

Almond Cream

Pear Tarts

Finished Tarts

Then it was time to get the dough we made earlier and make 2 more tarts. But for some reason my dough was not cold and when I tried to roll it out it resulted in a big mess. So I chunked it back in the freezer in hopes to us it later. Then the best thing ever happened, chef handed out Apples. We cored them, peeled them, and cut them up into tiny pieces. Those pieces went in a pan with melted butter and, wait for it, Vanilla Sugar. That’s right, hot apples, butter sugar, and vanilla is the greatest smell ever, and I smelt it. then that went on a sheet pan in the fridge to cool. But then we got them out again and filled some tarts. I had no tarts because my dough sucked, but Jessica, the gal in front of me didn’t have enough apples to fill both of hers, so she let me fill on. And for the first time we rolled out some more dough and put tops on out tarts. Unfortunately there was not enough time to cook the tarts so they went in the freezer for Thursday.

For dinner tonight we had some rice and I think it was veal chunks in a white sauce with pearl onions, so good.

Apples, Butter, Vanilla Sugar = Best Smell Ever!