Thursday, March 4, 2010

Day 42 - Showpiece is complete!






Today I completed my Dead Dough Showpiece. I think it came out looking pretty good. You can look at the sketch I drew, Dead Dough Showpiece sketch, and see that I changed it a little but basically used the same elements. The Chef instructor placed my showpiece in the window so everyone can see it.
Again dead dough is not edible. (Ok you could eat it buy it won't taste good) It's called dead dough because yeast is not used. This is used for making decorative pieces. To make dead dough, use the following ingredients:

First make the Syrup with the following proportions.
Mix the syrup first and bring it to a boil. Then let the syrup cool.
- 100% water
- 100% sugar
- 35% glucose

Then make the dough with the following proportions:
- 100% flour
- 67% syrup

You can add food coloring or use herbs and spices to make colors. I used beet powder, spinach powder, and tarragon.
After mixing the dough, wrap in saran wrap and let it rest so the flour absorbs the moisture. You can then work with the dough. If you need to roll it out, use a little flour on the work surface and rolling pin. After you finish making the shapes you want then let the sculpture air dry. After it's dry, bake at 200 degrees till the sculpture is hard. You can make many pieces and glue them together to make the final product. I used hot glue to assemble my showpiece.

I also baked a Chocolate Cherry Sour Dough bread. It taste very good. The cherries are dried cherries, I guess kind of like a juicy raisin. I found out today that I made a 100 on my practical last Friday. I didn't get my score sheet, I only received the grade. It surprised me. Tomorrow, I'll have my last practical in this class, Intro to Baking Principles and Functions. Next week will be the start of Basic Patisserie Techniques.

5 comments:

  1. The Dead Dough Showpiece is beautifully artistic. I want one.

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  2. Your piece is amazing. Good job, I'm very glad you got a good grade on this, you deserve it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi good evening,may i know what can be subtitute for gum arabic for glazing showpiece bread?

    ReplyDelete