Day 25 - More Quick Breads.

Today started out with the chef demonstrating how make Pâte à choux. Pâte à choux is a light pastry dough used to make things like profiteroles and eclairs. I heard that it can be fried to make beignets, which everyone from New Orleans knows of. Also during demonstration, the chef showed us how to line a loaf pan. This involved spraying the loaf pan with cooking spray and then taking a piece of parchment paper running from one end of the loaf pan to the other end with a few inches hanging out on each end. This strip is used to aid pulling the loaf of bread out of the pan after it's baked.

Using the ingredients that I scaled yesterday, my partner mixed up the dough for the banana-nut bread. The chef baked the bread from each table at the same time so they could be timed together. The bread came out nice.

Today I made blueberry muffins. The blueberry muffins tasted good and they were moist.

Today I also made Eclairs. They are really easy to make and they taste great. I filled them with pastry cream and they were covered with chocolate ganache. The ganache had a nice sheen.

Thanks for the comments, I enjoy reading them. Carol asked if I enjoyed attending Le Cordon Bleu and doing all the baking. So far I am enjoying going to Le Cordon Bleu and I love all the baking. Besides baking at school during the week, I also bake at home on the weekends. To be honest I didn't know exactly what to expect when going to Le Cordon Bleu. I did expect to do a lot of baking and I expected to do a lot of cleaning up after myself. But, here are some of the things I didn't expect:

It is a little upsetting to get to the kitchen and things have not been cleaned as well as you left it the day before. It seems that some of the chef instructors have varying standards as far as cleanliness.

I had it in my mind that I would get a little more individual daily feedback from the instructor about the products I made each day. The only feedback that each individual really gets is on the practical test at the end of each week.

I also thought I would be baking more each day. I think too much time is wasted some days on breaks and empty time at the end of the class. The way I look at it, break times longer than 15 minutes is a waste and being let out of class 30 minutes early is a waste of my money that I am paying for tuition. The Pastry and Baking program is only about 7 months long (excluding the externship) so I want to get all I can out of the classes.

Oh yeah, the ice cream/pastry scoop that came with my toolkit keeps breaking. (I know, big deal right.)

So far everything that I'm doing isn't difficult. We are given the recipes or we are given instruction during the demonstrations by the chef instructor. If I face anything that I think is hard, I'm sure I'll let you know in the blog.

If you are wondering why the title is More Quick Breads, well, quick breads refers to the fact that once I mix the dough it is ready to bake. The dough doesn't need to rise.

Day 24 - Quick Breads

This week we will focus on quick breads. The Chef demonstrated biscuits today. Then we went back to our tables to start production. We made three different things today. First my partner and I together, made Blueberry Muffins. They came out good and out of the three things we made today, these were my favorite. They were moist and tasted great.

My partner made the Scones with raisins. I didn't taste these, but my partner said they tasted like the biscuits.

I made the biscuits. They were easy to make and came out good. I wish I would have had some butter and apple jelly to eat with it. Then I scaled out the ingredients to make banana-nut bread tomorrow. My partner made pastry cream for the eclairs we'll make tomorrow.

Today I got the results for last Friday's practical. The overall grade is 95. We were graded on three areas:
A) Sanitation/General (grade: 10 out of 10)

• Organization / Work flow
• Hygiene and Safety Practices
• Timing
• Professionalism

B) Fruit Pie (grade: 43 out of 45)

• Top Crust Texture
• Bottom Crust
• Flavor
• Color
• Lattice (-2 points for lattice spacing)

C) Frangipane Tart (grade: 42 out of 45)

• Texture
• Flavor
• Color
• Aesthetics (-3 points for not trimming tart shell close enough to ring)
• Presentation/Garnish

Some of you may be wondering why I don't include the recipes in my blog. Currently everything we are doing is very basic and there is nothing very special about the finished product. The intended purpose is to teach us the technics involved. Later if we make anything that I considered extraordinary, I promise to include the recipe.

Baking for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras

Today I baked two King Cakes using a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Southern-Living-Magazines-King-Cake/Detail.aspx

The last king cake I made was too heavy and not quite what I wanted. This recipe was much better. The recipe makes two king cakes. I made the mistake of not rolling the dough out long enough. I probably rolled each piece of dough about 10" x 24". This made for a very small oval and a little thicker than I wanted. Next time I would shoot for maybe 8" x 36". Just a guess on my part. I didn't used all of the sugar/cinnamon mixture the recipe call for before rolling up the dough. I was afraid I was putting too much, but after tasting it, I should have used it all. The king cake is very light and tasty though. I'm very happy with the outcome. I decorated one cake with sugar using the traditional Mardi Gras colors; Purple, Green, Gold. The other king cake I tried to do Black and Gold to celebrate the Saints being in the Super Bowl today. For the Black sugar I used a stencil I made by printing and cutting out a Fleur De Lis.

Geaux Saints! Who Dat!

Day 23 - Practical

Today we started like normal, everyone lines up and Chef walks do the line inspecting uniforms. Then we started our practical for the week. Yesterday I had prepped by making Mealy dough, Flaky dough and Pâte Sucrée. The practical today required making Frangipane Pear Tartlet and Apple Pie. The pastry cream was made by my partner and me. Then we work on our own to make the rest. I've already talked about the Frangipane Pear Tarlet the other day. The Apple Pie was made using the dough like I did the other day. The filling was just apple slices tossed in sugar and corn starch. The Mealy dough was used for the bottom pie crust. The Flaky dough was used for the top pie crust. I rolled out the Flaky dough, made the lattice, then put it in the freezer to cool so that it handles easier when placing on top the pie. Both the tartlet and pie came out well. See the attached picture of the half sheet pan with the pie and tartlets that I turned in to get graded. Like last week, I won't know my grade till next week.

Day 22 - Tarts and Rugelach

The class today started out with the Chef demonstrating how to make Rugelach. This is a Jewish pastry. We were using apricot jam as a filling. Afterwards we started our production for the day.

I made Apple Tarts and Pecan Tarts. Then I made the Rugelach. The tarts came out OK but spent a little too much time in the oven. One minute I checked the tarts and they needed more time. Then next time I checked and they were over done. (See the picture below of the Apple Tart). It's very hard to cook something in an oven when 8 students are cooking in the same oven using half sheets. Very frustrating and challenging.

My Rugelach was a disaster. I cut two triangles out a 3" square of dough. The filling was apricot jam, raisins, walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar. Then I rolled up the triangles like a crescent roll with my filling in it, but as it baked the dough unrolled. I think my triangles were too small. (See the picture below).