Week Three

Day 7- mmmm breads.... I love yeast, and getting my hands all gross in the dough. Can't we all just get along and play with flour?

We made a kaiser roll/vienna loaf (turns out it's the same thing, the Kaiser-ness of the roll, if you will, comes from the design on top). It was our first time using the proofer and a skin formed over the top of it which makes it harder to make an impression in the top of it, but overall it went well. You can also use a razor blade to cut into the top of it.

 

Sauerkraut Rye Bread- I was pretty skeptical (not being the biggest fan of sauerkraut), but it's really pretty good and you can't straight out taste the sauerkraut it actually just makes the bread really moist.

All the culinary people in my class were dreaming of the things they could make with this bread.

French bread- I actually don't have much to say about these guys. They fell a little, apparently meaning they proofed too long.

Soft Yeast Dinner Rolls- mmmmm adding a little egg and butter makes bread TASTY (especially for us uncivilized American pallettes). They taste like Sister Schubert rolls which my sister in law introduced me to. Just what a dinner roll should be. We also used a press for these. Put a big chunk in a pan and it slices it into 38 pieces, then you can shape or not shape as you see fit.

We also started 2 kinds of prep an old dough which we take parts of in different recipes in the future (gives it a different character and flavor) and a Poolish dough which is another kind of starter dough that we made baguettes from (individually) the next day

Day 8-

We made Olive Bread which the instructor proceeded to bite into and directly into an olive pit....greeeeat... though I can say I didn't do it :)

Focaccia mmmmmmmm, probably the best with a rosemary/garlic/olive oil on top

White sandwich bread, where we learned to mix and match things to make creative fun loaves, pretty fun actually. And I taught one of the guys in my group how to braid.

Whole wheat bread (pretty)

Day 9-

Apple Pecan Bread

Potato Herb Rolls (got to use the big press again, and we added cheddar, yummy)

Pita (in a plastic bag to keep them soft), kind of interesting, but not my favorite. I don't know how many times were told DO NOT BROWN THEM

Pretzels- yum yum. You boil them before you bake them like bagels

And last but certainly not least...pizza pizza! We made the dough on Tues and made the Pizzas Wed. We all did individual ones. Did you know you should put olive oil between the crust and the sauce so the sauce doesnt soak into the crust and make it soggy. I made mine with garlic/rosemary olive oil, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, fresh mozarella and some basil. (there may have been a couple mushrooms for good measure)

Science for the week- Most bread is flour, salt, yeast, water. 1) Salt, though necessary, actually prohibits yeast from growing and doing its thing. 2) There is an entire process on finding out what your water temperature should be. You want the dough to be a specific temp so there's a formula to follow. You want your dough to be 75-80 degrees and take that number, multiply by 3. Then you take the temp of the room, the temp of flour, and the friction factor (the amount of heat you add while mixing the dough, which we say is about 20 degrees) and add them together. You subtract one from the other, and tadah....the temp you want your water to be. Let me tell you, doing that work and standing at a sink with a thermometer temping the water that comes out of the sink, give slightly more warm now cooler now warmer....man I just want to make slightly warmer than my hand and call it a day.

Listening to Madeleine Peyroux on Pandora

Reading "I thought There'd be Cake" (not actually about baking, a series of humorous essays)

Felicidades a Alison!!!!!

Week 2 - Cookies

Day 5 (we skipped day 4 for MLK, and in this missed a day of gluten free baking, which really isn't baking at all; you can't make real bread without flour, sorry gluten-freers)

Chocolate Chip cookies

Oatmeal Raisin

Peanut Butter Cookies

Coconut Macaroons with Raspberry and Apricot filling (need some work, not my favorite recipe)

Sugar Cookies and brownies (which apparently I didn't take pictures of)

Did you know there are 8 types of cookies?? Drop, Icebox, Bar (which is actually a biscotti not a cookie bar like you're thinking), Sheet (which is the cookie bar like you're thinking, or a brownie), CutOut, Pressed, Rolled/Molded, Wafer cookie.

We were called next door to the cooking class to try some of their food. The theme? African...couscous and garbanzo beans galore, but quite tasty.

Day 6

Coconut Triangles (actually really good!)

Here's the Recipe (I'm writing it just as I received it, you can convert it to cups if you want :) )

13.5 oz Pastry Flour

10.5 oz Brown Sugar

12 oz Butter, cold

12 oz Eggs (figure that one out, UGH)

3 tsp Vanilla

 1 dash salt

1.5 tsp Baking Powder

13 oz Coconut

11 oz Pecans

1 lb. Brown Sugar

1. Mix together flour, brown sugar and butter inly until crumbly.

2. Spread into the bottom of a lightly sprayed 1/2 sheet pan and bake at 325 for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.

3.While it is baking, combine the remaining ingredients until well mixed and carefully pour this mixture over the hot, baked layer, continue to bake until firm.

4. Cool for 10 minutes on rack and then place in coller. Chill for at least 1/2 hours, then cut into triangles.

Spritz Cookies which are a really thick dough squeezed through a pastry bag into different patterns. The top ones have jam on them.

Biscotti, I didn't know they were baked twice. We flavored ours dried cranberries with almonds and there's a cinnamon swirl throughout. Our instructor wanted to keep some for an open house that the school is having next week so I went to put them in the box and another student full of attitude said, "I don't think those are the quality that Chef is looking for, you can donate those to charity." Weeeeeelllll then, they were pretty darn good if I may say so myself. (FYI, we can't take any of our baked goods home, the school donates them to Sharing and Caring Hands so at least they don't go to waste, but don't worry we do throw away anything that's really bad....no one deserves that.)

Flourless Chocolate Chewies (after mixing them with almost 3 lbs. of powdered sugar I couldn't even bring myself to try them, but apparently they're really not too bad for gluten free).

We also made Tuile cookies which you roll into a thin batter and as they come out of the oven you place on something while warm and they conform to that shape. We ran out of time though. The entire class ran out of time and we got lectured quite thoroughly about not using our time correctly. Our punishment...we didn't take our test....Chef needs to work on what he thinks is threatening... (don't get me wrong I'm certainly intimidated by him, but really)

Any interesting science this round? Nothing too wild or crazy, we also had a long lecture on Day 6 about Nutrition, eating trends, ingredients etc. I happen to find all of it quite interesting. And for those of you who know of my feelings on sugars (and for those of you that don't I think all the sweeteners are just chemicals and can't be good for you even if less "calories") I asked Chef his opinion is the less processed, the better. So white refined sugar is indeed processed so perhaps there are other alternatives, honey being one of them actually, that is very sweet and not exactly "healthy," but it tends to be all natural and not processed, so it does have quite a plus going for it.... (or the opportunity anyway). I need to play more with substitution in recipes and see what I come up with while still making it taste good. I also need to work on making my products uniform on the production side (all triangles the same size and such).

Next week breads!!! Mmm I love yeast

Listening to Jacob Dylan

I tried this recipe this evening, I know it sounds really odd, but it's truly GOOD. I used chicken sausage instead of bacon. 

Week One

Here I am, in Minneapolis in January. Brr is a fair statement, and it snows almost everyday. So what am I doing? Going to Baking and Pastry school. That'll keep me warm right? I'm there 5 hours a day 3 days a week,  and working at an audiology clinic another good chunk of time each day, making the first half of the week quite hectic indeed. Which leaves the rest of the week for hibernating, I'm quite good at that part. I thought this would be a fun way for people to see what I'm up to as I'm quite bad at phoning and emailing at the moment (perhaps always).

Introduction to Baking:
Week One: Quick Breads
Day 1
Biscuits-
We were lectured for a good 4 hours or so followed by "ok go! make biscuits" hmm....where are things? What? we cook in groups? What's going on?? I hated it.

Day 2
Blueberry Muffins, Sour Cream Muffins (sooooo good, and not a thing good for you about them), Cream Scones (we added slivered almonds and dried cherries), Sour Cream Coffee Cake, Cornbread muffins

Sorry, these first pictures were taken with my phone (which is the kind that makes phone calls and texts only) so they aren't great.

Definitely a better day, we work in groups of 4 and divide up the work so that 1 person is in charge of measuring..."weighing" is the more appropriate term considering we have to use a balance scale to do it. Food on the left, weights on the right...off you go! This is the first time in my life I might have actually memorized the conversions as well...whoa...  Person 2 is in charge of mixing (quite an important part it turns out) Person 3 "make-up" and panning. Person 4 the actual baking process (Did you know that there are 9 steps to baking? A whole lot of science going on)

Most of the people in my class are Culinary students, only 3 of us (out of 20ish) that actually want to go into baking. I'm amused because all the culinary people hate this class. There's a huge culinary vs baking war that's going on all over the place. While in this class they have to actually follow the recipe, and they hate it. Too much parsley, you'll live...too much baking soda.....GROSS. I'm liking class more.

Fun fact of the day shortening (and fat, butter etc. in general) is called shortening because it physically shortens the strands of gluten in mixes and you put the amount of fat you want in to help control the amount of gluten. Bread you want a lot of gluten so you put little or no fat in it. Cookies, you don't want that same texture so you put a good deal of fat in it to shorten the strands and get the texture you want. Turns out science is interesting!

Day 3
Lemon Poppy seed bread, Morning Glory Muffins, Banana Bread, Caramel Bran Muffins, Popovers

 Our popovers in the oven, they got pretty big!

and delicious! We ate with some jam, and my group saved some of our caramel from the bran muffins and put it on them...yummm

my camera somehow turned itself to video mode, I didn't realize it happened but here's the rest of the goodies. It's during the end of class when we push our tables together and all the groups compare our products and discuss what happened or went wrong, or well or whatever.

We also had a first test/quiz today (turns out this class is going to be challenging in lots of ways) I've never baked for 4 hours, cleaned up and then all of a sudden had to sit an take a test. My brain was all over the place, so made some dumb mistakes, ah well.

Extra credit, the instructor put 2 spices on the table. Your task, what are they? Fun, though I'm not good at it. Spice 1 red peppercorns (could have guessed it, but second thoughts changed my mind) Spice 2 cardamom, had no clue by sight and flavor. It also turns out that the green part of this is cilantro. I had no idea. 

Quick breads are not my favorite, but I actually had fun in class today.

Currently listening to Patti Griffin on Pandora (thinking of Tamea Mae)

Currently watching Brothers and Sisters (quite silly, but quite enjoyable)

Currently reading One Day, brain fluff, but entertaining. I'm getting to the end and don't know how I feel...