"I know how much you guys love piping..."

I let my frustration get the better of me today. I need to keep reminding myself that I am still learning and this is the first time I am doing most of these things and it is okay to be not that good at them right away. It's just hard to keep that in mind when you're covered in chocolate buttercream and the longer you take, the more it starts melting all over the place and the harder it is to work with. Cake decorating today was not my favourite, but I think in time, it will become something I enjoy that is also really awesome and that I will be grateful to take away at the end of the course.

The morning began with a demonstration. Jean-Luc emphasized that when(/if) you have your own bakery, it's important not to throw things out if you can still use them for other things. I think he said something like, "When you throw it in the garbage, it can't make you any money." He explained one way to use up leftover sweet dough; once a batch has been used a few times, it will become dry and difficult to use for tart shells. But it makes excellent little raspberry jam cookies called trois frères (three brothers, for the round ones with three circles cut out of the top) or lunettes (glasses, for the oval ones with two circles). For the trois frères, Jean-Luc explained, cut out two large circles of dough. In one, cut out three smaller ones arranged in a triangle. Then bake. Once cooled, add raspberry jam to the inside (J-L added some frozen raspberries to the existing jam for a boost of flavour and to decrease the sweetness; this mixture is brought to a boil before it is spread on the cookies). The second cookie (with the cutouts) is placed on top and dredged with icing sugar so that the cookie is no longer visible and the jam is barely visible. Then the circles are filled in with jam. And there you go. I didn't take a picture, which I am currently regretting; if I could find one on the internet that looked anything like what Jean-Luc made this morning, I'd post it here. But, no sucj luck. Maybe we will get to make these with all of the leftover sweet dough we'll have at the end of this section.

The rest of the day for our group mostly consisted of decorating, which is where the frustration started (and didn't stop). We covered our chocolate sponge from yesterday in more buttercream and then worked on smoothing out the top and the edges. Once this was done, we had to take our large bread knife and move it in a continuous wave along the top to create a pattern in the buttercream. Then with our decorating comb, we combed around the sides. It sounds easy enough now, but the more you work with buttercream, the warmer it gets, so if you have to keep starting over with a design, it just gets harder and harder to do as the buttercream gets softer and softer. Once the cakes were adequately smoothed and patterned, they went back in the fridge to cool them down for the next phase.

While those were chilling, we took out our tart shells and our frangipane cream from yesterday. We softened up the cream, placed it in a piping bag, filled our tart shells about three-quarters, then put them in the oven. After they had come out of the oven and spent a bit of a time in the blast freezer, it was time to start piping. We added our lemon cream [that smelled so delicious and lemony] from yesterday into a piping bag and piped little pearls all around the edges of our tarts. I think the less I thought about it, the better my pearls were. I should really take that as a sign. Once the edges were pearled, we covered the top in a thinnish layer of lemon cream. After this, we took a stab at a "modern-style" fruit arrangement instead of the "classical-style" we attempted in the first week. The modern-style is about placing the fruit "randomly" and experimenting with shape and height and levels. I generally prefer this to the classical-style, but I didn't really start to get how to experiment with height until halfway through and once you drop the fruit onto the lemon cream, it stays there. The minute hand movements are not my forte... I may need to start doing hand exercises to strengthen my fine motor skills. Once the fruit was arranged we added a light coating of apricot glaze, a cape gooseberry [which we seem to put on most things], and really cool-looking chocolate triangles that the decoration group made. Because my fingers were so shaky and clammy, I kept breaking the paper-thin chocolate triangles while attempting to place them securely onto my cake. There was a lot of swearing involved. I initially wrote sweating. That too.

 

After we came back from break, we were ready to do Phase 2 of the chocolate sponge. More like Phase 54. This is where I really started to lose it. When I took the buttercream out of the fridge this time and heated it up, I heated it up a little too much so it wouldn't pipe properly and sort of just seeped everywhere. Jean-Luc recommended that I put it on ice for 10-20 seconds to cool it down, but it just took forever and I kept falling further and further behind. Eventually, Jean-Luc came back over and coaxed me off of the hypothetical ledge I was standing on while he  supervised my attempt to pipe around the edges of the cake. At some point in the day he asked, "Feeling a little frustrated today?" I just stared at him. Once the piping was done, the cake went back in the fridge. I may have almost dropped the cakestand at least twice.

After the buttercream drama, we wrapped up the day with a lemon pie filling. This seemed easy enough. Until while I was waiting for the mixture to come to a boil on the stove, it suddenly started to thicken and burn without ever appearing to come to a boil... what? It turned out fine and didn't taste like burning which is probably key. It was actually pretty good [aside from the congealed burnt stuff that stuck to the pot]. Also, the KitchenAid has a juicer attachment which is basically the coolest thing ever and you can just juice all of the lemons you want and it is amazing. I really need to get one of these.

My last task of the day was finally, finally finishing my cake. The last step was using these awesome brass almost antique (circa 1985) chocolate moulds to create chocolate flowers to place on top of the cake. Jean-Luc's mother gave them to him as a present when he graduated from pastry school. They were awesome. I expected the process to be super hard, because everyone said it was, but it might have actually been the easiest part of the day.

Not too bad for my first time, I guess.

Tomorrow we have First Aid training so we won't actually be baking anything. Our last day in the pastry section will actually be next Tuesday (not sure what happens to the next section that gets shortened a day) where we'll finish our vanilla sponges and probably make a lemon meringue pie. Aside from the fact that I don't love that I have to get my First Aid certification for the millionth time, I am sort of glad that we have a break from baking. I need the weekend to re-focus and re-energize and remind myself that I am taking this course to learn, not to be awesome at everything right away...

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Today's Recipes
 
Frangipane Tart with Lemon Cream and Fresh Fruit

Sweet Dough
400 g flour
200 g sugar
4 g baking powder
200 g butter
2 eggs

Frangipane Cream
125 g butter
125 g sugar
2 egg
125 g ground almonds
25 g flour
10 ml rum
10 ml vanilla extract

Lemon Cream
150 g egg
180 g sugar
120 ml lemon juice
1 lemon zest
1 gelatin leaf
225 g butter

Apricot Glaze
[Still waiting for a recipe for this one.]

Chocolate Sponge Cake with German Buttercream 

Chocolate Sponge Cake
5 eggs
155 g sugar
pinch of vanilla powder
140 g pastry flour
15 g cocoa powder

German Buttercream
500 g butter
15 ml vanilla extract
750 g pastry cream

Pastry Cream
1 L milk
250 g sugar
10 egg yolks
90 g cornstarch
pinch of vanilla

Light Syrup
500 ml water
250 g sugar 

A crate of pecans costs $300*

Today we made pecan pie, which was totally awesome. We started the day off by rolling out our sweet dough from yesterday and placing it into one tart pan and one tart ring (the pan has a bottom and the ring doesn't). Easy enough. I am getting much better at rolling out dough that is mostly even and in a sort-of round shape. Once the tart shells were ready we scooped out our pecan pie filling from yesterday into the shell and arranged the pecans on the top. Then into the oven they went.

 
While those were baking, we made German buttercream which was actually so delicious that I just wanted to eat it with a spoon. It is essentially creamed butter and whipped pastry cream mixed together and we also added melted chocolate. We used about half of our pastry cream from yesterday. What we will do with the rest is still a mystery.

Then we got out our chocolate sponge cakes from yesterday and we had to cut them into three even layers. Jean-Luc must have seen the fear in our eyes because he said, "Well, you wanted to be bakers? You have to start somewhere." I think we were all worried that our cakes would break and we would have to start all over again. But that didn't happen to anyone and then we let out a collective sigh of relief. Once the cakes were in three mostly even pieces, we brushed a light syrup (1 part sugar, 2 parts water) onto each layer, followed by a generous coating of buttercream. We did a crumb layer on the top and sides, which sounded familiar only because of that time I was addicted to Cake Boss. Then they went back in the fridge, to be continued tomorrow. [I would take before and after pictures but it's hard to pull out a camera when you are in a rush and also covered in flour / sugar / butter / icing / miscellaneous.]

Once we got back from break, we thought we were pretty much done for the day... but we weren't. Our group was leaving slightly early (at 11:30) to go to The Dining Room (aka the fancy restaurant) and it was 11:05, so we started cleaning up. Then once that was all done, Jean-Luc came over and said we were going to be making one more thing before leaving. I really need to get used to the feeling of being rushed (and not hating it) and also being okay with being the last person to finish things always. The final thing we made was a frangipane cream, which is basically a "traditional almond cream." Essentially, butter, sugar, and almonds with some other ingredients thrown in. I'm not the biggest fan of chopped nuts of any kind in anything, so this didn't look particularly appetizing, and I also came really close to overheating my butter initially so my cream wasn't as fluffy as it could have been, but I think it was okay. We'll find out tomorrow when we use it to fill our second tart shell.
 

I didn't make this, but here is one of the plated dessert from lunch in The Dining Room.
This crème caramel was made by the restaurant section. Note the sugar cage. 

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Today's Recipes

Sweet Dough
400 g flour
200 g sugar
4 g baking powder
200 g butter
2 eggs

Pecan Pie Filling
150 ml cream 
150 g brown sugar 
30 g glucose 
3 eggs 
60 g butter  
 

*That is what Jean-Luc told us before we started arranging our pecans.

Piece of cake.

Today was our first day in the pastry section, which already seems so different then viennoisserie. We didn't make anything. Actually, that's not entirely true. We didn't finish anything today though.

We made a bunch of pieces of various desserts, the way it will all fit together is still a bit of a mystery, though I have some guesses...

Pastry cream -- I didn't burn mine this time or add too much vanilla, so, that's good.

1 chocolate sponge cake + 2 vanilla sponge cakes (all different sizes) -- the sponge cakes were so light and fluffy. I had to restart my vanilla ones because I messed them up the first time. Apparently, I am not good at folding flour into things. I think Jean-Luc worries that I am always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, because he constantly asks if everything is okay (or reassures me that it is).

Pecan pie filling -- one of the ingredients in this is glucose, which is a really strange thing to work with. It's basically sticky goop that you have to scoop out with your hands. That sticks to everything.

Sweet dough -- probably for a pie...? Maybe. Jean-Luc likes to keep us on our toes.

Lemon cream -- that looked really creamy and delicious. We got to use the really intense food processors to emulsify the mixture. I really like the term "emulsify" and just wanted to use it in a sentence.

All of these things went in the walk-in fridge to use later during the week. I think we have to do a lot of prep work in advance so we have time later in the week to learn more decorative things, like piping icing onto cakes. Presentation will factor a lot more into this section than it did in viennoisserie, if only because you don't have to worry as much about decorating a chocolate chip cookie as you do a layered sponge cake. (I hope the previous section's oatcakes are not an illustration of the extent of my piping skills.) After this section, our group moves on to the restaurant section, which is by far the most presentation-heavy of them all. Watching them make sugar cages today gave me a bit of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

But I'll focus on the present and just dream about how delicious all of the things we started to make today will be when they're done. It's weird to end the day without having a finished product to show for it (or a finished product to taste...). But Jean-Luc told us we did a good job today and that's pretty much all that matters.

TGIF

I can't believe how totally exhausted I am. Thank goodness it's Friday because I'm honestly not sure if I'd be able to get up before sunrise again for class tomorrow if it weren't. My heels are in excruciating pain from standing all day... I'm going to have to invest in some squishy insoles. But, all complaints aside, I am loving all of it so far. It's definitely more high-stress than I'd like, but that's just to get us used to what we might experience if we were to pursue this as a career. I would prefer to do everything at about half the speed we do it now and make one thing at a time rather than multitask. [I don't think that's a viable option.] The other groups (e.g. pastry, restaurant) seem to have a lot more components to what they make, so they have to move even faster than we do. The restaurant group made 60 sugar cages and the pastry group made a bunch of chocolate flowers -- and both of these things, though time-consuming, were simply a decoration for some super complex dessert that they ALSO had to make. So, something to look forward to. I'm glad I started with vienoisserie, because it seems to have eased us into the environment, rather than plunging in right away.

During today's demonstration, Jean-Luc taught us how to make chocolate decorations, which was really cool. The scary part was when he said that in December we are going to be tested on our chocolate piping skills; there will be 10 designs that we have to do in a row on a piece of parchment paper, using a cornet. So, that's terrifying. I can't believe my homework is actually piping chocolate patterns. [I also have to study for a test on bread and yeast and do some hazardous materials/occupational health and safety exams. Fun times.]

Our first task for the day was putting our prepped apple tarts into the oven. Yum. The apple tarts were essentially puff pastry, a sort of almond cream filling, and green apples.

Ready for the oven.

Finished product.

Inside view.

While those were baking, we made our "Plain Muffin". I now understand why the recipe is just for plain muffins; Jean-Luc asked us if we wanted to add chocolate chips or blueberries and we opted for blueberries (we've worked with a LOT of chocolate over the last few days). The muffins were easy enough to make, using the methods for creaming, heating up egg to room temperature, sifting, etc., we've done so far. Then we scooped the batter into our silicone muffin pans and put them in the oven.

I need to get slightly better at using the ice cream scoop to put the batter into the muffin pans (even though it seems a little foolproof), because a lot of my muffins were a little bit lopsided. The blueberry distribution was not quite even either because I was worried about breaking the frozen blueberries while mixing them into the batter and making the dough turn purple. It did anyway. But they still tasted good! Fluffy and delicious.

Once our apple tarts were cooling and our muffins were in the oven, we took out our other piece of puff pastry to prep. The ingredients were pretty much the same as the earlier dessert, but the arrangement was slightly different. We scored our dough and put it in the oven for a few minutes so it got a little browned. Then we got to trim our dough into a perfect square. That's when we got to try it and it was SO DELICIOUS. Buttery and flaky and ohmygosh I couldn't believe I made it. Then we added the almond cream in a thin layer and arranged apple slices in a seemingly simple but inexplicably complicated pattern on top of the cream. We dredged them with icing sugar and then put them in the oven. I didn't love the look of these ones as much when they were done, but that's because I don't love cooked fruit that isn't in something like a pie. Jean-Luc said that this way of doing it was a traditional Parisian tart.

Today seemed relatively laid back because the only new thing we did today was baking the muffins. Otherwise, everything else was wrapping up loose ends from the rest of the week. Then we spent the rest of the time cleaning. By "laid back" I mean I didn't feel like collapsing into an ice water bath as much as usual at break time. But I was still drenched in sweat. The other reason I'm glad it's Friday is that I get a chance to wash my uniforms this weekend. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go through an apron a day for the rest of the year.

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Today's Recipes

Puff Pastry
450 g pastry flour
100 g flour
10 g salt
500 g butter
125 ml water (ice cold)

Almond Paste
[We used two different ones, I think. One we'll learn in the restaurant section and one in the pastry section.]

Blueberry Muffins
100 g butter
100 g shortening
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla extract
2 g salt
1 egg yolk
4 eggs
250 ml milk
600 g flour
24 g baking powder
250 g blueberries

Let them eat cake!

Essentially for each section we have a package of recipes and Jean-Luc comes over and chooses one of the recipes from your package, seemingly at random, for you to make. They are in no specific order at all so it's all very unpredictable. The only recipe left in our package now is "plain muffin" which sounds really exciting. I have a feeling that isn't all we're going to be doing tomorrow.

Getting back to today... Jean-Luc began the class with a demonstration of how to make Crème Anglaise, which is a sauce used in a variety of pastries (similar to but not as thick as pastry cream) and also as the base for other sauces. Very similar to making crème brûlée, but without the oven part at the end. The demonstrations are one of my favourite parts of the class, because it feels like you're on the set of a cooking show. There isn't enough room for all of us to huddle around the table to see what is going on, so there is a long mirror strategically placed above the demonstration table, where we can see exactly what Jean-Luc is doing without standing right beside him. The pastry lab, not surprisingly, is very high-tech.

After the demonstration, we finally made our chocolate chip cookies. I have never really been able to make a good chocolate chip cookie, which seem so simple (yet so delicious) so I was apprehensive about this going well. All my fears were allayed once the cookies were out of the oven. Yum. I have a feeling the key was creaming the butter, brown sugar, and sugar really well at the beginning. I don't have much to say about these aside from the fact that they were delicious. And now I know that I can finally make chocolate chip cookies, which seems like a staple baking requirement.

The picture may be blurry, but the cookies are delicious.

We also made our first cake of this section today; it was an upside down pear cake. So making it was obviously a piece of cake, right? Right... I'd never even thought about the possibility of even attempting an upside down anything cake ever, so I was a little apprehensive. (I'm starting to notice a pattern here. Apprehension for everything.) It actually wasn't totally crazy to make either. And they looked very impressive. I'm not a huge fan of caramelized pears on cake (or caramelized fruit on cake in general), but J-L said that we could basically use any fruit; peaches, pineapple, apple, etc. could easily replace pears in the recipe. I think what scared me most about an "upside down" cake is the worry that the cake would stick to the bottom of the pan and then everything would be ruined. But it wasn't! We buttered the pan, placed a circle of parchment paper at the bottom, dusted the pan with flour, added a layer of a butter and brown sugar mixture on top of the parchment paper, arranged the pears in this mixture, and then added our batter on top of that. When all of the cakes in our group had cooled down, we sliced and tasted them -- it's weird how the same recipe can produce a bunch of different-tasting cakes. I liked mine. Except for the fruit part. But that's just because of the aforementioned dislike of fruit and cake together.

Our puff pastry is still not done yet... well, that's not entirely true. We made a tart with apples and an almond paste inside (which one of the other groups made, so I'm not sure what's in it) but we didn't have enough time to cook them today. So they'll go in the oven tomorrow. We also have the other half of our puff pastry dough, and I'm not sure what we're doing with that yet. Every day is full of surprises.

We did get to finish off our oatcakes though. We dipped them in melted chocolate (yum) which we had to temper first (I had no idea what this meant until today, even though everyone kept referring to it, but I think it basically means spreading some of your chocolate out on a marble slab until it cools down a little and then adding it back to the rest of the chocolate). Then as he demonstrated it, Jean-Luc said, "And then try a design that looks like this." He proceeded to make what seemed like the most unnecessarily complicated chocolate design ever. On purpose, I think. To get us used to piping chocolate. This, of course, required the use of a cornet into which we had to spoon chocolate, and then NOT MAKE ANY MISTAKES because it is a pain in the butt to get chocolate off an oatcake. I personally liked them better half covered in chocolate and half plain. But I don't think we had a choice. I only photographed the good ones. And I didn't document Jean-Luc's, so (luckily for me) there's nothing to compare mine to.

This was definitely the best one.

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Today's Recipes

Anglaise 
250 ml milk
250 ml cream
100 g sugar
5 egg yolk
vanilla

Chocolate Chip Cookies 
275 g butter
225 g sugar
225 g brown sugar
4 g salt
15 ml vanilla extract
3 eggs
450 g flour
8 g baking powder
400 g chocolate chunks

Upside Down Pear Cake
125 g butter
105 g brown sugar
3 pears, poached or sauteed depending on ripeness
100 g butter
200 g sugar
1 egg
1 yolk (22 g)
240 g flour
12 g baking powder
2 g ground ginger
180 ml milk
15 ml vanilla extract

Oatmeal Cakes 
400 g rolled oats
200 g flour
100 g sugar
50 g brown sugar
8 g salt
5 ml vanilla extract
375 g butter

'Try everything.'

I can't believe how much butter we have gone through in two days. I mean, we're making A LOT of stuff, but still. I would add it up and get an exact gram count, but I'm sort of scared to. Jean-Luc did warn us that weight gain was one of the downsides to the program (/the profession in general). He loves to go around the room and sample various fresh-from-the-oven baked goods. "Try everything," he said, when I asked him if something that we'd just made was good. And then he handed me a giant sugar cookie. (Followed by a piece of oatcake, and half of a cupcake that he covered in buttercream.)

Today we finished off a lot of the things that we started yesterday. But not all. Jean-Luc forgot about the chocolate chip cookies, so I think we're going to finish them tomorrow. The puff pastry dough was rolled out, folded, rolled out, and folded again and went back in the fridge. I have a feeling we won't get to that until Friday. Any sort of laminated dough (e.g. puff pastry, croissants, etc.) is definitely not ideal for someone who wants to whip up something quickly. But now I understand what those croissant recipes were talking about when they said to fold butter into dough, roll it out, and wait. Our puff pastry dough is a "quick" one only in that we mixed the butter in at the beginning, rather than adding it to each layer of dough. I can't believe all of the things we've already learned after about four days of baking so far.

Side note: Jean-Luc started off the class with a demonstration of awesome caramelized sugar decorating techniques which was totally mesmerizing. He taught us how to caramelize sugar either "dry" (just sugar) or by making a syrup (out of sugar, glucose, and water) and then he made a lot of really cool things. He made a sugar "cage" by dripping the sugar onto the back of a greased ladle in a sort of checkered pattern, waiting for it to dry, and then gently removing it. He also added the [really hot] sugar to a piping bag and then piped a giant sugar spiral, which was flexible enough that he could pick it up, place it on top of a bottle, and it just cascaded down the sides. Then, just to top it off, he took a whisk and dipped it into the mixture and whipped it all over the place, creating thin threads of sugar (also known as spun sugar, also known as the coolest thing ever). 

The first thing we made today was our pur beurre. After rolling out the rock-hard dough from yesterday, we used our biggest cookie cutter to make giant cookie circles. Then we egg-washed the tops, made a design, and sprinkled them with sugar. I thought I knew exactly what they would look like once they were baked; they were nothing like what I expected. When J-L described it as "classic French shortbread" I didn't picture the light and fluffy cake-like texture we ended up with. I realized it's probably because I'm used to making shortbread cookies without baking powder, so they don't rise at all. They were yummy, but not my favourite. Which was the moment I realized that maybe not everything I make will be delicious to me. As long as it's delicious to someone. One of my group members didn't like anything that we made today, which was unfortunate.

After these were in the oven, we did pretty much the same thing with our oatcake dough. I thought that the other dough was hard. Then I tried to work with this one; I basically had to put all of my weight into it. Even though we did a lot today, it seemed less hectic than yesterday because most of what we were using was already prepped. Maybe I am just getting used to the hectic bakery life (doubtful). It's much easier to go from one item to the next if you don't have to clean your entire workstation and gather a whole new list of ingredients. So going from shortbread dough to oatcake dough to puff pastry dough was a nice break. Sort of. The oatcakes aren't quite finished yet because we're going to dip them in chocolate (yum) first thing tomorrow.

Two thirds into the day (morning, really), you never know what new big thing Jean-Luc is going to give you next. Today it was pound cake and Swiss buttercream icing. The lesson from making this is that I need to get a KitchenAid mixer for my apartment. Seriously. It made the whole process look effortless. Just kidding. But it did make things a lot easier, especially whipping the icing. We also used piping bags to decorate our little cakes, which I will definitely be practicing at home. The icing was SO GOOD. I may have eaten a little too much of it. One of the greatest parts of this program so far is watching Jean-Luc do really amazing things with very little effort, like piping adorable rosettes onto cupcakes.

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Today's Recipes

Quick Decoration Syrup
300 g sugar
50 g glucose
100 ml water

Pur Beurre/Shortbread/Sugar Cookies
250 g butter
250 g icing sugar
2 g salt
1 egg
50 ml milk
15 ml vanilla extract
10 g baking powder
500 g pastry flour

Pound Cake
250 g butter
225 g sugar
15 ml honey
2 g salt
250 g egg
5 ml vanilla
250 g pastry flour
3 g baking powder

Swiss Buttercream
300 g sugar
166 g egg whites
365 g butter
10 ml vanilla extract (or a pinch of vanilla powder)

Group 2: Viennoiserie?

We found out our groups today. I sort of felt like I was in elementary school again. Will my group like me? Will we get along? Will one person have to do all the work? But then I remembered that I'm in baking school and no matter what, IT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

The five rotations are:

Bread
Viennoiserie
Pastry
Restaurant
Decor

So, of course I am in the one that I can't pronounce. (Viennoiserie.) Jean-Luc explained that viennoiserie [still unsure of how to pronounce it] are small pastries named as such for their popularity in Vienna. Even after the day was over, I didn't really understand. But now that I've looked it up on the Internet, it's starting to make a little more sense. This category seems to include things like puff pastry, croissants, pain au chocolate, &c. Also known as things that are delicious. Also known as things that have a lot of butter folded into them.

The pastry lab was crazy today because every group was making something totally different and you kept wanting to look at what other people were doing. But there wasn't much time because we made so many things today. Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration. We, like many of the other groups, prepared a lot of things today, but didn't actually complete many of them.

Today, everyone in our group each prepared (to be completed tomorrow):

partially rolled out puff pastry dough 
chocolate chip cookies on baking racks, ready for the oven 
dough for pur beurre (i.e. classic french shortbread / "pure butter") 
dough for oatmeal cakes 

And, to round out the day, we made a collective batch of delicious-looking tea biscuits.

I think it's going to be a bit of a struggle to keep up with the rest of the class, because I seem to do things a little bit slower, but not necessarily more meticulously than everyone else. The thing about baking for leisure (vs. the people in the program who have worked in bakeries and at cafes) is that I can afford to be slow when I have five hours to complete one thing, rather than one hour to start five. Luckily, the atmosphere is a friendly one and if you're super behind, someone might clean your workstation for you while you are frantically washing the dishes you used for the previous item. And Jean-Luc goes around telling jokes and acting silly, which helps keep things light and fluffy, like the tea biscuits.*

*I didn't actually try any because the other people in my group took them to the cafeteria before I'd gotten a chance to take one. Jerks.** 

**Not really. 

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Today's Recipes

Tea Biscuits
500 g pastry flour 
1500 g all-purpose flour 
200 g sugar 
28 g salt 
800 g butter 
80 g baking powder 
4 eggs 
1 litre milk 

CINNAMON BUNS, et cetera

I could also call today "being drenched in sweat" because I was. Continuing with the Introduction to Everything that Jean-Luc is providing before we break into our specific groups for the year, today we made cinnamon buns and "milk bread" -- which I'd never heard of until the recipe was on a sheet of paper in front of me.

We made the dough for our milk bread first and my irrational fear of cooking with yeast made me nervous immediately. We used fresh yeast instead of dry yeast, which was weird in and of itself. Fresh yeast in its packaging looks sort of like a stick of butter. Fresh yeast out of its packaging, I am unable to describe. In order for the gluten to form (baking is so scientific), we had to slam the dough on the table, knead it, and repeat. Imagine 26 students hitting metal tables with slabs of dough, repeatedly. Now multiply the sound by four and increase the temperature by about a million degrees, and that's how it felt. Once the gluten had formed sufficiently, we set our dough aside to rise -- the part of bread-making that really freaks me out. My dough started to explode out of the bowl. 

IT'S ALIVE!

Since baking is all about multitasking, we started to make our cinnamon buns while our milk bread dough was rising. I am not the best multitasker or the fastest worker, so I am resigning myself to being slow but precise. Or something to that effect. I was REALLY excited about the cinnamon buns. We made the dough, rolled it out (which took me forever and may have required a pep-talk from J-L), added melted butter, then brown sugar and cinnamon, then rolled it up (which was difficult to do prettily, but one day), sliced them, and put them in the oven. Yum.

I MADE THESE!

 
The day was such a blur, that I can't even really remember the order in which we did these things anymore, but at one point we took our milk bread dough and rolled it out, shaped it, and let it rise a little bit more. I was so behind by then that I just skipped our 20-minute break entirely. Once everyone came back, we put an egg wash on our loaves of bread and stuck them in the oven.

My first loaf of bread....ever.

Jean-Luc pretty much controlled the ovens for both our bread and our cinnamon buns, so it's hard to say what either would've turned out like if he hadn't been in charge of that. But we'll just say they would've been perfect. Today was the first day that we actually got to try something that we made, which was exciting. We didn't get to try the bread, but we did get to take a cinnamon bun (the better choice anyway).

We also learned how to make parchment paper cornets for piping chocolate. Basically you roll the parchment paper into a cone-type thing, fill it with chocolate, fold over the top, and cut a tiny hole in the tip. Jean-Luc was just getting us to roll the parchment paper first; I thought I would be good at this because of my "extensive" origami experience. This is when I needed another pep-talk. But we all need a little positive reinforcement every now and then, right? I think this might become a theme for the year... I'm okay with that.

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Today's Recipes

Milk Bread
500 g all-purpose flour
35 g fresh yeast
30 g sugar 
10 g salt 
1 egg 
300 ml warm milk (30 degrees)
 
Cinnamon Buns
500 g flour
500 g pastry flour
150 g sugar
14 g salt
40 g baking powder
200 g butter
2 eggs
500 ml cold milk
10 ml vanilla 

Filling
brown sugar + 5% cinnamon mixture
melted butter

Flat Icing Glaze
icing sugar  
water 

That time we went on a wine tour for class

So, today was interesting. Being the keener that I am, I asked Jean-Luc in advance whether we would be tested on any of the knowledge gained during the wine tour [because I don't drink]. He laughed [and said no].

I may have zoned in an out when we were being asked what we thought of the tastes of particular wines, but for the most part, the wineries we went to were so scenic and beautiful.

The field trip -- we took a big yellow school bus and everything! -- was mostly just a bonding experience so that the Boulanger & Baking Art students and the Baking & Pastry Art students could get to know each other. One of the best (and most gluttonous) parts of the day was when we gathered in a grassy picnic area in the Annapolis Valley to have a potluck picnic lunch. We sure know how to throw a potluck. Highlights included: fresh spring rolls with homemade peanut sauce; eating [three of] the best chocolate chip cookie[s] I've ever had; the fact that the food was exploding off of the picnic table; and the culinary students looking on, over their packed individual lunches... (we shared eventually). 

I think this is the last day of not baking during class time. So, pictures of grapes will eventually be replaced with pictures of baked goods and anecdotes about wine not-tasting replaced with ingredients and recipes.

We actually baked things today.

Today was our first day actually baking in the kitchen which was really exciting. Jean-Luc said we would be starting with something easy.

So, obviously this is what we made...

I need to get a little better at my food photography. [Foodography?]

We didn't get to eat these, so I have no idea what mine tastes like. Alas.

Not too shabby, right? 

First we made a sweet dough, then a pastry cream, then baked the dough, then added the pastry cream, then sliced and arranged the fruit, then glazed it. Even though the description fit into one sentence, we were pretty much in the kitchen from 7:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. with a twenty-minute break around 10:30. Easing us nicely into the wonderful world of baking. (Seriously though, I am pumped.)

Everyone's dough/pastry cream/crust/finished product looked completely different. But that's what happens when you have 25 other people making the same thing as you. That and it also gets very hot and very crowded very quickly. I have to admit that my hands were shaking like crazy when I was trying to arrange the fruit; I added a bit too much vanilla to my pastry cream so it was a bit darker in colour than it should have been; and I don't think my crust was entirely even. But, even though I have the pictures to prove it, I still can't believe I made this! The whole morning sort of felt like an episode of Top Chef or something [but without the competition] -- it was pretty awesome.

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Today's Recipes*

Sweet Dough
400 g all-purpose flour
200 g sugar
4 g baking powder
200 g unsalted butter
2 eggs

Pastry Cream
300 ml milk
75 g sugar
3 egg yolks
27 g corn starch
A pinch of vanilla powder
 
Glaze
[We didn't actually get the recipe for this because J-L just made it for us. But he said he would give it to us later.] 
  
*Our "recipes" are simply the ingredients and we have to document the procedure Jean-Luc describes while he is describing it. Is it really nerdy of me that I am excited to type up all of my newly learned recipes and then add them to a (probably colour-coded) recipe book? Once I do that, I might add them here as well.

Kitchen Adventures: Day 1

Today was our first official day in the kitchen. We had to wear our uniforms and everything. And then we went through how to safely operate pretty much every piece of equipment in the Lab [highlights include: the ice cream maker (!) and when the Boulanger instructor let us all break off (and eat) a piece of fresh baguette]. 

We haven't baked anything yet though.

But Jean-Luc told us that tomorrow we wouldn't do any talking, just baking. He also mentioned that the "recipes" he will give us only list the required ingredients. We are in charge of documenting the procedures for ourselves. 

On the agenda for tomorrow: tarte sucrée. I obviously came home and googled it right away. Stay tuned.

Just checking.

Yesterday I baked* for the first time in a really long time to make sure that I still liked baking.

I do.

Phew.



*Chocolate chip cheesecake with a chocolate cookie crumb crust topped with chocolate. 

Socrates was right

So, you know how Socrates said: I know that I know nothing (or something to that effect)? That's pretty much how I felt today. But in a good way.

Jean-Luc* wanted to test our current baking knowledge so he just started listing a bunch of stuff on the board that we then had to define. I think I might have gotten five. Out of 30. The list was as follows:

Macaron 
Madeleine 
Brioche 
Financier [This is when I asked, "Are these all desserts, or...?" They were.]
Eclair 
Angel Food Cake 
Genoise 
Ganache 
Sabayon 
Couverture 
Fondant 
Meringue 
Florentine 
Nougat 
Sorbet 
Kumquat
Isomalt
Paris-Brest
Mille Feuille 
Croquembouche
Strudel
Tarte Tatin 
Praline 
Chiboust
Choux Paste
Puff Pastry 
Crepe
Parfait 
Fougasse 
Stollen [Jean-Luc only pronounced this with a heavy German accent. So that is now the only way I can pronounce it.]  

The one redeeming factor about barely knowing what any of these were is that by the end of this year, we are not only going to know what they are, but we're going to KNOW HOW TO MAKE THEM.

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I was better at our second activity. We passed around 26 covered cups (with small holes in the covers) and had to guess what each one was just by smelling it. My olfactory ability isn't as refined as my other four senses, but I still did okay. The irony of some of the ones I didn't get is hilarious: curry powder... cardamom... seriously? Also, peanut butter. (Also rosewater, saffron, hazelnut, lavender, rosemary, star anise, and passion fruit -- not as surprising, at least.) And because I love lists, here are the rest:

peppers / apple / coffee / cocoa powder / cloves / molasses / 

coconut / vanilla / lemon / nutmeg / banana / peppermint extract / 

cinnamon / raspberries / ground ginger / honey 

The activity reminded me of the time I made a blueberry cheesecake while I was fasting and had to smell the blueberry topping to make sure it was sweet enough. It worked. Somehow.

Other exciting things from today: I got to use this cool engraving tool to engrave my initials on all of my baking tools. The novelty didn't even wear off 15 tools in. I can only interpret this as a good sign. 

Next Tuesday, we start in the kitchen. To bake and stuff. OH GOD, I CAN'T WAIT. 

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*This is a YouTube video of Jean-Luc, so everyone can picture him as well as I can.  

Back to school...

This week I went back to school for the first time in three years. After finding out a week before classes start that I was accepted into NSCC's Baking & Pastry Art Program, while trying not to think about the stress of being accepted into a program a week before classes start, I decided to confirm my seat (with some much-needed convincing from a wise friend). Although the last two days have been filled with a bit of first day of school anxiety, awkward hallway hellos, and general free-floating anticipation for what the year will bring, overall I'm TOTALLY PUMPED.

This blog is just my way of keeping a record of all of the exciting things I'm going to learn this year and somewhere to store pictures, recipes, anecdotes, and general deliciousness for mostly my own records (but also for yours).

Since we don't start in the kitchen until next week, all I have so far is a picture of ALL OF MY TOOLS.

I don't even know what some of these things are.