Back in Breadness

Today was the first day in the bread section, which I was generally pretty excited for. I loved this section the first time around. I think the stress from the holiday cakes is infringing on my bread-related excitement, because I just felt very anxious while we were making everything today. I may have just been trying to figure out when would be a good time to make my genoise. Which I managed to do eventually. I tried to make a Swiss buttercream for it after class was over, but rushing is not a good technique for me and I overwhipped it so it looked pretty sketchy. Oh well. I am just going to go in early tomorrow and try to get as much done as possible. I think I would rather make a German buttercream than a Swiss anyway.

The demonstration today was how to decorate a yule log / roulade, which he made earlier last week. At this point, it was baked and iced with Swiss buttercream and rolled into a log. Then he iced the outside and decorated it. After the demonstration, he asked our group to decorate the second one and then take them out to the cafeteria. The decorations were made out of marzipan, meringue (or royal icing), and chocolate. 

Today we* made:
- Dough for "tiger bread" or Dutch Mottled Bread
- Dough for focaccia
- Mixture for cornbread
- Dough for Challah
- "Sour" for Sourdough

*By "we" I sometimes mean one person from our group and sometimes I just mean "I". 

Aside from the cornbread, they are all a straight dough method (so, everything in the bowl at once). The cornbread we already made, so it was exactly the same as the first time we did it.

Once the dough for the tiger bread had doubled in size, we took it out and put it in the divider, then rolled the pieces into balls. These then went in the proofer. Before we did any of this though, we made the "topping" for the tiger bread, which is what makes it have the cracked appearance. It is important to time it well, because making the topping too early or too late would reduce the amount of cracking when it is brushed onto the rolls. After the rolls had been in the proofer for a bit, we took them out and brushed them with the topping and then baked them in the deck oven for about 15 minutes, until golden brown.

 

For the focaccia, we chopped up rosemary, basil, and sage and mixed them with olive oil to brush on our dough. We spread some of this onto a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray and rolled the dough out (just with our hands) to the size of a small baking tray. Then, we brushed the top with the olive oil / herb mixture as well. This also went in the proofer. Once out of the proofer, we used two fingers to poke holes along the surface of the focaccia (the "pattern"). I think it may have been brushed with olive oil / herbs again, but we were all sort of working on a bunch of different things at this point, so it's hard to say.

At some point, I made my genoise, which is almost exactly the same as a sponge cake except that melted butter is added at the end, so it results in a heavier cake. Otherwise, the method is the same. Bring egg whites and sugar to room temperature, whisk until quadrupled in size, fold in sifted flour and cocoa powder (and then add melted butter). This took about 25 minutes in the deck oven at 325 degrees.

One person in the group also made the "sour" for the sourdough, which was essentially three ingredients mixed together and then put in a bucket for tomorrow. The recipe was multiplied by five so there would be enough for everyone, but we didn't each make our own batch.

The jalapeno cheddar cornbread was pretty straightforward because we had all done it before. The only thing is that some of them got a little well done in the oven, so that was too bad. I didn't take any pictures [or samples], but at least I know they were good the first time...

For the challah, we divided the dough into 150g pieces and then rolled each of these into a long strips. We then braided three of the strips together which took me a second to get and I had to unravel mine a few times, but eventually I understood it. Basically, it is the same as braiding hair but for some reason I was doing a weird thing where I thought it wasn't. There was a bit of extra dough left over, so in true form, I made a baby challah which I got to take home. Yay! I haven't tried it yet, but I'm definitely excited to. The challah went into the proofer as well. After it came out, we egg-washed it and then put it in the deck oven. They turned out beautifully golden brown and looked delicious.

The clean-up seemed like it took forever today, but that's probably because we all wanted to try to do it as fast as possible so we could work on our cakes. When we were eventually done cleaning up, I tried to make a Swiss buttercream because I thought it would be the easiest one to make. I was doing okay until I overwhipped it or did something weird once the butter had been added and it just looked really gross. I think that if I went in early enough and made a batch of pastry cream, I could pull of a German buttercream in enough time to cut the cake into three layers, ice it, and put it in the blast freezer. Even as I'm typing that, I don't think it's true. So, maybe I'll just come early and then make the Swiss buttercream better. Sounds like a plan.

Tomorrow for the holiday cake, I really wanted to have it sliced and iced in the hour before everyone else comes, because that will put me in a spot where what we have to do is just decorations. I worry that 7:30-11:00 isn't that much time to make a lot of decorations and cover a cake in fondant; sometimes it seems like forever and sometimes it seems like no time at all. I guess we'll find out...

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Today's Recipes

Dutch Mottled Bread
Focaccia
Southwestern Cornbread
Challah
Chocolate Genoise
Sour (for Sourdough)