We started our new sections today, which puts our group in Viennoiserie, the section I don't even try to pronounce anymore. This is basically individual pastries, cookies, muffins, and things of that sort. We didn't complete anything today, but started a bunch of different things. Jean-Luc took it easy on the entire class today, because it was Friday, and I think everyone was tired from the week.
First, we started puff pastry. The amount of butter that goes into puff pastry makes me not want to eat it ever again, but also explains why it is so delicious. Essentially, we blended some butter and a little bit of flour until it was soft and then shaped it into a square. This was then saran-wrapped and placed in the fridge. After this, we got our ingredients for the dough together. We added the dry ingredients and then crumbled in our butter. The water we added was ice cold, and we added more as we mixed it in, to make sure the dough remained moist. We then made a vertical and horizontal cut in the top of the dough (a cross) but only part of the way through and covered it and set it aside. After it had rest for a while, we took started rolling it out. We rolled it into a cross shape, and placed our slab of butter in the middle. Then we folded the top and bottom and the sides over, not going more than halfway or pulling on the dough. After that, we flattened the dough a little with our rolling pins and then rolled it out to about the length of one and a half rolling pins. Then, we did a single fold, and rolled it out some more. I think what we were actually supposed to do is a single fold and then stop rolling, saran wrap it, and put it in the fridge, but we kept rolling... and then Jean-Luc came by and said to do a single fold and put it in the fridge. But we'd already done our single fold. So there was a bit of confusion on that front. We'll figure it out on Monday though.
We also made the dough for oatmeal cookies, which was simple enough. But, I think the rest of the week was getting to us, because we were definitely making silly mistakes. For example, I was getting the sugar and the flour, and for some reason, I put the sugar and flour into the same container, but we were supposed to cream the butter and sugar first, before adding the flour. So I had to start everything all over again. Whoops. The oatmeal cookies were pretty straightforward: cream butter and sugar; mix in dry ingredients; mix in oats. Then we used our small ice cream scoops to scoop them out onto a baking tray. We didn't bake them today, so we just covered them and put them in the fridge for Monday.
I don't remember the order in which we did anything today, but we also made Chocolate Indulgence, which is basically a really rich chocolate cookie. Yum. First we melted down some chocolate and butter. Then we whipped our eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Then we folded this mixture into our chocolate. Then we added our sifted dry ingredients and our white and dark chocolate chunks. Once this was folded in, we poured the mixture onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper into two equal(ish) piles. This then went in the fridge. Once it had set and hardened, we took them out again, and rolled them into logs. These we then saran-wrapped tightly and put in the fridge, to be baked next week.
No pictures today, because we didn't finish anything. Next week is our Christmas buffet, so that should be exciting. I am making a tart and a buttercream cake, and possibly something else. I am looking forward to experimenting with flavours and decorations. I also realized that since it's pretty much almost December, I should probably start hardcore practicing my piping skills, since the test is in the last week of school. Yikes.
---
Today's Recipes
Puff Pastry
Oatmeal Cookies
Chocolate Indulgence
No comments:
Post a Comment