Equipment-Oven Stone

One perk that I really like about my new apartment is my kitchen. The apartment I had in Virginia was very nice in most regards, except that it only had a little kitchenette which really sucked for cooking. Being a baker, one of the biggest boons of this large kitchen is a full sized oven. I have no problem doing anything in there, even big loaves of bread, or a couple trays of items at one.

One piece of equipment that I came to appreciate but had never owned was an oven stone. When in school, we did most of our bread in deck ovens, which is similar in that you are baking directly on a hot surface. I think it was in Friday Harbor, seeing Elaine's bread baked on an oven stone that I appreciated the functionality of the item and its use in one's home. When I was in Virginia, I did most of my baking in loaf pans, which provided nice shaped bread, but it wasn't rustic, wasn't artisan, wasn't very pretty. The other alternative was baking on a cookie sheet but I never had the best luck doing that, I guess it's just not enough heat.

So with a full sized oven I sought a proper oven stone. Well I shouldn't say proper. Commercial oven stones are nice, but they are usually a good $15 or so. And I'm cheap. They are pretty and professional looking, but at the end of the day, they are stones (or some kinda composite). After doing a little research on materials and what works for an oven stone, I decided to just get my own makeshift one. There are a number of materials you can use-granite, marble, terra cotta, brick, volcano stone, probably more. Just gotta make sure they aren't glazed or else you're asking for toxic fumes.

Lucky for me, about 2 blocks from where I live, there is a place called the Re-Store, which is like a thrift shop for construction materials. People drop stuff off and so you can get stuff cheap. This is where I found my oven stone. Well two oven stones. My first one I kinda ruined with melted plastic due to my own idiocy. The second was just as good though. A 20" square piece of granite, about 1/2" thick, and it cost me about $1.25. Not bad. I was a little worried about circulation since it takes up almost my entire oven but I have had no problems. My first one was 16" square but this seems just as good. I usually still bake on a reusable baking sheet-kinda like parchment, because it makes transfer easy, and I'm too cheap to buy a peel which I think would be a bit of a waste for its one use.

When properly treated, oven stones can last a good while. You have to be careful though because they can be pretty easy to break. If they get wet or are put on a cold surface (like a countertop) when they are hot, they are likely to crack or break. Even if that happens, however, it is still good. They still work fine in pieces, if they can be put pretty much back together, and if you bake on a sheet like I do, then any cracks aren't even an issue. They work pretty much fine unless it breaks into too many small pieces but unless you drop it or continually mishandle it, I don't see that being very likely to happen.

What I've Been Up To

While I haven't been doing a whole lot of new baking since I finished school, there is one fairly significant project that I took part in. That is being the baker for my sister's wedding. I was "commissioned" back in December, unsure if I would have the skills necessary to prepare a wedding cake. Even after culinary school, I don't think I really would be able to prepare a presentable wedding cake, but luckily for me, my sister instead desired cupcakes. Something I can manage.

So, since I was spending a month in Washington anyway, I was already there and able to prepare the cupcakes for her wedding. She had requested two flavors: chocolate with vanilla frosting and red velvet with cream cheese frosting. I had gone through a good deal of preparation beforehand, including taste testing for several recipes before I was able to decide on the right ones, balancing flavor, texture, moistness, and practicality of preparation.

And so, two days prior to her wedding, I was involved in a lot of baking. I had made twelve dozen or 144 cupcakes total, 6 dozen of each. The day of the wedding, I had prepared sufficient frosting for all those cupcakes during the morning and did the final piping and finishing an hour prior to dessert. It was a lot of work overall, I certainly underestimated the time required for every step. Regardless, I did what I set out to do, and while I wasn't crazy about the finished product (I was quite out of practice piping), it seemed to go over well enough.

In addition to the 12 dozen cupcakes for the wedding, I also prepared a special dessert. This was a giant cupcake, which I saw as representative of a wedding cake top, for the bride and groom to freeze and save for their first anniversary. I prepared the base with red velvet and the top with chocolate, and frosted it with the vanilla frosting. It was then finished with edible flowers, a little more extravagant than the single blossom each cupcake received. It was certainly an interesting experience overall and I guess I was moderately satisfied, but like in everything I do, I feel like I could have done a lot better.

Rising Up From The Ashes

When I had completed culinary school in June, I stopped updating this blog. Without classes I was no longer making new and interesting things. Sure I baked, a lot. I bake every few days. However, it's the same old stuff for the most part. Quickbreads, leavened breads, a little variation, but nothing interesting. I had considered posting again when I got a snazzy baking job and had new and interesting things, but that certainly hasn't worked out. Three months out of school, I'm still not working. Not the best situation.

However, I am in a new location. Bellingham, Washington. While I am still not baking much new, I now have an opportunity to widely broaden my cooking options. The lifestyle here in Washington has bred several opportunities to find foods that I couldn't find otherwise. Bellingham has a great farmer's market every week. It has a co-op that offers access to lots of local and organic foods and ingredients that I couldn't get back east. I live a few blocks away from two Asian markets, offering even more ingredients that I could never get before.

I am only cooking for one, so it only offers a couple opportunities a week to cook, but regardless, I am trying new things as much as I can with the new options that have presented themselves to me. And so, I am resurrecting the blog, to further enhance my portfolio and expand into regular cooking with the new options that I have available. I plan to post recipes of everything I make in addition to pictures, descriptions, and opinions. I will probably go back and repost all the old staples that I commonly make just to include the recipe. While I probably have no readers and so nobody actually interested in my recipes, I want to use this blog to create my own cook book of sorts. With the blog format, searching, things like that, it will make it easy to always find recipes I want and it seems like it will be easy to make a quick search on the site to pull up a recipe as opposed to any other format. So hopefully this place will get a little more interesting as I post once again.

06/11/10 - Class - Bread Decoration

Here's the final for my breads class. This is something I was pretty apprehensive going into, but after having done it, it was really fun. We did bread decorations, showpieces made out of bread. Being non-artistic I was apprehensive, but luckily my partner was pretty creative so I was able to help him make something pretty good. It was based on a template, not something original, but we ran with it and changed it some to create something nice. My partner was going to a wedding in a couple days so we personalized it to make it a pretty nice gift. I did most the details-the rose, the grapes and leaves, stuff like that and helped out with the bigger parts. I was really surprised how how well it turned out and I'm pretty proud of it.


So that, as they say, is that. No more school. Since this is a portfolio of my work, there probably won't be many more posts, at least for a while. I only want to post new stuff, and unless I get a job and have new stuff to show, there isn't going to be much new. Perhaps it'll pick up again in the future, but till then, we shall see.

06/07-8/10 - Class - Torte Final

This was our last week of my cake and torte class, and so we had our final. For it, we were charged with creating an original torte recipe that included complementary flavors, various textures, and quality presentation.

I called the torte that I prepared a Chanoyu torte, named after the Japanese tea ceremony. Its base is a green tea meringue disk, the wall a green tea roulade with green pate a decor on the outside. Inside is blueberry mousse with fresh blueberries folded in, a pomegranate insert, and pomegranate glaze on top. It was then decorated with a few fresh blueberries, a dusting of matcha powder, and sugar decorations, representing the three flavors of the torte.

I chose the three flavors because I know that green tea goes well with both blueberry and pomegranate flavors, and that blueberry and pomegranate go well together, so I assumed that the three would make a good mix. I wish my presentation could have been better. The glaze on top was too thick and a little messy and there was supposed to be designs on the pate a decor but I made that toot hick as well so it did not show. I am however satisfied with the result.

06/03-4/10 - Class - Bread

Our last week of making regular bread recipes, this week we focused mostly on rolls.

On Thursday we finished two recipes and prepared one more to bake the next day. The two that we did bake were soft dinner rolls and onion poppy seed rolls. Both turned out pretty nicely I think. The onion poppy seed rolls tasted better than I'd expect.

The first bread on Friday was the one that we prepared the prior day, sourdough cheese bread. I think that it turned out pretty well. It didn't get a whole lot of rise however. Every bread that we have had to retard overnight in this class didn't bake especially well the next day, which is unfortunate. There just isn't enough time in one class period to give the bread proper time for quality product. Regardless, I guess it turned out really well; Everyone else seemed to think it was really good. I'm not into cheesy stuff myself so I'll take their word on it.

Two more rolls that we made were carrot rolls and potato dill rolls. Both turned out okay but I don't think either are quality products. The carrot roll dough was so wet that it was really hard to work with. We had to add a lot of flour to make it manageable at all and even then it couldn't be shaped. I guess they turned out okay but I wasn't impressed. They didn't really taste like anything, not carrots, didn't even have much of a bread flavor. I didn't try the potato dill rolls cuz I don't like dill much so I'm not sure how they turned out. We didn't have potato flour so had to use potato starch. As such the dough was pretty tough, I'm not sure if it adversely affected the flavor as well. They look pretty good though so hopefully they turned out well.

The next recipe was pretty interesting. It was called Filoncini Burro y Nocci, little sticks with butter and walnuts in Italian. I didn't really know what to think of them at first. The name led me to think that they'd be pretty crisp bread but in fact they were very soft. Though I guess I should have guessed that from the recipe; the majority of the liquid is milk and also contains eggs and butter, so I guess it is on the line of being a sweetbread. It also contained walnuts. However I was surprised how good it tasted. Really one of the best tasting breads in my opinion this quarter. Unfortunately, being nearly a sweetbread, it's pretty unhealthy for a bread.

Last, and certainly least... more country bread. I didn't bother with the special shaping but did try to be a little creative, and just like every other time baking it, it doesn't hold its shape, making it a stupid choice to practice shapes with. At least this is the last time I'm making it in class, and probably ever.

06/01/10 - Class - Tortes

Our last class of regular tortes. Next week is the final. We did these tortes between Monday of last week and Tuesday of this week since school was closed one day of each week.

The first torte was called a Diva torte, which another group member of mine made. It was a pistachio sponge with apricot mousse, topped with Italian buttercream. Certainly doesn't sound very appetizing in my opinion. Plus she ruined the presentation by hitting it on the freezer rack or something.

My other group member made a lemon raspberry basil cake. Pretty intricate, with a lemon white chocolate sables for the base, filled with lemon mousse, a basil cremeaux insert, and a lemon chiffon sponge. I dunno, basil in a cake doesn't sound very tasty either.

I piece that I made was called an Empress torte. At least this one sounds like it would taste pretty decent. It had a dacquoise base, almond genoise round, lime curd, and raspberry mousseline. It was then topped with raspberry glaze and along the sides are shingled pieces of white chocolate that I made a marble design on by mixing plain white chocolate and dyed white chocolate. I'm pretty happy with my torte at least.