At Home - 10/31/09 - Bread Experimentation

I finally ran out of my stores of bread from the first couple weeks of class so I baked some more today. I also did a good deal of experimentation. It's not terribly wise to use several unknowns at once, but whatever.

Unknown 1: I used my sourdough starter for the first time to make some sourdough bread. It seems to have worked just fine. I took it out of the fridge yesterday and reactivated it by feeding it last night and it was good to go. I could definitely taste the sourness in the bread.

Unknown 2: I substituted half whole-wheat flour for bread flour, because I like whole-wheat bread. In some white bread recipes you can do that so I wanted to give it a shot. I think it worked out okay, though I'm not really sure. The loaf rose decently, but it didn't rise a ton, which may be due to the whole-wheat flour. It contains more gluten so makes a denser bread. I would prefer using a full whole-wheat recipe so I might keep experimenting because I like doing the sourdough also.

Unknown 3: The sourdough recipe called for steam injection. In real bread baking settings, some breads have steam injected into the oven at the start. This gives it a crisp crust. In a situation like mine, you can imitate the steam injection by putting a pan of water in the oven about 5 minutes before you put the bread in, and then taking it out about 5 minutes after starting the baking. It seemed to work well. The pan was steaming when I took it out. The bread came out with a very crisp crust as well. Though I didn't really care for the crisp crust. I don't think I'll do it in the future, I'd rather have it soft. That may have also inhibited the rise some during baking.

So the baking part wasn't too bad. But since I'm a total idiot and something always has to go wrong, well, something went wrong. I was keeping my starter on top of my oven since that is kinda warm, due to some radiant heat from my hotplate. However, I left it on there when I baked the bread. It is surprising how ridiculously hot my entire oven, outside included, gets when it is on. To put it simply, I pretty much killed my starter. By the time I realized, almost the entire thing was a baked brick. I discarded everything hardened and was left only a tiny bit of liquid starter left, and even that was pretty hot, like 115F. So I may have completely killed off my starter. It even melted a hole in my tupperware and now I like don't have any storage containers anymore. I fed the starter before class and there was a little bubbling when I got home, so there may be promise. I'll have to see tomorrow.

If it's any solace, at least today showed that I was able to make a successful starter that did it's job. If my attempts at saving mine fails, I know that I'll be able to make a new one if I desire. If that is the case, I'll have to consider my options. While flour isn't expensive, I'm not exactly swimming in cash, so I'll have to consider if i little flavor to my bread is worth it. However, I'll have to look at recipes and see if it really is costing me anything to maintain it-if using the starter cuts down on the required flour in the recipe enough to even it out. Plus if I ever get more serious about bread baking in the future, it'd be cool to have a starter that's been maintained for a few years. Another consideration is making a whole-wheat starter. As I said, I prefer whole wheat bread, so if I'm successful in making a fully whole-wheat sourdough, that would be nice to have a whole-wheat starter as well. If I am able to salvage the starter I have, I may consider converting it to a whole wheat one too. I guess I'll see.

Class 10/30/09 - Pies and Laminated Dough

Today was a rough day. We had to finish our work with the Danish pastry dough, start the croissant dough, bake more pie shells, make a cream pie, and we stuck a practice run of dinner rolls in there as well. We ran rather long and didn't finish everything, and I didn't stop the entire class.


Laminated dough, to say the least, is a heck of a lot of work. I already spoke yesterday on the effort involved in the prep. We did the lock-in and two turns yesterday. Today we did one more turn and then let it chill some more. Then finally we were able to begin work with it. The chef gave a demo on a bunch of different shaping methods, there's a heck of a lot of ways and you can pretty much do whatever you want. We also had a lot of different fillings. Yesterday a couple groups prepared almond paste and cream cheese filling and there was extra blueberry and cherry filling from yesterday's pies. In addition we made a cinnamon sugar mix. So after filling and rolling about 2/3 of our 5 pounds or so of pastry dough, we egg washed them, proofed them, egg washed them again, then could finally bake them. They took quite a while to bake because they needed a very deep brown color. In the meantime, we still had even more work to do for the Danishes. I had to prepare apricot glaze, which is a bulk item, sorta like thick jelly, that I heated up and thinned out with water. Meanwhile we also heated up fondant till it was soft, then diluted that and let it cool. When the danishes were done baking, we glazed them and drizzled the fondant and finally had some finished product. They turned out beautifully, to say the least. I didn't taste any, not my kinda thing, but the chef said they were excellent, perfect. So I'm satisfied. Hell of a lotta work though for a few pastries. But we did end up with four half-sheet pans of them and still 1/3 of the dough in the fridge. I understand why the chef said we should make that full recipe, they're quite popular.

We also baked off two pie crusts that we prepared yesterday. These are for cream filling pies so they had to be fully baked as opposed to par-baked. I was surprised how long they took to bake. I didn't really think an empty pie crust was photo-worthy.

One of those pie crusts though we used for a cream pie. Like the danish pastries, this had a decent amount of work and parts. We had to bake the first pie dough. In the meantime we had to prepare the custard filling. It's pretty simple. Milk and some sugar and heavy cream's brought to a boil, then tempered with a mix of more sugar and egg yolks and cornstarch. It's brought back to a boil then removed from heat and butter's stirred in. Once the pie dough finished baking, the custard went right in and we chilled it. To top the pie we needed to make a meringue. I, as an idiot, did the wrong recipe and first made a common (French) meringue. So I had to scrap that because we needed Swiss meringue, which involves some cooking over heat then whipping. When that finished, I piped it onto the pie and we torched it. It looked pretty nice but we were already past the end of class so we just tossed it in the fridge. I'll get a picture tomorrow.

We made a batch of dinner rolls for practice for the midterm. I didn't get a picture but they turned out much better than last time.

We unfortunately didn't even get to do the lock-in for our croissants. I guess we'll do the lock-in and all the folds tomorrow and then freeze them for next week. As I said, this stuff takes too much effort.

Tomorrow should be easier. We don't have as many recipes but we're also going to be practicing for next week's midterm. No problems though, I can do all the items easy. Biscuits, blueberry muffins, dinner rolls. No problem.

Class 10/29/09

Today in class we continued with pies and began work with laminated doughs.

The pies were easy. We made both cherry and blueberry pies, a cooked fruit and cooked juice pie, respectively. Cooked fruit means that you cook both the fruit and the juice on the stove top with seasonings and a thickener (cornstarch or tapioca) for the filling while cooked juice means you just cook the juice with seasonings and a thickener then add the fruit back for service cuz it's too delicate to cook. They both came out fine. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking and didn't take pictures =/

We also began work on Danish pastries today. Laminated doughs are quite a lot of work. The amount of butter in them is pretty gross. We made about a 4-5 pound batch and 3 pounds of that was butter. The preparation method is kinda tough and time consuming but rather interesting. After preparing the dough you ferment it in the refrigerator. After it has risen and is sufficiently cold, we rolled it out into a half-sheet pan to make it pretty much a rectangle. After it chilled some more, we rolled it out into a larger rectangle. We also rolled out the butter, cold, into a slightly smaller rectangle, put the butter on the dough, and folded it in. After more refrigeration we rotate and fold it again, and that repeats for a few times before it's ready. We will finish it on Friday after a few more folds for a total of 135 layers. I'll get a picture of that too before we prepare the danishes.

At Home and About - 10/25-26/09

Sunday the 25th was a fun day and something rather out of the ordinary for me. I went to Marta's house to prepare chili for the following day's Chili Cook-off at the school. I had never really made chili myself so it was an interesting and fun experience. We made a vegan chili which was cool, as I won't eat meat. The prep of all those vegetables took quite a long time but it was really beautiful, containing green and red peppers, carrots, celery, corn, onions, garlic, three types of beans, and a lot of seasoning. One seasoning I found quite interesting was cocoa powder, making giving it a mole flavor. It wasn't predominant but it mellowed it out nicely. And of course tasted great.

In addition to the chili we made cornbread to go with it, jalapeno cheddar mini corn muffins to be precise. I think they were excellent. They had the jalapenos giving it a little kick but nothing strong. I never really tasted the cheddar but I'm sure it was a good complement to everything else. One thing we did, like the corn muffins we made in class a couple weeks ago, was use whole frozen corn in it. I am still unsure whether or not I like it. It gives it some texture but I can't say whether or not it's my thing. I like it more in this than I did the ones made in class so I don't mind it, but I'm not sure if I'd prefer it without. Either way, they're great. We made some at Marta's yesterday which we at with dinner and I made a fresh batch today (the 26th) for the contest.

Class 10/24/09

An easy class this evening. Not much on our plate. We delved further into creams and custards by making pate a choux (and subsequently eclairs) and two kinds of pastry cream.

First, this is the flan (left) and creme brulee (right) from yesterday. I was quite surprised at the outcome. When I made them yesterday I feared that I undercooked the brulee and overcooked the flan but I think they both turned out perfectly. I did err a bit slightly in the flan though. I was unaware that the caramelized sugar we put first in the ramekin should be only a tiny bit-I put a fair amount in and so it didn't really come out when I plated them, but rather was all hardened in the ramekin. Though that may have alternatively been another error in prep yesterday. I prepared the syrup before doing the flan and so it sat and hardened in the ramekins before I added the flan-I thought it would remelt during baking but I guess not. Now I know.

We also made some pie, apple cranberry to be precise. We had made pie dough yesterday so used that. The filling was really nice, apples, cranberries, brown sugar, lotsa cinnamon (Chef said too much, there can never be too much cinnamon), and other stuff. After par-baking the crust we filled it and then topped with some streusel topping from a couple weeks ago. I only had a bite and it tasted good; it certainly looks pretty. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, hopefully I can bake all this stuff then. We also made more pie dough for next week, that's just chilling in the fridge.

Our final item was eclairs. We first made two custards, creme patissiere (pastry cream) which is vanilla-y, and then creme anglaise, chocolate flavoured. We then made some pate a choux for the eclairs. They unfortunately didn't turn out the greatest. The eclairs were taken out before they were fully baked and put back in and so some collapsed a bit and didn't have great cavities. The creme patissiere was also a little runny. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the eclair shells or the finished product; I forgot to in class and gave them away on my way home so don't have any with me now. Though we'll be making more throughout the quarter (they're part of the final) so hopefully then I'll have more presentable items.

At Home - 10/24/09

I'm not sure if it's technically baking, but it's close enough. Today I tried my hand at making some homemade whole wheat tortillas. I normally buy a frozen 6-pack at Whole Foods for about $1.50 which isn't bad. But tortillas are just flour, water, some oil, baking powder, and salt, costing, I dunno, probably less than $.25 for 6? Probably not even. They turned out nicely, though I need to increase the recipe slightly to make them a little larger. I'll have to consider it for the future, while it is cheap, it still does take time and the flour makes a bit of a mess. Maybe I'll just make a ton at once, like a few dozen, and freeze them all (I like enchiladas)

Class 10/23/09 - Even More Enriched Yeast Dough

Today was slightly easier, not as many things done. We did some more enriched yeast doughs and began working with custards and pies.

First we had our brioche. We got portions of that hug tub from yesterday and baked them up. I tried only a bite. It tasted okay, like a croissant. How anyone could eat a lot of that I don't know though, it's so rich, so full of butter and eggs. My chef suggested that slices of it makes about the best French Toast ever though.

Next we used the sweet bun dough that we prepared yesterday to make cinnamon buns. We rolled out the dough, covered it with cinnamon and brown sugar (optional nuts and/or raisins, and we opted to omit them), rolled the sheet up, and proofed. They then baked and were topped with a sugar glaze. They look pretty, but again, just swimming in sugar.

One thing that I spent a good part of the class working on were two custards-a toffee caramel flan and baked creme brulee. It was of course something I had never done before. To be honest it's not really my thing I think, it's really more of a restaurant kinda dessert while I like doing bakery kinda things. I don't have any pictures cuz they're presently chilling in the classroom's fridge, so I'll have them tomorrow. I think the flan was a little overdone and the creme brulee might be a little underdone. I'll have to see.

We also made pie dough, that's easy stuff though, nothing special. We also made a filling, I think it was like cranberry apple or something, but we couldn't find cranberries so it's really just gonna be an apple pie. Those are chilling also so it'll be baked tomorrow.