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.