Class 11/06/09 - Tarts and Bread Production

This evening we had a fairly light workload. We had the beginnings of a lecture in chocolate. I don't think we do that really until the end of the class but we are using it in a recipe tomorrow so I guess it's a good intro.

Today we made a walnut tart. We baked off the tart dough that we made yesterday. The two tarts that we're making tomorrow require fully baked shells so we baked those off. They were cracking a little, one broke completely, but that's cuz it stuck to the tin. I'll have to diagnose why it was cracking, not sure if it was overworked perhaps or something in the prep (I didn't prep the dough and I don't trust my group members). The walnut tart turned out nicely. We blind baked a tart shell and then filled it and finished baking. It ended up being kinda like a custard. We did begin cooking it on the stove before putting it into the shell, though we didn't thicken it at all-that may have just been to have it hot for baking. It looks like it came out alright.

That was our only actual recipe tonight. Some other groups made some more croissants or danishes but we weren't interested. Instead we focused on continuing the work we started yesterday with the big batch of bread. We combined the poolish from yesterday with more water and flour as well as salt and let it ferment some more before working on it. You can see in the first picture just how much we had after the ferment, and that had already started being portioned. We then made a bunch of baguettes, some rolls, and a couple loaves. The rolls were cool because we used a machine-I forgot what it was called-but you put a big portion of dough in it and it portioned it into even size pieces, I think 36 total. We shaped and proof it all and then baked it off. The baking took a long time and so we were there until past 11:30. We'll need to learn to better time it all. There just wasn't enough space in the deck ovens so we were staying late for just a couple more sheets. It was fun though, and we of course made a lot. The final picture is just a portion of what we had, not even half probably-some was already taken and a lot was in the process of baking. I didn't mind staying late or anything, I thought it was fun. Making four servings of an item isn't really practical experience, this gives you a little feel for the reality.

I also helped myself to a bit of the sourdough starter that we had in class, to replace the one I killed. I figured it couldn't hurt to have some. I don't think I really need to throw out so much starter every time I refresh it like books say, as long as I drain off the alcohol. Plus this starter has a few months on the one I had, so it's purer.