Over the last few days we have been making laminated doughs. Laminated doughs have very thin layers of dough and butter. Examples of laminated doughs are croissants, danishes, and puff pastry; we made all three types of laminated doughs. Lamination involves “locking” a layer of butter into the dough, rolling out the dough, and folding it to create layers. The butter is sealed into the dough to ensure that it does not escape out of the dough when it is rolled out. This process of rolling out the dough and folding it is repeated numerous times to create many flaky layers. Here is a selection of the pastries that we made.

One of the many myths about the creation of croissants is that they were developed in Vienna in the nineteenth century by bakers who alerted the town of an attempted Turkish siege during the middle of the night. The bakers heard the Turk’s tunneling through the city walls and were commissioned to make a pastry in honor of their alerting the town of the invasion.

The danishes we made were filled pastry cream and strawberry jam or fresh fruit. The main difference between croissant and danish dough is that danish dough has eggs in it.

These danishes have pastry cream with fresh blueberries and a raspberry. These danishes were so good that they have the distinction of being the first item that I have made at culinary school that I took more than one bite of, I actually ate the whole thing!

Baking Kindergarten

The products that we made today could be classified as belonging to the kindergarten portion of Baking Techniques. The most important thing to focus on when making scones and muffins is to not over-mix them once you add the dry ingredients. Over-mixing muffins and scones results in tunnels forming in the crumb structure of the muffin/scone.

In the bottom of the basket are Chocolate Chip Cream Scones.

Blueberry Muffins

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Butter Heaven

Butter Heaven is a unique title for a post, but that is what best describes the atmosphere of the bakeshop today. The main product that we made was Brioche, which is essentially an egg and butter bread, with an emphasis on the butter. The recipe of Brioche that we made had 3 pounds of Plugra butter; Plugra butter is a European butter that has more butter-fat in it then American style butter. Once we put our Brioche in the oven, the whole bakery smelled like butter. When properly made, Brioche should smell and taste of butter. If the Brioche has been allowed to ferment too long it loses the butter flavour. To avoid having Brioche ferment too long, we allowed it to bulk ferment for an hour and then chilled it down in the blast freezer. A blast freezer can freeze a product rock solid within an hour. It is great for ice creams, sorbets and items that need to get cold fast, like our Brioche. It will also be my favourite piece of equipment once the bakery temperature goes over 105 degrees...

Here are our Brioche a Tete, they are the traditional shape; tete means head in French. The Brioche have little round heads on them!

I would highly recommend that you try Brioche if you have never had it before...

We also made a variety of sweet rolls. They are cloverleaf rolls, dinosaur rolls, knot rolls and milk rolls (in that order in the picture). These rolls are egg-washed before they are baked, that is why they have a beautiful golden brown colour.
Here is an up and close picture of our dinosaur rolls. They emulate a stegosaurus.

Rolling around the Bakeshop

Bread Rolls are an important staple in any bakeshop because they are a vital part of the bread basket at dinner. Rolls are also more profitable than selling a loaf of bread, although there is more labour involved in shaping rolls than loaves of bread. We made a variety of differently shaped rolls that were made from white lean dough and whole wheat lean dough.

(Clockwise from 12 o’clock)

Whole Wheat Round Rolls - Just a plain round roll that is slashed on the top, just before baking.

Kaiser Rolls with Poppy Seeds – These are a white lean dough that is shaped into a round and then proofed before being stamped and dipped in poppy seeds. The rolls are allowed to proof again before they are baked. The stamp that is used for the rolls is similar to a cookie cutter, but you do not cut the roll all the way through the roll.

Torpedo Rolls – These are made out of whole wheat lean dough, and shaped into a torpedo shape. The rolls are then rolled in a mixture of poppy, sesame and fennel seeds. The fennel seeds give the roll a great flavour.

Schlumberger Rolls – This is a white roll that is purposely baked with its seam on the top of the roll (it is usually imperative when baking bread that the seam is on the bottom of the loaf/roll). To ensure that the roll’s seam unravels during baking (to form the decoration on the top of the roll) olive oil is placed in the seam. This is done by rolling the roll and then taking a large finger that has been dipped in olive oil and inserting it into the seam. I emphasize a large finger because it is important to get the oil into the roll's seam; small fingers do not have the same surface area, and are not as effective.

Cream Pie Bonanza

Coconut Cream Pie

Cream Pies were the order for the day on Tuesday. My partner and I made Banana Cream Pie as well as Coconut Cream Pie. Making a cream pie filling is very similar to making a pastry cream, which is a building block in pastry making. Pastry Cream is a cooked custard made with eggs and thickened with cornstarch. Pastry Cream can be found in the filling for Napoleons and cakes. To ensure a successful pastry cream, it is imperative to properly cook the starch (by boiling the custard for approximately a minute). The easiest way to tell is the starch is properly cooked is to taste the pastry cream to see if you can feel any starch granules between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. It is also important for a successful pastry cream to ensure that the custard and milk are not scorched, therefore a lot of stirring is involved!

Creaming Crazy

The focus of today was the creaming method; the recipes that we made were Sour Cream Pound Cake, and Polenta Cake. When using the creaming method it is important to scrape the bowl to ensure that the butter and sugar are creamed properly, and that the ingredients are well incorporated. It is also important to ensure that once the flour is added to not over mix the batter. Here are the results of our hard work:

Polenta Cake

Sour Cream Pound Cake

Culinary Olympics

This weekend I went with a fellow classmate and students from one of the culinary programs to The Culinary Olympics sponsored by the food science program at The University of California Davis. My classmate and I were in charge of making dessert in a black box competition. There were over 20 secret ingredients in the black box that all had to be used in a 4 course meal.

My classmate and I made tropical shortcake for the dessert portion of the meal. The tropical shortcake consisted of: coconut (secret ingredient) shortcake that was made without any leavening agents, lime curd, and fresh pineapple (secret ingredient). We served this with a pomegranate (secret ingredient) sauce that had a melted popsicle (secret ingredient), and jack fruit (another secret ingredient). The plate was then sprinkled with Nestle Quick Powder (a secret ingredient). The judges had already eaten 31 dishes before our dessert, and they liked our dessert so much that they ate it all. When they scored our dessert we only lost two points! The dessert looked a lot better in person than in the picture.

Mise En Place For the Dessert

Bread Basket

Late last week we made white lean bread dough, and white lean bread dough with Pate Fermentee. From these two batches of dough we created a variety of different shapes and styles of bread! Lean dough is not enriched with fat or sugar; the lean dough that we made only had flour, water, yeast, and salt. Out of the lean dough we made a variety of shapes, which were: Fougasse (the one in the back with the holes), Batards (the loaf on the right hand side), and the traditional French Baguette. Fougasse is thin bread that is shaped into a triangle, and is meant to have holes to ensure that the bread has a lot of crunchy crust. The loaf is also sprinkled with sel de mare, which is a salt that is not overly salty. The other dough that we made was white lean dough with Pate Fermentee; this dough is made with “old dough.” This enables a baker to make bread that has more flavour (than it normally would) in a short period of time. The longer you ferment dough, the more flavour it has. Fermentation is allowing the yeast in the dough to consume the sugar and starch in the dough, therefore giving off carbon dioxide (which allows the bread to rise) and alcohol (which gives the bread flavour). We made the regular recipe for the white lean dough, and let it sit out and ferment overnight. We then used some of it the next day in our white lean dough with Pate Fermentee. These loaves were shaped into Boules (the round loaf at the front of the basket), which are a round shape that is allowed to proof in a round wood basket (the loaves are knocked out of these baskets before they are baked). All of these loaves have a very short shelf life (one day!) because they do not have any fat or sugar.

The other loaves of bread that we made were enriched breads (with fat and sugar). Challah is braided egg bread. It can be braided in a two, three, four or six strand braid. Challah gets its beautiful dark brown colour from an egg wash that is painted on the bread before it is baked. Hiding in front of the Challah is sunflower seed bread, which is essentially a bread with sunflower seeds; it is formed into a Batard. The other loaves of bread in the basket are multigrain bread that I made as an extra project.

Bar Cookies

The main problem with the Bar Cookies that we made was the fact that the ones that were plated for the picture all got eaten.(I am not sure if that is a problem...)

These are the remnants of the Pecan Diamonds. Below is a picture of the ones that were plated for the dessert buffet. Pecan Diamonds have a shortbread crust with a chewy pecan caramel topping! They are very sweet, therefore they must be cut in small diamond shapes.

Brownies were the other bar cookie that we made.

The plated version was consumed before a picture could be taken.

First Day Cookie Mayhem

Today marked our first day in the kitchen or bakeshop, whatever term suits you most. The first few weeks are basic skill building, therefore cookies were the item of the day.

The two cookies my team created were:

Almond Spritz Cookies

Essentially an almond shortbread that is piped and filled with raspberry jam, some cookies are two cookies sandwiched with Jam and dipped in chocolate!

Russian Teacake Cookies

These are a pecan shortbread that is rolled in confectioners sugar (aka icing sugar) just after they come out of the oven.

The secret to these cookies (and most cookies) is to cream the butter and sugar until it just turns a lighter yellow colour. If you over whip the butter and sugar, your cookies can be flat because they will spread more in the oven. It is also important to make sure that you scrape the bowl numerous times to ensure that all of the ingredients are properly incorporated! Another secret to successful cookies is to make sure that your eggs and butter are at room temperature. This ensures that a proper emulsion occurs between the butter and the eggs!

Cookies...who knew they could be so complicated...

Pet Sourdough

On top of the large amount of time spent studying this week for three exams (yes, exams in culinary school...), I was also in charge of taking care of my Pet Sourdough. This week as a project for baking science, every student created a sourdough starter. Last Friday we started them by mixing flour, water, and "food" for the yeast that we were trying to catch in the air. The food needed to contain sugar or starch for the yeast to use to be able to ferment. You can use a variety of fruits and vegetables that have a skin or peal that is easy to cut up, it is best to use organic fruit or vegetables. The trap that I used for my yeast consisted of pears and potatoes; therefore I named it "Pear and Potato French Fries," or PPFF for short. I even used the skin of the pear and potato because vegetables and fruit normally contain yeast on their skins. We left these mixtures out all weekend, by a window to trap the yeast as it blew by. San Francisco is known for it's sourdough, because of it's unique flavour. The specific name of the yeast that is found in San Francisco sourdough is Candida Milleri, this yeast is very tolerant to acetic acid (the same acid that is in vinegar) in comparison to other wild yeasts. Therefore it favors the bacteria that creates acetic acid, this bacteria is called

Lactobacillus SanFrancisensis!

Here is my sourdough starter (after I had strained the pears and potatoes out of it). As you can tell from the picture below and above it has risen up the sides of the container (all of the dried bits that you can see attached to the side), and then fallen (most likely when it ran out of food/sugar)
Here is PPFF, after I had fed her. Feeding a sourdough starter involves throwing out a portion of the mixture and replacing it with fresh flour and water. If you notice in the below picture, it is much more moist than the before pictures.

A few hours later I came back to check on PPFF, and as you can the yeast has begun to ferment and give off carbon dioxide, which causes the starter to rise.
Next week, we will combine all of the starters from the class into a massive starter that we will use that to make bread! Hopefully PPFF will enjoy her transformation into a loaf of bread!

San Francisco Adventure

So after a week of math equations, and the various functions of flour, eggs, sugar etc, I escaped to "The City," to the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market at the Ferry Building.

The Christmas Present that was shipped all the way to Vancouver, actually made it back to San Francisco. Here it is posing, waiting for the ferry:

The Famous Bridge

The Destination:

The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market is located just outside the ferry buildings on the docks. There are easily over 100 vendors. One can purchase never ending produce from the farmers who picked it that morning or the day before. Right now it is the middle of strawberry season (don't worry no woody, white strawberries here), cherries and peaches are just beginning to make an appearance. I bought a red onion that had been pulled from the ground that morning, as well as a pinkerton avocado. The cherries pictured below also made it into my farmer's market bag.

Other things that made it in my market bag were the peaches (pictured below), strawberries, and a loaf of rosemary meyer lemon bread from Della Factoria. Della Factoria is an artisan bread company from Petaluma, that bakes their loaves in a wood fired brick oven, that is always kept hot. We might get to go see their oven on a field trip! The bread is a bit dry, which could indicate that the starch in the bread is interacting too much with the crumb. See what I have learned already....

Besides fruit and vegetable farmers there are a variety of cheese and egg producers. You can also find a variety of "prepared food" vendors that sell meals made on the spot or packaged meals that you can bring home. Flower vendors are also at the market. Pictured below are some sweet peas, they do not make an appearance in Vancouver for another few months! They were $4 outside at the market, and inside the Ferry Building at a flower shop (the same flowers) were $7... Quite a mark-up!

Boulette's Larder is located inside the ferry building, and I would highly recommend checking them out if you are ever in SF. They describe themselves as a "mise en place for your home pantry." Mise en place means everything it it's place. They have high end ingredients as well as what can be described as "prepared meals." They also have a great breakfast, lunch and Sunday brunch menu. They cook right in front of you, as you eat communal style. Evidence of their success is that they close before 3 on the weekends!

I also checked out Micheal Recchuiti, while at the Ferry Building. They make the best chocolates that I have ever tasted! And people who know me can tell you that I am quite a chocolate snob...

Here are just a few snapshots that I took while exploring the city:

A palm tree in Union Square...

And the world famous cable car!