Christmas is a holiday full of traditions and memories, and I hope everyone has a handful of new ones from this year. As promised, I am going to share the process of our annual family baking tradition. My great grandmother used to bake German Stollen bread every Christmas morning when my grandma was young, and the tradition has been passed down from there. I started helping my grandma make the Stollen (and decipher the old, handwritten recipe) a few years ago, and this year was extra special because I actually understood the process and why it takes so long to complete. Even though we did things a little different than I might of learned in class, the Stollen was absolutely delicious and gobbled down yesterday morning.
Before we begin, it's important to note that we use a potato sponge for the bread instead of a basic flour, water and yeast mixture. You can't really taste the potatoes in the bread, but I'm sure it adds a little something extra to the final product. Here is the sponge being made on the night of December 23 before it was fermented overnight.
Before I left for the evening, a brief moment of panic set in when I asked my grandma if she had everything to complete the bread the next day. She said yes, however, after a short second exclaimed, "I don't have any raisins!" Since we don't put anything except raisins in the bread, this is a rather important ingredient. Luckily, we were able to make a run to the grocery store and save Christmas. Lesson learned: make your list and check it twice, just like Santa Claus.
The next morning, I returned to grandma's house to get the dough all mixed up. I should have brought my new Kitchen Aid 6-qt mixer along with me, but it wouldn't be Christmas if the dough didn't run up the beaters of grandma's trusty small mixer.
Another interesting item here is that we always have to add an undisclosed amount of flour to the dough to make it workable and not runny. Which leads to that small bowl getting fuller by the flour scoop. Once the dough started looking good, we emptied it out on to a floured cloth and the eight minutes of kneading began. Last year I thought this was hard work, but it felt like clockwork to me after my bread baking in class last term.
Once my grandma was satisfied with the kneaded bread, we covered it to let it rise into one huge loaf.
After two hours, it was time to separate the gigantic loaf into three separate loaves and let them rise again. Here are the two smaller loaves getting ready for a proofing by the heat vents.
Another few hours and it's time for the oven. These babies came out nice and brown and were slathered with butter...
and powdered sugar.
The whole process took about 24 hours and then the bread was covered until Christmas morning. And all that's left to do at that point is pray that the bread is done inside and tastes as good as it looks. There's always a sigh of relief from my grandma's mouth when we first cut into the bread on Christmas and all looks well.
But the true test comes after my great uncle spreads a slice with butter and powered sugar and takes the first bite. Once it's been approved by him, it's time for the whole family to dig in and devour two of the loaves. This bread is seriously hard to quit eating. I had at least 5 pieces.
That's just one of the perks of being a baker. You have to try your work and make sure it's up to par. And then try it again just in case. My grandma taught me that.
Another Christmas, another Stollen. Here's to another year of delicious and tasty traditions!
It's official - I've made it through the first term of school and definitely feel more like a chef than I did ten weeks ago. And even though I've hung up my pastry kit for three weeks, I will be indulging in some baking adventures over Christmas break. And eating a ton of holiday cookies. Mmmm frosted sugar cookies.... Before my mind is completely taken over by a spoonful (or twenty) of sugar, here are the details of my last day in the classroom kitchen in 2010.
We arrived on Saturday morning ready to take our final written exam and bake up some stellar biscuits and muffins, however, we had to wait a bit to do so. Our first project of the day was English muffins. English muffins are my favorite go-to breakfast food and I never thought I could make any that would taste as good as my trusty Thomas brand muffins, but these were very delish. The dough is fairly easy to make and to my surprise, this bread is not baked but fried in a skillet in butter. Chef gave us compliments on our work and immediately slathered up one with butter to eat.
Check out these chocolate chip scones. They are so amazingly large and in charge that I had to begin my blog this week with a picture of their grandness. In case you're wondering, yes, these were the largest scones made in class on Saturday. And while a handful of students were chattering about the grand size of my scones, Chef reminded me that no one else in the class knows more about baking than I do at this point, so I shouldn't worry about what anyone thinks unless it's him. Noted and appreciated, Chef.
The main reason I was able to make these plus-sized baked goods was because I was in a group by myself. That's right; my one remaining group mate for the term didn't show up. So I made everything just how I wanted it, but I also found myself looking around the room wondering if I was doing everything correctly. It really forced me to trust my instincts as a chef and believe that I was doing things right. It also made me work extra hard because not only did I have to scale all of the ingredients, make all of the dough, pan and bake the breads and watch the timer on the oven, but I also had to keep my area clean and wash every dish I used. Phew. Needless to say, it was an exhausting but very rewarding day.
Our final exam and practical is next week and we were able to whip up another round of practice biscuits this week. Here is my second (and better) attempt at this quick bread.
And now for the twist - not only do we have to make biscuits for our final grade, but we also have to make blueberry muffins. Luckily I had chosen these muffins to make from our long list of options. I made a batch using the muffin method, which is a much quicker/simpler method than the more common creaming method. It makes the muffins taste more like bread than cake, which is not desired by most consumers these days, but I thought they were pretty darn good.
I feel pretty confident that I can bake up a few good biscuits and muffins next week, but I might try to whip up a practice batch or two this week just to be sure. Wish me luck!
And just in case you're wondering exactly how grand my scones are...
Yesterday in class I more than made up for my lack of participation in the kitchen on Thanksgiving. It was a day filled with various pumpkin desserts, bread pudding and biscuits. It was also a day of snowfall. We were dismissed from class at noon because of the snow, yet we still managed to complete everything on our list. We have officially made the transition to quick breads and I could not be happier. Au revoir to yeast and waiting forever for our breads to rise! Bonjour to biscuits, muffins and scones - my comfort zone! But first, a journey through the pumpkin patch.
I must confess that I'm not a big pumpkin pie fan, although I always have a polite slice on Thanksgiving. So I wasn't extremely excited to see two pumpkin desserts on our to-do list yesterday. However, the pumpkin pave' we made first is one of the best pumpkin desserts I've ever had. Pumpkin pave' is basically a pumpkin cheesecake with streusel crust and topping. Much creamier than pumpkin pie and not quite as strong. I have two of these babies at home and not enough family and friends in Indy to share them both with...
While the pave' was in the oven, we began mixing up the ingredients for our pumpkin bread. I have a recipe at home for pumpkin cranberry bread that makes a pretty delicious bread and this one wasn't quite up to par in my opinion. It came out of the oven looking like a brick, but my very kind fiance tells me that it was delish.
Bread pudding was up next. Much to the dismay of my male classmates, we didn't have bourbon in stock to make the sauce. I'm not sure there would have been any bourbon left to make the sauce after they got a hold of it anyways, but that's beside the point. Bread pudding was easier to make than I thought it would be, but I probably won't be making it again in the near future. Who likes soggy bread with raisins? Perhaps this is why it's normally served with a warm bourbon sauce. Ours came out of the oven nicely browned with a uniform jiggle and earned praise from Chef.
Hold on to your spatulas because next week things get even quicker - several types of muffins and scones are on the agenda!
I'm kind of embarrassed to report that I took the Thanksgiving holiday off from baking. That's right readers, I allowed my mother to bake her frozen Sara Lee pies instead of whipping one up from scratch for my family to enjoy. But hey, once they have the real thing do you think they'll ever settle for less again? No. So really, I am saving everyone a lot of taste bud therapy here. Don't worry, Mom - everyone loves Sara Lee (especially when she gets dropped on the floor right before we leave).
The only chef-related activity I engaged in during Thanksgiving break was watching the entire season of Top Chef: Just Desserts. And it was FABULOUS. I personally cannot ever imagine memorizing tons of recipes and working under that kind of pressure, but it sure is fun to be sucked into the television drama of pastry for several hours. And now I am refreshed and ready to get back into the kitchen this weekend. Bring on the bread!
For all of you anxiously awaiting the results of Jaime vs. butter, the wait is over. And even though my butter put up a bit of a fight yesterday, I'm happy to say that I was victorious in the end. And there was "naan-thing" the butter could do about it.
We started our day making the Danish pastry dough for our practical exam. After we folded the butter into our dough and put it in the refrigerator to chill, Chef P demonstrated the snail shapes we had to perfect for the practical. We also made the dough for our delicious Naan (Indian bread) while we were waiting - more to come on that later. After lunch it was time to make some snails. There is a nervous energy in the classroom when our class is making something for a practical grade and you can feel the buzz in the atmosphere. We all set about rolling out our dough as thin as we could get it, spreading egg wash over the whole thing, sprinkling sugar and cinnamon over one half and folding it together. Then we cut 1/2 inch strips of dough off, twisted them up on the table and tied the strip in a knot around our fingers. Voila - a snail. Luckily we were able to whip up about twelve snails each and pick the best six to present for a grade. My snails were much larger than my partners (of course), but we baked them together and all turned out well. We then had to spread apricot glaze over the tops and had the option to frost them as well.
I'm officially halfway through my first term at school and I am starting to feel like a real chef. One who knows how many ounces are in a quart, how to use baker’s percentages in recipes, and how much flavor butter and other fats can add to plain dough. That's right; it was butter me up time in the kitchen again this week. After the slight mishap in class last week, our group was determined not to slip up again yesterday. The butter had other plans for us however.
Our assignment was to make Danish pastry dough, blitz puff pastry dough, an apple compote filling and chocolate icing. The chocolate icing was a piece of cake (and I wish I had cake to put it on). The apple compote was also quite simple, once we learned the quickest, safest way to dice up an apple. First you cut the apple into sheets, then sticks, then squares. And you get to keep all of your fingers. Genius. Best thing I learned all day. The blitz puff pastry dough was fun to make and very similar to pie dough except that you have to give it three folds and roll it out a few times to make sure the fat is evenly distributed. This helps the flaky layers magically appear after baking. When this dough was ready, I styled it into a few different designs from my baking book and squirted on some delicious blueberry filling.
These turned out better than I thought, although the dough was not quite as tasty as the Danish puff pastry dough. Once the Danish dough itself was ready and had cooled, along with a large hunk of butter, we spread the butter onto the dough and began the fold in process. The main concern here is trying to keep the dough and the butter the same temperature. If the butter is too soft or warm it will attempt to escape the dough and ooze out onto the table. Which ours did. Once my butter jumped so far out of the dough that it would have won first prize in the long jump competition at a high school track meet. And even after some extra time in the refrigerator, we were unable to get this dough thin enough to fold up like the fashionable pastries above. So we decided to throw some apple compote and cinnamon and sugar in the middle, roll it up like a log and cut it into cinnamon rolls. Anything with this much butter, cinnamon and sugar is bound to taste good, even if it's not the intended final product.
Here's hoping that in my final showdown with butter during next week's practical, I win. And now let's take one additional look at the most splendid pastry I've ever made...
It's a beautiful specimen of flaky goodness. And I'll be eating it tomorrow morning for breakfast. Here's to a tasty Monday morning filled with blueberry happiness!
Bonjour! It’s Saturday bake time and I am feeling slightly more French than I did last weekend. Why, you ask? Because I am now a fiancée of course. OUI. And this makes everything in life more exciting - including waking up at 6:30am every Saturday to run around a hot kitchen for eight hours. Maybe it will help my skills at mastering the flaky croissant as well...
Before I begin my recap of class this week, I'd like to fill you in on everything that I must drag to class with me every Saturday morning at 8am. Like a normal student, there are the books, notepads, pens and a calculator, but for a pastry student there is also the apron, hat, side towels, pastry kit (with approx 20 tools inside) and digital scale if you so choose to buy one. After the first few weeks of using an old-school balance scale, I promptly invested in a nice digital one this week and was eager to use it in class yesterday. So eager, in fact, that I managed to walk right out the door without my pastry kit. Luckily, my group allowed me to borrow their tools as needed, but how could I forget such an integral part of my "uniform?" Needless to say, my large stack of supplies will be waiting by the door for me next week. And the digital scale will definitely be included - it considerably reduced our time scaling ingredients.
Now let's move on to my week four recap. I wish I could say everything went smooth like butter; however, we had a few marginal mishaps. And tons of butter was involved. But before things got sticky, we made two delicious breads. We delved into the world of rich dough this week, and while yeast is still involved in a variety of these breads, the sweetness of the finished product makes it all worthwhile.
Our first bread was Kugelhopf, which I fondly nicknamed the Kug (pronounced Coug - short for Cougar). This bread reminds me of the Stollen that my grandma makes every year for Christmas morning. Mostly because my grandma makes Stollen more like Kug and uses only raisins instead of adding the candied fruit chunks - and I don't blame her one bit for this variation. Kug is pretty basic sweet bread with golden raisins added. It's baked in a tube pan, but you heavily butter the pan and line the bottom with sliced almonds, which makes for a nice decorative touch.
Obviously this is only half of the loaf, but I think this bread is worthy of two images. Just look at those almond beauties.
Next up was Brioche. This is very similar to the recipe for Kug, but tastes more like a croissant than anything else. It's interesting how breads can have the exact same ingredients and vary in flavor based on the quantity of ingredients used and preparation technique alone. I realize this tidbit may only be interesting to an aspiring chef... Anyways, back to Brioche. This bread is typically baked in tins of various sizes with dough that has been rolled out like a bowling pin. The smaller portion of dough is placed on top of the main roll like a tête. En Francis, tête means "head," and I was able to show off my French skills by shouting this out when Chef B asked if anyone knew what tête meant. Moi! Oui, oui!
I hope your weekend was as tasty as mine!
For the first several minutes in the kitchen this Saturday, I thought a trick was being played on my group. There were four of us chefs-in-the-making last week and only two of us were present yesterday. And we were both newbies. After getting over some initial doubts, we decided to be confident, positive gals and do what we had to do to survive the heat in the kitchen. And survive we did. We successfully made the same amount of bread that every other group did AND received compliments from Chef B on how efficient we were and how well we worked together. Definitely a treat!
The majority of the day was spent working on our soft rolls. Everyone made their own full batch in the morning and we were taught various ways to roll, knot and braid the rolls so we could practice a bit before our first practical exam in the afternoon. We had to present Chef P with four rolls total, two rolls in two style varieties. Consistency within each set of rolls was important as well, and with only a half batch of rolls to work with (seven), there wasn't a lot of room for error. I ended up choosing the fairly simple cloverleaf roll and the more difficult double knot roll. We brushed our finished rolls with egg wash, threw them in the oven and let them cool before lining up Top Chef style to be judged. These aren't the exact rolls I used, but these are the two varieties I presented. I received a 92 for my efforts, and Greg, Lin and Mike received two huge bags of roll rejects for their enjoyment.
Week number two, check. You'll be happy to hear that no hands were injured in the world of bread making this week; however, my love of bread may be "losing some of its rise" per say. Seriously, you can only smell fresh yeast so many times before all you want is a sinfully sweet cookie that you don't have to use twelve steps to make. This week we were introduced to the world of Italian and French bread. My taste buds felt like they were still eating the soft rolls from last week, but I guess my buds need a little bread tasting refinement. Although with flour, yeast, water, salt and sugar in each bread, you can understand my dilemma...
Here is the first round of Italian bread. The dark background in this image is appropriate because the top back corner of the loaf was burnt. This was caused by a hot spot in the oven and is very disappointing to someone who doesn't enjoy burnt food - a.k.a. me. Luckily, we made 7x the original recipe so we were able to try out a few varieties including pizza, which we shared with another class and got to eat for lunch ourselves. I decided to make mine into a calzone since the rest of my group was making regular pizza. Here are the statuesque results.
Those of you who know my baking style are aware that my rule for sweet baked goods is the bigger the better. Apparently that ideology has carried over to bread as well. This calzone was bigger than the Italian loaf when it first came out of the oven. We are not talking Pizza Hut calzones here people.
These braided bread sticks were the final variety made from our Italian dough. Not only were they fun to make (who doesn't like braiding dough?), they were also the tastiest bread we made. Tasty tip for happiness: brushing melted butter over freshly baked bread is always a good idea. DO try this at home.
Last but not least, our bread from the land of the Eiffel Tower. What this French bread lacks in uniformity, it makes up for in taste. One of my favorite parts of bread making is scoring the bread before it goes into the oven. This is also the trickiest part because if one part of the bread is scored deeper than the others, your bread will have large dips in it and not be the same width throughout. Educational side note: scoring is putting shallow slices in the top of the bread so that gases can escape during baking. And in bread or in life, it's never good to let out too much gas at one time.
After a Saturday full of bread, I decided to indulge my sweet tooth (and more finely tuned baking skills) and whip up a batch of cookies today. These peanut blossom cookies were just what the baker ordered and made my apartment smell way better than yeasty bread. I guess sometimes you just need a cookie.
After surviving my first weekend of pastry school, I have two answers to the proposed title question. Under normal circumstances, the answer is obviously no. But alas, in my case the answer is yes. That's right. This weekend there was not only blood, but also sweat and tears in the kitchen...
Here is a quick summary of my class schedule this term. Friday night: sit in a classroom and discuss strategies for success in the hospitality industry. We will work on our goals, attitudes, habits, behaviors and journal about what's going on in our lives. Easy, right? Maybe even a little too easy. Yeah, I think that only long enough to complete a full eight hour day in the kitchen on Saturday and realize that this Friday night class may be essential to keeping me sane for the next ten weeks. Or two years.
My Saturday class is titled "Introduction to Baking, Dough Formulas and Specialty Bread Products." That's right - bread. My favorite part of any and every meal. Unfortunately, my love of bread was almost the death of me. Here's where the blood, sweat and tears come in. With weekend classes, one week's worth of material must be crammed into our heads in one day, so we unwrapped our brand new pastry kits and baked two breads this Saturday. One item in said pastry kit is a huge knife that should only be used once one is shown how to use a knife properly. Lesson #1: Rushing around a kitchen with a huge knife to hastily cut off a chunk of soft butter can lead to this image...
Since banana cream pie is my boyfriend's favorite dessert, his birthday celebration over the weekend was the perfect opportunity to test out my skills in the pie arena. I had to go out and buy a pie pan earlier in the week, if that says anything about my current pie making skill level. Nonetheless, the finished product was a bunch of bananas better than I initially expected.
Before turning the oven on Saturday afternoon, I was most worried about perfecting the meringue topping. Much to my surprise, I seem to have a magic touch for whipping up meringue, but my pie crust technique needs some work...
I used shortening to make my pie crust, as it makes for a nice flaky crust with good flavor (so I was told). The image above doesn't really convey the true size of the rolled out crust, however, I will be honest and tell you that it did not all fit in the pie pan without some extra guidance. I had to break off pieces of dough from one side and press them around to other sides where needed. Luckily, this was not evident in the finished product because of the beautifully browned meringue distraction.
After baking the pie crust and slicing the bananas, I was ready to make the vanilla cream filling. This process started with my first experience separating egg yolks from egg whites. Not as hard as I thought, although I did have to dig out a small piece of egg shell from the bowl of egg whites. (Note to self: meringue should not be crunchy.) The cream turned out nice and smooth and my only worry was keeping it warm while I attempted my first meringue.
Much to my delight, my wobbly Sunbeam mixer did a fine job of whipping up a tasty meringue topping. (Yes, a KitchenAid mixer is on my "wishlist of happiness," but for now, I am happy to make do with what I have in my cupboard.) I quickly poured the vanilla cream into the pie crust over the bananas and spooned the meringue on top. After carefully spreading the meringue to the edges of the pie crust, it was ready to bake.
I should take a second here to note that I have a bit of a bad habit of peeking into the oven to check on my goodies before they're done. This poses a problem only if you're one of the chefs who believe that you're letting heat escape and cold air in, therefore altering the quality of the finished product. I am not one of those chefs. Although this bad habit may be breakable if I had an oven with a light inside... Another addition to the wishlist I suppose.
Controversial oven habits aside, thirty minutes later my very first pie came out of the oven looking like this! While I'm not personally a huge fan of banana cream pie, I was pleased to receive a plethora of pie praise from not only the birthday boy, but also a few family members who were in town for the weekend. One piece even made a two and a half hour car ride north to Columbia City, where it was promptly devoured by my uncle.
All in all, it was a successful first taste of pie. Seeing the happiness on my boyfriend's face as he ate several pieces during the course of the weekend made it that much sweeter. Three days and counting until my adventures in pastry really begin. Get your tastebuds ready...
