butter me up

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!

After our lunch break, we watched a video on laminated dough. The easiest explanation for this type of dough is that you take a slab of dough and roll it out into a rectangle, then take a ton of butter and roll it out into a rectangle half the size of the dough and fold them together like a book. You have to roll the fat in several times until it is distributed throughout the dough and you have many layers of dough, which after baking results in a flaky, layered pastry. This is where croissants and puff pastries come from. The process looked very time consuming on the video, so our group went back to the kitchen to gather ingredients and get started. If you haven't guessed yet, this is where the butter issue arose. Instead of leaving the majority of our butter out for the giant rectangle of butter, we decided to mix all 7lbs, 5oz of it in with the flour for the original dough. That's right; we basically had a bowl of butter. Luckily, our Chefs are very creative and decided all was not lost. And I quote: "This is how new recipes are invented." The only problem is we have no idea how much of everything we added to make a good tasting dough in the end. But after a ton of sugar, flour, some sourdough starter, cinnamon, and another group's unusable Kug dough, we had invented quite the tasty treat. We rolled out the cinnamon/sugar dough and filled it with cheese and raspberry filling and some streusel, and Chef B showed us how to braid it up. Volia - a Danish roll!

This was definitely the sweetest treat of the day; although I am a little worried that we didn't get to attempt our original endeavor of laminated dough. I think we'll get another shot at it next week though - especially since it might be our next practical exam in a few weeks.

After a long day of baking, you might think I'd be tired of the kitchen and ready to pass out on the couch, but much to my surprise it seems like the opposite is true. Last night I was eager to try out a new recipe for dinner to accompany my Brioche rolls. My Rachel Ray cookbook led me to a venture of pork chops with applesauce and risi bisi (a risotto/rice dish). Greg gave the dinner two forks up and I will definitely be repeating the meal in the future. In case your mouth isn't watering yet, here's the blue plate special -

 

I hope your weekend was as tasty as mine!