a trail of bread crumbs

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.

Next up was bagels. Again, I questioned that we could make bagels to taste as good as the ones at the store or at Einstein's, but these turned out pretty well and were fun to make. We rolled out dough, cut it into 2oz chunks and rolled each one out in a strip, then wrapped it around our hand to get the circle shape. We then boiled the dough circles in water with a little malt syrup and baked them off. This is the traditional way to make authentic chewy bagels, not the soft, fluffy bread ones you most often see today. Our bagels weren't the prettiest thing since sliced bread, but they sure tasted good.

Next we took our written exam - which I am pretty sure I got an A on - and then went to lunch before our practical exams. But a funny thing happened on the way back to the kitchen...we were locked out of the kitchen and Chef's keys wouldn't work. So while he went to get a set of keys from the dean, we all played a pastry trivia game in one of the classrooms. The second question left me in a standoff with my teammates. The question was "name a German holiday bread traditionally made with raisins and currants." Of course I know it's stollen bread - I have eaten this bread every Christmas morning since I was born basically. But no, my teammates wanted to say kugelhopf since we made that bread in class one day. I ended up being right and it made me even more excited to bake stollen with my grandma next week. Using only raisins - no currants or candied fruit for this family.

Anyway, we finally made it into the kitchen and were given a break on our practical due to the lock out incident. We only had to make biscuits for our final grade. We ended up making a batch of blueberry muffins too, but weren't graded on them. I'm proud to say that my biscuit making skills have gotten better every week. I prepared the dough, cut them into squares (I'm against using a traditional circle cutter because it's so cliché), brushed them with egg wash and popped them in the oven. Here are the beauties that earned me 49 out of 50....

Not only do they look better than last week's biscuits, they tasted better too. I am making a vow right now to never buy Pillsbury biscuits again. These are so simple to make and the fresh taste is definitely worth it.

Thanks for all of your support and kind thoughts as I cut and burned my way through term one. Merry Christmas to you all and stay tuned for a family Christmas baking adventure. There's bound to be a fun story in the Fry kitchen next week as we make the annual stollen!

I'll leave you with a trivia question. In the photo below (and above), what does the front and center English muffin resemble? Winner gets a spatula signed by yours truly.