Pastry Pro I: Week 3: Yeast Breads

Bread baking is one of those things I do around the holidays, usually trying a new dinner roll recipe here and there but never quite finding the "right " recipe. I think it was more my technique than the recipe. I learned several things in this class that have already helped. Since class last night I have already practiced at home and made a huge batch of roll dough. I wanted to use the new information while it was fresh in my mind. Making yeast bread turn out right is not that simple. There are so many variables including room temperature, humidity, temperature of the flour, yeast freshness, etc. We were given demonstrations on how much to knead dough and it was then I realized that I've probably been under kneading dough all along. We learned a method called the "windowpane" which is a simple way to test the dough. When I tried it today it worked well. We have different equipment at school which makes it easier than home. The warming oven is great for "fermenting" (rising) of the dough because we can set it at an exact temperature whereas at home it's not always easy to find the right spot. Chef Kurima suggested using my oven with just the light turned on. She was right--that worked fine.

The mixers at school are also very heavy duty and made to knead dough. My home Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer is not up to the task of kneading bread dough. We were shown how to make bread crusty bread by using a steam oven. We turned a regular oven into a steam oven by placing a pan of water in the bottom, using a baking stone on the rack, and spraying the sides of the oven with water during the first 10 minutes. We contrasted rolls and bread made with or without steam and saw the difference. The steam oven rolls had a crisper outside and browner color.We were given the opportunity to make several types of rolls and bread. We made soft roll dough, an enriched dough as well as whole wheat bread, French bread and brioche.With the soft dough roll we made various shapes of rolls and bread, including round, braids, knots, and stuffed breads. The brioche dough took forever to knead and was a very sweet and tasty finished product. Imagine using 12 eggs and 1 1/2 pounds of butter in aroud 2 1/2 pounds of flour and you get an idea of what a rich dough it is. Not something I plan to eat much of unless I want to look like a fermenting roll. I made one stuffed bread with French bread dough and chunks of cheddar cheese and roasted poblano peppers. It was wonderful. I also made some mini cinnamon rolls with frosting and they were very tasty. The rolls I made today at home turned out better than ones I've made in past years. I believe my more thorough kneading and using the oven to ferment the dough helped. I also learned to check doneness by using a themometer. This is really effective and easy resulting in perfectly done rolls and bread. Too bad I couldn't eat more than a taste--but that taste was very good.

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Pastro Pro I: Week 2: Cookies and Brownies

Cookies and brownies seem like such as easy topic when as a mom I've spent more years than I want to admit making them. I learned to bake first from my mother but more from a home economics class I took in high school. Over the years I have collected cookbooks and magazine recipes with many, many cookie recipes. I never gave much thought to modifying a basic recipe to suit my taste or using a "ratio" to make a cookie dough but that's the difference between the home cook and the professional. By learning the chemistry of baking it's possible to start thinking in a totally different way. Why did the cookie dough spread out so thin when I baked it?
It could be the fat (butter) or the type of flour (all purpose) and the temperature of the dough (room). To spread less the solution may be cake flour and chilled dough. If I want chewier cookies I can use bread flour and brown sugar. These are just a couple examples of the many facts we learned and then practiced in class. I also learned that creaming butter and sugar is a much longer process than I thought. To think, I've been undercreaming stuff all my life and probably drying stuff out by adding too much flour and overmixing it. Chef Loy did an excellent job of teaching this class and I learned so much.
Our class assignments included:
1-2-3 Cookie Dough: A very easy to remember recipe.
Take 2 pounds butter, 1 pound sugar, 1 Tbs vanilla and cream a LONG time, add 8 ounces of eggs, one at a time, then 3 pounds of flour and you have a basic dough. Add lemon zest or other flavors and make any type of cookie. The dough is missing salt, so adding it would be a good idea.
Rolled cookies from 1-2-3 dough
Gingersnaps (piped)
Nut cookies (molded)
Brownies (plain and cream cheese)
Carrot cookies (drop)
Whole wheat crackers
I volunteered to make a batch of the 1-2-3 dough for the class so I could use the "big bertha" mixer for the first time. That mixer is hugh and powerful. Imagine mixing 2 pounds of butter, sugar, and 3 pounds of flour in your home KitchenAid--no way.
Making all the different cookies was fun, not as stressful as savory cooking at all.
Tasting them at the end was very interesting.

I wish I hadn't accidentally left both my camera and cell phone at home so I could have photographed the 7 varieties of cookies we made. Four tables of students made a dozen of each of the different cookies--7 dozen per table--so at the end we spread out these 28 dozen cookies, brownies and crackers for all of us to sample. The sight of 336 cookies at 10:00 PM is hard to describe, particularly when you're hungry from not eating dinner but trying to lose a few pounds for an uncoming military conference requiring fitting into a too tight uniform. I nibbled on a few of the cookies and just brought the rest home. I was surprised to discover how much I loved the wheat crackers we made. When I saw the recipe I thought "yuk" and heard Chef Loy tell someone that "once you taste homemade crackers you'll never want store bought again."
I was doubtful, but the taste of the savory, spicy, salty cracker was unbelievable. Strange that in a cookie/brownie class I liked the cracker best. I spent the next day nibbling on my crackers making plans to try making them at home. My husband took the cookies to work and is becoming a very popular guy. He came home with a request for the brownie recipe but I told him to warn the guy that our recipes are written in pounds and ounces not cups and teaspoons.

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Sushi Demonstration at Texas Chef Association Meeting: May 6, 2009

I had the opportunity to volunteer for a TCA meeting held at the school. Chef Bobby Garza from Piranha Killer Sushi in Ft. Worth did a sushi demonstration and Chef Kurima asked for students to assist. Sign me up! Sushi is my favorite food and I have always admired the unique and beautiful creations at Piranha. The above photo does not do the sushi justice as most of it was gone by the time I could get my camera out. Everything he made disappeared instantly because it was not only beautiful but also delicious. I was able to make some things for him before the demo. He asked me to fry some corn tortillas cut into 6 wedges, put salt & pepper on them while they were hot. He showed me how to scrape tuna off the fish in such a way that the sinew and tough areas were omitted. He even allowed me to make it my own way which included mayo, sriracha, a chopped jalapeno. I tasted it and it was pretty bland but then Bobby added his touch to it--some finely chopped chives, more sriracha, and some tobiko (flying fish roe). It tasted fantastic after he was through.

Later, during the demo, he placed a spoonful of spicy tuna mixture on a tortilla wedge and added a squeeze of sriracha mayo. Out of this world! He gave us so many useful tips and new ideas I started taking notes so I wouldn't forget. He demonstrated how to hold a hand roll together by using a piece of rice as glue at the end. I have tried to make hand rolls and always struggled to keep it from unrolling. He had ideas for making a salmon tartare and using it on the chips like the spicy tuna or served alone. He had so many sauces in squeeze bottles that were made by mixing mayo with sriracha, mayo with wasabi, cilantro with rice wine vinegar, garlic and ginger, reduced soy sauce with sugar, and he had a few different tins of sea salts. He would take thin slices of sashimi, lay some thinly sliced Fuji apples on the plate and squeeze lime juice or one of the sauces on the plate, with a sprinkle of one of his sea salts. He took a plain tuna thin roll, placed several on the plate cut side up and sprinkled tobiko, some sriracha mayo, chives, then plain sriracha--a twist on spicy tuna roll. He showed us how to make a rainbow roll, then laid plastic wrap on top of it and cut through the plastic wrap which keeps the thinly sliced avocado and fish from moving around.

He demonstrated shaving a daikon and turning the thin spirals into shredded diakon for garnish.

I was so energized by watching him and learning his techniques. I can't wait to make sushi and try them out.

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Pastry Pro I: Week 1: Principles of Baking/Quick Breads

When Chef Kurima started the lecture for Pastry Pro I she told us that pastry is all about "chemistry". Later she said we would be "scaling" which involves math and weighing everything. This information did not thrill me since math and chemistry were not my strongest subjects in high school and college. Although I have been baking since the age of 14 which I took home economics in high school (do they still even teach that?) I have not used recipes that call for 2 pounds of flour, 1/4 ounce cinnamon, 8 ounces brown sugar, 1 1/2 pounds granulated sugar, and 1 1/4 pounds whole butter--and now take this recipe and scale it by making only 1/4 the recipe. Fortunately when table assignments were made I got Jessica who is a math teacher.

She said she always uses a calculator though so maybe that isn't such a plus. My other table mate is Brent, a firefighter who is just starting both Chef Pro I and Pastry Pro I at the same time. You see Pastry Pro I is a beginning class so a person just starting out could be in the class or someone like me who has already taken Chef Pro I and II. Brent is nice but he has not been baking for *&% years like me and has an irritating habit of calling me "ma'am" everytime I talk to him. Maybe I should let one of the hot muffin pans accidentally touch him next time he does it.

I learned about the "baking process" and the importances of gases forming which cause the dough to rise. Steam is created when heat is applied--as the moisture in a dough is heated; yeast and baking powder release additional carbon dioxide when placed in a hot oven. Gases expand and leaven the product. In a nutshell, starches gelatinize, proteins coagulate, fats melt, water evaporates and sugars caramelize. And to think, all these years I have been baking for my family and didn't realize all this technical information. I swear I have produced birthday cakes for my 4 children, numerous baked goods for bake sales, holiday gifts, for friends, and for my family in ignorance. Fortunately I have been a very good baker but I'm sure that will soon end now that I'm doing it for a grade. As I found out in Chef Pro, years of home cooking experience don't always give you a great edge since working in a commercial/production kitchen is far different from cooking at home. Baking in school is very different from baking at home. Although I have used recipes in which I measured ingredients with a scale, those recipes were already "scaled" and I was the only one baking. At school there are 12 people, all trying to get their things in the 2 convection ovens at different times which also means they are checking them and taking them out at different times which translates into HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO OPEN MY OVEN DOOR! We were told we need to start communicating about putting in multiple things at the same time so the door isn't opening at all during the first half of our cooking time. That will not be easy as I've learned that communication with fellow students can be very challenging.

We were given assignments to make the following:

Basic Berry Muffins

Creme Chantilly

Simple Buttercream

Country Biscuits

Sour Cream Muffins

Streusel Topping

Classic spongecake

After getting used to working alone last semester I now had to get back into the groove of working as a group. We started with biscuits and all took turns doing the different steps. I started working on the biscuit dough but Chef Loy noticed I looked like I knew what I was doing and asked if anyone else had ever made biscuits. The others hadn't, so I stepped back and watched Brent make the biscuits. He overworked the dough a bit but they still turned out good.

I did the same for the other recipes--tried to step back and let the others do things they haven't done before. All in all it was quite enjoyable and our products turned out very good (except for the spongecake which we overcooked). Our sour cream muffins were so pretty some of my classmates wanted them so I was happy to give some away. The only negative I can see so far in this Pastry Pro class is sampling the food we've made. Imagine sampling all 12 classmates' 4 or 5 recipes at the end of the night. Here I am trying to take off the few pounds I gained the last 2 semesters so I can fit into my summer military uniform and I'm tempted with the smell of fresh biscuits, muffins, cake. This is going to be very hard! Although the bottom photo is not related to Pastry class I included it. It is from the Big Taste of Ft. Worth, an event in which the culinary school was represented. Lisa and I staffed the booth and had a great time. The event was held at the Hilton Hotel in Ft. Worth and is a fund raiser for Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Many of the best local restaurants were there with tastings of their food. My husband, Steve, and Lisa's husband, Grady, bought tickets and enjoyed the event while we worked. But at the end we did get to make the rounds and sample things. My favorite was the gumbo from Buttons Restaurant.

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