Pastry Pro I: Week 7: Custards

A custard is anything thickened by the coagulation of egg proteins. Custards can be stirred or baked. Stirred custards are cooked on the stove top and must be stirred throughout cooking to stabilize the eggs and prevent curdling (overcooking). Think of the filling for a cocount cream pie, made with pastry cream. Pastry cream is a custard. Another common custard in creme anglaise (vanilla custard sauce). Now I have some experience making custards. I have made successful creme brulee, panna cotta, and recently a very good coconut cream pie so I went into this class with confidence. How hard could it be to make some custards after all? Chef Loy warned us about curdling and the thin line between perfection and ruin so I was a little worried.
Pastry class in Texas when it's 100 degrees outside is also a factor. It's hard to concentrate 80+ degree kitchen! We were given the the following assignments:

Pastry Cream

Vanilla Custard Sauce

Chocolate Mousse

Creme Brulee

Lemon Curd

Panna Cotta

Flan

Fresh Fruit Bavarian

I was teamed with Eric and gave him first choice for 4 items. He picked Chocolate Mousse,

Creme Brulee, Lemon Curd and the Bavarian.

I thought things were going well as I was making my flan. It seemed pretty simple. I made pastry cream and then realized it was awfully thick and lumpy looking although I did everything according to the instructions (and I have made this before!) The creme anglaise looked fine, however I saw some signs of curdling around the edges of the pan so that should have clued me in on the fact that it was overdone but I have never made this before so I wasn't sure. I now know what overdone creme angliase looks like though. My panna cotta looked pretty good but when it was tasted it was definitely a little too "tight", meaning too much gelatin. Working with sheet gelatin is a little tricky so this will take some practice to get right. The pastry cream turned into a too thick, lumpy mass by tasting time. Surprisingly, the flan was very good but the sauce I attempted to create was not so good--brown sugar, syrup, nuts got very hard and sticky.
Eric's mousse was good, the Bavarian cream OK, the creme brulee a little soft, and he did not get the lemon curd done. Although most of what we made turned out either mediocre to bad it was a good demonstration of the frustrating dynamic of failing to make something due to the situation. I could go into my kitchen right now and make very good pastry cream with a recipe from the textbook but I'm not juggling 3 or 4 other dishes using different equipment and around a lot of distractions. The factors at school that make cooking ordinary dishes hard are being timed, unfamiliar equipment, and unfamiliar ingredients. Also, making something for the first time is always a gamble. The pastry cream at school used flour but I prefer using cornstarch for smoothness. I would have also reduced the amount of flour but I didn't know it at the time.
Now do I want to go home and practice making something with these ingredients?:
1 quart half and half
1 vanilla bean, split
12 egg yolks
10 oz sugar
Whisk eggs yolks and sugar together in a mixing bowl. Temper the egg mixture with 1/3 of the hot cream, return entire mixture to saucepan. Cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly until thick enough to coat back of a spoon. Do NOT allow the sauce to boil. As soon as it thickens, remove it form the heat, strain it and put in a clean bowl. Chill over an ice bath.
(This is the recipe for Creme Anglaise)
I have a 5 year physical for my job coming up this fall so after culinary school for a year I'm afraid to see what the cholesterol level is going to be!

Read more »

Pastry Pro 1: Week 6: Laminated Doughs

Chef Loy

The thing I love about culinary school is learning new things and then seeing the finished
product. Other than cakes, which I bake for my family and friends, and holiday cookies, the occasional dinner rolls, quick breads, and cookies, I have stayed away from baking due to time constraints and the constant worry about weight gain. After working all day I hardly have time to make dinner let alone bake something. And then of course, the fact that it doesn't take too many pieces of any baked good to add on the pounds. I typically buy a loaf of multi-grain bread from Artisan Baking Company and enjoy a slice each morning. I would love to go to a bakery and stock up on danish pastries and croissants but then I would be in big trouble when I go for my annual physical (which is coming up soon!) One of the students in my class mentioned that her cholesterol level is up 70 points since starting pastry class. I'll soon find out the damage report on myself. I still treasure the learning process and even if I don't make laminated dough too often at least I'll know how if the occasion ever comes up and I am now capable of making a beautiful and tasty croissant I think a treat of homemade croissants at Christmas would be wonderful. And, if you've ever looked at a Williams-Sonoma catalog they sell frozen croissants for a small fortune ($39.95 for 15) and they come frozen and you have to bake them yourself!

Lamination refers to the process of layering the dough and fat. When baked, the butter worked into the layers of dough gives off moisture, and the steam causes the thin layers of dough to puff and rise. There is no substitute for butter here--can't use olive oil or reduce the amount of butter or it won't be the same thing. Folding is the most critical factor--the layers must be even and consistent. The process of folding is not all that complicated but requires repeating at least 3 times with resting and cooling periods in between. The whole whole process takes hours from start to finish but the finished product is out of this world. Much better than what they call "croissants" at most stores and even bakeries. I usually skip them because I've had so many bad croissants over the years. I do love a really good chocolate croissant though, so maybe I'll try making that eventually. Some good tips we learned--brush off excess flour between turns, keeep the dough covered during the resting and folding periods, and don't roll it too thin.

Last week we started our croissant/danish and puff pastry doughs by encasing the butter in the dough. We froze the dough for both puff pastry and croissants with the intention of doing the folds in tonight's class and then baking off a small piece of dough and saving the rest for a class later on when we would make finished products with our doughs. Chef Loy gave a very detailed and interesting lecture on lamination and then threw out a lot of French terms which I hope I can remember. Bouchees, vol-au-vents and feuilletees are some of the different types of puff pastries. We went to our stations and started by working on a new type of dough, blitz puff pastry. Now this is something very useful. It's a short cut to the much more time consuming real puff pastry and is made somewhat like a biscuit dough. We cut in the butter, some salted water and the made a shaggy dough, rolled it out, folded it, chilled it and folded it 4 more times, chilling it in between. This was not hard at all and resulted in a very flaky and puff like product. On the other hand, the puff dough from the freeze did not perform. Our puff samples were pathetic, flat and ugly. The croissant dough, however, made lovely croissants, largely due to the yeast in that dough. Since we were supposed to use the frozen dough later on I know I'm going to have to make my own at home, which is good because then I'll have to practice.

Croissants

We were able to use the blitz dough to make anything we wanted. I was attracted to the palmiers and wanted to make some. Later I realized that I used to buy very large palmiers at the bakery for my mother but they were called elephant ears. She loved those things and it made me sad when I thought about how tickled she'd be to have a homemade palmier from me. If fact, all the things we're doing in the lamination classes are things my mother dearly loved. In Japan she grew up eating French bakery goods--the cream puff, eclairs, croissants and such and always spoke fondly of them, but she was not a pastry maker and we never lived near any French bakeries so I didn't appreciate her good taste. I wish she could be here today when I practice making more palmiers. I miss her so much but her love of cooking, gardening, and making things for people will live on in me. Thanks Mom.

Read more »

Pastry Pro I: Week 5: Pies and Tarts

What is not to love about pies and tarts? I have made pies all my life, including my earliest pies when I was a young teenager. I didn't know anything about gluten formation then and couldn't figure out why my pie crust had the texture of cardboard. I just mixed that dough until it was completely together since I didn't know better. In recent years I have learned not to overmix the dough but my very limited practice, mostly Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas, has not always been successful. The great thing about culinary school is finding out why things didn't turn out right. Chef Kurima explained the importance of chilling the pie dough before rolling it, something I always did, but then she also advised chilling the pie crust after it's been rolled, something I never did. Chilling it keeps it from shinking while baking, which is what happened to my apple pie a few months ago. She gave us hints such as putting large rubber bands on the ends of the rolling pin to keep the dough from getting thinner than 1/8 inch and the best one was using a method where the butter is chopped, put in with the flour and placed on the working surface. Then a rolling pin is used to roll the bits of butter, the flour is moved around, more butter is rolled and this is repeated several times. Liquid is added until the dough holds together. We tried this technique and it worked very well. The interesting thing is that it took a lot less liquid than the other methods. We also learned to move the dough around as we were rolling it out, use as little flour as possible, and brush off excess flour before baking.
We also had a lesson on laminated dough. Think puff pastry and croissants. We learned to "lock the butter" and will continue with this subject next week. We made a dough, rolled it into a square, took 9.5 ounces of butter (yes--that is a lot of butter) and flattened it, then placed it in the center of the rolled and dough, folded in the edges of the dough like an envelope and double wrapped. We made both puff pastry and croissant dough. Next week we'll continue with the next steps. I have a feeling I will not be making too much laminated pastry on my own since butter is on my list of things to avoid for healthy heart reasons.
Pie crust, on the other hand, can be made with a combination of vegetable shortening and butter and takes less than laminated dough. We made the following:





Pate Brisee
12 oz pastry flour
.3 oz salt (1 1/2 tsp)
.3 oz sugar (1 1/2 tsp)
6 oz butter, chilled
4 oz eggs
.6 oz water (4 tsp)
4 drops vanilla extract

We also made Pate Sucree (tart dough) which was similar to the brisee, except we creamed the butter and sugar like cookie dough.
We chilled our doughs, rolled them out, place dough in mini pie tins, chilled again, then blind baked them. Blind baking involves docking the dough (poking holes in it too keep it from puffing up) and placing a piece of foil on the crust weighted down by beans, then baking it.
Our crusts were baked and we all sampled them. Some were made with butter only (best flavor), shortening only (bland), and a combination of both (ok). We also sampled the baklava we made as a class last week. I have never made baklava and have had it many times but didn't care much for it, however this baklava was wonderful, not too sweet and very flavorful. I will definitely make it at home. I will also practice pie making as soon as possible.





Preparing to lock in the butter...

Read more »

Pastry Pro I: Week 4: Pastry Doughs

This is not an area of familiarity for me when it comes to baking. Of all the topics we covered in class: Pate a Choux, Meringue, Crepes, and Phyllo I have very limited experience with most.
I've never made Pate a Choux (which means paste of cabbages), nor do I care much for the end products which include cream puffs, eclairs, and beignets. Oh, I've eaten my share of chocolate eclairs and churros but they are on the list of things I usually avoid. My mother was a big cream puff lover and pastries made with pate a choux are very popular in Japan. Her favorite treat was a cream puff but I always preferred cookies or cakes, preferably chocolate. I have made meringue before, a very good low fat cookie called "forgotten cookies" is made from meringue and I've made them before. Problem was they tasted so good I ate them all in a couple days therefore accomplishing nothing by making low calorie cookies. I've also made many dishes requiring whipped egg whites but we made some different things in class such as swiss meringue in which egg whites and sugar are cooked over simmering water, then whipped until stiff.
The stiff mixture is then piped into shapes, baked, then can be used as a base or cup for fruit, puddings, mousse, etc. I tried the finished product which looked beautiful but was so sweet it made my teeth hurt! Don't think I'll be using too much swiss meringue in the future. Making crepes was very educational. I've enjoyed eating them but never made them before. The batter is mixed in a blender, sits at least 1 hour, then spread thinly in the crepe pan. My first few were ugly but then they got much better. I made some apple filling and Tela made some brandy whipped cream. Crepes with caramel apple and sea salt with brandy whipped cream were delicious. (A little too much cinnamon though) We all participated in making baklava. I made the honey/sugar syrup, Eric made the nut mixture, and Lisa prepared the first several layers of dough. Tela, a baklava expert, cut it into perfect diamonds. We'll taste it next week.
I asked my husband later if he thought I should try to make it and he said he preferred chocolate baklava. Hmmm, I may look into that. Making popovers was a bonus and very interesting. This is another thing I've never made but it's very simple. I never thought about adding ingredients to popovers but Chef Kurima suggested adding fruit, herbs, spices, etc.
I'm including the recipe here. My version had grated parmesan cheese and finely diced fresh rosemary, however anything you like can be added--just keep the quantity small so it will rise.
10 oz vegetable oil
8 oz AP flour
1 tsp salt
6 eggs
16 oz whole milk
3 oz whole butter, melted
Place small amount of oil (1/2 oz) in each muffin tin or popover tin and use pastry brush to spread over all the surface. Place pan in 425 degree oven until hot.
Sift flour, salt together and place in large bowl. In separate bowl whisk together eggs, milk, and butter. Pour liquid over dry ingredients and whip until smooth. OK to do this by hand.
Remove pan from oven and fill each 2/3 full . Bake at 425 for 20 min. (less if using mini muffin pans), then reduce temp to 275 and bake 10 more min. (less if using mini muffin pans)
Serve hot.

Read more »