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...

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Pastry Pro 1: Week 6: Laminated Doughs

Chef LoyThe thing I love about culinary school is learning new things and then seeing the finishedproduct. 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...

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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...

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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....

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