Saucy

Yippee, I made it to Friday! My legs and feet definitely are not used to this. Standing. My hands are cracked from so much washing, washing, and washing.

Today we reviewed the history of baking and the teacher demonstrated some sauces. Caramel, chocolate, and crème anglaise... mmm... tasty.

The caramel was totally different than how I normally make it. I only take it to 245 degrees (ish) and it is with the cream in it... Hm. I wonder what I am making.

The chocolate sauce is pretty simple and very tasty. It is interesting how shiny it is in the end.

The best sauce was the crème anglaise. I have never had it. Only four ingredients but so good I wanted to cry! I am so glad we got to bring home samples AND that the Level 2 pastry students made angel food cake and shared. :)

Chef WW also did a demo of how to make a coronet. As part of our skill checks, we have to make 12 coronets. I could not for the life of me, make one without a hole in the bottom. Grr. Must practice. Dang, I should have brought home potatoes and parchment!!!

Alan treated me to a slice of week 1 done/celebratory pie at our favorite pizza joint, Escape from New York Pizza. It was perfect.

Have a good weekend all. Watch out for those ice pellets.

Knuckles bleed less

Day 2 done. Today was a knife skills demo and PIZZA! Not your LQP here, no sirry bob. We could put anything we wanted on our pizza. First we mixed up the dough and while it bulk fermented, we got the toppings ready. I went with yellow and green peppers, mushrooms, red onion, fresh basil, and a garlic cream sauce. And on top of that, BACON. Chef H brought out a giant box of bacon and one of the other students put it in a pan, oh the smell is heavenly. Other folks had zucchini, goat cheese, potatoes, pepperoni, Canadian bacon... Next time, anchovies!

It is all kind of a blur but I think I have it down...

-Formula (recipe)-
bulk ferment
Punch down
scale and shape
proof
wash
bake
EAT

My table mates are all so fun. High school grad, ex-Marine, and more. Everyone in class just wants to bake. There are only 12 of us so it is a great size class. Not crowded, enough ingredients, just feels safe. Here are some pictures from the day. Note, the perfect round pizza with all vegetables is not mine. I had to take a picture of the perfection though. ;)

We also got to watch the process for a baguette and breadsticks. The Chef from the advanced pastry student section kept coming in with fancy stuff like angel food cake and cheesecake, I wanted to cry. Later, Chef H was packing up cupcakes, yes cupcakes, for something else and when there was leftovers, I missed them. They were claimed on the other side of the room and I didn't even see it.

:(

I did get a picture of the cupcakes that got away. I am not above bribing Chef H. She mentioned her favorite food is pancakes... I have a certain spiced pancake mix that is super tasty that I want to figure out how to make myself anyway...

Love your dough

The apartment in Portland is different. The view from our apartment building roof top is sweet and the lobby right now is decorated with huge, lush poinsettias and they even have a wrapping table with supplies so people can wrap holiday gifts. I miss my yarn cabinet but it is exciting to live in a city with multiple (YES MULTIPLE) cupcake shops! Also, Escape from New York Pizza is literally 10 minutes walking distance.

Today was day one in pastry school. I was nervous but really excited. The Chef for this term is funny and nice. Ha, I forgot my scale. It is sitting down by the mixers in the student lounge. :)

How was it you ask? Crazy. We hadn't even got through inspection of our tool kits and we had 2 injuries (not me!), one requiring a call to mom and dad for a quick visit to urgent care. The knives are so sharp, shiny, and new...

The kit, an collection of lovely tools... chef, bread, and paring knife, zester, measuring spoons and cups, calculator, scale (that I left, jeesh), a vegetable peeler, and piping tips. I do need to add a few things, a microplane, a parisian scoop, a bench scrapper, and a bowl scrapper.

We did get in the kitchen a bit. We learned where all the supplies are and then we practiced measuring out stuff for recipes (my table had corn muffins and butter bread). Chef then tried a couple of the recipes that were measured out to just show us a bit of process. She mixed up the whole wheat rolls and butter bread. The rolls we quick proofed (too much, oops) and then they baked for a bit. They were ok tasting but not great. The butter bread was left to proof overnight. We then learned all about cleaning up our spaces. You could eat off those counters!

Anyway, I think we get to make pizza tomorrow but I am not sure. I will let ya'll know. The best news, we can bring cameras. In fact, they encourage it so we can see just how much we progress over the time we are here.