Baking and Pastry Journal Week 4

Baking Monday 01-28-2008

This week we started with breads. Our goals were to make a challah loaf, baguettes, and soft rolls again.

The Challah bread we learned is a Jewish ritual bread that produces the best french toast. I have heard this fact from three chefs now and wants to try it for breakfast some day. Maybe we will get a chance to make it again in class and I can take a loaf home to make french toast the next morning. The Challah bread ended up being a very quick proofing bread which is nice. It is also a very rich bread because it has a lot of eggs in it.

The specific recipe we used could have made two Challah loaves… but… Marie and I were having a little too much fun and ended up dropping it, not good. We cut off almost half the dough that was contaminated, I was very embarrased. It was a silly accident really, I had the bowl we were going to proof the dough in and she had the dough in a nice ball. She threw the dough a little hard being funny and I didn’t have ahold of the bowl and it all dropped to the ground. Luckily only part of it touched the nasty floor, needless to say we didn’t offer any of our bread to anyone cause we knew what happened. It did bake up beautifully though. A little browner than I am used to but it was cooked wonderfully and Chef says that it was a nice brown. He likes dark and says we are just conditioned to like a lighter brown because we are used to loaves from the grocery mart that are cooked from a mix. Makes sense but it will take some getting used to in order to get the desired dark brown colors on my breads.

We combined the yeast and water then the remaining wet ingredients. We then added the flour, sugar and salt mix and used the mixer with the dough hook for about ten minutes. We had to add a little extra flour in order to get the consistency we wanted.

While Marie and I worked on the Challah bread Matt and Bobby worked on our soft roll dough like we made last week. We decided to go with a more healthy and different bread so we used whole wheat flour, not my favorite but I am always up for trying something new (especially since our last ones turned out well). These turned out okay but not great. When we proofed them they didn’t raise as much as the white dough did. I am not sure if it was because the dough was much tighter or if it was because we had a mistake in one of our steps. The taste of these rolls were not as enjoyable as the white ones but I don’t think its because they bread was bad I think it was just because it was whole wheat and a little drier than the previous ones. I think we will need to try those again in order to perfect the roll.

We were also able to make cinnamon rolls. Unfortunatley we weren’t aware we could do this today and we had made only wheat dough so… our cinnamon rolls were whole wheat. Very different than regular cinnamon rolls but still good. What wouldn’t be with cinnamon sugar and tons of butter? These were cooked nicely. Chef mentioned that he preffered whipped cream as the frosting and our table decided to do the conventional royal icing and mix it in the whipped cream, it was a perfect frosting for that type of roll.

Then we learned a new way to make the baguettes. It was called Autolyse. This is the way I would do it at home, it was much easier and I thought the baguettes tasted better in the end. It could be my imagination since it was two weeks since I had my last baguette, but I finished this one and didn’t finish my first one. The Autolyse way means we use room temp water instead of warm water, about 80 degree water and add that and the flour to the sponge. We then mixed that for a little over 10 minutes as well. We weighed out 1 pound pieces and shaped them in torpedos and set on the bench covered with plastic. (Instead of the proof box) Chef mentioned that sometimes this method could produce a better quality bread. Once we folded our baguettes and got our seems laid down on the baguette pan we let them sit once again covered until they were ready to bake.

I was happy to learn this way because I was wondering why we were learning to only use the proof box when I am sure those haven’t been around for long and I know for a fact that your average home kitchen isn’t going to have one. People make wonderful breads at home and the Autolyse method is how.

Once our breads were all ready and proofing we watched a video. The video pretty much recapped the 12 steps of baking we learned last week: Scaling, mixing, fermentation, punching, scaling, shaping, benching, shape, fermentation, baking, cooling, and storing.

This video did clear up the Bakers % for me.

Basically the amount of flour you have is 100%, the water will always be 65% of the flour weight, salt 2%, and yeast 1.5%. This is a great tip because now you don’t have to use a specific recipe, you can use what you want based on the amount of flour you have. The video also mentioned that for a bakery it is best to always measure by weight and not volume.

The video proceeded on to the 4 mixing stages:

Pickup stage – low speed to bond to ingredients

Cleanup stage – bowl cleans, uniform incorporation of the ingredients

The pickup and cleanup stages should take about 3 minutes on low speed

Development stage – the gluten strengthens

Final stage – uniform mix at the desired temperature

The development and final stages should take about 3-4 minutes on high speed

We also got a quick tip about under and over mixing doughs: if you overmix your dough it can lose flavor and be sticky, if you undermix it it can be dry. Also if you increase the temperature of the dough the fermentation rate will increase as well. I thought this video was helpful to tie together some of our notes from Chef.

Once the video was over we put all our breads in the oven, the soft rolls, cinnamon rolls, baguettes, and Challah bread. I think they all came out well and Chef agreed. The only thing we should have done differently was wait for the Challah bread to cool a little more before we cut it because there was a little matting in the center after we sliced it. I really like making these breads but next week I really want to try and slice my baguette because I haven’t had a chance to do that yet and I know from my team mates that it is a challenge and needs practice. Next week I will be first in line at my table to slice my baguettes, hopefully I won’t ruin any of them.

Here are all of our breads:

Materials used: Baguette pan, beast mixer, kitchen aids, dough hooks, spatulas, loaf pans, spoons, digital scale, parchment paper, and sheet pans.

Pastry Tuesday 01-29-2008

Today was SUPER busy and there were a couple frustrations but nothing serious. We started the day off with a test which I think I did okay on, hopefully I will get an A. We then got yet another lecture on people being lazy in class not cleaning and many people not doing any homework and therefor failing. It is nice that Chef will warn these people but again it really irritates me that I pay thousands of dollars to hear lectures addressed to people (not me). It takes out of my class time that I pay for, guess theres nothing that can be done about that so I will move on.

Chef did a few demos today which were good to see. I like that we are able to actually see what our outcome should be, or not be… Chef got too busy during the demos and overmixed the cake batter and they sank. It was crazy they looked like a bowls made of cake batter. He said “my bad” which was sort of funny. He fixed it of course with the next cakes. I was actually glad to see those cakes because then Chef spent a little more time on why that happened and I now know what to try and avoid. The cake he demonstrated was a Genoise cake. This is a dry cake by nature and has no chemical leaveners in it such as baking powder.

Chef and us as individuals started out by whipping the warmed eggs and sugar on high to add volume. The sifted flour was then folded (not stirred, be gentle) into the egg and sugar emulsion. If you work from the outside of the bowl in you will avoid stirring or overmixing it. Chef stated that it was ok to have chunks of flour in the completed cake which surprised me. I understand they shouldn’t be throughout but I would think that none would be ideal. That is why I am at school and he is the teacher though.

I was thankful for these tips: an underwhipped emulsion will not give you the height you need and an overwhipped emulsion will cause your cake to fall. While watching all of these demos and trying to keep up with the notes and not missing any of the demo I was getting overwhelmed. I had no idea what kind of work went into a cake and the frosting. I was beyond overwhelmed with all the french terms being thrown around. I never took French and I am having a hard time knowing what Chef is refering to sometimes. He says things like roulade, joconde, genoise and sometimes I don’t figure out what it is until I am making it myself. I guess its good I eventually figure it out but I am starting to wonder if a Culinary French Language class shouldn’t be offered at the school to help with people like me. Or maybe just a weekend seminar.

My genoise cake came out pretty well for my first one but we didn’t have time to try the Joconde Biscuit Chef showed us. It was actually pretty neat Chef started out with the twile batter I made and spread it out over the silpat. It can be spread in any design with a pastry comb (which I can’t find anywhere to buy). Then freeze that and pour the Joconde mix over it then bake. Once it is cooled and inverted the design that was combed in it earlier. That can be wrapped around a cake or put into a mold. I assume we will see the other options for that batter next week. I look forward to using the twile batter and other cake batters.

After the demos we were supposed to make our own cake batter, a French butter cream icing  and an Italian butter cream icing. The icings are a lot like the meringues we did last week but when the butter is added after the sugar and water get to ball state you slowly add that to the egg mixture then slowly add the butter. I have had a reputation ever since I was little about being impatient but it was pounded into my head that I need to work on it even more than before because these icings take TONS of patience. I kept thinking my icing was broken or I did something wrong but all it needed was more mixing with the paddle attachment. I needed to get the butter to incorporate better than it was. Once Chef told me patience about four times then it finally looked like his did. During the demo it just didn’t seem to take quite as long. I made my French butter cream a chocolate butter cream and it was great. I am not sure I am a big fan of the butter cream icings, they taste like munching on a sweet stick of butter. The chocolate cut the strong butter flavor. I think next week if we get the chance I may try to make another cake with a citrus butter cream icing. Maybe throw zest of an orange, lemon or lime in there.

So once I waited for the butter creams to paddle longer they turned out great along with my two genoise cakes. They were perfectly browned and didn’t round on top or sink in the middle, not bad for my first go around. Tomorrow I will get to decorate them.

Materials used: Spatulas, burner, pot, candy thermometer, cake pans, parchment paper, cooling rack, paring knife, sheet pans, spoons, and stainless steel bowls. This is going to get repeptitive I am sure.

Pastry Wednesday 01-30-2008

Today made me feel like a five year old. We started off with Chef doing a demo on how to mask a cake with the butter creams we made. The best frosting of a cake I have ever done is spread it on top while the cake is still in the pan. I have never taken a cake out of the pan, cooled it properly, cut it to make layers, stacked my layers with different frostings, and then “masked” my cake. It it were me doing it at home I probably would have left it at the rustic look but Chef wants us to smooth it out, make it look nice and cared for almost like a piece of art. Another part of cake making that is going to take patience and TONS of practice.

Chef mentioned the bottom of the cake being a large cookie. We didn’t do that this time but I am interested to taste a cake with a cookie on the bottom and to see what and why that is done. If we would have used the cookie on the bottom Chef would have started with that but for this week we are simply using our first two 8″ round genoise cakes we made yesterday. Mine are about 2″ high max I think his may have been even shorter and he got four layers out of each of his cakes. That is another skill that is going to take some getting used to. So:

Cake on the bottom, paint simple syrup, layer with butter cream, cake, simple syrup, butter cream, etc. until you get the desired height. The cake should remain 90 degrees so it doesn’t look like its falling over or have any weak spots. Once the layers are set in place put your cake in the freezer to shock for a bit (set up). Then you can spread the remaining butter cream on the top of the cake and work your way around the sides to the bottom. Once the cake is covered but not smooth shock the cake again (25 minutes worked for me). Get a warm water bucket to put your spatula in so the knife will cut through or glide over to smooth the cake out. This was also much harder than Chef made it look but at he keeps telling us this is our 1st cake and he has been doing this for over 30 years.

I followed these steps and struggles a bit, I had to reshock my cake in the freezer a couple times because it took me so long to get it decent. Once it was masked and shocked for the last time we started practicing our piping but because it looked like a five year old made it I scraped off the piped butter cream and will try again next week. During the minutes of down time Joy and I made more cakes to use next week which we will hopefully make much nicer than these ones.

The downs for the day were when I was slicing my cake into layers. I have never used my bread knife and sliced my finger open. It was stupid really because not two minutes before I did it Joy did it also. Trying to mask and slice cakes with a badnaid and finger condom on is quite the challenge. What an idiot I can be sometimes; out of all my knives and I cut myself with the bread knife. Nice!

Materials used: Cake pans, parchment paper, paring knife, spatula, pastry bags and tips, sheet pans, burner, pot, turning cake stand and the bread knife.

~ by Tasha on February 5, 2008.