Week 3!!! Yum!!

Lets see if I can fit all 3 classes in this post!

Intro to Cooking Techniques

This weeks class was focused on Garnishing. I was excited for this class... until only 3 of us showed.. that's half the class... so then I figured that maybe this class wasn't going to be as exciting as I thought it would be ... but I shrugged it off, I was definitely excited to learn how to garnish. So, chef showed us how to make a palm tree out of a carrot, a penguin out of a squash, tulip from radish, crab out of a cucumber and a basket out of a lemon!

Let me tell you a funny story. So this Carrot Palm Tree is really supposed to look like this picture on the right. Well, Chef didn't have green peppers so he made the palm tree out of one carrot... it didn't really look like a palm tree but it passed for one. After the demo, Chef walked out of the room for a second and all 3 of us looked at each other and were like "that carrot!!!! phallic!! ahh!" He walked back in so we resumed to doing our own garnishing..... then! Another Chef next door came in, he's completely opposite of our Chef. So next door chef walks in and looks at the palm tree and asks "Who made this?!?" and our Chef says "I did." Then next-door chef says "Chef, are you aware that it looks like a penis!?!" hahahaha our Chef then says "Chef! Don't put these thoughts in my students head, now you ruined it for them!" All three of us just looked at each other... it was hilarious.

Anyways! I made a lady bug radish, an orange basket, 2 radish tulips, and a Kermit the frog look a like. Oh!! and!! I tried to make a flower out of carrot shaving but I couldn't figure it out, so I made a mat out of thin carrot shavings, and scallions cut lengthwise... oh and I made a little radish rat but I didn't cut ears like the picture up above. So that was that class!

Intro to Baking

This week we learned about different types of flour, about wheat, about gluten. There's the Endosperm, Bran and Germ ...different parts of the wheat... and yeah... gluten is important... we learned about different dough conditioners and what flours are good for gluten-free baking and all sorts of other stuff... stuff that I have to study for my assessment test next week... hopefully I'll have a better understanding of stuff and I'll be able to give you a more clear idea of specific things we learned.

Honestly though, I know this test is gonna be an easy one, Chef practically gave us all the questions and answers and what to study. Something that she keeps on mentioning though, is that for example these flour and gluten chapters we will have better understanding of them when we have our Bread Making class... so I think all this stuff we are going to learn in this class will make better sense when we take the classes and can put 2 and 2 together.


Retail Pastry Production

This week was hard core DANISH week!!!! WAAAHH!! Haha I volunteered to do the inventory side.. so me and my partner took inventory and set up trays. Then when doing inventory there were no more nut danishes or fruit danishes left, so we had to make danishes! We made the Nut filling out of crushed hazelnuts (my fav!!) sugar and old dough. oh and water! Then we grabbed some danish dough and used this huge flattening machine that was kind of hard to figure out... but we got it!

Once it was rolled to the length and thickness we needed, we brought it back to the table.... covered half of it (length wise) with nut filling, spread the top with egg wash, folded top half over the nut half. Took a rolling pin to it just to lightly seal it up. Then we took the pizza cutter roller thing and cut strips 3oz each ... one person cut the other person stretched... once we got that down, we toll twisted it.... then rolled it into a swirl, tucked the end under and BAM hit it with the heel of the palm. By the time we were done with the fruit danishes our hands were covered in delicious nut filling that I just wanted to gobble up... but ya know..... eh.. can't really do that there.
(Ours don't look like this pic... but here's one to make you hungry!!!! yum yum)

Then to end the class we cut pizza dough in 6 oz chunks and rolled them into boules! 12 of which were used to make pizza which I later consumed for lunch!! Yum yum yum yum yum.

I did it! Got all 3 classes in!!!

Until next time! Enjoy food ya'll!!

Week 2: Retail Pastry Production

So!

I'm not going to really write about Intro to Baking... it really is a cool class, like I mentioned in another post, we learn about the scientific side of baking... I'm not sure if you readers would be interested in it... I'll give a quick synopsis of what we learned this week. We went over different types of heating (conduction, convection, radiation etc.), types of metal cookware (copper, aluminum, stainless steal), science of the baking process (mixing, baking and cooling), and different tastes (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami) and how the environment and other things effects the outcome of the product (lighting, plating, texture.)

We learned things like a copper pot is ideal for candy making because its the the one that conducts heat the highest the one just below that, I think, was aluminum. A dull aluminum pan would heat faster than a shiny one because the dullness attracts the heat. We learned about olfactory cells (?) and blah blah... haha I don't remember everything right now.



Retail Pastry Production

Woohoo!! Love this class! Yes I have to wake up at 430am on a freakin saturday but FUCK Yes I get to wake up at 430am on a saturday and go and do something I LOVE!!!! :)

Anyways! So, last week I learned the inventory, setting up of pastries and I learned a bit about measuring, and shaping dough. This week I got to make the dough! Let me think... what'd we do? We made.... baguette dough! Out of that dough we cut and shapped like ??... 10? 15? baguettes? half were 10 oz i think and the other were 16? i dont remember...

Then we made sourdough bread. I think it was a rye sourdough bread... threw in some ::vomit:: caraway seeds. So! The cool thing about making the sourdough bread is that I got to meet MOM! MOM is the sourdough starter! She is....I think I was told she's 20 yrs old. Super awesome!! So! We had like 2 buckets of MOM in the walk-through (the fridge) so Chef asked us to stir them down and consolidate the 2. So, we took out what MOM we needed, stirred the buckets up, and tried to consolidate as much we could. (Here's a pic of a sourdough starter, this is probably a good enough size for home, at school we have 2 HUGE tubs of MOM.)

That was exciting! I have yet to learn how to feed mom... something I'm super looking forward too! I'd like to have a sourdough starter at home! So, this class will teach me how to take care of MOM!

I feel like we did some other stuff too. hmm.... can't remember anything.....my mind is so warped from waking up early for production today (I'm running a little behind with this blog.. I just finished up week 3)  and not sleeping enough last night and having too long of a nap this afternoon.

Oh! Focaccia!! We made Focaccia dough with roasted garlic!! DELISH-ISH-ISH! So, we made the dough, we let it proof.. for I don't remember how long but it had to rise to be pretty big... then we oiled pans and spread out the dough in each pan, but the dough retracts, so we push it out at least 1/2 the pan let it sit for 15 min and press out, sit, press out, sit until you have the pan filled out. Brush the Focaccia with oil and you're good to go!!

So!! Until next time!! Enjoy your food ya'll!!

Week 1: Part 2

Alright!!!

On with the next class!!!

Intro to Baking
This class really excites me! It's about the science behind baking! Yeah!!! So basically we read from the book and the teacher lectures in class.... not much to really talk about.... but all I can say is that while I find the reading interesting, it's also hard to get into...

I'm excited to learn the basics so I'll know how to create and alter recipes based on the percentages of ingredients in certain recipes and to know the characteristics of ingredients and know how to put them together to get the kind of outcome I want.


Retail Pastry Production
The best of the best!!! This class I will have every term, every Saturday from 6am-11pm! I LOVE this class! I love it so much that having to wake up at 430 on Saturday mornings for it, isn't a bother to me!

So, this class is sort of like working in a kitchen at a bakery... there are 6 stations in the kitchen and there are actually 2 kitchens for this production class. The two kitchens are separated by The Finishing Room... pretty self explanatory. So we will be rotated throughout our time at school, 3 weeks at each station. Anyways!! Let me fill you in on what the 6 stations are!

1. Bread Station - Also pretty self explanatory, like the many others I'll mention. So at this station we make dough for baguettes, boules batards, sourdoughs, focaccia etc., do inventory on the pastries and doughs made the days before, set trays up of said pastries made the day before so they can proof, shape the dough into baguettes, boules and batards or whatever shape chef asks us to put them on trays to proof and send them to the oven station.

2. Cookie Station - This is where cookie dough is made, where they are set up on trays to be baked. Also they set up the baked cookies nicely on trays to be sold in the pastry shop or for events at the school.

3. Steward Station- This is where the breakfast trays are prepared.... mostly for events that are being held in the morning at the school... I'm not quite sure what else they do when there aren't events going on in the morning. I guess I have yet to find out!

4. Oven Station - This is where breads are baked! This is where cookies are baked!!! I'm not sure if the cakes are baked here too, because the Cakes are mixed and prepped in Kitchen 2.

5. Restaurant Station- This is where plated desserts are prepared and put together. Plated desserts for the restaurant and what not :)

6. Cake Station- Where cake is made!!! I thought it would be where it was decorated as well, but according to what I overheard the other day, the cakes aren't decorated here!!! dun dun dun!

So!!! When I started school I was soo looking forward to bread making... and well, I bet you couldn't guess what station I got assigned to could ya!? THE BREAD STATION!!!!!! Soooo!!!! Excited! The advanced students have been telling me that the bread station is the best one, so its good I got it, but at the same time it kinda sucks because it's downhill from here! boo!

Anyways! My first production class was amazing! All the other freshmen were so nervous because this was their first hands-on class.... and there I was with my inflated ego thinking to myself "yeah, ha! well, I've experienced a hands-on class before, I got this!" Haha.  But seriously, I think I did really well. See, what I learned was that this school kinda just throws you into these hands-on classes and you just gotta learn by doing and by observation.

So, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but this production class is filled with all of the part time pastry arts students so there are new students, advanced students. So at the bread station there were 2 advanced and 2 new (me being one of them) so I paired up with the advanced student that's in my cooking techniques class. He's a great teacher! I'm glad that I got put with him for the first few weeks!

My first pastry production class he taught me how to set up the trays of yesterdays pastries to proof and to take inventory of the others we have in the freezer. Then when the other 2 got done making dough and waiting for it to rise I was taught how to shape dough! Hahaha! So, in the kitchen there is a special baguette rolling machine... someone scales the dough so we have even amounts/weights of dough and for all breads we have to put the dough through a process to get all the air out... so what the baguette rolling machine does is that it simplifies it, cuts out the steps of having to special roll it to get the air pockets out so you plop the dough in and it goes through rollers to flatten it and then it sort of rolls it so when it comes out you just have to roll it again for a min to get the size you want. It's pretty simple! Like my chef said "It's not rocket science" ...... Who fucked it up??

I did!!

How many times???

Twice!!

Thus prolonging the bread dough shaping. eeep!! So, I guess I wasn't a pro after all, hu?

It was a pretty exciting class though!! I love having to work with the dough, getting my hands dirty, working in a fast paced environment! It's really awesome!!!!

Well!! I think I've written a lot in here!!!! I should try and incorporate pictures next time! I can't take pics in class, and I don't even have time to!! But! I'll try and search on the web for some relating to the posts I write!

Until next time!!! Enjoy your food!