bakedandbrewed

Today’s class was very informative….and delicious.  We focused on pie dough, pate a choux dough for cream puffs & gougeres, coffee cake and brownies.  

I now know all the things that I have done wrong in the past that have contributed to my failed attempts at making flaky crust. Here are the lessons that we learned:

• Lesson 1: Make sure you cut your butter (very cold butter) into the flour until it is in marble or walnut sized pieces.
• Lesson 2: Add just enough water that the dough comes together (it’s okay to still see flour in the mixture).  Mix the water in GENTLY and DO NOT over-mix.  Over-mixing will cause shrinkage and toughening.
• Lesson 3: Use the smear method. After the dough has come together, take small portions of the dough and flatten and smear these portions (example picture above).  We used a bowl scraper.  You basically are creating little sheets of dough.  These will become the crispy layers.
• Lesson 4: Dough needs a rest.  After mixing, gather the dough in a ball and flatten slightly.  Then place the dough in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours before rolling out.
• Lesson 5: After rolling out the dough, place the dough in the refrigerator again to rest before baking.   If the dough begins getting soft as you are rolling, return the dough to the fridge for a few minutes.

I hope these tips help!  

Below is our coffee cake and our pate a choux dough.

Happy Baking everyone!

Today began as normal…with a short lecture and me promising myself that I would not eat as much today as I did yesterday.  (yeah right).  Why do I bother making promises to myself that I know I won’t keep.  I knew that the focus of today’s class was to be scones and muffins.  Yummmmmm : )

Our day began with a lecture on the functionality of eggs and leavening agents in pastries. Eggs serve seven main functions in a recipe: hydration, coagulation, coloration, leavening, structure, flavor and texture.  Leavening is the production of gasses into a dough that will give the final baked product texture, volume and shape.  Leavening agents can be biological (yeast), physical (air, steam) and/or chemical (baking soda, baking powder). The lecture today focused mainly on chemical leavening agents.  We discussed when to use baking soda and baking powder, followed by a lab experiment using muffins to demonstrate how these leavening agents affect the final product.

Much like our experiment substituting various fats and sugars in our cookie recipe, you can see that altering the percentage of baking soda used in a recipe significantly affects the final result.  In addition to the plain muffins used for our experiment, we made berry muffins, bran muffins and chocolate muffins…..and I tried them all!

Next on our ‘to do’ list was scones.  Each table made two batches of scones, one cream scone and one butter scone.  We got to try an assortment of sweet and savory scones. Is this not absolutely beautiful….and it’s not even baked!

This was our finished product table at the end of the day.  My favorite was the savory scones (rosemary and goat cheese…..oh man it was gooooooood).Happy baking everyone!

San Francisco Baking Institute, here I come….

Everything happened like clockwork.  I made it to BART by 6:50 a.m. and took the train to South San Francisco.  My shuttle arrived for the San Francisco Baking Institute at 7:40, which put me arriving at SFBI at 8:10 for an 8:30 start time.  Before class, we had pastries and coffee in the break/snack area below.

Class began with personal introductions. Including me, there are 16 people in my class. We are a diverse group of people coming from all corners of the U.S. (New York, Louisiana, Michigan, Texas, California) and abroad (Brazil, Costa Rica).  Some of us are being sponsored by corporations.  Other students are professionals looking to improve their skill level in certain areas.  There are some of us who are simply taking a ‘bakecation’ for enjoyment.  And, there are some of us who are baking enthusiasts, hoping that skills we learn here in SF will help us turn our favorite hobby into a career in pastry.

The first part of the day was spent in the classroom.  Today we discussed the basic components of pastry recipes (flours, sugars & fats) and how different varieties of these three components affect the end result.  After lecture we headed to the lab where our teacher, Juliette, had us demonstrate the effects of different components using a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe.  We were split into pairs.  Each pair of students was responsible for two batches of cookies.  In one batch, the sugar was altered for each group.  For instance, one group used only brown sugar while another group used only honey.  For the second batch, the fat was altered for each group.  Some of the various fats used were butter, margarine, oil, fat substitute-banana, and another fat substitute-apple sauce.

Just by looking at the cookies below, you can see how changing only one ingredient can dramatically change the appearance of the cookie.  This is also very true for taste.

After today, I certainly feel as though I have a better understanding of basic ingredients and their characteristics.  I left with a notebook full of great information and a stomach full of yummy cookies…..and this is only day 1.

Happy baking!