Tartine bread

I am going to be out of commission for another few days (as I have been, regrettably) as I finish up school. I'm scouring for things to keep me going. 

 

This absolutely fit the bill. 

 

Mind blowing.

 

If you have not flipped through the Tartine bread book, I don't know how you get through every day. The photography alone is so romantic. The recipes and methods are nothing short of totally inspiring. Two dudes totally committed to bread. It's a beautiful thing. 

I finish up this week. My practical exam is next Tuesday. I miss it here. I will be so happy to write again and to get back into the narrative of life. Instead of simply pouring myself wine. Not that I'm complaining. First world problems.

I want this to be my life. The community of food. 

 

Watch the movie. Get up and do a dance. Possibly pontificate about how much you love bread. Repeat. 

Can't I just put butter on it? Butter makes everything better.

 Not gonna lie, I'm kind of tired of being in the kitchen. Thank God it's not the 50's. 

It's been a full day dry run of my midterm today. I know that it doesn't sound like a very successful dry run. 'Bri', you say, 'don't you only have four hours for your midterm? And today took you ten?' 

*In my head you sound like a Precious Moment when you talk.

But yes you would be absolutely right. I only have four hours to do everything that I took all day to do today. And there are even things that I will have to do on Wednesday that I didn't even DO today. Self-sabotage? Perhaps. My life resembled a bit of a science experiment today. I had my projections of what my midterm should look like, my HYPOTHESIS if you will -(guaranteed I just lost a couple of readers)- and compared it to what I felt I was capable of against what I was able to actually pull off. 

To my surprise -probably an hour added up throughout the day was made up of me congratulating myself on being realistic about my abilities and that I was 'going to be just fine at the midterm'- everything went fairly smoothly.  

Now being in pastry school has been an exercise in managed expectations. Anything you do at school -ANYTHING- that you choose to try and replicate at home, you will likely be disappointed. Professional kitchens are laid out with a certain modicum of premeditation. Ergonomics. "Flow". And you have a $1000 knife kit at your disposal. Your tuition has paid to enable anything you could want to put your hand to to be at your fingertips. Your apartment kitchen was made with the premeditation of "We were just going to put in a hot plate and a plug-in for a microwave but the building next door just put in new faucets and privacy film on the bathroom windows. So we have to at least make room for a full-size refrigerator." So any moments of Sound of Music-style spinning that was possible at school is only possible OUTSIDE your apartment. I don't remember my kitchen being inadequate before I went to pastry school. This is why you don't sleep around with other kitchens. Hindsight and all that.

So you get home. And you realize that you have a cloth piping bag that smells like morning breath (It DOESN'T dry well OKAY!?), you have a dough scraper that was obviously designed by someone who had never made bread before and purchased by someone (me) who hadn't a clue either, and your spatula has chunks missing along the side due to it being left on hot surfaces unattended. And then you feel sad. 

But then. You look back at your recipe. You remember the glory of school days recently passed. You conjure up your best show stopping dish. Commence dancing and inspired chanting at the glory of your semolina bread and how it's going to bring all the boys to the yard. 

Fast forward fifteen minutes: "Bah! This thing doesn't work AT ALL!"

Inspired chanting is replaced by swearing under one's breath. You make concessions for your recipe not shaping up like you had hoped. You pass the buck to the (now) broken spatula. You say that "It's just not for the home baker". And then you feel ashamed because you promised yourself that you would be better than that. Whatever you were making comes to a relative state of completion and you eat it with your eyes closed trying to resuscitate the previous beacon of talent and unchallenged winning. 

I have done this before if you couldn't tell. 

But today went well. I tried my best to preempt any tool-related shortages and use what I had at my disposal for it's intended purpose. I know you say, "Just take your knife kit home." But I would probably just say -and probably not very nicely- that it is simply not that simple. I don't know if you have ever been in the charge of a toddler or related small human before but there is this inevitable moment where you realized that they blew a shoe, or their pacifier or their blanket at all Hell breaks loose when they are without it. You search and retrace your steps. "You just had it. I don't understand." This life is my life. Everything I have is on an idiot -ahem, tether- when we go to the airport.  So two days before my midterm I am not going to lose my shoe THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 

I documented my truffle making process today because... I am a product of my generation and I have this insatiable desire to take pictures of my life on my phone using unnecessary photo sharing apps. Mae culpa, mea culpa. I worked with milk chocolate today whereas I've only worked with dark chocolate before. This made for a learning experience I probably could have saved for AFTER my midterm. Because dark chocolate has more cocoa solids in it, its sets up faster and requires less work to create the proper crystallization. The milk chocolate ganache is quite soft but it has bourbon in it so it can't be THAT bad right?

Including the Saran wrap and Archimedes the napkin holder seemed necessary. Or I just didn't realize I hadn't moved them until after. Our glass table isn't a marble and therefore will never be as great as marble but it definitely served its purpose well today. 

I also practiced my pate a choux paste today. I made eclairs, with drive me crazy but are on my exam, and then some profiteroles, which are much easier to work with and therefore more gratifying. I practiced some lemon curd today as well so instead of pastry cream I crammed the profiteroles full of lemon curd and left the finicky eclairs without any filling. That'll teach them right? Lie to me. 

 Tomorrow I have time to further finesse my agenda because I am the queen of over planning. A third of my class has already done their midterm. I want to ask them, ya know, pick their brain and TOTALLY obsess. But I know it is a short distance for me right now to go from there to rocking back and forth whispering, "I'll never teeeeeell." Best if I just keep to myself until Wednesday morning. 

Moozh did his this morning. The culinary students weren't told ahead of time what would be on their exam so Moozh went in blind. His chef told him that all of his stuff was cooked perfectly and that he did very well. And after six years of education and a master's program, Moozh still considered this midterm the most stressful exam he's ever written. I concur. Already. 

One more day to overprepare. 

Find a cookie. No, two. Find some ice cream. Make a sandwich. CUZ WHO DOESN'T LIKE AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH? Repeat. 

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

"What do you want me to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?"

If I were a racer, and providing I could any longer see my toes, I would be stretching right now. I would be decked out in something unflattering, that wicks away sweat and pinches at your armpits (and your groin). I would likely be sizing up my competition, praying my shoelaces hold, and injecting myself with some kind of steroids (secretly). But I'm not a runner. I'm a baker. I still wear unflattering clothes. I still sweat a lot. Nothing pinches because everything is too big. (Which is a good sign.) I'm not sizing up my competition, I'm clinging to them for emotional support. I'm not on steroids but when you eat nougat for breakfast, you might as well be.

I ROYALLY messed up my marshmallows. I had coffee extract all ready for it. Coffee marshmallows + HoCho* = what you want your life to be all about. Or a mocha. This is a "both/and" kind of situation.
Anyways, I then realized we had a scaling situation on our hands as we were pouring the BOILING SUGAR SYRUP into our egg whites. Hot sloshy mess = not what marshmallows look like. And then I nearly poured that mess down the drain which would have resulted in, what we call in the culinary world, 'call the plumber cuz shit just went down'….and it's not moving. I guess. (This is stream of consciousness blogging.) But I've picked up some gelatine so I'm going to give it a try this weekend on my own when I should be studying for my midterm.

*HoCho is the gangst terminology for Hot Chocolate for those of you unaware. Now you know. And you sound cooler or as Moozh likes to call it, "Trying to be black, you white girl". You're welcome.

So marshmallows were not to be for us but we did make nougat. Did you know that nougat (and marshmallows and hard candies, I kid you not) started out as medicine? They were a way for pharmacists and apothecaries to cover up the gnarly taste of their medicine.
I was telling my friend Zoe that marshmallows used to be made from the mallow plant, that grew in marshes. And then I told her that they also used to be medicine. She will henceforth never believe anything credible I have to say. Certifiably.

But look at our nougat. Yum city, right?

Candied orange, toasted almonds and pistachio nougat. I don't know about you but I was NOT excited for nougat. Whenever I think nougat, I think of that irritating crud that gets stuck in your teeth when you eat a Toblerone. So I also associate nougat with Swiss Chalet. Not a good association. But this nougat is NOTHING like that crud. Like anything made by hand. My mind was completely changed about marshmallows, marzipan, and fondant for this same reason. When it's not churned out in a factory where the air smells like Frito Lay chips, it actually turns out pretty good. This nougat is chewy in the best way while still being pillowy. And it's not the 'clingy-chewy', where you think you're gonna rip out your fillings if you eat another piece. I have totally made things like that. Good nougat.

We also made Pate de Fruit (Pat-due-Free) yesterday and it is the candy equivalent of bacon. You will eat EXCESSIVE amounts of it and it 'cures' underneath a centimetre of granulated sugar for at least a day. K, maybe it's not JUST like bacon but it is so good. Again, it's the artisan equivalent of a fuzzy peach (or whatever fruit puree you choose to make it out of). I'm sure if Epic Meal Time found out about Pate de Fruit there would be a shirt that read "Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit".

This week has been more of midterm prep.
We made more chocolate truffles:

More buns (accompanied by Chef's continuous jokes about 'handling our buns'. Hardy har. My sense of humour is the first to go under stress.)

We may take another stab at eclairs tomorrow but that is somewhat unlikely I think. We are learning plating tomorrow. Pretty desserts. I am forbidden to put a mint sprig on ANYTHING. EVER. Chef ranted about that for probably five straight minutes today. Which I get. Mint is boring. And unless you have halitosis, I would wager, no one eats the mint sprig. You either leave it on the side of your plate or flick it at your eating partner. (Moozh and I never go for dinner anymore. So strange.)
We made sauces today: caramel, chocolate, anglaise, fruit coulis, gelee, to use to plate things tomorrow. Eight hours will be spent on learning the art of the 'smear'. You know the one I'm talking about. The sauce that you always wish there was more of.

My practical is a week from today. Week. From. Today. What is scarier to me is that a week from tomorrow, I will BE in advanced, preparing food for the general public! But what if…what if something totally irrational and unlikely happens! What will I do?! How will I recover from the embarrassment?! Like what if I stab someone (by accident, for real)? What if I give someone food poisoning?! What if my mousse doesn't set?
(I'm trying to poke fun at myself now. I will laugh later. WHEN IT HAPPENS.)

P.S ~ Three points for me: I used the "Hula Dance" from The Lion King in conversation at school the other day. Someone mentioned something about doing the hula (Because this is what you talk about in your down time at pastry school) and of all the songs and quips that could have come to mind, I managed to pull this out, complete with dance moves, I can guarantee you. It's stuck there, in my head. That is core space I am never going to get back, never be able to use for any other useful purpose.

Find some Toblerone. DON'T EAT THE NOUGAT CRAP. Sing a Disney song. Repeat.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Smells like delicious

"My hands smell like butter." 

"Your hands love it. It's like being at a spa all day…an Italian spa where they yell at you."

Enriched dough is a whole new story. Just as I was figuring out what we were doing before, lean dough (dough that isn't enriched by sugar or eggs), we started adding a shit ton of butter to EVERYTHING. Yesterday, when we were supposed to be focussing on our bread evaluation, we prepped a lot of stuff for what we were going to be doing today. We only produced one loaf of bread yesterday and yet I was so stressed by the end of the day. Today, we produced four different things and I swamped all day long. This is good practice because this is what it's going to be like in a work environment. You're not going to have time to stand around and waste time. But the first couple days are an ADJUSTMENT. After we all left the kitchen (25 minutes late), we all walked into the change room and stared blankly at our lockers for a couple of minutes in complete silence. We are newbies. And welcome to the jungle.

Today was rewarding though. I got a really good sense of what making enriched dough is really like. Incorporating such a large amount of butter takes some getting used to, especially when I'm used to lean dough. Our recipes have been really finicky too. We are generally having to add more flour or moisture than the recipe calls for by up to 100g in some cases. My recipe sheets look hazardous because there are all of these notations like, "SO wet. +100 g flour" or "Double the water. Triple the water." 

By the end of the day, however, when we were tearing at a pan of sticky buns, still dripping from the pan, everything was forgotten. It was Friday and we had the entire weekend to process that day whilst being consoled by butter. As I was walking out of the school, I was examining my hands as they glistened. Everything glistens. As soon as I hit the winter air, however, they shrivelled and cracked just like before.  

These are my consolation for the weekend. 

We made the brioche dough that we prepped yesterday. Half of it became buns, a quarter became a loaf, and the remaining quarter became buns. I left behind over half of what I made. 

We also made kugelhopf, which is a special occasion bread from Germany, Poland or France depending on who you ask. It's very similar to brioche. It's traditionally baked in a fluted, bunt pant-like mould and then dusted with icing sugar once it's cooled. The fact that I have a loaf of brioche at home already and I was bringing home all the other stuff, I only brought home a couple of buns for Moozh to try. I made mostly buns as well, since I wanted to give my rolling and shaping more practice. It was good practice and also gave Chef ample opportunity to make ball jokes, along the lines of 'handling my balls' or advising me not to 'shake my balls'. 

We also made hot cross buns today, replete with the sticky piped on cross. I love, quite seriously, LOVE hot cross buns. But I hate the piping mixture. I have picked it off my hot cross bun since as long as I can remember. And the recipe for the piping 'goo' was so awful, it busted open my parchment bag. (Ironically, the 'word of the day' app I have had 'viscid' for today, which means 'having glutinous consistency, sticky, adhesive.) I, with all the subtlety I could muster, threw the bag in the garbage with a quiet expletive under my breath. It was five minutes to two and there were still five pans of product in the oven. Any patience I could have extended towards the hot cross buns was absent. So our buns went in without the cross, which meant they were better and rounded out the sample platter I was putting together. 

Moozh, in the other kitchen, got to do some really fun and tasty things today. Yesterday the culinary students learned consommé, which is a clarified broth and/or soup base. Of course, being French, it is a arduous and finicky process at times but, as Moozh can attest, it makes for a tasty result. 

Then today, they jumped from what I consider simple, foundational cooking like soup and dressing, to venison roast with red wine au jus which, to a vegetarian, sounds quite advanced. But again, looks taaaaaaaasty. 

Culinary plating always looks so clean and bright. I know my obsession with Instagram right now affects the kinds of pictures I take and looking darker but a meal on a wide, clean white plate is really striking. 

It's Friday and thank God for that. 

Grab a loved one. Eat some food. Repeat. 

Thursday, January 12, 2012

One more time, this time with more feelings...

Recipe time!

Today was our bread evaluation day. We had to develop a bread recipe (from a standard bread recipe) using our knowledge of the science of dough development and of the interconnectivity of the ingredients. Up until today, I was extremely optimistic about my bread making ability. In a week and a half I feel that I've learned so much and applied it well. As my pictures can attest, my bread has not always turned out flawless but I feel that with each new loaf I have gained a better perspective on the process and become more adept at 'reading' the dough.

That is why I was somewhat surprised (and yet not surprised) when I could not shake this feeling of impending doom when it came to my recipe. I agonized over the measurements, cringed throughout the entire mixing. I examined my gluten window (a test of the gluten development) easily three or four times and when I finally deigned it acceptable, I stared at my incorporations and my heart started racing again.

Despite all of the emotional histrionics, Chef said my scoring was beautiful, my loaf was correctly shaped and proofed and that my flavour combination was 'amazing'. Not bad.

Luckily, the recipe is nowhere near as difficult as I'm making it sound. But my love of artisan bread and insatiable performance driven personality made the exercise more stressful than it needed to be. This is an easy loaf. You could even remove the incorporations and come out with a great bread for soup or a crusty sandwich. And how cool is it that I'm posting my first recipe?

This recipe is written according to weight not volume. But I will add notations for imperial measurements where I can.

Fig, Walnut and Anise Parisienne
164 g (2/3 C + 1 T) Bread Flour
61 g (1/4 C) Whole Wheat Flour
74 g (5 Tbsp) 100% hydration starter
135 g (1/2 C + 2 tsp) Water + fig steeping liquid
3 g (1/2 tsp) Fresh Yeast**
1 g (1/4 tsp) Malt Powder
6 g (1 tsp) Salt
22 g (about two mission figs) dried Figs, chopped
22 g (1 Tbsp + 1 tsp) Walnuts
**Instant yeast can be used as well but you will only need about 1/8 tsp of it.

Process
Preheat oven @ 350. Place a roasted pan or cookie sheet in the bottom of the oven to preheat.
Cover the chopped dried figs in boiling water and allow to soak until cool. Strain the figs, squeeze the excess moisture and set aside, reserving liquid. Dust the figs with bread flour and toss to coat. Add enough water to the reserved fig water to come to 135 g.
Combine the two flours, the malt powder and the salt. Whisk to combine. Then add the yeast.
In a separate bowl, combine the starter and fig water. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. If you are kneading by hand, turn out onto a counter top with flour and knead until the surface looks smooth and elastic, 5-6 minutes. If using a machine with a dough hook, mix on first speed until the dough has picked up all the flour. Continue until the surface of the dough is smooth and elastic, about four minutes.
Gently flatten the dough into a disk with your fingers. Take a third of the additions and sprinkle them onto the loaf. Fold in the four sides to enclose the additions and knead until incorporated. Continue until all the additions are incorporated. Let rest, covered for 45 minutes to an hour or until doubled in size. Form into preferred shape and let rest for another half hour.
*If you can use your microwave as a proofer your bread dough will bake up so nice and preeetay. Fill a microwave-safe bowl with water and heat on high until water is boiling. Remove the bowl and replace with your shaped loaf covered with a towel. Let rest for a half hour.*
Place loaf on middle rack in oven and dump a half cup of ice cubes into the baking tray at the bottom of the oven. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until nice and brown on top. When knocked on the bottom, the loaf should sound hollow.
Allow to cool! This will be hard but it makes for a less gummy loaf.
Slice. Slather with butter, jam or cheese. Eat. Repeat.

We got our primer on brioche today. I'm not gonna lie, it blew my doors off. I had only ever had stale brioche in the past and thus I thought it was simply an overrated, froofy French bread. And then I had some made by an Italian, singing "Somebody call 911. Pastry chef is on the dance floor." Because it is rather involved, as is ANYTHING French, he demo'd the brioche for us today and we prepped our dough to make our own brioche tomorrow. Doubtful mine will look quite like this. But we also prepped some sticky bun glaze, presumably to go with the brioche. So methinks tomorrow is going to go just fine. 

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Thank you for your sarcas-mah

Redemption! The bread universe aligned for me today and I came home with four beautiful, tasty and satisfying loaves of bread today. Cause and Effect is beginning to work itself out in my baking. This procedure = this result (somewhat reliably). Even if I'm not pulling it off every time, today was the first day that I could see that I was really learning. The shackles of shame I have been wearing since I made my play dough baguette was lifted today and I am free. I have been working ever since that day to prove to myself that I can do better. And today I did. If Jacob Marley says we wear the chains we forge in life, my chain is made up of…inconsistency. But look at that baguette!

Redemption!

 I know that any pictorial documentation of my first baguette escapade is conveniently missing but this baguette is just…a thing of beauty. Chef even said to me my scoring was 'not only good but very good, excellent scoring'.

I have been walking on clouds.

I just cut a cross section so I could see the crumb and crust at a later date. The crust was crispy this time, not dense and crunchy. The crumb is light, with irregular openings instead of being tightly packed. And it bloomed! Or 'sprung' I guess. The bread reaches it's final volume during 'oven spring' or 'oven kick' which is the first 5-10 minutes of baking.

And then today was when we learned all about incorporation which is when you add anything (herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, dried fruit) to a dough. Today was the fun day. I love sourdough. I love rye bread. But bread with STUFF in it, that is my favourite. Today we made a walnut rye  bread, with chopped walnuts and a sweetened walnut paste, an olive and rosemary loaf, and an asiago cheese loaf.

Walnut Rye, Asiago Cheese Loaf, and Olive and Rosemary Loaf

The cheese loaf is, of course, very satisfying as anything with even a remote connection to cheese does. The Olive and Rosemary is just such a phenomenal combination. It made most of us think of pizza dough and how fantastic it would be as pizza dough but even if you were going to do a big veg sandwich with some sharp cheese -Mwah! (How can you tell I have an Italian teacher?) The Walnut Rye though was probably the most impressive. It came out of the oven with almost a purpley hue to it, I'm assuming due to the brown of the rye flour and maybe something to do with the walnuts? But the taste was beautiful. Slightly sweet, with that warm, toasted nutty flavour to it. It had great texture because of the nuts and the rye flour. A serving suggestion of French Toast also circulated the classroom many times for this one. What I love about incorporations is that your possibilities are limitless! You can combine flavours and textures that lend themselves well to meals and where the bread is used as an ingredient, but you also create a loaf of bread that stands alone as well. The kind of bread that you could eat all in one sitting, by yourself. I mean, no you wouldn't because that's crazy…right?

Tomorrow we are baking bread that we created ourselves! We went off of a basic recipe but we had to account for all of the ingredients and make the necessary changes ourselves. I am doing a Fig, Walnut and Anise loaf. I wanted to do another fougasse, which is that cool flatbread, with the fun cuts in it. But the purpose of us doing our own bread tomorrow is for them to see that we can handle every aspect of the baking process and that includes kneading, shaping, proofing, and baking. (Uh oh) All of these considerations make me wonder if I shouldn't do a flatbread, but instead a regular boule or batard loaf of bread. Hmm. I have ten hours to figure it out. I've prepped my mise en place already so I can't stray too far from the original fougasse plan but I'll see what it looks like to make the switch. You'll see what I decide :)

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Mama Feed You

Who's ready for Round 2?!

We're are totally moving now, so fast that I'm amazed that I haven't reverted to toddler mode, where I just sleep and cry in my spare time. I'm sure that will come. Operation Better-Time-Management is a go. Last Friday, I was pulling bread out of the oven ten minutes before I was supposed to be OUT of the kitchen. Doesn't allow for much cooling of any kind.

The irony of my program is that I LOVE bread. I want to become excellent at it. Not just at creating interesting bread or even necessarily pretty bread, but tasty, well made bread. I want to KNOW the bread (in a biblical sense). But bread is so dependent on timing! And timing…is not my thing. You've got the mixing. And if you mix for too long, the dough becomes stiff. If you don't mix long enough, the dough is too weak and will collapse under it's own weight. Then there's the bulk fermentation, when the dough is left to relax. The first fermentation needs to be long enough for the dough to develop flavour and aroma and also for the enzymes to get working on creating a tasty dough. If it's not long enough, you don't get any of those things. The dough is still tough, it stales faster and it doesn't have any of that beautiful yeasty flavour that bread is so loved for. And then you have dividing, and shaping, and bench rest, and final proof and baking -all of which are intensely dependant on timing and acute attention paid. And so producing a large amount of bread in one day, especially around other people (even if there are only eleven others) who are delightfully distracting, is, too say the least, not something for which I have a whole lot of skills to draw up. WRITING IS TOTALLY SOLITARY! And -AND! There's never a timer. Ever. Even when there should be.

So yesterday, I was very excited, was bagel day. And pretzel day. But as a Canadian, pretzels are boring. Bagels, BAGELS, for someone with a massive Jewish crush (on basically everything even remotely connected to that -New York, SNL, Seinfield) and a carb crush, bagels are exciting! Bagels are worth an entire day unto themselves. The pretzels got in there too. But with the pretzels, being made out of the same dough as the bagels, also boiled and having a fun shape, I am willing to get excited. But they have no Jew cred. Sad pretzels. Despite my enthusiasm, I had some issues with both the pretzels and the bagels. My dough shaping method needs some…finesse. Or a complete do-over. My teacher drills, "Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent." each and every day. He also says, "Mama feed you" numerous times a day also. He's Italian. It's endearing.

In so many words, I can't keep on practicing shaping that produces bagel smiles. I chose to 'turn the frown upside down' if you will. He kind of looks like he's wearing a monocle doesn't he? As for the pretzels, they (in retrospect) needed to be a little bit….thinner before they were baked. They are more like bunny ears or peace signs. Which also have no Jew cred. Still sad pretzels.

We also made some caraway rye, which is always delicious. My shaping kind of broke down on this loaf. If you rotate it ninety degrees counterclockwise, it kind of looks like lips. Which is not what I was going for but works alright I guess. I am one of like two people in my class who actually like caraway, but everyone put caraway in their bread because we're are still in that awkward, new-class stage where we think we can actually have an opinion. We will get over that. I think we're nearly there, especially after the recurrent gag noises made by members of my class today over the olives that we pitted and chopped for our bread tomorrow. My bench partner, a fellow broccoli-head (aka vegetarian) loves olives too so we'll prob put in double what everyone else does. You know, so we don't have to share.

But sharing is not a problem, because we each go home with, on average, four loaves of bread each. Some have given in already, leaving the majority of their bread at school to be offered to staff and the culinary students. I have lovely friends that I would love to bequeath with fresh bread of questionable shaping (need I mention everything posted above) but of unquestionable tastiness.

We finished with Pain Meuniere, or Miller's Bread, which is supposed to be a homage to all of the grains that a miller would produce traditionally. It's made in the artisan style. It is by far the prettiest loaf I made yesterday. And I got to bake it in the fancy oven, which honks like a car when the time is up. An oven I will likely never encounter in the real world.

And then today -oy I haven't even talked about today yet -today I realized that I have SO MUCH to learn before I can function in a commercial kitchen. I stick my bread in the proofer (a humidity controlled cabinet), which is the last step before baking, and I forget about it until I see it sitting on a cooling rack. At home, I am vigilant about watching the oven. I repeatedly check to see the progress and I always set the time. At school, I don't check the oven. I never check the proofer. A lot of times, I never set a timer or even glance at the clock to have some semblance of what I'm doing or what I should be paying attention to. Which has to change. Because when people pay you, they expect you not to burn the shit out of everything. They tend to fire you when that happens. Or not. I've worked in enough bakeries that when that happens, you just throw it out, record it as wastage and start again. The world doesn't end. But you go home for self-flagellation.

Anyway! Today we were shown a variety of different decorative breads. Often, decorative breads, the ones you see hanging from the walls in bakeries, are made out of 'dead dough' which is simply flour and sugar syrup. It's not meant to be eaten, but meant to be dried out so that it can be displayed and won't mould. Chef showed us a couronne (crown), a pain d'epi (wheat stalk), a spiral and then assorted slashes that you can make in the surface of a boule or batard. The back is slightly blurred but that six-point star is all one piece. Each of the strands that meet in the middle are then braided together (in a six-strand braid) to form a six-point star. Braiding is a skill that will come after. After I learn to pay attention to the oven.

Clockwise from top: couronne, epi and spiral

What we actually baked today though, was two sourdoughs, one without yeast and one multigrain, a pumpernickel and a two castle rye. I lost my two castle rye. I don't' know what happened to it. You see what I mean? Ridiculous. But, in my defence, after everyone slashes their loaves the same way, it's very hard to distinguish between them once they're baked. Unless they get baked in the fancy oven. Then they look like holy loaves. Instead of potatoes (which is what they look like in the regular oven).

The multigrain sourdough, which is the one on the far left, looks pretty good. I seem to get one pretty loaf a day. The sourdough in the middle was baked in an oven that was too hot so consequently it coloured unevenly (which has to do with the Maillard Reaction, with is a chemical reaction resulting in colour on the crust). It didn't rise in the oven. You see how it is still very small and looks quite dense, even in the picture. When bread rises in the oven, that's called 'oven spring'. No oven spring. I't also did not bake in the middle. It was totally raw. So sad sourdough.

Tomorrow is another day. We made olive bread. And bread with cheese in it. It's gonna be a good day. And then by Friday, no more bread. We are already onto Viennoiserie, which is croissants, danishes, and brioche. We make Stollen in week 3, which makes up for my well-intentioned plan to make it during the holidays that flashed by like a peep show. I have stashed the prettier bread in the freezer for coming weeks when we no longer have four loaves of bread coming home in one day. It'll be like rationing. 'Oh shame, no more bread. I guess I'll have to have a croissant for dinner'. We live a hard life.

Friday, January 6, 2012

The Gluten Structure

Recap!

I have completed the first week of my six month training. I have received and dirtied my uniform. I have nicks in my dough scraper. I have dough under my fingernails and under my ring. I am wicked tired but I have never been happier. You stick a bunch of foodies on a single floor with toys at their disposal and you generally have a pretty happy environment. The practical kitchens at the school (which cook for the student-run restaurant and for the catering service) can get pretty hectic as you step into a real-world environment but the fifty or so people in the school at a given time are generally pretty happy.

Here's what I've been up to.

I could not be more thankful for my Chef. He is teaches precisely the things that I want to learn. It isn't simply do 'this' because it will yield the results that you want. He teaches what to do and why, with all of the science and formula behind it that really equips you to understand and consequently manipulate the formulas, to read your product results and know how to fix problems. And he is hilarious. Today, to go around and help students, he draped an apron over his head and snugged a baking ring on over top of it. Looking like Laurence of Arabia, he expected us to learn. Which didn't' happen.

Day One was simply housekeeping. We did learn some of the foundations of a bread starter. We named it Baby Goo. My favourite story about a bread starter is in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential (which is a hilarious read if you haven't read it) where he recounts a quirky baker he worked with who affectionately called his sourdough starter "The Bitch". If he were ever incapacitated, which happened frequently, he would simply call into the restaurant and beg Bourdain over the phone. "Feed The Bitch. If you don't feed The Bitch, she'll die." This deals with a sourdough starter's rather fragile dependency on regular "feeding" intervals wherein you remove a portion of the dough and perpetuate the culture by adding more flour and water.

Day two was learning shaping, scoring, gluten development and scaling. The culinary students spend the entire first week just finessing knife skills. Which are finessed. Matt 'turned' a cucumber for me last night and I had no idea there was so much to it. As required by the standards in French cuisine, a 'turned' vegetable must have so many points on it. Yesterday, when I walked past the AM Training kitchen, every single person was bent over the bench, their faces inches from a pile of ribboned carrots. Pastry, we have it a bit easier. Our main learning curve is scaling and kneading, especially because we start with bread.

We made a whole wheat honey boule (left) and an olive oil semolina boule (right). 'Boule' is simply the French word for a round loaf.

You will notice that Day three is conveniently missing. We spent the day learning further about scoring and kneading, learned the math behind baking (Baker's Percentage) and made our first recipe using a starter. That recipe was a baguette. Be it out of shame, expedient storage, or simply forgetfulness, I have no pictures of my baguettes. Which is for the best. The one looked like it was made out of play-dough, due to a scaling malfunction which a funny almost coppery colour to it. Not a huge deal; the bread itself still tasted okay but it punctured a hole in my inflated, cavalier attitude that I could be taught nothing about bread or kneading OR rolling in the first week. The folding and rolling technique for baguettes, while essentially very simple, is a process and each step affects the next. Due to this, my second baguette looked like more of a baseball bat. Also, not the end of the world but I just stuffed them in a ziploc and stuffed the bag in our freezer as soon as I got home. My excuse was (quite legitimately) that we already had SO MUCH bread in our house that I was preserving it.

But Day Four! Day Four was exciting. We further worked with starters of different hyrdations (meaning differing water content) such as a sponge, and a pate fermentee (meaning 'old dough'). With these, we made pizza dough, focaccia, and fougasse (which is a decorative bread with a distinctive structure and crispy crust). Now, I love making pizza dough. I have tried out many recipes for pizza dough in the past, kneading by hand, let to rest. And they were always very good. I could never get a thin crust but I like thicker crust too so I never really pushed past why I couldn't get it thinner. I could also never get out of my head when I would see bakers in pizzerias or on cooking shows how the baker would be stretching the dough and it would drape over their fingers almost like fabric. Delicate, fluid folds where the dough was almost translucent in the centre of the dough. But yesterday, I did it. I watched, I saw, I did. And then we made pizza for the entire school. My teacher is VERY Italian so he was a rather opinionated voice of reason when it came to pizza. But the entire class ate a grotesque amount of pizza in a very short amount of time. So I also have no picture of my pizza dough. But I will make another. As for the focaccia, it was a little crisper on top than I intended, but all the better excuse to make another. And focaccia never lasts long in our house. Om nom and all that.

Focaccia with Parmesan, Rosemary and Maldon Salt

Fougasse with Olive

 As for Fougasse, I had never actually eaten it. Having seen it in bakery windows and oohed and aahed over the shape and cut, I never thought to make it. It's a very simple, accessible dough and the cuts are extremely simple with quite an effect. I kneaded some olives into mine (which proved to be a VERY good but awfully attractive decision).

Finally, today we made challah, naan, Armenian lavash and ciabatta buns. Four doughs turned out to be A LOT for one day and I need to get better at my time management (Not a surprise. Not a surprise at all.). I did a five-braid challah with a simplified five strand braid. There is a more ornamental one that I would love to figure out. It will simple take some time and possibly learning aids (and by that I do not mean alcohol). At the top, you
Again, I don't have documentation of my ciabatta buns. Because of my aforementioned time management (or lack thereof), the ciabatta came out of the oven right before it was time to get out of the kitchen for the other class. So fresh from the oven, I got to make my way home, toting my newly baked ciabatta buns. The first one, I don't remember chewing. There were three. I didn't eat them all….seriously. The Naan turned out more like pita in my opinion. The recipe is awesome but I think they just dried out too much which caused them to puff up and separate in layers. And the lavash, which is meant to be like a cracker, got a little brown. I'm starting to see a theme in my baking. I'm at the back of the classroom facing away from the ovens so I don't even think about the ovens. And the girls stationed on the benches next the oven are really keen and end up taking care of it. Which is going to come in so handy when they are no longer there and I am burning everything in sight. Hmmm.

Rock sugar Challah and Naan bread

Lavash

By the end of the first week, I can already tell that this is going to be a growing experience for me, in the best of ways but also in ways that are going to be hard for me. I can be SO controlling, I'm a perfectionist and I'm a solitary worker. So even for how small our class is, the amount to which all of those buttons are being pushed is going to form me into a better person, especially one better suited for the workplace afterwards.

It is 430 and the sun is set. Tomorrow some semblance of the life we had before school will return for a brief day or two. But MOnday will come and we're doing Rye bread!! And I can already tell you that it will require a short mixing time and a polka-cut style scoring because of the weaker gluten structure in the bread. Who's reading their book? I am.