Lamination as stress journey

Today was the day. Armed with every admonition from bakers of viennoiserie past, today was croissant day. The teacher from the PM class even came in to put the fear of God into us and prepare us for the intense self-loathing and almost inevitable premature career failure that would come from taking croissants lightly. And then she talked about our first test as well, in the same aggressive tone, just to scare us. And I was scared. I eyed my croissant dough, where it lay in the corner, resting as if it owned the place, with contempt. I held my fragile butter block tensely between my fingers, just so it knew the real gravity of having its life in the hands of a hesitant but equally stubborn new baker. And then I stopped the internal monologue and began.

And a few hours later, not too bad! Glazed with some friendly apricot glaze and stuffed with everything from vanilla pastry cream or almond paste, and garnished with juicy cherries. There are some cheese and plain ones among them as well, you know, to represent the savoury fans in my house. Really the fans in my house are first and foremost butter fans and thus any filling is acceptable  post-butter inclusion.

I cut my dough panels slightly smaller than I intended so my croissants came out slightly miniature. But their bite-size so that mean you can eat (or MOW depending on your propriety) as many as you want without feeling guilty. As my Grandmother Porcheron would say, "There's no calories in that." Self-delusion, it's a family trait.

I don't know what is up with my horribly out of focus pictures today. I will rectify that. I was probably just shaking from the fire and brimstone croissant prep talk I got all day long. But LOOK AT THOSE LAYERS!! No bready croissants for me. Those bitches are made pro-per-ly. They pull apart perfectly with a little pocket of vanilla cream waiting inside.

So basically, Today and I are totally buds right now. This is not a, "Dear Today, go screw yourself" kind of day. That was last Thursday. Last Thursday, you can still go screw yourself.

Tomorrow is stollen! And we start muffins! Slippery slope. Not going to lie, in high school I was totally in a group on Facebook called "I Love Muffins". It's been a problem in the past.

Grab a croissant. Pull the ends like a  party cracker. Watch how it spirals. Eat in one bite. Repeat. I'm going to.

Simple in theory but loud in practice.

Chef is probably on a plane at this time, flying to the land of gelato (Italy) where he will make fun of Canadians, eat lots and covet high quality olive oil. And little over a week from today he will compete internationally in a gelato competition, Salone Internazionale Gelateria. I am blessed to learn under someone who is so driven and so gifted. He is a chef that teaches work ethics and real intention towards honouring a craft. And he gets back in time to teach us how to make amazing ice cream and gelato, so it's all works out in the end.

Today was solely dedicated to the mere understanding of laminated dough. Laminated is, when you find out what it is, exactly what it sounds like. Think of taking a sheet of paper to the printers and they laminated two sheets of plastic overtop that hold the paper within them. Now imagine that the paper is butter and the plastic is a yeasted dough.We sat from seven in the morning to well after two o'clock talking about lamination, mixing croissant dough, watching (four times over) the enclosing of the butter, or beuragge, in the croissant dough, or the detrempe. We made vanilla pastry cream and almond cream; we watched single folds and double folds, envelope shaping and croissant rolling. It's an anxiety inducing process because in order to make really good croissants you need to consider many different conditions. And croissants are a lot of work so if you mess it up you will be righteously pissed. Really the worst thing that happens with the croissant process going awry is that you end up with a bready dough, instead of flaky. You end up with brioche, essentially. Which is not really a bad thing, is it?

I made one of the batches of dough today. These aren't mine. Mine will come out tomorrow. We all had to hammer out (literally hammer with a French rolling pin) our 'butter block', which is a slab of butter about 1/4" thick that is 'enclosed' within the croissant dough which is then rolled out to create the layers of flaky pastry. I think I have a handle on the detrempe, it'll just be the actual lamination process that will take some getting used to.

And seeing the process repeatedly was really helpful. If gave me a sense of what we're looking for in each of the different stages: the butter crumbling, the seams lining up, rotating the dough for folding, etc. And Chef's turns of phrase never get old.
"You want lots of space. You don't want to be too confinated."
Truth, Chef. You speak the truth.

So nothing of my own to report for today, but I do have weekend yumminess to report. Our small group meets every Sunday night and we chill out, eat good food, drink good wine, laugh lots, pray lots. It's always such a great time. And it provides a great outlet for Moozh and I when we host at our place to try out some of the things that we're learning. As soon as I read Smitten Kitchen's most recent post, I knew I had to try it out. I have what can be considered rather quirky obsessions: Jewish people, Russian people/food/music/history, musicals, knitting/crocheting, octopus, steampunk, etc. And I can get MANIC. So when I started Smitten Kitchen back in high school, it was so endearing to me that she was Jewish. And then, just last week I discovered via her post that she is married to a Russian man (or a man from a Russian heritage rather). Kind of clinched it for me, not gonna lie.
Soooooo.
I also though what better way to break in the set of appropriately red Russian nesting doll measuring cups that I got for Christmas than a Russian recipe for cake?! Or is it cake? All night, I tried to figure out what it could be described as. I landed on an apple pie/meringue cake. It's like pie but it has no crust. It's like clafoutis but it has no milk in it. It's like cake but it has SO MUCH FRUIT in it. So you kind of have to land on whatever makes sense. It was demolished after dinner so I think any ambiguity about it's identity didn't get in the way of much.

That is Kooknaya, which is Russian for 'kitchen'.

The recipe, which is made for a 9" springform pan, calls for six granny smith apples, so you get this beautiful tart, brightness amidst the sweet. It's not too sweet though. There's not a ton of sugar in the meringue and the apples add a nice subtle sweetness and that delicious comforting flavour.

This is a super poor picture but it's the only decent one I got of it in the pan before it went in the oven. You can see that I opted no for a springform pan (namely because I don't have one). I instead used a regular 9" pie plate. I couldn't fit in the last apple but the cake didn't suffer any. It would have looked great with even some powdered sugar but it was WAY too hot and I was already late on my way.

And now what is that. The top came out looking toasty browned, just like a meringue, with that beautiful crunchiness. It's a really simple recipe and it comes together really quickly. The most labor intensive part is the peeling of the apples and, like any good pie, I think it would be just as good with the peels on. Grannies can get a little waxy but their peels lend a slight bitterness for balance. *That sentence reads differently taken out of context.

If you like what you see, head over to Smitten Kitchen and check it out.