Basic Baking Week 3, Day 5. I went with Rodney to volunteer at a catering event at Boeing. It was my first experience inside an institional kitchen. Aramark runs Boeing cafeteria and the Chef was contracted to do the catering event. I'll admit that we didn't serrve haute cuisine, but people liked it. It showed me a lot. There's a side of the industry that I choose not to enter. I am not going to culinary so that I can learn the shortcuts when I enter the industry. I guess I'm only against those "timesavers" that compromises the integrity of the food. I will work at a place that respects food enough to serve it with care. All this took place between 630am and 1pm.

And all that before our practical for Basic Baking. For the roll-in station, we had to make blitz puff pastry dough and then make dessert Vol-au-vents. According to Larousse Gastronomique, the classical vol-au-vents are savory and round with a lid. The dessert ones we made look like diamonds with twists on two opposite corners. I think we made the classical dessert ones which use cherry filling. Here's how you make it: Cut up 13 ounces of cold butter into cubes and mix it(with your hands) with 18 ounces of bread flour. The consistency is still very powdery. Then slowly incorporate 9 ounces of cold water with .5 ounces of salt. The consistency of the dough should be soft with chunks of butter. If it's still a bit floury, add a ittle bit more water. Shape the dough into a rectangle and then roll it out into a larger rectangle. Ensure that the underside is well-floured. Fold opposite sides to the middle and then fold in half. This is a four-fold. Roll the dough out again into a large rectangle. Do another four-fold. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 5-10 minutes. Roll and four-fold two more times and refrigerate again. After another 5-10 minutes, the dough is ready to be rolled into vol-au-vents. Fold into a large reactangle about a 1/4-inch thick. Roll it out so that you can cut out as many 4"x4" squares you can. To make the vol-au-vent from a square, first fold corner to corner so you have a triangle. Now make two cuts each about 1/4 inch from the legs of the triangle(not the hypotenuse) but don't connect the two lines(this would separate a smaller triangle). Now unfold the triangle and brush it with egg wash(1-2 eggs beaten). Now there should be two opposing v-cuts facing each other. Fold the vertex of one v to the opposite inner v. Fold that piece of dough back over this first one. what you should have now is a smaller square with twists of dough at two opposing corners. Brush the top well with egg wash. Fill the inner square with the filling of your choice: sweet or savory. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 mintues or until golden brown. We had to make six of these for our practical. Piece of cake ... er, puff.

Basic Baking Week 3, Day 4. The test wasn't too bad. A lot of memorization gone awry. Deborah and I made puff patry dough. It didn't start out pretty, but by the time we got to the fourth rolling, it was a thing of beauty. Too bad we won't get to make anything out of it. We also made savarins which look like doughnuts.

Basic Baking Week 3, Day 3. I attended a Student Leadership Council meeting today. They brought up all the competitions and events that are coming up: Cherry Recipe contest, Scottsdale Culinary Festival, ACF Junior team, a wine tasting event, and elections. In lecture, we reviewed for tomorrow's written final exam. It's going to be a lot of memorization. In the kitchen, Deborah and I made biscuits with blue cheese, rosemary, and sun-dried tomatos. We also made Mexican wedding cookies and peanut butter and strawberry jelly muffins.

Basic Baking Week 3, Day 2. We had our last lecture on Baker's percentages. Baker's use percentages for their recipes so that it's easier to scale. Everything is based on the main ingredient which is usually flour, so that makes flour 100%. If the recipe/formula calls for 50% water that mean 50% water comapared to flour(in ounces). Pretty simple concept.
Deborah and I made buttermilk poundcake. We didn't have the same experience as Joe and JB did. We also made Blitz puff pastry dough for Vol-au-vents. We finished the day with chocolate chip muffins filled with chocolate ganache. Nelson and Will made very good star-shaped garlic, spinach, and rosemary biscuits.

Basic Baking Week 3, Day 1. Lecture was about creme anglaise, custard, pastry cream, and ice cream. They all have similar ingredients and have fairly similar procedures. My partner for this week is Deborah. We were the oven people today, so we just proofed, baked, cooled, and wrapped everyone else's stuff. There was a slight mishap with Joe and JB's buttermilk poundcake. It bubbled over and made a mess in the over. We were lucky that it was one of the smaller ovens so that we didn't get backed up. We also were responsible for putting out the break trays. Today there was sundried tomato and parmesan bisuits, mango-rasberry muffins, blondies, baklava, and heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies.

Basic Baking Week 2, Saturday - Bonus. I spent the day helping out at our Titanium Pastry Chef competition. It was the finals. Four teams headed by Chef instructors faced off for two and a half hours trying to make as many plates as they could from a market basket of items and four mandatory mystery items: blood oranges, blue cheese crumbles, fresh rosemary, and another less exotic ingredient that escapes me at the moment. The market basket had pastry cream, buttercream, creme anglaise, phyllo dough, vanilla beans, plain shortbread dough, chocolate shortbread dough, plain petite four dough, chocolate petite four dough, rasberries, blackberries, a mango, a pear, a green apple, two limes, puff pastry dough, and bittersweet chocolate. The teams were also allowed to use whatever was in the kitchen.

The teams all did very well. The top two teams were actually missing people. The teams were well organized. The winning team made a creme brulee using blue cheese and rosemary. It felt kind of weird cleaning up as Rodnay and I trashed the plates.

Basic Baking Week 2, Day 4. Another Friday, another test and practical. For the bread station, we had to make knots, roll dinner rolls, and shape a baguette. The written test wasn't too bad; a lot of methods muffin#1, muffin#2 aka creaming, biscuit, high-ratio, warm foaming, and separation foaming. I stayed after class with Rodney to help Chef prep for the Titanium Pastry Chef competition tomorrow. The Chocolate-Sour Cherry Bread came out well except for the size of the loaf. I don't think I let it ferment enough yesterday. The bitter chunks of chocolate matched well with the tang of the sour cherries. These components were interspersed in a soft moist dark loaf. It doesn't have the texture of cake since it's made with bread flour, and the sourness of using a sourdough starter was not really present. I think I'll try again next week.

Basic Baking Week 2, Day 3. I came in a little early to try making Nancy Silverton's Chocolate-Sour Cherry Bread. The dough came out pretty good. Since it's a two-day bread, we'll see what happens tomorrow. JB and I made Ciabata. It uses a biga which is kind of like a starter. It's a two day process some we'll make rolls out of them tomorrow. It was Chinese day in the International kitchen. The kids made a good effort. The duck had good flavor.

Basic Baking Week 2, Day 2. In lecture, Chef demoed three types of meringues: French or Common, Swedish, and Italian. His attempt to make the Italian meringue was foiled by the slowness of boiling water. Chef used the Swedish meringue to make a mini Baked Alaska. We each got to make our own as well. It was fun using a blowtorch to brown the meringue, but Chef used Will's New Castle ice cream which didn't match well with the cake base and meringue. JB and I made Blue Cheese Buttermilk rolls and sourdough.

Basic Baking Week 2, Day 1. First day of bread making. My partner for this week is JB. Our first project was Focaccia. We added some sun dried tomatoes to the dough for flavor. We almost got to the French Bread, but we ran out of time. Bread station is a little different. Our reference point for the night is 530pm. That is when all doughs to be baked for that day is punched down and bench rested. Our group for the bread station is 8 people; so we all make doughs for about an hour and then let it ferment for about half an hour(exceptions are ciabatta and sourdough, those are fermented overnight in the walk-in). After the bench rest, we scale and divide the dough into production units and then we shape. Dinner rolls are either rounded or tied into knots. We use a dough cutter for these to cut a three pound piece of dough into 36 equal pieces. We made focaccia rolls by gently shaping into a ball and pressing down, brushing with olive oil and dusting with parmesan cheese. We also made sheet pans of focaccia. After we shape and placed the products on sheet pans we give in the the oven person to proof and bake. Everyday two people from the roll-in team are in charge of the ovens.

Today the International students served up German and English food. I'm not sure why the quality of this food is so poor. I guess I'll find out when I take the class.

Basic Baking Week 1, Day 4. We reviewed for tomorrow's test by playing a game. It was kind of like Family Feud in that we had two teams and people went head to head to answer one question. For production, Joe and I made chocolate Petit Four dough for the AM class, Creme Anglais, pate a choux - dough used for eclairs and pastries of that nature, and ice cream. We messed up our first Creme Anglais by overcooking the eggs. Our second batch came out great and served as the base for our ice cream. Joe flavored our Creme Anglais with lemon extract, so I came up with a lemon poppyseed ice cream with lemon curd swirl. It was fun squeezing in the lemon curd with a mixing bag as the lemon poppyseed ice cream was extruded from the ice cream machine to create the swirling effect. Needless to say that it was very lemony and sweet. Everyone who tried it really liked it, but I found it a bit too sweet for my taste. People might have been comparing it to Nelson's Guiness Ice Cream which had a creamy stout flavor. William made his ice cream with New Castle Nut Brown Ale and roasted macadamia nuts. JB came up with an orange Grand Marinier flavor, Deborah made a rasberry mint chocolate chip ice cream. We have some strong creavity flowing in this class.

The cuisine of the day was Italian. Much better than yesterday's stuff: osso buco, veal scallopini, chicken picata, bruschetta, polenta, mushroom rissoto, and some halibut. In our break trays, we served up some chocolate-white chocolate cookies, angel food cake, cornbread, biscuits, croissants, stuffed croissants, and muffins.

Basic Baking Week 1, Day 3. Joe and I made angel food cake, devil's food cake, and a Sachertorte. The Sachertorte is a proprietary dessert. I not exactly clear where the name comes from; a town or hotel in Germany, I think. We only made the cake portion which uses cocoa powder and almond flour. Traditionally it is then split in half, moistened with kirsch, spread with apricot jam, sandwiched back together, covered with ganache, and iced with Chocolate Glacage.

The International kids whipped up some Greek and Morrocan fare. People didn't think too highly of it, but I thought it was okay. There was hummus, tabouli, baba ganoush, veal, squid, and loads of other stuff that I ate but forget about.

Basic Baking Week 1, Day 2. First day of production. My partner for this class is Joe. We made pastry cream and spongebutter cake.

In lecture, we went over the twelve stages of breadmaking: mice en place and scaling, mixing, primary fermentation, punching, scaling and dividing, rounding, bench resting, shaping, proofing, baking, cooling, and storing.

We sent out our first break trays. We had biscuits, muffins, International served up Russian and Hungarian food. There was borscht, goulash, salmon in some pastry dough, breaded cauliflower, fried potato things, and some other stuff. Supposedly the class doesn't label their stuff because it's not like catering where the food is made for other students. Here, the class is "inviting" the other classes to eat their food. We could always just ask, but there are invisible social barriers between classes.

Basic Baking Week 1, Day 1. Back to school. After an uneventful three week break, the journey contiues. It was good seeing everyone again. There were a couple of MIAs: apparently we have lost Casey to the morning session. She'll be missed. I would like to give a shout-out to fellow culinarian Gabe if he's reading this. He found my entries doing a search for Anozira - the temp agency that I signed up with but have yet to do anything for. I haven't reread any of my previous entries, but I think my opinions on certain chefs may have changed for one reason or another. But I digress...

The start of Basic Baking promises a flurry of activity. Chef Cipriano and his associate Chef Collee have a daily schedule planned from 3-10pm. There are three stations in the kitchen: breads, roll-in, and desserts. I'm not quite sure what roll-in yet. We make all the baked goods for the restaurant on this campus L'Academie and the International Cuisine class. Chef Cipriano is very passionate about his job and I hope his energy will enfuse us all. He took us through the twelve stages of bread with French bread dough. After a little tour through the new campus, we met in the kitchen for a some demos there. Chef demonstrated puffed pastry. I stared in awe at the amount of butter in the dough. Chef also demoed a biga - a firm preferment that we use to make Ciabatta and a poolish - a wet preferment used in other breads. For the desserts - the station I start at, Chef demonstrated pastry cream.

Our dinner at the new campus comes courtesy of the International Cuisine class. I was a little worried that we were only to snack on bread alone. Besides our production, we also put out break trays for the rest of the classes at 6:15pm, including our own.