OK, this is a bit overdue, since my class is on Saturday, but I’ve been busy, and lazy.
First of all, a big welcome to Ashley and anyone else from Cheftalk who read my post and decided to read my blog. I’ll try to keep it as entertaining as possible. Baking and Pastry day 3 was amazing, but started a bit rough.
My class starts at 8:30 , and me being the overeager student, I left the comfort of my wife’s Xterra at about 8:00. I figured I could use the extra time to figure out how to actually get to the building. The 5 feet of snow we had gotten was plowed up onto the sidewalk into an impenetrable wall of ice. I took a very roundabout way of getting out of the garage and wound up taking the long way, since the wall of ice extended all the way up the street. I finally made it to the front of the building, and realize that I had forgotten to bring an ingredient that my lab partner and I were planning to use. I figured that when we had a slow moment (dough takes time to rise), I could walk to the grocery store a few doors down and grab what I needed. So I stood outside in the cold, since our chef hadn’t arrived yet. He pulls up in his new car, gets out, goes to the passenger side, digs around a bit and yells, “Son of a b—-!” He yells over to me, “Go someplace warm, I have to go and get the keys.” I now have plenty of time to go to the store, so I walk in, carrying my book bag on one shoulder and my knife kit on my other, wearing my full chef uniform. I love attracting attention. Truthfully, I wear my whites with pride, and it brings a smile to people’s faces when they see a chef walking around. I find the one item I need, Emerald Cocoa Roast Almonds (yummy), and head to the checkout after killing a few minutes looking for any variety of diet vanilla cola with no luck whatsoever. I swear there is a conspiracy to keep me from enjoying Vanilla Coke Zero, or Diet Vanilla Pepsi. Anyway, I walk back and see the rest of my classmates huddled in the cold. I explain what happened, and we all wait together. For a half hour. There was traffic on his way home due to the snow, and the accident he witnessed where a pickup truck hit a snowbank and flipped onto its roof so hard that it crushed the roof down to meet the truck bed. Somehow, I don’t think the driver walked away from that. Especially after the car behind the truck smashed into the back of it. Isn’t winter great? But chef returned and we got inside into the warmth.
Lecture passed very quickly because he wanted us to have plenty of lab time. Since the snow had completely destroyed our schedules, he had to figure out what we would make. We were going to make another focaccia, with living yeast this time. We didn’t have the preferments necessary for the breads we were going to bake, so we would put that off until the following week, and make the preferment for challah. He decided on yeast dinner rolls, and baguettes, since neither required a preferment. Not that the baguette couldn’t have used a preferment, it just wasn’t required.
We started on the baguettes and focaccia first because they took the longest to rise. Our baguettes were the first thing we actually stuck to the recipe with. My lab partner and I like to experiment with flavors and combinations, so we make strange things, like our fig and gorgonzola focaccia. So this weeks focaccia was going to be a cinnamon-chili pepper focaccia with grated chocolate on top. While I gathered ingredients for the dough for both the focaccia and baguettes, my lab partner infused some peanut oil with red pepper flakes. She brushed that on a piece of parchment paper and sprinkled on some semolina. She added the cinnamon to the dough and we set our focaccia and baguette doughs aside to rise. We then decided to make honey wheat dinner rolls and a honey butter to go with them. We set that dough to rise, then made our preferment for the challah. By that time our focaccia and baguette dough had risen, so we prepared the focaccia for a second rise, and portioned our baguette dough for a rest. We then watched the chef demo how to shape a baguette, and did the same with our rested dough. Baguette forming is a little tricky and will require practice. So we let our shaped baguettes rise a second time, and turn our attention to our rolls, which had risen. We portioned the dough into rolls,and shaped them into balls and set them to rise a second time. Then it was back to the focaccia. We drizzled on a little grapeseed oil and sprinkled on a generous portion of turbinado sugar. We popped it in the oven and waited. We then put the baguettes in the oven. Unfortunately, someone had moved the chef’s spray bottle so we couldn’t steam the oven. Steam helps promote crust development. Then we put an egg wash on our rolls and put them in the oven. I burned my finger pulling the baguettes out of the oven because the rag I was using had a thin spot.
Our focaccia came our beautiful. The sugar caramelized on the top and became nice and crunchy. The grated chocolate melted on top and balanced the heat and sweetness very nicely. The baguettes developed a great crust, even without the steam. The rolls came out shiny and beautiful. Everything tasted great. But there was way too much, so everyone wound up taking a bunch of stuff home.
As I was walking back to the car, an old man in a pickup truck rolled down his window and yelled, “Hey Chef Boyardee!” I laughed, and would have waved if I wasn’t carrying two baguettes, a dozen rolls and a half sheet of focaccia. Like I said, people like to see a chef.
A good day in class.
