greek spreads for $100, alex...

"The answer is...A cucumber, yogurt, garlic and olive oil spread that tastes great on Naan flatbread".  What is Tzatziki?... Our instructor whipped up some Tzatziki (dha-Zhee-kee) for our Naan (picture) today. Yum. We also made Focaccia (picture) which was seasoned with sea salt, pepper, olive oil and rosemary. Pizza was also on the menu. The crust was too good to spoil with sauce so we covered it with tomato slices, mozzarella slices and basil (Italian flag colors). I had never seen fresh mozzarella cheese balls before. I learn something new every day.

dough a dear, a female dear.....

Today we did 4 breads. The loaf of whole wheat bread is glazed in heated honey (photo). We finished the Ciabatta (Italian white flatbread - photo) today.  We also finished the Pain de Mais (corn bread) muffins and did a Fougasse stuffed with black olives and sun dried tomatoes. It's hard to pick a favorite but the whole wheat was mighty fine - and good for you.

liberté, egalité, fraternité.....

As much as I hated french class, I love a good baguette.  The baguette is the symbol of France and for something that is relatively easy to make, it is very tasty. If you are brazen enough to add something other than flour, salt, yeast and water, you can't call it a baguette. Yikes.  

In addition to baguettes, we made Pain de Mie (white bread), Pain de Mais (cornbread) and Ciabatta (Italian white bread). The baguette ruled the day. I felt like storming the Bastille when class was over.  Viva la France.  

we'll just be having the dinner rolls this evening...

The 3 week bread block has begun. Today was Pain Au Lait (milk bread) which we twisted and contorted into various knots and shapes for dinner rolls. We also made a grape starter for future breads. It's very similar to sourdough starter which uses yeast as the active ingredient. Grape starter uses the acid from crushed grapes to get the fermentation process going. Freaky.

care for a cookie?.....

I'm off to Green Mesquite for a beer and barbeque and I'll be bringing some of these to the staff. One benefit of school is that all recipes are individual batches. These bad boys have chopped up dark chocolate instead of Toll House chips. A little trick is to use an ice cream scoop for the cookie dough. The cookies are much more uniform. Plus, parchment paper is the best invention ever. No sticking and no clean up hassles. 

let's be practical.....

We have evaluations every Friday.  There is a written test followed by a practical exercise and evaluation. The written test includes everything that has been covered for that particular module - in this case, we are in the cookies, dough and quick bread module. The practical portion includes 2 recipes that we did in the past week. The good news is that we know what products will be evaluated. The twist is that we are given the ingredients and weights but not the procedure. Everything is based on methods - only the ingredients change. For example: the jelly roll was made with the separate egg sponge method.  The practical this week was with blueberry muffins and a jelly roll. It was a piece of cake (giggle). 

The instructor grades us on product texture, uniformity, color, taste, etc.  Our poor instructor for this module is about 3 months pregnant and she has to taste all of this product. Yikes.

icing on the cake....

The cake construction was rolling along. I had taken the chocolate chiffon cake from yesterday, cut off the crown, sliced it horizontally in 3 equal layers and reassembled it with ganache between each layer. I struggled with the sides and the the top but eventually got it nice and square on the edges. The final touch is a glaze over the entire cake. This is done by reheating the ganache and pouring it over the entire cake. The finished product is very smooth and dark - sort of like waxing your car.  Some water accidently got into my ganache so I had to make some more from scratch. The result was a glaze that was too glossy (in my opinion) with too many ripples.  Still not a bad effort for a first attempt but a little discouraging. I'll save this photo and use it for a comparison 9 months from now. We'll see if there's any improvement!

it's how i roll....

I feel like I'm running a marathon. Today we did Chocolate Chiffon Cake, Sponge Cake and Ganache (as in "Oh my Gosh").  The Chiffon Cake secret is that half of the batter is a meringue that gets folded in.  It is what gives it its fluff and lightness.  The sponge cake is about 1/4" thick which is ideal for jelly rolls (picture).  If this was Christmas time, there would be yule logs for everyone. Sponge cake, peppermint filling and chocolate coating.  The ganache is nothing but melted dark chocolate, heavy cream and butter.  Yikes.  It will be the icing and decoration for the cake tomorrow.  Two more days of cookies and cakes and then we start 3 weeks of bread.

do you know the muffin man.....

Did you know that quick breads are the only, truly American contribution to the pastry arts?  Everything else can be attributed to some immigrant group. Whereas yeast breads can take up to 4 hours to make, muffins can be served within 15 minutes if you are organized.  Quick breads is an understatement.  Today's quick breads in class were blueberry muffins and banana bread.  I had blueberry pie last week so I went with raspberry muffins today. As you can see from the picture, I had one before I remembered to take a picture. After the picture, there were 2 muffins missing.  I think the world would be a better place if everyone leaned to the left politically but it looks funny in pastries. I need to figure out why they are doing that.

called on account of rain....

A few of us (Meghan, Clea and myself; left to right in the picture) started training for a 50K (31 miles) trail race several months ago. We did a couple of 18 milers in the woods and a couple of 22 milers on the road. I have done several marathons but this was going to be my first 50K, or ultra marathon.  We had a big dinner of chicken and dumplings at Clea's house on Friday night and we were ready to go.  I got up at 3:15am on Saturday morning, met the girls at Clea's and by 4:15 we were driving to Smithville, which is east of Austin, for the 6:00am start of the race. It was a 70 minute drive and by the time we got there, there was a very severe lightning and rain storm. They cancelled the race and we made our way back to Austin. We were really disappointed given the time that we spent preparing for it. We got up today and ran a little over 20 miles on the Town Lake trail. It wasn't a 50K but it was a beautiful day for a run. This photo was taken when we finished today. I guess we'll have to start looking for another run to do.

i do eclair.....

Whenever I visited Cooperstown, I would make a daily stop at Schneider's bakery and pick up an eclair. I don't think I ever bought anything else from that bakery. The combination of pastry, cream filling and chocolate coating was the perfect combination for me. 

Behold my first eclair. It's not perfect but I'm sure it will be the first of many. We also made pastry puffs which is just a round, bite size eclair. The pastry is made from Pate a Choux (pot a shoo) which is french for cabbage paste. The puffs resemble heads of cabbage and the paste is aptly named. It sticks to everything. I'm almost scared to make them at home. Cleaning up is harder than making them. We have a 3 day weekend. Next Tuesday are muffins - as in blueberry muffins.

lattice pray....

It was busy day today. We rolled out two pie crusts. We made key lime chiffon and blueberry filling.  We also did scones and buttermilk biscuits.  Yikes.  I can't say for sure if I had ever made a pie before but I had a grand time making the blueberry pie.  Doing the lattice on the pie was like caning a chair. The pie in the picture is prior to baking. We ran out of time so it's sitting in the cooler overnight. I'll have a piece for y'all...

i feel fruity, oh so fruity.....

Yesterday we made pate sucree which today became the crust for our fruit tart.  We also made pastry cream for the fruit tart.  It's the same cream that is used for eclairs.  Yum.  To get a jump on tomorrow we made a flaky dough for a couple of pies (cherry and key lime chiffon).

As good as the tart looked, I restricted myself to the small slice seen in the picture.  I would like to keep my girlish figure but we are 7 days into the program and I feel it slipping away.  giggle.

check mate....

I'm starting to think they pile on the activities on purpose. There's a hard deadline for everything so the pressure is on. Today we did the Brysselkex cookies (picture), Biscotti (my partner and I did orange/pistachio - yum), Strassburger cookies (those little shortbread like cookies with jam in the center) and a batch of Pate Sucree dough for a fruit tart shell.  We do the fruit tart tomorrow.  The Brysselkex checkerboard can be modified for special events and holidays.  White/pink for a girls baby shower, yellow/green for easter, black/orange for Halloween,etc.  What fun!...

spring has sprung....

"Spring is sprung, the bird is on the wing. How absurd; I thought the wing was on the bird..."  We don't have the drastic change from winter to spring like we had in New York but the transition in central Texas is still one of my favorite times of the year.  New England has autumn foliage but we have spring wildflowers. Most of the area along the roads are covered in bluebonnets. I'm not sure what the plant in this photo is but it is incredible this time of year. This particular bush is in my front yard near the driveway.

I survived the first week of school. This week, we have Brysselkex cookies, croissants, pastry creme, apricot glaze, fruit tarts, scones, cream puffs, eclairs, blueberry pie and key lime chiffon pie.  Yikes

look sharp...

The first 3 days of school this week were spent on sanitation and hygiene and I passed the test.  Yay.  This afternoon, we had a 2 hour knife skills demonstration and session. We cut some citrus supremes (look it up), sliced crab apples and diced an apple (1/8" dice size).  I thought I was pretty good with a knife but it's amazing how much better things turn out when you learn the correct way.

The school is having a workshop on Friday morning and they'll be making pressed sugar Easter Eggs. I'm going to get up early and give it a shot.  In our normally scheduled class, baking commences on Friday. We'll be in groups of two and evaluated along the way by the instructor. I hope I don't get performance anxiety.

in the vale of old otsego...

I've always been a gadget geek so one of the the neatest things that I received at orientation was our tool kit.  I don't know what half the stuff is used for but it's still cool. As you can see from the picture, I haven't unwrapped everything yet. What is seen in the photo is maybe a third of the goodies that were included in the carrying case. One problem is that everyone in class got the same kit so everything will look the same.  I have decided to mark my items with electrical tape. If you look at the handle of the whisk, you can see that I've selected orange and black as my gang colors.  ....on the shores of glimmerglass; stands our noble alma mater, dear to every lad and lass....  I can't remember what I had for dinner two nights ago but I can still remember Cooperstown High School's alma mater.  Freaky.

it's show time.....

Up to this point, tapioca has been the upper level of my dessert preparation skills. It wasn't store bought, it required the separating of eggs, beating the whites to soft peaks, patiently stirring and trying not to burn the stuff. Last night, I looked through the textbooks that I got at orientation. I had an anxiety attack when it hit me how little I know. Who knew that there were so many tarts, custards, breads, doughs, pastries, chocolates and cake decorating techniques. Why does there have to be so many types of pie crusts? Then I discover that grades are determined by skills assessment, as in making the stuff in front of the instructor.  Yikes. I didn't sleep well last night. School starts today at noon. I don't think we do anything in the kitchen until Friday. This is definitely going to be an adventure!

mechanical advantage...

My first attempt at making buttermilk bread last month turned out good but it was difficult. I did everything old school and mixed the batter by hand in a big bowl. I made some bread yesterday but this time I used my pink KitchenAid mixer.  There is a special bread hook attachment which did a great job of folding the flour into the dough.  It was faster and easier on my old arms. I still got to knead the dough by hand, which is my favorite part of the process.  On top of that, it smelled the same as it was baking. I refuse to use a bread machine but I'm not ashamed to say that I've been converted to the use of a mixer for helping out with the dough.

vacancy...

One guest room is almost done. I had this bed delivered last week and I'm waiting for a box spring cover to be delivered. The local linen stores have tons of bed skirts but I think the side rails are too nice to cover up. The new closet and storage in my bedroom made that dresser unnecessary so Kevin and I moved it to this room. This room has its own bathroom. My fear is that guests will come to visit and they'll never leave.  giggle....