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!