"It's not dollar days at K-Mart!"

I know, I know. Such a bad blogger am I. Breads is finished, and we are now both feet into French Pastries. I'm liking this class simply for the fact that it is not as stressful as Breads was. Some of the people in my class who've had other labs are, apparently, bored. But, I find enough to keep me busy, so I can't complain. I also do well with the chef's more hands-off teaching method, so no complaints here except for the fact that his instructions can be a little vague. So, I've learned to ask very specific questions.

We're taking our mid-term practical tomorrow. I'm not that nervous, as I'm pretty sure I've got a good handle on everything. Once I learned the trick to piping non-anemic looking eclairs, I stopped being afraid of the pastry bag! For those who are interested, don't pipe your eclairs head-on; angle your hand so you're actually piping a little sideways.

Today, we made this really tasty dessert called tartouf. You make cream puffs that you fill with lemon chello (boil lemon peel and sugar in Vodka or Everclear; mix into diplomat cream). Then, you dip the entire cream puff into freshly made chocolate mousse. Sounds (and looks) kind of gross, but OMG! Delicious! Chocolatey! And it was a good thing, too, because lunch from the International Cuisine class was really bad. Again.

It's hard to believe that the trimester is almost over. Class gets out for fall break on November 19th, and then we have 11 days off! What a treat!

OK, time to gather my notes for tomorrow....

The highlight of the past two weeks....

was getting a new cell phone. One that I could program to play my favorite Rob Thomas song as my ringtone. But, I digress. This is supposed to be a blog about my culinary schooling.

The past two weeks have been seven days of awful and one day of goodness. We're two days in to our practical exam in breads class. The first day, we forgot to convert the formula for our ciabatta down to 5 lbs, so we were racing to do that before we could get anything into the mixer. Then there was a problem with our corn muffins. Corn muffins, of all things. We had to redo them the next day. But, we did get 100% on our ciabatta. We're doing pretty well, with two 90's and two 100's on our graded items so far. Tomorrow is baguettes and soft rolls for my table. plus date-nut bread and croissants (the last two not for a grade). An easy day compared to Thursday, when we had 4 yeasted doughs to make up, plus biscuits and corn muffins, and the laminating of croissants.

This long weekend has been full of "busy" schoolwork. We have to keep these portfolios that are due on Wednesday, and we have to type up all our formulas and class notes, plus keep a daily journal. And we have to put pictures in with the formulas. So, I spent yesterday doing that only to find out that I apparently forgot my camera more often than I thought I did. I'm missing pictures of about 20 items, so now I'm waiting for my tablemates to email me what I'm missing. I just need to get my resume fixed, and then that can get crossed off my list too.

Thursday we start our next class, Classical French Pastries. I'll be interested to see how the table assignments bread down... every chef has a different way of doing things.

Wish me luck in the last of our practical!

Is that a baguette in your pocket?

Sorry about the decided lack of posts last week. It's been crazy! Our mid-term paper is due tomorrow, as is a draft resume for my career management class. We have a networking assignmnet due next week. Add to that the lessons for Food Sanitation, and the fact that we're doing inventory at work, and I've been super busy!

Friday we had a skills lab, which was great because there were so few of us there. We really got to work one on one with Chef L. on things like rolling and stippling baguettes, braiding challah, and cutting dough.

Friday night I was taking the trash out at home and tripped (over my own bare foot, aparently) on the porch. The concrete porch. Hello, skinned knee and gouged shin.

Sunday I washed my uniforms. Soaked and washed coats, aprons, and side towels in one load, and then did the second load of pants, t-shirts, and hats. And a black gel pen. Yeah. Those would be ink stains all over my t-shirts. Thankfully, the pants came out unscathed, and only one of my hats has a little ink dot on the back. I'm hoping nobody notices. But I did have to go to Wal-Mart yesterday and buy new t-shirts.

It's actually been a good week in lab. I think the skills lab helped us all gain some confidence, and we haven't been bugging Chef L. much at all. Tomorrow we start the Week 4 rotation, which included croissants, danish, and doughnuts. We'll be making Boston Creme Doughnuts, which are my most favorite doughnuts (after jelly-filled, of course... I asked my dad one time what kind of doughnut I used to get as a little kid when he'd take me to Dunkin' Donuts, and he said that I always got jelly. I guess they've been my favorite for a looooong time :) )

Once week 4 is over, we spend week 5 doing our practical exam. I can't believe how the class has just flown by. Winter trimester schedules came out last week. All of us GYD's have am labs, and then on Tuesdays we'll have Baking Tech. It incorporates a lecture and a lab, and runs from 2:15 to 8:30 at night. Ugh.

And really, what's with the culinary class fascination with fish and veal? Seriously, I've eaten fish more in the past 3 weeks than in the past 3 months, simply because I won't eat veal.

OK, off to do more work....

In which things get "all jacked up"

I'm quoting my table-mate, K #1 (there are actually 3 K's at my table). We had a bear of a day today and got, as they say in the restaurant industry, "in the weeds." The day started off with a mandatory meeting with the college president... she's had them all week long, and today was the morning culinary labs' turn. So, we didn't get back to class until 8:15, and right away Chef A wanted bread for his class for service at 11:00. Yesterday one of the tables made up all of the sponge (pre-fermented dough) for walnut-currant and sourdough rye breads, but then there was confusion today over who was supposed to actually use the walnut-currant sponge. There wasn't enough for my table when we went to scale it out, so we have to carry that over until Monday. There was confusion over the mixing up of the sponges for Monday. There was sourdough rye, ciabatta, and coffee cake to make. We ran out of streussel for the coffee cakes. Then, Chef L added 2 loaves of banana bread to every table's rotation. Yeah. Right. Helpful, that. K #1 was one of the sous-chefs for the day, and it was Thursday, which means that it was my table's day to work the dish pit. There was math for the doubling of the banana bread formula and halving of the formula for the coffee cake. Thankfully, table 5 came over and helped out a little bit. In the end, everything got done. Except for that dang walnut-currant bread, which we'll try again on Monday. Keeping my fingers crossed that we'll be able to remove that from our rotation after Monday.

My table did get some kind words from Chef L after class; he said that he saw some strong skills emerging at our table. That made me feel better. It was just a long day today. I'm glad it's the "weekend" for me. Going out with friends tonight, and to a Rockies game on Sunday. Lots of homework this weekend, too.

New Skills Every Day

Today was the last day of our first four-day rotation. Every four days, we get a new list of breads to work on. So, in preparation for the new rotation tomorrow, this morning we were introduced to ciabatta and brioche.

We'll be adding other breads to those. Of course we got to sample; the brioche was good, but the texture was more eggy than I like. The ciabatta was soooooo tasty, but there's alot that has to happen to the dough before you can divide it.

My table used to be five of us, but one girl got dropped today after missing three classes, so we're down to four. We've got a good routine going, and we get along well. This is a good thing, since in this class especially we all rely on our group members to pull their weight. I'm pleased to announce that there are no slackers at Table 4!

On that note, we got to play with varying some formulas this week, and yesterday we made these delicious tart cherry scones:

and our first bananna bread and lemon pound cake (front one is from my group, the other is a lemon poppyseed from Table 5):

We finished up with the traditional presentation of baguettes today. Tomorrow we'll start learning to to pretty them up in decorative ways.

My group also finished up with 7 grain bread today. Below are two pics... one of the rounded dough having its "bench rest" prior to proofing, and the other of the finished loaves:

The week seems like it's speeding by. It's already Tuesday afternoon! I went to the library yesterday to do research for my bread project. I actually did find some good information, and some interesting recipes. There's lots of

contradictory sweet bread info out there, though: some people say sweet bread and really mean pao doce, which is a kind of Portuguese cornmeal bread. Some recipes call for potato flour or potato water. And one I read called for saffron. Seriously? Saffron in sweet bread? I don't think so. In our paper, we have to include a formula for 5 lbs of dough. Guess what I'll be trying this weekend? You got it! Sweet bread. Thankfully, Other Half LOVES sweet bread, and I'm sure I can pawn some off on friends... if not, it makes really good French Toast. One girl at my table is doing her paper on a Mexican breakfast bread that sounds similar to sweet bread, so I'm interested to see how they compare.

I'll be back on Thursday with more pictures, and stories of new breads!

How I paid for college, and other tales

Besides a variety of service-oriented summer jobs (camp counselor, cashier at a drug store, and telephone customer service provider), I paid my school bills via a work study job in Dining Services. This meant dishes. And pots. I've washed many a pot, and many a sheet pan. But I've got to tell you that you've never seen anything like the amount of sheet pans used by a class of 25 baking lab students. It was crazy making. The policy is that you wash your own dishes as you use them, and then one table is assigned to kind of monitor the dish pit and put away the dry stuff. At the end of the lab, when everyone else is taking care of their daily cleaning assignments, the table assigned to dishes washes all the sheet pans, proofing trays, etc. Today was my table's day in the dish pit. There were LOTS of sheet pans. I think that's all I'll say about that right now.

Today was a busy day. According to Chef L., we produced 16 different items today. We had a quiz. We did dishes. We got to eat some chocolate from Chef B's chocolates class. At lunch there was spanikopita. And pie! I thought I was a picky eater. Not so much, after seeing how picky some of my classmates are.

On tap for the weekend: studying. Laundry. And working on my research paper. I'm doing mine on Portuguese Sweet Bread, and I need to get over to the campus library so I can get some books.

I'll leave you with some pictures from today. From top to bottom are biscuits, lemon poppyseed muffins, sour cream raisin bran muffins and corn muffins.

Rolls, breads, and muffins...oh my!

Hot. Sourdough. Fresh from the oven. That was definitely the highlight of the day. Yum! We sampled from two loaves, and then sent the rest off to Chef A's Advanced Dining Room class for them to use at lunch service.

The class is run on a four-day rotation for each segment, and each day each table is responsible for different items. Today, like yesterday, my table had soft rolls, blueberry muffins, and honey wheat bread. Tomorrow, we'll be on French dough and biscuits. It's amazing what the learning curve is like from day to day. I already felt more confident going into class today. I'm still learning my way around, especially as far as what ingredient bins are under what table, and where to find which tools. But skills-wise, I think I'm doing all right.

We got another lesson in rounding and rolling the baguettes, and we all did better with some different wording during the demo process. Then we learned how to stipple (cut/score) the tops of the loaves before they go into the oven. I had to do a whole pan, and finally Chef L. guided my hand in the right motion. It didn't feel any different from what I had been doing, but the results were different so I must have been doing it wrong. That's a skill I'll definitely need to work on.

Our first quiz is tomorrow, on the methodology of mixing and the steps of bread-making. I think I'm on top of that pretty well. I need to get my class notes typed up, and do my journal for yesterday and today. I was so tired last night that I was asleep by 9:15, and didn't wake up until 5:50 this morning. Oops. I still got to class with time to spare, but there I was at 6:55 standing outside the door trying to finish my bananna before the day began.

We're fed by the culinary classes doing hot food prep, and today was yummy. I had French Onion Soup, fried eggplant, carrots and greenbeans, a potato pancake, and beef with a mushroom sauce. Needless to say, I didn't eat the mushrooms. But everything else was good :) Thankfully, I'm sure I'm burning it all off running around the kitchen!