Lab for Pies and Tarts...

Wednesday we did pies and tarts, which is something I am pretty familiar with since I love making pies and tarts all the time! My apple pie came out pretty awesome and the crust kicked some serious ass. I have a pie crust recipe that I've been pretty devoted to, but that may change. I made a pretty lattice crust which garnered me some extra points, which were needed cause my banana cream pie did not look so pretty. I never heard of using a graham cracker crust for a banana cream pie, so that was a bit odd. Also, never ever heard of using meringue for a topping. When I think of banana cream, usually a whipped cream topping comes to mind. Not a fan of this pie. The filling was good, but I didn't like anything else about it. I would have used a regular pie crust and whipped cream topping. But, my pie looked like crap. I burnt the top the first time I put it under the salamander, so I had to take the burnt part off and try again. This is the result. Gross. Onto the tart! I was quite pleased with how the tart crust came out. My pastry cream came out well, even though Chef said it was a bit thick from what he could recall. (Lies.) It was not too thick. It was perfect. Who wants runny pastry cream? Not I! I decorated it with fruit. Ta-da...

Nervous about lab tonite...

Not sure why. I make pies and tarts all the time. Maybe it's just because they are recipes I've never used before...maybe since I'll only have a tiny are with which to work...not sure. I'm really hoping that we can have our own stations tonite. I don't like being so cramped. I tried to scale the pastry cream recipe, but for some reason it will not work for me. Grrr. I'm most likely going to arrive early and see if I can get it to work at the computers in the library. Or just photocopy from the book and scale it myself. It may be worth the 10 cents to do that. I just hope I don't choke!

Lab for Yeast Breads...

I started off making the rye bread while Niki was working on the pecan sticky buns. Chef Mark started the sponge for us before class began, so while I was waiting for that to ferment I measured out all the ingredients I would need for the rye and foccacia. Once the sponge was ready, I added it all to the mixer. I let it mix with the dough hook for a good 15 minutes and it didn't look like the gluten was developing so well, so Chef Mark said to take it and hand knead it. I then kneaded it by hand for another 10 minutes, but the consistency never got to where it needed to be. Chef then decided to take the dough and throw it in the larger mixer for another 15 minutes, at which point it didn't look any different than it had before. We just decided to then proof it and see what happens. Then I just went ahead and started on the foccacia. I already had my ingredients together, so it went fairly quickly. I added the sugar, yeast and water to the mixer and let that go for a minute or two, until it had a nice consistency. I then slowly added the flour to the yeast mixture. I let it mix for another 5 minutes and then took it out and hand kneaded for a few minutes. Then it went into the proofer! After giving it some time to rise, we took it out and I punched it. Then I spread it out onto a parchment lined half-sheet pan and brushed some olive oil over it, then back into the proofer to rise again. After that we tossed it into the oven, after poking it with my fingers. Halfway thru the baking process, we sprinkled some asiago cheese and baked another 10 minutes. The cheese didn't get the brown color we were hoping for, so after the bread was done we slid it under the salamander for a few minutes to get a nice toasty color. I'm not sure about the process for the sticky buns, as Niki did all of that on her own, but they were quite tasty! The rye bread never actually rose and didn't turn out so well. Chef said it was most likely due to the flour that was used, which was wheat. If we had some actual rye flour it would have turned out better. I wasn't too disappointed since rye bread isn't my favorite.