We started on Wednesday with another lecture, this time on dry storeroom goods - nuts and spices mainly. There isn't really much to say about the lectures, the chef talks through the slides and we have to fill in the blank bits of information in our folders. Pretty uneventful to blog about, however it was a useful lesson as I hadn't realised Apricots contained a kernel that was used to flavour Amaretto (a big favourite!). There was one incident in class that is worth retelling though. We had a male French chef for this class and I'm not great with accents at the best of times, on this occasion I think chef said "when I was a young guy", unfortunately I misheard that as "when I was a young girl". A couple of other people had misinterpreted that as well and went to laugh, as I did, and then we very quickly realised the rest of the class hadn't heard it that way and that was most definitely not what the chef had said as he carried on talking without batting an eyelid. Ordinarily it would have been chuckled about and moved on from very quickly, but when you're in an environment where you're supposed to listen and pay attention things that wouldn't normally be that funny suddenly become the most hilarious thing you've ever heard. Most people that know me know me well enough that when I get the giggles I can't stop laughing. Fortunately I was in the middle of class so could hide a bit, but the chef was at the front of the class for this bit and kept looking round at everyone. Every time he looked in my direction I had to bite my lip and put on a straight face quickly, despite laughing hard inside!! After a good 5 minutes I finally managed to pull myself together again and wiped the tears away and my body had stopped shaking from the laughter!! Not the only time this week that I got a fit of the giggles though.
Thursday was a long day. We had a demo in the morning on coffee eclairs. We had to make the choux pastry by hand, pipe it, make a pasty cream and let it cool, prepare the fondant icing, knock back the pastry cream and flavour it and then fill the eclairs. Once all that was done we also had to apply the fondant evenly and then pipe a chocolate decoration on top. This one's a potential exam dish, so paying full attention to everything was of the utmost importance. It didn't look too bad, I was actually quite looking forward to getting in the kitchen and doing this one...
After the demo we all had a 10 minute mid-term review with an assigned chef, who acts as our mentor. We were given a break down of our grades for each practical lesson so far. In the practical lessons we are marked on 5 areas; teamwork, organisation, hygiene, preparation and presentation, and for each of those areas we are given a score of 1 - 5 (1 being the lowest, 5 the highest). I was pleased to see a lot of 3's and 4's against the various practical sessions and even one 5 on there! It was for presentation in the Jalousie lesson - I'm still really chuffed with that one. I averaged it out and it came to 3.75, which when converted to a percentage is roughly 75-ish%. More than enough for a pass, so I'm very happy with progress so far, just need to keep up this pace.
After the feedback we had a couple of hours wait before we went into the kitchens to make the eclairs. It started out ok, made the choux pastry fine and I was pretty happy with how I piped it too, it went in the oven - we were all a bit slower than chef wanted but no matter. I'm not sure what happened then but I slowed down majorly and fell behind, I got my pastry cream on but it took ages to thicken. I had to leave it off the heat while I sorted out the eclair shells, which were now cooked. Made the little holes in the bottom of them, but the pastry cream was still liquid - and everyone else had either finished theirs or were just finishing. It eventually came together though, and I got it in the blast chiller to cool down quickly. Got my station tidied and rearranged and then when the pastry cream was ready I knocked it back like a mad man possessed, added the coffee extract and straight into the piping bag. I then proceeded to fill the eclairs as quick as I could. They don't just need a bit of filling here and there, they need a good piping until its bulging out of the other holes in the bottom! Scraped the excess down and then got the fondant sorted. It's really weird stuff, I've never used it before, but you need to heat it to around body temp to keep it shiny, but also loose enough to work with. We also had to flavour that with coffee extract, which helped thin it down enough to drizzle over the eclairs. By this point I seemed to have caught up and actually managed to get the fondant on my eclairs pretty quickly. Then to finish them we had to pipe chocolate on the top. Because I hadn't quite got the fondant wide enough on a couple of the eclairs I went with the slightly simpler design than the one I practiced the night before. Then before we knew it the lesson was over, got some useful feedback, just need to work on precision a bit more - which fortunately was an action I'd set myself (we had to set 3) at the mid term review. The other two were to get the Pate Brisee right and to work on my piping! It was a late finish, so after quite a stressful lesson I was happy to get home, although annoyed with myself that I'd got so far behind, but at least its a good learning curve. Just hope the marks weren't too bad!
Friday morning we had the basic breads demo (the one I've been waiting for!), and unfortunately this was the second time in the week I got a fit of giggles. Although this time I think the chef knew what he was doing! We were shown how to make soda bread, white dinner rolls and a couple of brown loaves. The loaves looked great and came out looking very nice - no pressure! The rolls were also a work of art, and the chef showed us lots of different styles; mini baguette shape, round rolls, knots, plaits, a turtle and others. The one that caught me out though was the double knot. Chef did three of each and left the dough in various stages of each shape on the worktop. Unfortunately with the double knot, the first stage you shape it too before tucking the ends under looks phallic. I couldn't help it, when he left it there I had to succumb to a laughing fit and hope I didn't get told off for it - in the front row there's nowhere to hide! Fortunately I didn't get told off! Childish I know, but if at the age of 27 I haven't grown out of it now I think its time to abandon hope I ever will. Not that I ever really wanted to anyway, life's a lot more fun when you laugh a lot! I'm not ashamed to say I hung around a long time after this lesson and tried A LOT of the bread, in fact I was one of the last 6 or 7, in a room of about 60ish! The bread was that nice, and I couldn't stop myself. Truth be told I didn't want to stop myself either! That was it for friday, it was nice to have just one lesson so I could get the notes written up and early to bed ready for an early start Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, 4am alarm, tummy still full of bread - lord have mercy. The coach driver was a miserable old git as well, alas the weather was nice enough to walk to school and sit in the park outside to woof down a quick bit of breakfast, so I could wake myself up a bit before the 8am start!
The lesson went really well, we started on the dough for the dinner rolls and gave it a good knead and slap around. While it was bulk fermenting we started on the soda bread. Once that was made and shaped it was time to get the other dough out and shape it into the rolls. I went for the double knot! The single knot, round rolls and a wheat shaped roll (not really sure how best to describe it), for the ones I was presenting, and coated some in poppy seed, sesame seed and caraway seed. Then with the leftover dough I made a couple of single stranded plaits (thanks for showing/reminding me how it was done George!), an olive filled wheat shape, a mini loaf and a suspect looking turtle! We got to play with the last few bits so it was up to us what we made. Chef told us all the animals had to go on one tray so he could open a zoo! We had about 3 turtles, a nice looking fish, a fat panda and a monkey, and a very nice looking octopus. I think its fair to say we all really enjoyed this lesson a lot! In fact its been my favourite one so far. I love making (and eating) bread. The feedback I got was also really good. Chef said the bake on the rolls, the shaping and application of extras was good and he also said I'd made a "Very very good soda bread" - dead chuffed with that feedback!
So that's the halfway point now passed for Basic Patisserie. It's going ridiculously fast, but even with the stressful moments, I'm loving it. The final practical exam/assessment is only a month away now, it feels way too close for comfort, but I'm finding time to re-read recipes, practice the dishes and piping techniques, so preparing as best I can.
My coffee eclairs, need to get them sized better, work on the fondant application and also the chocolate piping (and not fanny around with the pastry cream!) but overall I was happy with them. The family thoroughly enjoyed them anyway!
The soda bread and bread rolls. I'm really really happy with how these turned out, and will definitely make these again...and again...and again!
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