Articles from October 2022

12 people arrived for class today out of 20. Last week’s covid positive student is still not back, and 4 others have tested positive. The remaining students off are symptomatic but are testing negative – could be a false negative or just a cold. We share a small room together, so not surprising that it is spreading. The delay in spread is the more surprising given that the first student tested positive last weekend, so was likely brewing towards the end of the week before.

Chocolate week started with tempering practice (tabliering), then seeding in the afternoon. Not a challenge given this is my bread and butter, but my self-imposed challenge was to complete the tabliering with minimum mess and none on my jacket. Tick for the jacket, not so much for the surface which needed some scraping afterwards.

Learned a different way to handle ganache for dipping, a very neat trick to chablon (spread a very thin layer of chocolate). Even more usefully, learned how to make my own praline; I have been limited heretofore by only being able to purchase large quantities which inevitably separate if not used frequently and are hell to reintegrate. Tomorrow we learn how to dip – LOL (how many thousands of those have I done?). I am certain I’ll learn something new though!

Spain won the world chocolatemaster competition – but all of the finalists were absolutely amazing, such interesting ideas and interpretations of the different tasks, more than one deserved to win!

Not sure if fireworks are legal here (would be surprised if not) but not too many going off yet. Here’s to a quiet Hallowe’en for all the pets around, who are almost uniformly disquieted by the weird antics outside.

Goals for the weekend: Get an eggcup and some teaspoons small enough to use with a boiled egg. Put bike together and go for a ride. And chores, of course (clean up notes from last week, laundry, groceries etc).

Didn’t suceed in either! Well, partial success…

-Eventually, after four stores, managed to get some small spoons in the fifth (they are called “appetizer” spoons”?). It was also the only one that didn’t look at me like I had two heads when I asked for an eggcup, and although they didn’t have any in, they are being sent. Doesn’t anyone around here eat boiled eggs? I sure miss Amazon – I don’t have an address I can get deliveries to (not able to use the mailing address here) so am back to picking things up in person which is nasty especially when you don’t know the stores around.

-Put bike together Saturday while listening to zoom conference – assembly looked good, and planned to go riding today. However when I picked the bike up to put it in the car this morning, saw it had a flat (on the back, of course). Not uncommon after it has been packed in the suitcase, so I pulled the tube and tire off to find that the rim tape had shifted and needed retaping. Sigh.

Reboot the day: wait for the bicycle shop to open after finding one with good reviews online, and then head out for a hike instead (was expecting to have to leave the wheel at the shop). The shop surprisingly taped it on the spot at a very reasonable price, another patch kit picked up (no glue in the one I brought with me) and I was headed for my first visit to Red Rock Canyon. It’s mandatory to reserve a time October to May if you want to go on the scenic drive, which is where all the trails leave from, so after researching which trail looked good, reservation on hand, google map directions obtained, it was going to be a smooth go – right? The cycle shop was very near the highway to Red Rock.

Some special event, which wasn’t showing up online when I checked in the bike shop and which nobody working there knew about, closed the exit from the highway that I needed (in both directions – noted on the way down). No problem, I worked out an alternate route using the exit further south. Got up to the highway – turned around again. Hmmm. How could they completely close down the only route into the Canyon?? No detour provided, just “turn around”. Okay, let’s try one exit north, it’s the last option – winding through a maze of a residential area where there are multiple dead end streets and no grid layout in sight, GPS amazingly managed to navigate far enough to get past the “special event” and finally onto the highway.

Lots of cyclists! Good looking bike lanes in this neck of the woods (Summerlin west) and the highway though fairly busy had a very wide shoulder. Had a lovely hike up Calico Hills, where there were also a lot of people bouldering – looks like great rock to play on. Trails were busy around parking lots but quickly tapered off as few people actually hike, and were well marked. Finally got some exercise!! and some beautiful scenery.

And now back to chores, reassemble the wheel and remove bike from living room, and get ready for chocolate week!

Not much to say about today. Tiring – assembling, decorating with different techniques and the discovery of whipped ganaches, deep clean of the baking kitchen and moving to the chocolate kitchen next door for next week. More familiar territory, at least. We started some chocolate decorations this week, which was fun. Our head teacher is away acting as chief judge at the World Chocolate Master competition this weekend (sorry, can’t figure out how to include the link but google World Chocolate Masters and you will get there!).

The number and variety of products from this week was huge, as evident from the buffet pictures below: from banana bread and lemon poundcake to fruit flan, poached pear tart (my favourite), and every variety of puffed pastry you could imagine. Tarts galore – and lots of fruit flavours. Imagine this: breton sable base, topped with a layered ring of crispy hazelnut feuilletine/raspberry ganache, glazed with chocolate mirror glaze then finished with piped chantilly cream and fresh raspberries and sprinkled with pistachios…. or black forest mini cakes. Or tart with almond cream on the base, a layer of soft caramel, then chocolate cremeux ganache topped with pecans and whipped chocolate ganache… Enough to induce a diabetic coma just with the pictures – no wonder our fridges are freezers are groaning just now.

No calories here…..

We are one day away from concluding tart and gateaux de voyage week. Another busy day, and another mountain of dishes later…

Pumpkin pie was finished today – sweet potato in this one.

We did a session on chocolate decorations as well, as you can see!

Caramel flan was completed, but didn’t look too pretty so I plan to level it off with a caramel topping to pretty it up. That one used puff pastry to line the pan.

Leftover puff pastry was also used for apple turnovers (below), a gorgeous apple streudel, tarte fine (apple with pastry cream on puff pastry, below), pithivier with almond cream filling, palmiers…. a multitude of things one can do with puff pastry!

We tasted Canelés, a custard like dish with interesting crispy crust baked in special molds lined with beeswax. Yumm.

Carrot cake was baked in several layers, to be sandwiched with cream cheese icing tomorrow (and decorated with chocolate of course). Brownie decorations were also constructed in chocolate. Coffee cake batter was made and refrigerated for baking tomorrow with fruit layers.

Crunchy hazelnut feuilletine, and raspberry cherry confit inserts were made (layers made to the size of baked products and then added to the top or middle during decorating); raspberry ganache, marscapone cream, milk chocolate, pistachio and white chocolate ganache were made for whipping and piping tomorrow during decorating. Raspberry and dark chocolate mousse inserts were constructed, and chocolate chip cookies were baked. Cheesecake was made with leftover sweet pastry which had been grated, baked and compressed with more butter for the crust. All of the re-use tips are music to my Scottish blood as nothing gets wasted.

The poached pear tart was baked and the poached pears sampled (poached in red wine and spices, fabulous! though not everyone liked them…. Blueberry tart was constructed with previously made blueberry filling and Portugese custard tarts (Pastel de Natel) assembled with leftover puff pastry.

And still to come tomorrow Quiche Lorraine, and all that decorating! The buffet tomorrow promises to be spectacular…. My poor partner is lactose intolerant and can’t eat most of what we are making 😞. I am enjoying my morning breads, pulling a different one out of the freezer each day, making some room for this week’s additions; sourdough with raisin and cranberry inclusions disappeared earlier this week, and today chocolate sourdough with citrus peel. There is no room for real food in the freezer anymore! Where are my visitors?

Too much sharing today! We made things in pairs, but frequently only had enough pieces or equipment for one person to work at a time. This resulted in either running out of things (caramel), or the warmth in the room and the person’s hands detrimentally affected the mix by the time it was passed over to the second person (Chantilly cream).

Despite that, as always we learned a lot, our piping is improving, and the St. Honoré that came home was delicious even if not the most pretty (my partner’s below, the Chantilly cream was too warm when it finally got to me to stand up – so mine looked like someone sat on it!).

We used our puff pastry (classic) today – when to dock and not to dock? Tartan fine with sliced apples assembled today and baked tomorrow; caramel flan with puff pastry and fruit flan with almond cream in paté brisée both progressed in their respective stages today. Our team was pretty happy with our puff pastry, hand rolled through 6 folds, although mine rose slightly lopsided (probably due to uneven docking) and had to be trimmed a little to lay flat for the St. Honoré, and my partner’s came out slightly oval (unequal rolling in each direction usually the culprit). The lemon pound cake was baked, dipped in lemon syrup then glazed with lemon icing. Meillefeuille upcoming, baked today – it is baked in a big sheet, and cut afterwards, who knew.

My partner this week is Anna from Missouri, who is in her early 20’s but has had cooking experience working in hotels and a Michelin star restaurant in France during a previous culinary program. Her knife skills are excellent – she tells me she was prepping avocadoes for breakfasts in one hotel every day for months – it showed in the apple slicing for the tartan. I am looking forward to the arrival of my replacement contact lenses, which I inadvertently left at home, as the board at the front of the class is receding and I’m starting to think I should be bringing in reading glasses for finer decorating work. I blame my apple slicing today on that!

It was a tiring day, tons of dishes at the end and no afternoon break. We shelved the pumpkin pie tart for today and will attack it tomorrow. I think Francois, our teacher, was tired as well trying to corral us all along today – I don’t think he realized that having only one set of things (equipment, mixes) means twice as long for each step as two people need to do it one after the other…. He is learning too!

#$!%!@$!#%!

Try and make a pastry tart shell in a hurry, with soft dough…. 4 attempts later, I thoroughly endorse “Haste makes waste”.

Today saw more fillings made; blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, chocolate ganache, lemon curd, a different lemon cream, chocolate caramel, and chocolate curd. We made a lemon pound cake, lemon syrup and glaze, and all went into the fridge for assembly and baking tomorrow. Chocolate sponge (dacquois) for a future Black Forest Cake was trialled (delicious) and cherry filled blueberry muffins went into the fridge for baking tomorrow. Chocolate caramel tarts were made to be decorated tomorrow. Pecan tarts (pictured below) came home with us.

The Basque travel cake was assembled and put back in the fridge, and we made some cookie dough. Naturally not normal dough, this is rolled and will get a chocolate caramel disc insert to make a sandwich type cookie… Yesterday’s banana bread was baked and was delicious – very moist and nutty.

Throughout the day we worked on the 6 folds needed for classic puff pastry. It was hand-rolled instead of using the dough roller which I think we were all happy about as none of us have dough rollers at our homes or workplaces! It’s resting overnight and will be deployed tomorrow.

More practice with making tart shells tomorrow. Apparently it’s such a basic skill one can’t graduate any pastry chef course in France without making perfect shells. I have a ways to go…. though I did make the one in the picture, I just can’t make them under pressure yet!

Still chilly overnight (9C) but days are pleasantly warm and perfect for sitting out at lunch, and bright and sunny.

It was actually cold enough to require a coat today – down to 10C in the a.m. and the news is complaining it’s unseasonably cold. By lunch though it is very pleasant sitting outside.

We have started tart week, and are learning different techniques to perfect good tart shapes and forms. We had several practice rounds with paté brisée, filling our shells with almond paste and they are currently resting in the freezer waiting for filling tomorrow. Learned how to pipe meringue into cool designs for Pavlova. We made several fillings, banana bread, pecan topping, and getting ready for puff pastry tomorrow – both regular and inverted.

Pictures to come tomorrow….

Nothing much to report for the weekend as plans to go to Valley of Fire for a hike were cancelled due to weather. We had high winds in the valley starting Saturday at 11 a.m. ish and though I tried to beat it on my walk to the Wetlands Preserve, I had to abort the desert walk loop because the dust was already kicking up. I got home at 11 ish and measured my parking spot carefully to be away from the palm tree should it topple – the news had indicated that trees down and power outages were likely with wind gusts predicted up to 65 mph.

The forecast was right on, and by noon the mountains were not visible – by 3 p.m. the airport was barely visible for the dust though the planes continued to fly in and out; with their changed flight path they were audible for the first time. Amazingly the pool down below remained open and the noise from there was the loudest yet until it finally shut down at 4 pm ish as everything was flying around by then. Interestingly the windows let in enough breeze on the 19th floor to move the curtains inside…

Pretty obvious in those conditions how much trash there is discarded in this city – it was whipping around everywhere. Single use bags still abound, no charge at stores for these so between those and plastic bottles and cans that have no deposit, quite a mess…. I packed in the afternoon, counting down the hours until I could get off the strip…

Happily I was advised on Friday that I could move in anytime on Sunday to the apartment – previously the schedule had me doing a late checkout at 1 p.m. and then being orphaned until 3 p.m. checkin so that was great news! I was out of the Marriott after two loads by 8:30 a.m, (all that bread hanging in bags hanging off the luggage rack) and heading over to the new abode where I could finally unpack and call it home. Although the gate wasn’t working properly (storm electronic malfunction?) someone kindly let me into the complex and it was then a process of multiple trips up and down the stairs, the promised workout – unpacking and then shopping for provisons and mopping the floor which was filthy. As I didn’t find cleaning fluid inside I suspect they hadn’t been done properly for awhile, though the owner suggested that it was the dust storm that was the culprit… I’m not so sure, as it took three mops to get the dirt to a tolerable level.

Very nice to unpack – quite a quiet complex and some bike lanes close by; stumbled into a shopping centre with an REI store within 10 mins, that may be dangerous….

Several of my classmates had glazed eyes this afternoon, and many of us felt we were approaching diabetic coma levels of sugar from the carbs by mid afternoon. We covered a LOT of ground this week, and made a lot of different types of bread as you can see from the bread buffet assembled today to showcase samples of each….. We covered variations of basic breads, Artisan breads, ancient grains, low gluten, fruit breads, flatbreads, croissants and Danish and all forms of laminated dough; sourdough both sweet and savoury and with loose and stiff levain. We did variations of white, brown, and multigrain bread….

Thank you to all the cows that provided the plentiful butter we went through on brioche, croissant and Danish days…..

We baked lovely pizza dough today that was in the works since yesterday, and had that for lunch – then went back into class and were offered samples of flatbread, the gorgeous Danish pastries you will see on the buffet, and baked sourdough, multigrain sourdough, curry buns, and pretzels. All interspersed with salty info on marketing, profit margins, and options for bakery production.

One could have induced diabetes just watching Michel, our main teacher, decorate – after piping chocolate cream into a rich Danish pastry ring, he will decorate with chocolate ganache, chopped pecans, and then snow sugar on half to make it look zippy… it wasn’t enough to bake a double Danish ring with pastry cream, it was filled with diplomat cream, topped with raspberries or blueberries, and then sprinkled with pistachios and powdered sugar… The finished results are divine, but not fare one could sample often without consequences. All three of our teachers are slim and fit, and one reason is that they dance around the kitchen at full speed all day – one day this week we watched in amazement as Michel managed 10 different timers simultaneously, all measuring different stages of different breads (bench resting, proofing, baking, or mixing). Truly impressive, and skills imported from being an executive chef of a large bakery where time management determines production quantities and revenue.

Coming home with me today were curry buns, sourdough bread, and multigrain sourdough. Definitely going for a hike tomorrow to work some of this week’s sampling off! Sunday I am moving to my final accomodation so can finally unpack and put my bicycle together.

I think that was the universal refrain after today, day 4 of bread week. Both sweet and savory breads today and the much anticipated croissants….

Cool new trick – spraying eggwash with a spray gun! I have one of these for chocolate decorating, and if it happened to be out, it sure makes the job easier…

We made two different types of sourdough, chocolate (shown below) and multigrain, from the starter apple peels last week.

In the morning we also shaped and baked the red wine bread, zebra bread, and foccacia (pictured below). I didn’t try the red wine bread as it had Salami but it got very mixed reviews.

A stroll around the interesting neighbourhood at lunch – it is the Arts District and filled with wall murals. Hot in the sun, still 33C at noon. My last weeks’ partner lives in Yuma and says she finds it too warm there when it hits 125F…

The afternoon saw the mixing of pizza dough, “Ingredients” bread (farmer’s market bread with lots of fruit inclusions), Curry bread, Couronne Lyonnaise from SE France, Flatbread, and Oignons de Cérvennes (a local onion spurred the development of this bread, pictured below – we substituted red onions and it was delicious).

And because we were short on calories for the day (not) we made Kouign Amann the easy way (making a caramel first, hardening and then powdering it to spread on instead of sugaring each fold of the Danish dough), sticky buns with macerated raisins and pastry cream, sticky buns with caramel and raisins, and learned how to make bearclaws, windmills, and other shapes with Danish dough. The Kouign Amann were lighter than the traditional Breton version (not a bad thing!) but still loaded with calories and subsequently utterly delicious – apparently calories disappear in the oven during baking, along with caramelization ha ha.

As many of these breads came home as samples, our freezers are groaning. I doubt I’ll need to get bread again during this stay although I have to move everything on Sunday….

An interesting discussion of equipment options – mouth watering but not in my horizon – interesting tips to reduce costs for those establishing a commercial bakery. Apparently croissants are supposed to be a narrow margin item designed to lure people in order to sell other things – not so much in North America. I thought that Vancouver’s croissants were costly but it’s not unusual to be charged $5 US according to the American students – a “luxe” item rather than a lure.

Lots more baking tomorrow, and picture day – a bread buffet. Pizza for lunch!