DOUGHNUTS!

From the title, you can see that I was a little but excited that we made doughnuts today. It was a long process, not nearly as quick as the bagels, and the dough was a little pesky at times but it was overall a fun day. Our group made chocolate sour cream doughnuts and then we helped make pastry cream and I made Italian doughnuts or bomboloni to test a recipe for the chef. The bomboloni were an enormous disaster. They were made with a dough that should have proofed but we didn't have time for the proofing and as a result, when I fried them, the bombolini acted like an oil sponge. It was actually a little gross and I threw them all out because they tasted like oil. Ek. However, the doughnuts were a delight. The dough was easy enough, mix the wet ingredients into the dry and then roll it out between two sheets of floured parchment paper and let it chill. Then you use a small round and a large round cutter to cut out the doughnuts and then you fry them, let them cool down a touch and dress them with whatever topping tickles your fancy. As you can see from my pictures, I used a lot of sprinkles and just a touch of glaze on my doughnuts. And if you are wondering about the taste, I must say that they tasted pretty swell. Of course they don't taste like store-bought doughnuts, they are a lot denser, but the recipe had a little cinnamon in it and that made for a very nice flavor in the batter.


This picture is of the bomboloni but you get the idea -- you fry up the doughnuts in oil...


And then you get a lovely perfect doughnut...


And when you add colorful sprinkles...



You get a fetching sprinkle doughnut hole...unless you top the doughnut with glaze...


And then it that case you would get this, a lovely glazed doughnut.

Since it is Friday today and I'm verra excited it is the weekend, I will try and keep y'all updated on all the comings and goings of Collin Murray and I. Plus, since it is supposed to me godly hot this weekend (one forecast said it was going to be 28C tomorrow!), I may have a little ice cream session for y'all too.

The Wait Is Over, The Sourdough Has Baked...And So Have The Bagels and Pretzels!

In some ways today was a little anti-climatic. We finally got to use a little bit of our "babies" to make sourdough and it was such a quick and easy recipe that was over so quick that I kind of found myself asking, 'all that feeding just for this?' Now, I know that the proof is probably in the puddin'...err, bread, but honestly, I have yet to taste the loaf I made. I'm in such a state of carb-overload that I just didn't want to cut into the loaf today. Also, for those who are aghast that I haven't tasted the bread yet, when we bake loaves that have to proof for some time before being baked, it takes a long time for the whole process to occur, especially when we only have four hours of class. Since we made the dough, let it proof and did other things, shaped it, let it proof again, and then we baked it, by the time it was done, we were dressed in our street clothes and leaving school. To have sliced into the bread, fresh out of the oven would ruin the loaf because all the moisture in the bread would escape and dry your beautiful loaf out. So the bottom line is, my sourdough looks like a dream and we will have to wait and see how it tastes. Also, since my partner made a rye sourdough starter, she made a pumpernickel bread and we shared our loaves -- no, I haven't tasted that one either but it is in the pictures below. She made the starter and I shaped the loaf; it is a very communal process this bread baking thing.


Our sourdough and rye sourdough breads -- mine is the lighter one

What we did today that was really fun was we made bagels and pretzels. Both were very easy, very quick proofing doughs and both were very fun. The process is simple: make the dough, let it proof for about 15 minutes, divide the dough into pieces that weigh the same, shape the dough into bagels or pretzels (I'm not going to try and tell you how without providing pictures because it will be verra, verra confusing), boil them for 15 minutes, top them with whatever topping you prefer and bake them. Honestly, it might sound like a lot of work but I was shocked by how easy it was to make bagels. Honestly shocked. I've never been a pretzel kind of girl so the pretzels didn't excite me too much but the bagels were both exciting and something that I could see myself over and over again. Stay tuned my faithful followers because I know that Collin Murray is going to freak out with how good the bagels are and I am sure that I will be making them at home and blogging about the process with pictures and a recipe quite soon.


Home-made pretzels don't look perfect but they were still tasty -- I liked the cinnamon sugar the best but I thought this one, the salt one, photographed the best


My bagels. It is going to take me a few times to work on the shaping so if you can tell, mine need to be shaped a little better but you get the gist, right?

If I thought that the bagels were fun, I think I might freak out with delight tomorrow because we are making doughnuts and brioche. Brioche is a sweet egg-y bread that I have been look forward to baking for a very long time so I am really excited. Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Carb Coma

Oh my land. I am still full from all the pizzas of today. Each person had enough dough to make two 12 inch pizzas and with all the tasting and ingredient sampling, I am quite literally in the darkest depths of a carb coma.

Before we got into the pizza making, each team made a batch of foccacia dough that was left to proof for the couple of hours that we were all entrenched in the pizza pies. The foccacia was so easy that it is almost laughable. Basically, if you can measure and stir, you can make foccacia. I will include the recipe for y'all one day so make sure that you stay tuned but since I felt that the end result was a little thin and a little bit crisper than I usually like foccacia to be, I am going to test it out at home and maybe make some changes first.

Now in order to make the feast of pizza, all the students were asked by our chef to pick a couple of toppings to prepare. Me? I cooked bacon in the oven, minced many heads of garlic and then tossed them in olive oil to make a garlic oil, and I doctored the tomato sauce because it needed a little help in the seasoning department. We had lots of other toppings to work with, onions, mushrooms that were cooked and raw, several kinds of cheeses, herbs, olive, capers, anchovies, sausage, spinach, pesto -- I'm sure there were others that I just can't recall at the moment, carb coma, remember? Anyway, after we shaped our dough, we began the topping. I made a few different kinds of pizza, mozzarella, tomato, basil and several other cheeses too, spinach, ricotta, red peppers and prosciutto and pecorino, a cheese-stuffed pie crust with spinach, sausage, ricotta and mushrooms -- they were all good. The dough, which our chef seemed to really adore was good but not great. I found it a little bit dry in every pizza that I made which to me means that it wasn't my cooking of the pizza but instead was the dough itself. However, despite the dry dough, with the red sauce, cheese and all my tasty ingredients, the pizza was truly delicious. Hopefully when Collin Murray gets home from work he will think so too because let's face it, cold pizza and milk is a pretty tasty treat anytime of the day!


One of my small unbaked pizza pies


Happy pizzas in the oven (Mine is on the far-right side of the oven with all the cheese and basil on top)


Another small pizza after baking


The baby stuffed crust pizza. It was so cute and only about six inches across -- truly an adorable little pizza pie!

I'm not sure what tomorrow's plan is. I heard someone say that we are making sourdough rye bread so it will be exciting to finally get to start to using the "babies" that we have been feeding for such a long time! Other than that, there is not too much exciting to report. I've been busy working on the first FLAVOR PICNIC blog entry and I'm so nervous to start this new writing endeavour that I'm just not sure what I for sure want to write about. I've got some ideas but nothing solid yet. I will let y'all know when I do post it and I sure hope that people will tune in as they do with this blog! Thanks again faithful readers, if I was anywhere near any of you I would bring my leftover cold pizza over to you and have a pizza party right this second!

Oh My Land, What A Bread-Filled Day Of Fun!

Unlike yesterday which I found to be a little tedious, today's pastry class was a hoot. We shaped and dipped our grissini in toppings, made pizza dough, fed our sourdough starters (more on that a little later), and we made and braided soft dough. It was a fun and full day. As I explained yesterday, grissini are long, thin, crisp bread sticks. We dipped ours in powdered garlic and Parmesan cheese. They were pretty tasty and they were also pretty easy. If I make the grissini at home, which I intend to do soon, I will post the recipe with more pictures.


Parmesan and Garlic Grissini

Next we made the pizza dough which was a bit of a process. Like some of the bread we made last week, we made a poolish or a sponge for the pizza dough and then we mixed the sponge with flour, water, and eventually a herb oil. The dough is resting and slowly rising tonight and we are going to use it tomorrow to make...PIZZA!! Apparently the whole class is going to be devoted to pizza making and foccacia and I am very excited. I think that my team is going to make four-cheese pizza but there are a lot of other types that we will probably have the opportunity to make tomorrow -- stay tuned!

As we have been every single day since last Wednesday, we fed our sourdough starters or our "babies" today. Our babies are getting quite big and very bubbly and soon they will have developed enough sourness that we can use them to make bread. When we do, I will be sure to tell you all the information about sourdough and all that jazz but I can't right now because I don't know. I know how to feed my baby (equal parts flour and water daily) but that's about it! What I did want to share with y'all is something we learned today that was fascinating to me. At school there is a chef-instructor who used to be the head baker at Balthazar Bakery in New York. Balthazar is a wonderful restaurant owned by famed restaurateur Keith McNally and Balthazar Bakery supplies all of Mr. McNally's restaurants with bread as well as functioning as a separate entity of its own. The chef-instructor, who as a side note seems a little nuts, told us that at Balthazar they use a starter that has been feeding for 38 years. Seriously. 38 years! And if that is not crazy enough, they have one person at the bakery whose job it is to feed the starter...four times a day! Every six hours. It is just crazy to me. Crazy!

Ok, so on to the best part of the day, the braiding of the bread. The dough that we used was pretty egg-y. It had eight fluid ounces of egg yolks in it which is about 12 eggs and it was verra, verra sticky. We made it and let it proof till it had at least doubled in size and then we punched it down and divided it in order to shape it. To braid, you take three, four, five, or more strands of dough that weighs relatively the same amount, pinch the ends and braid. I made a four-strand and a three strand braid and then one of the girls in the class and I combined our left overs and made a Windsor knot roll. It was a lot of fun and I wish we had had more bread so we could have braided all day long. Before we baked, we proofed the dough again, egg washed it and baked it until the internal temperature of the bread was 220F. So fun and so delicious looking and delicious tasting too. I was planning on making waffles tomorrow morning for a FLAVOR PICNIC story that I am working on but I might just have to change my plan and make French toast with the buttery, moist, and rich braided dough instead!


Just braided dough so that you can see just how rich the color develops with the egg wash


Happy loaves all in the oven


The finished four-strand braid loaf


A close-up of the finished soft dough loaf

FLAVOR PICNIC!

Ok y'all the "professional" blog that I will be including on the resumes that I send out to potential employers is now up and sort of running. I have posted one entry but not a food-related entry. I would love if you could spread the word about the blog; maybe someone you know, knows someone who knows someone -- eventually I hope this whole writing thing will be for more than just fun and hopefully somebody, someday will pay me for doing it! I will make sure I let my faithful followers on this blog know when I have updated the other blog and I promise (Angie Bishop, I especially promise to you) that I won't forget about this blog.

Thank you for all your support everyone!

http://flavorpicnic.blogspot.com/

Dough You Can't Eat?! What The Heck?

Odd day at school today. Odd and labor intensive. We made a dough that is going to slow rise in the fridge overnight and will be turned into grissini or very thin, slightly crisp breadsticks tomorrow. Then we made a dough that we did nothing but knead and shape, knead and shape, knead and knead and knead and shape. This dough, called pain morte or dead dough, can be used to create bread showpieces (who knew?!) or sculptures made out of dough but we used the dough to learn and practice braiding bread. Since the dough doesn't have yeast in it, it doesn't rise and though I suppose that you could eat it, I really wouldn't suggest it. We made the pain morte to practice how to braid dough because tomorrow we are making challah-like bread which is a very egg-y and rich dough perfect for french toast and grilled cheese and I'm verra excited about that. When reading cookbooks, challah is something that I frequently see as an ingredient and I'm really excited to learn to bake it and I guess if I'm going to bake it then I need to know how to braid and shape it too but oy vey was today a lot of work. Pain Morte is basically rye flour with a sugar syrup mixed and then kneaded into it and because rye flour is really likes to absorb liquid, it needs to have liquid (the sugar syrup) in almost constantly. Basically, we would learn how to braid the dough, we would braid the dough and then it would need to be re-kneaded, have liquid added and then be kneaded again. Also, my partner's dough was really, really dry and so I tried to help her out after I had done my own dough. It might not seem like anything strenuous but you have to remember that the liquid that we were adding to the dough was sugar and so the sticky-ness of the sugar was making the little bits of rye in the flour stick to my hands and the table. I really didn't like the lesson today even though I liked learning how to braid the dough -- it just seemed like a lot of hassles and I know I'm whining now, but it was nothin' compared to the amount of whining that was going on in the classroom...my fellow students are even bigger princesses than I. The good thing about ALL the kneading of today is that I am feeling like I can knead a lot longer without feeling tired. In other words, ladies and gents, the bread be makin' be buff.

Anyway, my newly-buff princess self is rather excited for tomorrow. Hopefully there will be wonderful pictures of braided bread for y'all to see. Today's picture is of the pain morte that has been braided into a five-strand braid. Sorry for the ugliness of the color, we used cinnamon because all the other fun colorings (like turmeric and paprika) had been taken.

Cookie Monsters

What does one do on a cold and rainy day in New York City? Eat cookies of course! Since Collin Murray and I have been eating just about everything in New York, it stands to reason that we haven't neglected the mighty cookie on our tasting tour. The first cookie that we had that was truly delicious was at a place called the Momofuku Milk Bar. Milk Bar is one of several restaurants in New York owned by a man named David Chang. The restaurants that he owns are very hip and very pretentious in a way that only hip restaurants can be. Milkbar is attached to another of his restaurants, Momofuku Saam Bar and is usually very busy. They sell soft serve ice cream in flavors like red velvet and cereal milk, whole cakes, different kinds of pie (like their signature flavor called crack pie that has an oat crust and a butter-y filling) and they sell cookies. Collin Murray and I shared three cookies, the cornflake cookie that has cornflakes, chocolate chips and marshmallows in it, a double chocolate cookie and a blueberry cream cookie that apparently had milk crumbs?! and dried blueberries. For all the hype that we had heard about Milkbar, Collin Murray and I were a little disappointed. The cookies were good but they weren't great. The blueberry one was especially bland and the cornflake cookie was very chewy and tasty but it had too much sugar in it which made it a little bit hard on the outside. However, the flavors that the bakery sold definitely got my brain a-thinking for when we start the cookies and cakes module in school.


Milk Bar cookies

Tonight, because of the cold and rain, we were looking for something sweet and comforting to have after dinner. I had heard about a bakery called Insomnia Cookies from a friend at school and so Collin Murray and I knew we were in the neighbourhood and we decided to make it a mission to find the place. Insomnia Cookies is basically a bakery that is primarily set up in college towns and caters to students studying late at night. They are open till 3am, deliver to nearby NYU and have very reasonable prices and pretty tasty cookies. The other neat thing about Insomnia, which is actually supposed to be a neat thing about Milkbar but we didn't taste it, is that they serve their cookies warm. What I think they do is only bake the cookies half-way and then keep them in a very warm oven with the hope of them cooking all the way through but not overcook and that they will still stay warm and soft. We tried the chocolate chip, smore, oatmeal raisin and white chocolate macadamia nut and they were pretty tasty. Like the cookies at Milkbar, these cookies were very sugar-y and also very butter-y -- I think this is part of the way that they make them So soft and So chewy but it makes them a little bit greasy at the end of the cookie.


Insomnia Cookies (not including the smore which Collin Murray and I shared on the way home...)

After the cookie tasting I have a lot of ideas for mix ins when I bake cookies but I also want to know from you, my faithful blog readers, what your favorite cookie is to munch on when it is cold and icky outside? Please share, don't be shy. Give me some ideas for cookies to make, research, photograph, eat, and blog about -- let's get involved in the blog! And have a glass of milk on the side.

What Do You Do With Stale Bread?

So as you all know, there is an abundance of bread in our apartment and instead of making buckets of bread crumbs, I thought I might try to find a recipe that would help me use it all up because really, how many bread crumbs does one really need? Since we made bread puddin' in class a few weeks ago, I thought I might try to find a recipe that was similar to the bread puddin' but a little less sweet and dessert-y. I searched online for something called strata which is technically a savory bread puddin' -- no sugar, no sweetness, just goodness.

I found a recipe from Smitten Kitchen (a great blog site if you have never been and I will include a link to the recipe at the end of the blog), modified it just a tad and had a very, very good breakfast this morning. The premise of the strata is to take cubed, stale bread and layer it in a baking pan with savory ingredients like spinach and cheese and then pour a mixture of milk, eggs, and a little mustard over top. You let it soak overnight and then bake it in a 350F oven until it is cooked through, about 55 minutes. I know it sounds like an effort to have to make the strata the night before and let it sit in the oven overnight but it actually makes things a lot easier, especially if you were having people over for brunch. Think about it, on the weekend, the last thing you want to do is slave over a hot stove. So do a little work the night before and then throw your pre-made breakfast in the oven the oven and enjoy.

Like I said, I will link you up with the actual recipe but I will tell you what I changed first. I added what the crazy Americans call Canadian bacon -- pre-coooked ham, and I didn't include the nutmeg because I didn't have any. I also just used the cheese that was in my fridge, white cheddar and pecorino instead of the gruyere and parm. I have to say that it turned out delicious and so if you don't have the cheeses at home that the recipes suggest, don't sweat it, just sub in something else. Another suggestion that I will give is for you to try and pre-cut and pre-grate all your ingredients before you start. I found that when I read the instructions, the recipe had expected for me to have already done my prep-work and be ready for the next step and so I found myself feeling behind. Other than that, I was tremendously happy and so was Collin Murray. I think he even ate it cold and liked it. Enjoy!


Yummy!


Yum yum yummy!

Here is the link to Smitten Kitchen

Opps...Name Correction

Blog 2.0 was mistakenly named Picnic Kitchen in yesterday's blog and thank goodness Rod pays attention. Blog 2.0 is actually going to be called Flavor Picnic. Opps.

Buckets of Bread

Holy crap did we make a lot of bread today. Seriously, holy crap load of carbs. As before, it is a little bit tough to explain everything that we did today because there was just so much but I will do my best.

We started my making a sponge for two types of bread, a Nicois Olive and what's called a Fougasse. A sponge is just a mixture of water, yeast and flour that is left to ferment alone before it is mixed with the rest of the flour and other ingredients. Also called a Poolish, the pre-ferment makes for a much softer, spongier, and wetter dough because there is a lot more moisture in the dough. After our sponges were made, we got to work on the dough that we had left to pre-ferment over night in the fridge. It had gotten very sticky and very heavy over night and was really hard to work with but we all managed. We shaped the overnight dough into long logs and let them proof in the proof box while we got ready the ingredients (or the mise en place) for the Olive and Fougasse breads. With the Olive, we had to chop rosemary and olives and the Fougasse required fried bacon and herbs de provence to be steeped in hot water like you would do with tea. As soon as we finished the mise en place the bread in the proof box was ready for the oven and since it was very, very, very sticky, I needed a valium after trying to get the dough from the floured linen towels (called couches and pronounced cu-shez)to the cornmeal covered boards to put them in the oven. They stuck to me, to the towels, to each other -- it was bad. After the French bread was in the oven, we started getting our Olive breads and Fougasses mixed, kneaded and proofed. Whew, are you getting tired? It's work just recounting it but we are almost done... Once the French bread was done, we prepared the Olive and Fougasse for the oven and once they were in, we all fed our babies or the sourdough starters. Then finally, we broke bread and boy did it taste good. I really liked the olive bread but the Fougasse was a little bland for me. It kind of looked like a mal-formed pretzel and so it was a touch crusty too but not bad. The French bread got over-baked (our chef was taking care of that and forgot...opps) but they will likely be good for a strata or bread puddin' -- look for that as a possible blog topic this weekend.

In other news, the flood damage has been fixed and I've decided to call Blog 2.0 Flavor Picnic (Flavor has to be spelt the American way because I will be sending this to American magazines in the hope of getting hired...). Please stay tuned for more details and for wonderful New York weekend updates!


This is the lovely Shannon's bread not mine. It is called American Black Bread. I could have made that instead of the Olive bread but it had far too much molasses for my taste. It sure looked pretty under the oven lights though.


Fougasse (pronounced fu-gas by our chef from New York...that might not be the right way to say it but I wasn't going to mess with him about pronunciation) or as I like to call Ugly Bread.


Olive Bread

French Bread Delights Me So Much I Ate The Whole Loaf!

You will note that in the pictures there are three loaves of bread but in actuality there are only two because I ate one. I ate one with butter and I ate the other half with cheese. It was heaven. They were still warm and they were perfectly soft and the crust was not too crusty. Oh. Heaven is a loaf of French bread.

Remember how I told you yesterday about the sponge dough? Well, the sponge is what we made our bread with today and really, that's all we did. Our class first measured out all the ingredients with which to make two batches of bread with. We used a 60 quart mixer (for those in Canada, 1 quart is 4 cups...that means a 60 quart mixer holds 240 cups -- it is an enormous mixer) to mix all the dough and since there was a serious amount of laziness in our class today, I was able to help out a lot. I poured in the water/yeast into the mixer, poured flour, scraped beaters and dough hooks of the excess, worked the mixer controls, helped the lovely Shannon scoop the dough into the bins for it to proof, did dishes and also did a lot of cleaning. It was a pretty fun day and there was a lot of laughing. The dough is very, very sticky and so it is often a little bit difficult to try and work with it but that also makes it a little fun. There is also so much dough that at one point I told someone that working with it was like trying to put a dress on a donkey. The dough had to rise for quite a while and be tended to by folding it like one would fold a letter every half an hour or so -- this was not easy, remember that I said it was a super sticky dough and that there was a lot of it? It was like trying to fold dough that was sticky and the size of a sandbox... After all the rising and folding, we shaped the dough into another rounded envelope with pinched ends and then we rolled it evenly till it looked like French bread and let it proof (or rise in the humidity box) again. We baked the bread till it had a nice golden brown and was hollow sounding and then I took it home and ate it.

We also worked with our "babies" or our sourdough starters by adding more flour and water to them and we did more math. Today the math was easier and I am sure that I will remember the formulas eventually but until then I need to look at my book a lot still... Tomorrow we are going to be using the other half of the bread that we made today to make more baguettes and we are also going to be making another couple of breads, I'm just not sure which ones just now because our chef is changing things around...until tomorrow, go buy some fresh bread and delight in the sensation of eating fresh, artisan bread that is still warm from the oven.



Our bread in the oven


Fresh bread right from the oven


All my pretty loaves

Bread Day Breeds Brain Confusion

My head is all jumbled with all the new terms, techniques and tools that the second module of pastry school, the bread and pastry dough module, threw at our class today. We had a new chef, a man chef who is a little sassy, very cocky, and who seems to like our us just fine. He talks too fast and gives definitions that are way too intense but he is enjoyable and helpful and he doesn't yell. Apparently we don't have him for the whole module though, he is just filling in for a few days until we get yet another chef. We will see. I honestly cannot even remember everything that we did today but I will try and sum it up.

We started by making a semolina dough. It was a pretty easy dough to make and I will probably try to make it at home one day and share the recipe with y'all but I have to check and see what changes would need to be made to make it at home first. At school we have little baskets to proof our bread in and we also have an actual bread proofing box. The box kind of looks like a fridge but it has tons of shelving and is warm and humid. Putting the bread in there sort of speeds up the rising process and made it possible for us to have raw ingredients turned into actual baked bread within a couple of hours. The bread was quite dense and would probably make for a nice French toast or grilled cheese but it is a touch bland for munching on though I'm sure Collin Murray will enjoy it when he tries it. Throughout the bread rising and proofing process, we learned about baker's percentages which are super confusing, made sourdough starter that I have to feed tonight before I go to sleep, and we also made a sponge dough (which I think means a starter that ferments prior to being used...but don't quote me on that) that we will use tomorrow. The nice thing was that there were a lot less dishes but it was also a bit of a whirlwind.

Tomorrow I believe that we are making French bread and working with the sponge dough too. I am sure there will be more discussion of gluten and yeast and flour and of our sourdough starters and I will be sure to share them with y'all. Until then, enjoy the bread pictures!


View one of the boule


We made two loaf shapes, a batton (a longer loaf) and a boule (pronouned like fool with a "b" and a round-shaped loaf). This is the batton which we topped with seasame seeds. It know it's a weird photo but since my partner and I spilt the loaf, it was really the only photo that looked halfway ok.


View Two

Painted Cat Lady and Her BF Edward No-Scissorhands

Here is what I can say for today, I enjoyed the sun. It was really a beautiful day today in New York. I finished my test in my management class early and so Collin Murray and I were able to have lunch on a bench in Madison Square Park and then since he had to work, I hung out at the apartment, did laundry and attempted to make macarons (look for a blog about that soon -- it was too much of a disaster to discuss today). In the laundry room I met one of our neighbours who I have seen selling art at the Greenmarket. She is, to be politically correct, a very eclectic lady. Very eclectic -- like feathers in the hair and over a certain age but still wearing mini-skirts and patchwork jeans eclectic -- but also really, really nice. I talked with her today for about 45 minutes while she folded her laundry. Her laundry was an experience let me tell you. First of all, there were no underwear?! And, everything was either ripped, or had ricky-racky ticky-tacky stuff sewn into it or had paint on it. She delighted me. We chatted about grocery stores and health care and I had a rant about recycling (aren't you proud Mama?). I have no clue what her name was but maybe I will call her Painted Cat Lady because she noticed the cat hair on my pants and shared with me that she has four cats of her own... I also know that she also has a man-friend because I've seen his freaky self in the building too. The thing is, they are both so nice and they are very warm and open but they look a little nuts! The man looks a little like Edward Scissorhands without the scissor hands and he must be a music man because whenever I see him he is carrying some kind of instrument-shaped case. The point is, they are nice. They are nice crazy peeps that you would only ever see in New York and whenever Collin and I see them, we chuckle to each other that you only see that degree of eccentricity in New York.

Tomorrow I start the bread module of my pastry class and I know that Collin Murray is excited. I'm excited too and I hope that there is a lot of kneading and that I can work off my excess arm fat. So since the new unit is starting, I hope to have a more focused blog to share with y'all soon. All this test business makes for a challenge when blogging and hopefully that will change tomorrow. Till then, enjoy these photos. I know it has nothing to do with Painted Cat Lady and Edward No-Scissorhands but I know the photos make Rod happy and I have been working on my close-up shots lately. Let me know (nicely) what you think. Toodles.


This is/was delicious prosciutto, purty, huh?


Blood oranges that I fought with and took pictures of for days. I need to be a little less of a perfectionist because I really love this photo but I see so many things that I could have done better.


I love this Macaron and I long for mine to look this good one day.

A Five Minute Window and A Flood

Today was our first practical or baking test and it was sort of an oh my land couple of hours. Seriously intense. My name, of course, was picked out of the bowl to be the first one to "present" my souffle to chef and I had a five minute window to present in. FIVE MINUTES! That means that I had to time the making of my souffle, like the whipping of the whites, the folding of the whites into the chocolate mixture and the actual filling and fixing of the cups perfectly so as to be able to have a perfectly risen souffle within that five minute window. It was actually a lot tougher than it reads now because you had seven other people all making souffles at the same time as you, asking questions to you about their egg whites and trying to sneak your burner away from you and chit-chatting (oh the chit-chatting -- it drives me insane!) and when you top that off with the stress of having to have a perfect souffle within a five minutes window...it's not fun and it makes me tired just thinking about it but when it was all said and done, chef would have liked to see my souffle a little taller but she said that it was a beauty, that the texture was great and that I did well.

Onto the next one: we also had to make creme anglaise. I had a smozzle of things happen with my creme anglaise, my burner went out twice and I had to move, I had another student's crap all over my station, I had blonde moments...but the thing is, none of this stuff would matter in the real world. I would still need to make a good creme anglaise and so I did. It wasn't perfect, it was a little too thin but I knew that and I told chef what I had done, what I would do differently and she said that was what really mattered, that I recognized the process and how to make it better. Then she told me that I was going to do fabulous (presumably in the real world), just fabulous. I heart her.


This is my practice souffle from around 2am yesterday morning...it needed a little height too but it still tasted delicious.


See?

Now, the other thing that was going on while I was making souffles was that our apartment was having a minor flood. It's actually not that minor, the walls in the bathroom are seriously bubbled and they are not coming to fix them till Friday -- which might be bad because the bubbles sort of look like they are still holding in water and what happens if they burst?!. I guess what happened was that the person who lives above us left his sink on and it wasn't draining right? How you can leave you sink on I have no idea but he did and our super had to bust into his apartment to turn off his water. Thank goodness Collin was home getting ready for work and so he was able to mop up all the water -- he said that at one point he could have splashed in the puddles -- had I come home to a flood I may have just gone to a hotel.

Tasty Delights from Colicchio and Sons

Collin Murray and I went for brunch today at his new workplace, Colicchio and Sons. Now I'm not going to get all restaurant review-y or anything because that's not really my thing at the moment. Instead, I will tell you how delightfully delicious it was and how lovely the room was and how satisfactory the service was.

For brunch, I had the Ricotta and Spring Vegetable Frittata with Truffle Honey and Arugula and it was verra tasty. It was made in an 8 inch cast iron pan (it helps to know someone who works in the kitchen) and served whole on a white plate. Inside the frittata was a selection of fava beans, peas and ricotta and it was topped with arugula, honey and a little fleur de sel. When I first tasted it, I was a little worried because there was no real taste but the chalk-y flavor of the beans. Dear me. However, I kept eating and it kept getting more and more delicious. The sweetness of the honey and the peppery-ness of the arugula played really well together and the ricotta provided a wonderful creaminess too. I also had a side of bacon which Collin told me is made in the kitchen -- how cool is that?!

Collin Murray had Carolina Johnny Cakes with Duck Confit, Poached Eggs and Red-Eye Gravy. He was delighted by the dish but it really didn't do anything for me visually. There were three cornmeal pancakes (johnny cakes) and then there was a heap of brownish gravy that held the duck confit. The two poached eggs -- poached to perfection said Collin -- were atop the gravy. Like I said, he loved it but I didn't taste it so I cannot account for the flavors.

As for the space, Colicchio and Sons occupies Tom Colicchio's old restaurant, Craftsteak but it looks to me like it has been slightly updated to support a new concept. In the Tap Room, which is the room that we had brunch in and is sort of the more casual room of the two that comprise the restaurant, there is a large dividing wall that is made of glass and holds the wine collection. It is a really neat feature, especially if you sit at the bar because it faces the wine wall. The floor is wood but it has a really neat kind of patchwork rug on it. There are a variety of sizes of tables and a bunch of different kinds of seating -- benches, chairs and stools. Also, there are giant windows all around the room which let in a lot of great light during the day and at night, the ceiling, which has a super cool geometric design, lights the room very nicely Collin says.

It was a fun brunch and it was very neat to see where Collin works and see a couple of the chefs that he works with. We think we will probably go back soon and try another couple things -- the Brioche Pain Perdu with Smoked Maple Syrup is calling my name.

Wish me luck on my tests tomorrow. I'm very nervy about them and find that the idea of not being able to make any mistakes is a rather nerve-wracking one. Until then, to keep the picture mongers happy, here are a couple pictures of a cupcake that I took yesterday. It is from Eleni's in Chelsea Market and though the cupcake itself wasn't that good (too sugar-y and too dry for my liking), it sure did photograph pretty.

Back To Basics With Candied Citrus Peel

Since I spent today riding the subway for literally hours and making creme anglaise and bread, I hope y'all think it's ok that I recycle some old material and talk to you about candying today. We candied citrus peel in our first couple of weeks of school and I found it to be rather delightful and recently tried it at home. It doesn't take a lot of work and it's actually kind of fun. Plus, when you do candy at home, people will think you are super talented and way cool.

You don't need a lot of ingredients to candy -- sugar (and lots of it), citrus of your choice and water. What you do is cut the top and bottom off of the citrus and then remove the flesh -- it's really the peel you are looking for. Once you have removed the flesh, simply cut the peel into 1/2 inch stripes. Then take a medium-sized saucepan and fill it with enough water to cover the peel. Bring the pan to a boil and drain and then repeat this process of boiling three more times. This takes away the bitterness of the peel and makes it nice and soft. Then, after the last boil, place the peel in a bowl and combine sugar and water in a saucepan and bring it to a boil (you are making a very concentrated sugar syrup when you do this). After it boils, adds the peel back into the simple syrup and let the peel simmer until it is tender. Now for this, you follow my Chef's rule, don't listen to what the recipe says, just boil it until it is translucent and tender. My recipe says that this will take three to four hours but when I made mine at school it took 45 and when I made it at home, it took one hour. Cool the peel in the syrup overnight and then put it in the fridge, it should last for months and months. When you are ready to use it, remove from the syrup, dry out slightly and dip in chocolate or roll in granulated sugar, whichever you think tastes best. For me, a person who usually hates candied peel, I find the chocolate to be the best but actually, the sugared peel is really good too. Maybe it is just the act of making it yourself that makes me like it, I don't know but whatever it is, it's good.

Since the recipe varies depending on what kind of fruit you are using, I will simply give you the verbatim recipe from my school formula book. Follow my directions from above for whichever citrus you choose to use and if you want to use one (say blood oranges or pomellos) just use the quantities for the fruit in the recipe that are closest in size.

CANDIED CITRUS RINDS

3 large oranges or 2 grapefruits or 4 lemons
3 pounds (no, not a typo) sugar
4 cups water

Follow the directions from above and in mere hours you will have your very own citrus rind!


Boiling the rinds -- Don't forget to repeat the process four times


Are they not just so pretty?!

Tomorrow more studying and practicing will be taking place and Collin Murray and I are also going to have brunch at Colicchio and Sons. I promise to provide a full report of the wonderfullness of the restaurant that Collin Murray now calls home. And PS, thanks to those of you who emailed Blog 2.0 name suggestions, they are all on the table for consideration -- what do you think of Delightfully Delicious?

The Pressure Of A Name

Hi y'all. Not much to report from the culinary front today. We all sat in class for four hours and listened to our delightful career services advisor talk about how to make our resumes better and perfect our pitches. It was a dandy time. Monday we have our first practical exam which should be interesting and vaguely stress inducing. I practiced making creme anglaise tonight and think I got it right. Next time I think I will be turning down the heat a little and letting it thicken a little slower -- it is hard to be your own judge on creme anglaise perfection when you have only made it once or twice.

Now, due to the nature of today's class, a fire has been lit under my butt to get going on another web-related project that I need a little help with from y'all. I love this blog, I (mostly) enjoy writing it and I love hearing all the feedback from everyone about my exploits at school, around the city and at home cooking with Collin Murray but I'm thinking of starting another blog. Blog 2.0 would not be a replacement for this blog -- and NO, I am not going to stop writing this blog. Blog 2.0 would be a blog of a more professional nature. Since the point of this whole pastry school thing is to one day (hopefully soon) get a job in food media, I want to begin to write with a more professional and less personal audience in mind. So, to begin Blog 2.0, which I'm only going to update a couple times a week (because I will still be so busy with this blog of course!), I need a name. And the name has to be good. Every name that I have suggested to Rod or Collin Murray has not suited so I'm asking for help. I like 'Sugar and Sass' but I don't know if that works. So let me know your thoughts and ideas pretty, pretty please. Like I said, I want to get Blog 2.0 up and ready so that I can include the address on my resumes when I send them out to potential employers so they can get an idea of my writing and since the whole sending out of resumes needs to start happening soon, there needs to be a named blog there and there needs to be a named blog there fast!

Now, due to my test on Monday (and actually, I also have a test on Tuesday in the other class that I am taking and never talk about because it is not nearly as entertaining for everyone else as it is for me...culinary management doesn't really get your juices pumping does it...?), I'm not sure how exciting the weekend will be for Collin Murray and I. The forecast is for rain and what I call mizzley weather. Mizzley is a combination of Mist and Drizzle and it is an intensely miserable kind of wetness. I had plans for picnics in the park this weekend and that damn mizzle is raining on my parade, er, picnic. At least there will be other weekends full of sun. Until then, put your thinking caps on and please comment or email or text or call or send a pigeon with your suggestions for the new name. I need the help something fierce. Oh, and if you send a pigeon, send it attention Collin as my fear of birds is legendary.

Until the tomorrow when I have something food-related to report, please enjoy this picture of Little Maudie Mae. It is totally random and un-related to this blog but even if you hate cats (gasp!), I hope it makes you smile. Isn't she cute when she's sleepy? Don't you feel her life is hard? Oh, and Happy Birthday to the lady who birthed me. Please send good birthday karma her way! Love you Mama!

A Roller Coaster Of Sugar and Pastry and Emotion

Man alive did I have a bad day today and I really don't want to talk about it. We had a roller coaster, quite literally, of pastry and sugar and then we finally had success. The thing that I was so excited about making today was a French pastry wonder called croche en bouche (crock en bush or booosh, I'm truly not sure which way is right). It is basically a tower of cream puffs held together with caramel and boy oh boy was our final product a beauty. Our first product was not, actually, our first products were not. Both my partner and I had our croche en bouches fall apart and our sugar hardened and the owner of the school came in and was eating the few remaining cream puffs we had and asking questions that we all didn't know so we were making our chef look bad, and our new batch of caramel had to be remade twice and people in the class were annoying and mean about the whole thing and my partner got burnt like five times (I was unscathed...) and our burner broke twice and we lost power -- can you see why I don't want to talk about it? It was a disaster. However, then, once we made new caramel and worked together and got a little extra help, we made the most beautiful croche en bouche. Don't believe me, ask our chef.


This is the finished product which doesn't have a lot of spun sugar on it yet but because we were so worried that something terrible would happen to our croche en bouche we took pictures of it right away just in case!


This is the finished product. The little purple bits are actually candied violets. So pretty. After the horrible disappointment of the first croche en bouche, I was so happy and relieved with our perfect one because I had been so excited for this day that I just wanted it to all work out! Thank goodness it did!

We also made these things called paris brest. They are comprised of three little circles of pate a choux piped together and then brushed with egg and sprinkled with almonds, baked, cooled, and then sliced in half and filled with pastry cream and topped with heaps of confectioner's sugar. I didn't eat them so I cannot attest to how they tasted but damn did they look pretty.


I couldn't decide which view I liked better and I wanted to give y'all an idea of how full of pastry cream the paris brest was.


Today was also actually our last day with our chef because, believe it or not, we are finished our first quarter of school. Shocking, right?! It's going so fast and it is so intense I can't even take it. Tomorrow we have a date with our career services advisor and then Monday we have a practical exam (we have to make creme anglaise and flourless chocolate souffle) and we have a written test too. Sheesh. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend, hopefully Collin Murray likes him some souffles and creme anglaise 'cause I'm going to be practicing like crazy!

I'm So Excited I Could Just Spit!

I'm very excited for tomorrow's class but I'm not going to tell you why... If I told you, I would probably have to explain it because it's this fancy french thing and it would ruin the (hopefully) wondrous surprise for tomorrow. So be patient and tune in for fabulousness tomorrow!

Since what we did in class today is in part to prepare for tomorrow's excitement, you might be able to guess but nevertheless, I'm still going to tell you what we did today because it was very fun and exciting. Today we made something called pate a choux (sounds like pat a shoe) and pastry cream, chocolate pastry cream to be exact. Now you may remember that we made pastry cream before using Chef No-Name's dump method -- we threw everything in the pot and whisked it till it was thick -- we didn't do that today. Today we made it the hard way. Now, the hard way is not actually really that hard, it just requires a lot more dishes and a lot more attention to detail. The formula for pastry cream is a dairy + eggs + a starch + sugar + flavouring and hopefully that = pastry cream. With our method today, instead of just dumping everything, we mixed some of the milk with corn starch and then we added the dairy + starch to lightly beaten eggs and yolks (16 yolks and 4 whole eggs to be exact and that was just for the pastry cream!). Then we heated the rest of the milk and the sugar till boiling and then quickly whisked the boiling milk into the egg + dairy + starch mixture and then put the entire mixture all back into the saucepan and whisked and whisked and whisked until the mixture boiled and = pastry cream. After the pastry cream boiled, we took it off the heat and added vanilla extract (because, did you know that if you add vanilla before whatever your cooking is cooked that you will evaporate all the essence away?!) and since we were making chocolate pastry cream, then we added melted chocolate. We are going to use our cream tomorrow but I did taste it today and it was really good.

Now, for the pate a choux. First, we boiled water and butter and then dumped in a bunch of flour and stirred the mixture until it came away from the pan and looked like mashed potatoes. Then, we transferred the mixture into a kitchen aid and beat in eggs (20 of them...) very gradually until the mixture was not too runny or too stiff. Just like Goldilocks said, it had to be just right and in between these two stages. Hard to explain really, so sorry. After we got the perfect texture, we used our piping bags and piped out dozens of little circles and lines, and baskets of pate a choux (if I told you what these shapes were called in fancy French pastry terms, you might guess what we are doing tomorrow and I Really want you to be surprised!). Then we baked them and wrapped them up for tomorrow's class...!

Enjoy the pictures and maybe with them and all my subtle hints, see if you can guess what exciting, tall, romantic, and delightful French dessert we are making tomorrow!


Baked round pate a choux in various sizes


Pretty circular pastry with almonds


The whole lot of 'em

Static Ice Creams...What The Heck's That?

So today we worked with static ice creams and honestly even though I made them, I still have no idea what the heck they really are. My pastry chef dictionary doesn't even have a definition. All I can tell you is that I think that static ice creams are ice creams that are not made with a traditional custard base but made instead with bases that have whipping cream and then a custard or meringue base whipped in. The texture of these ice creams is not like that of regular ice cream because of the whipped heavy cream that is added to the base just before freezing. As whipping cream (believe it or not) helps to lighten desserts that it is added to, there is a much airier and lighter texture in the static ice cream when you taste them. Also, because of the texture of the static bases, they can be placed into molds and formed into different shapes. Our class used silicone molds but you could easily use a loaf pan lined with cling wrap.

Our group made two flavours of static ice cream today. One was made with pineapple, coconut milk and rum and the other was made with raspberry puree. With the pineapple base, we took sugar and pineapple juice and boiled it until it was 240F. Then, with a kitchen aid mixer on, we added the syrup to lightly beaten egg yolks and then we mixed the yolks and syrup until it was thick, light and cool. While the kitchen aid was mixing, we whipped the heavy cream, rum and cream of coconut milk together and when the egg and pineapple syrup mixture was cooled, we simply folded the two together and poured it into the molds. The raspberry static mixture was even easier. First, we made a Swiss meringue by whisking sugar and egg yolks in a double boiler until the sugar was dissolved and the mixture was hot, hot, hot; then we whipped the meringue till it was thick, white and cool in a kitchen aid. While it was whipping, we mixed raspberry puree with lemon juice and whipped cream (by hand thank you -- I'm getting faster too!) to stiff peaks. Once the Swiss meringue was ready, we folded the raspberries into the meringue and then folded the cream into the raspberries and meringue and voila, fruit based static ice cream!

As you can see, it wasn't too complicated, just a little tricky because we had to know the basics in order to accomplish the advanced recipes. Seeing as we made two different flavours, we were able to freeze them together and create a two-tone dessert. Below are three pictures, one of them is our molded static ice cream, one is of a classmates' (they made coffee and praline flavours and I thought that they were nicely plated so I snapped a picture) and the last picture is one of some amaretti cookies because they looked so pretty in their little paper jackets. Enjoy!

As a side note, for those of you who know my Collin Murray, he got a stage job yesterday (stage = an unpaid externship) with a brand new restaurant that is super busy and super well reviewed and owned and executive chef'd by super famous Top Chef judge, Tom Colicchio. Yeah Collin! Please send good karma and vibes his way!


Pineapple, Rum and Coconut and Raspberry Static Ice Cream Mold


Jenna and Lucia's Praline and Coffee Static Ice Cream Molds


Pretty Cookies.