Baking week one

Chocolate hazelnut cake

How difficult is to make pie dough?

We started Baking and Pastry Development skills last week. This is school practise - send bakers for three weeks to the kitchen and send cooks for three weeks to the baking side. Our instructor welcomed us on the 'bright side' (he calls kitchen 'dark side'). Baking shop is very different from the kitchen side. It has different mentality. You have to use exact measurements and for large volume they are grams and ounces (or pounds), not spoons or cups. As soon as you form your product and place it into oven you are not able to change anything, it's done. In the kitchen you can adjust seasoning, add some flavor, and so on. Our instructor is really
great, he is extremely knowledgeable (Certified Master Baker) and he is passionate, he is doing his best to share his knowledge about baling. Unfortunately a half of the class does not give a shit. It is common practise to listen lecture, ask questions about things which already explained during the lecture, and finally do exactly opposite. The chef was upset two days out of four. For people who cares it's pity, because we have to wait and instead of doing really cool things, we in a way try to help the chef to keep production going.

Here is a recap of the week. I am not going to type recipes here. May you be interested in any of recipe please leave a comment and I promise to share it.

Monday

Spitz cookie

Was our first day in the baking shop. We had a tour in the baking shop to figure out where are different things located. Our team made vanilla pound cake, ginger cookie, spitz cookie, and Russian tea cookies (Mexican wedding cookies).
The day was easy (for my team at least). All of these products has one thing in common - you do not want a development of gluten. You want these products to be soft and sometimes crumbly.

Russian Tea cookie 

The most important part is to know when to stop mixing machine. For example with ginger cookies we made (like an all cookies) you beat butter and sugar until very light and add eggs one by one waiting for eggs to incorporate. The last addition of eggs you do not wait for full incorporation, the mixture looked like 'broken' and you add flour and mix just to combine. So the dough is not going to be over mixed.
Spitz cookies are piped, usually in three different shapes - rosette, shells, and like number eight. Then they are decorated with jem and nuts.
Russian tea cakes resemble in a way shortbread. I brought a few of them to my landlord and she was very happy, twenty minutes later she sent me e-mail saying 'they have gone'.

Tuesday

Bisquits

We made pastry cream, basque cake, and chocolate hazelnut cake. We supposed to make pie dough for Wednesday, but somehow did not make it.
Pastry cream was really easy for me. I made it a few times before and the chef explain exactly the same way of doing this.
Basque cake was really good. A basque cake is a cake made with a dough similar to pound cake. The cake formed with a pastry cream inside (you pipe bottom layer, then 'walls', fill them with pastry cream, and pipe dough on top) and baked. The final product is very light and has wonderful taste.
Chocolate hazelnut cake made with hazelnuts, later it is covered with apricot jam and covered with chocolate.
Tuesday was the first day when the chef was disappointed. It was clear around 5:30 that he lost his patience with our class.

Wednesday

Cherry pie - lattice was mine!

We made cherry pie, scones, biscuits, and coconut cream pie.

The day was crazy for me. First I screwed up a whole butch of pie dough. The dough is really easy - mix butter with flour to pea size, then add ice cold water, mix just to combine, rest dough. I was close to the point of adding water and stepped away from mixer to measure water. It took me literally 30 seconds. When I came back to mixer my mixture of butter and flour was over mixed and there was no way to rescue it. I had to start again.
Then I made coconut pastry cream and asked the chef how I should chill it. The answer was in the fully cooked pie shells, which were not ready by that time. So the first batch of coconut pastry cream landed in a compost bin as well.
After that I made a minor mistake and had a filling that I am an idiot in a baking shop. Thanks to the chef he said that I am not an idiot (actually he likes me and a couple of other people from our class).
Scones and biscuits were easy. I did not make a cherry pie, but I made a lattice top for it and it was beautiful.

Thursday

Swans

Was an easy day. We made puff pastry and pate choux. Puff pastry was frozen for the next week (we had no classes on Friday). Puff pastry suppose to rest for about 24 hours before you can use it.
Pate choux we used for eclairs, cheese puffs, and swans. It was really cool to make swans - you pipe shells and bake them. Separately you pipe necks and bake them as well. Then you cut shells in a special way, fill with whipped cream, assemble and it's done. It was an easy day and it was clear that the chef likes our team very much, as we work efficiently, clean, and we enjoy to be in the baking shop.