Return of the Puff

First week back, no longer feeling like the babies of the school, it was time to begin Intermediate Patisserie (IP). Monday and Tuesday were spend in demos on more puff pastry recipes. Somehow the dreaded pastry we first tackled way back in week seven didnt seem quite so scary second time round. The first recipe of the term was for a gateau St Honore. This is a fairly technical dish as the recipe includes not only puff pastry, but our good old friend choux, as well as sugar work, creme diplomate and, of course, piping. Charmingly, this cake is named after the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. In demo, the chef finished the cake of with the classic spun sugar decoration and a bit of crystalised lavender.

On Tuesday we covered two more classic puff pastry dishes: pithiviers & mille-feuille. A pithivier is an enclosed puff pastry dish, filled with an almond creme. It is egg washed for shine and marked with a knife for general prettiness. There is an old french tradition (I am told) of baking this with a bean inside, and whoever gets the lucky slice au bean gets to be king for the day. To avoid the consequences of a demanding IP king, ours was baked beanless.

All pithiviers, great and small.

The final dish of demos was the mille-feuille; thin layers of puff pastry sandwiched with jam, cream and strawberries, traditionally finished with a layer of fondant icing with feathered chocolate. Im salvating just writing about it. Again, the chef made both a larger 'cake' and smaller individual sized slices. 

Really rather lovely looking

Moving on to wednesday and our first bake-a-thon of the term. Between the hours of 3 and 9 we were in the kitchen rolling, whisking, piping and slightly sweating to create the dishes above. The first half of the lesson was spend making the puff pastry and the St Honore. I was pleased to find my basic skills hadn't disappeared along with the snow in the winter holidays. Being back in the boulangie was great, although my spec right by the oven wasn't the best of calls. Nonetheless, here is cake #1 minus the spun sugar.

We then had a 15 minute break, during which I ate a pastrami sandwhich in all of three bites and downed half a litre of water. Fed and watered, I was ready for the next two treats. I was a bit apprehensive that the puff pastry might not have had enough time to rest, but everything went according to plan and overall I was pleased.

King for the day

Good enough to eat

I'm not going to lie, after six hours of baking I was well and truly ready for bed and didnt enjoy my mission across London laden with cake tins. Having said that it is definately a better reflection of real working life and it shoundn't be long till I'm hardened up to it. The dilemma of fitting the cakes into the fridge was solved by my hungry housemates who made sure they all slotted onto one plate nicely

In other news, I have a French speaking test tomorrow for evening classes so perhaps I'll be learning the lingo in no time. 

Sweet Success

Friday was day two off puff pastry. In demo there was a distinct air of nerves around the room with the crucial will they/won't they (rise) question being bandied around. Whilst we sat contemplating our puff pastry futures, chef used her perfectly made example to create a fresh fruit puff pastry tart and a stack of delicous crisp puff pastry biscuits called palmiers. For those of you who havent ever had the joy of trying a palmier the only advice I can give you is - eat one as soon as physically possible. Furthermore, make sure you buy more than one because they are extremely moreish. Palmiers are infact so good that chef didnt dare leave it till the end of class to let us taste them, passing them round in our break.

I think I'm in love.

In comparision to recent behaviour, I'm going to class this as a 'light breakfast'. So light infact that one slice didnt suffice..

Moving swiftly onto practical. Not much of an intro because I'm far to excitable to tell you: it worked! I made a tasty puff pastry from scratch and managed to turn it into one tasty tart and many, many palmiers. Revelling in our shared success there was quite a 'friday feeling' in class and everyone left in high spirits. Even managed to sneak in a cheeky pint before heading home. Even better, I had a big box of palmiers for the journey. Not sure how quickly I will be attempting to re-create the puff pastry recipe, although the combined end results of taste and satisfaction do make it more likely.

Slice, packed and ready to go home.

Delightful

Professional Puff

Today we took what I felt was quite a large step away from amateur baking with the challenge of pâte feuilletée. Don't get me wrong, the recipes we have cooked so far have been delicous but its not often you come across a home chef with puff pastry in their repertoire. Puff pastry is made in 2 parts, the paste and the butter. The butter is folded and rolled into the paste to create a fine layered pastry ,and thus creating the puffed up effect as the butter cooks. Doesnt sound too bad so far. However, in order to achieve optimum 'puff' there must be around about 1000 layers of butter and paste. Thats right - the millenium pastry. In demo today we were taught how to incorporate the butter and 'turn' the pastry to create these layers. Its quite a tricky thing because as the layers get thinner the chances of the butter seaping its way through increase, so it requires a fair amount of tlc, and plently of time to rest and cool between folds. After making  the dough it is left to cool, in our case overnight, before using it. So for the rest of class chef made a puff pastry tart called a jalousie which is a puff pastry lattice filled with almond creme and poached fruit. Taste sensation.

On to practical. As you may of guessed, we were making our own puff pastry, or at least attempting to do so. We were also making our version of the tasty almond treat above but with a bit of a cheat. As our puff pastry wouldnt be ready till the next day, we were given a batch of ready made puff pastry to use. Cheeky. I wasnt on my top form today and had a few small mishaps. My attempt at rolling out the pre-made puff pastry to the desired rectangle resulted in more of an x-marks-the-spot treasure map. Luckily chef saved the day. Im also not 100% confident about my puff pastry but I will get to see the result of that tomorrow when I actually cook with it. Chef assured me it was fine but some of the layers looked a bit dubious to me so fingers crossed! The take-home treat for today turned out to be just that. We poached our pears, whipped up out almond creme and constructed our fine pastry. Done.

The final event of the day was our first one on one tutorial with our mentor chefs. We had to have a chat about where were were doing well/badly, what we wanted to improve etc and most importantly we got our marks for our first batch of practicals! So far I am averaging a 4.1 our of 5 which is a merit. Very happy baker. However, its still very early days and I still have that pesky puff pastry to face tomorrow..

Sunday Sessions

Practising the old pâte brisée. Slightly salty pastry, bitter chocolate filling, sweet raspberry topping. Not half bad.

N.B. See "start with a tart" for professional version.

Tarte Aux Pommes

The voyage into pastry continued on Friday with our lesson on pâte sucrée, a sweet pastry crust. So far we have been mothered a bit at school and have had the same chef for all our demos. This lesson marked the end of our newbie era with a new chef for demo and a much faster pace. My notes this week are full of asterisks and arrows, which somehow form a 12 step plan to a sweet crust. Once we had the pastry crust in order, chef taughts us three potential fillings: pastry cream & fresh fruit, almond cream and the classic french apple tart

Feeling fruity

Almond and poached pear

Classic

Once the tarts were finished, presented and photographed, I waited with moderate patience to collect my now standard 3-piece-of-pie breakfast. Nom nom.

Seven hours and a brief nap in Starbucks later, it was time to make a tarte aux pommes. And this is what it consists of: a sweet pastry crust, blinded baked and egg glazed, filled with a layer of apple compote and topped with a decoration of fine sliced apples glazed with butter and sugar. At the start of class chef reminded us that this dish was simple and in his words could be made by a 4 year old, blindfolded, in the dark. No excuses then. Highlights included using the slightly vicious looking slicing device that is a mandoline and a classmate accidentaly snorting a vat of cinnamon. In other chef news, I managed to cut myself for the first time this lesson with my wielding chefs knife resulting in a few rejected blood soaked apples. Tasty. Et voila, before you knew it, we each had our very own apple tart.

Not sure if I can call myself a chef yet, but after this, I'm definately ready to take on the pre-school kids. 

Start with a tart

Before I begin, I appologise in advance if this blog is a little lacking. For some reason school has truly exhausted me today, I'm going to blame the early morning sugar rush. After my second helping of chocolate tart, I definately peaked a little too early - well worth it though. Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Today we started a new topic: Pastry. We began our new adventure by making tarts with a shortcrust base (pâte brisée) and will continue by making sweet, puff and choux pastry. Shortcrust pastry is great because it can be filled with sweet and savory so if, god forbid, I tire of sugar, I can adapt the recipe accordingly. Chef taught us two examples of tarts using this pastry: lemon meringue and chocolate. After our three hour demo my savlation glands had had a pretty hearty work out, so I lept from my seat to grab a slice of each. And yes, I went back for seconds. Hopefully after you see them this will seem a bit less greedy:

 Lemon Meringue goodness

Chocolate actual heaven

 

After an extended lunch break with my group,we made our way back to school to make our very own lemon meringue pie. Lesson today was pretty hectic because the group before us was running late due to a mid-lesson fire alarm. This meant the precious time we had to make our pastry crust, lemon curd, italian meringue, candied lemon as well as put it all together was cut short. One pie in two hours? Surely not! But dont worry guys, I pulled myself together and tried to keep my piping as neat as possible. It has turned out a right zesty treay. Surely one more slice of pie today can't hurt too much?

Feedback was good overall. Again negatives focused on improving my piping to neaten the whole thing up a bit. Looks like I'll have to make myself another pie. For practise reasons only of course..