Krista’s adventure through culinary school

This is going to be a quick post since I should really be getting ready for my practical tomorrow. The written final was today and was pretty easy. It is like jumping out of an airplane, you just don’t know what to expect until you take that first step. Well, not exactly like the rush of jumping out of an airplane, but I’m sure you get the idea. We didn’t quite know what to expect, but once we got in there, it was fine. Tomorrow is the same thing. We have done all the possible tasks that we will be tested on, it is just a matter or recalling what we learned and putting it to use.

So today, Julie and I started out early and made puff pastry dough and white wheat lean dough before class to get a head start. The puff pastry dough was a left over task from last Friday when I missed class so that I could get a little hands on experience with laminated dough. We used the lean dough to practice hand rolling baguettes, batards, and my favorite, schlumberger rolls.

I had a few problems with the puff pastry dough when I was laminating. It is so touch-ably soft like a babies bottom(even after refrigeration), that I was having a hard time managing it. I also didn’t put enough flour down on the bench at first, so it started to stick. But after a few hours, it firmed up enough and was able to laminate it with 4 folds of dough and butter. We will use it in our next class, hearth breads and rolls.

We also made my favorite, banana bread. It is so delicious! I even brought 2 loaves home, one to share with my neighbors and the other to eat and freeze for later. I also brought our lemon buttermilk bundt cake to share with the neighbors. It is so soft and fluffy! I will definitely keep this recipe close and experiment with it…since my hubby doesn’t like lemon flavored cake.

O..and here is a picture of the blueberry muffins, lemon poppy seed muffins, and orange/pecan scones that we made yesterday.

So… it has been awhile. I had a fun filled weekend in Minnesota. It was so nice to be *home* with Seth and Duke, whom I miss so much. I was back for Jason and Shelby’s wedding, which was a lot of fun…I didn’t know that I knew so many cowboys. Saturday, Seth and I tried our hand at some of the recipes I brought back. We made pizza, almond coffee cake and baguettes. The baguettes didn’t turn out very good as it is hard to get the right conditions in a home kitchen, but we will get our system down and make a better product next time…and then share our baked goodness with others.

Sunday we went to breakfast with Leah, Matt and Gianna at Turtle Bread Company. It is a cool bakery with an open kitchen where you can watch them at work. The bread had good flavor, but was a little light in color for my preference. We then went to the Living Green Expo at the state fair grounds with George and Ayuko. We sampled a lot of local foods, George won a bottle of jam, and we got a lot of great information about local cuisine and ingredients.

So…back to school today…I made fruit filled danish and croissants with the laminated dough that Julie made on Friday. They turned out quite tasty and flaky…even Mr. Crabby the croissant(see picture below). The other teams made banana bread…one of my favorite foods…so I brought some home for a tasty treat. Tomorrow we are making blueberry and lemon poppy seed muffins and scones. Hopefully we get around to practicing some dough shaping, but we will see. Thursday we have our first practical/test which signifies the end of our first class in the bakeshop. I am a little nervous for it, but I’m sure it will be fine. It is nice to work in teams, but it will be equally nice to see what we can all do by ourselves on our own time lines.

For the practical, we will have to bake three things in 4.5 hours. We are given a list of four possible combinations of products that might be on our test. We will work in streams throughout the day to spread out equipment and space. It should be interesting…like I said before, I am a little nervous, but mostly excited to see what I can do.

The rolls from my practical..