Baking Day: Part Two

So, the rest of baking day was so-so; meaning there was one good recipe and one not so good recipe.  Good news first:

The zucchini carrot nut bread is very tasty.  It is a quick bread recipe from my professional baking course.  I attempted this at home a couple of weeks ago to less than stellar results.  The reason is because the book says to make them into muffins and I wanted to make them into loaves.  This is normally not a problem if I had been thinking and changed the temperature of the oven and the cook time.  Instead I had loaves that were done on the outside and still dough on the inside.  Not good.

The results this time were perfect.  I froze one loaf and cut into the second and will share part of it with family.  The difference with this recipe is it is a mix method of preparation instead of a creaming method.  Thus, the result is less like what we Americans are used to in the texture department.  The quick bread/ muffins end up being very hearty...less like eating cake for breakfast (a practice I highly recommend due to my mother indulging my A.M. sweet tooth...carmel sundaes and lemon pound cake for breakfast, anyone?).  The heartier texture goes well with a warm beverage in my book!

Then, I made the not so good recipe.  No offense to the recipe creator - it just wasn't my bag.  The recipe from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenburg for Banana Ginger Chocolate chip Bread (sounds great doesn't it?) was too gingery for me.  The small chunks of crystallized ginger were a taste sensation I was not feeling.  In fact, I don't think I really liked the chocolate chips in there either.  I guess I will have to stick with the old-fashioned Banana Nut bread.   I made these into muffins instead of loaves with the proper temperature and time adjustments.  I think these will be given away to unsuspecting thankful friends and family.

All in all, not a bad baking day, except for the clean up.  What to do?  Leave the dishes for the A.M., after the coffee and zucchini carrot nut bread!

Baking School: Week 4

Hello, my name is Leah and I am a breadmaker. 

For the last week, I have been working on a 12 step program.  No, not that one.  The one that results in warm kitchens, yummy smells, and yeasty goodness of a whole other sort: the 12 step program for baking bread. 

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal for this year to learn how to make bread.  But ,I have to be honest, I was pretty intimidated by my goal.  I had never attempted anything beyond banana bread and I had never used yeast in my life.  So, imagine my terror when I opened my textbook and found out the process of making bread was even more involved than I had ever imagined!  

Thankfully, our teacher is helpful in guiding us through the program, defining terminology, and encouraging us to go for it.  Over the last week, we made: focaccia, sweet rolls, danish, brioche, french loaves, and whole wheat dinner rolls.  Whew!  That is a lot of bread and a lot of patience!  If there is one thing I am learning about baking in general each week, it is patience.  The process of baking is not something you can just speed up because you are running short on time, or you just want to get it over with.  Attention to each of the 12 steps is necessary in order to acheive the best possible results. 

So, my teacher suggests that we select one type of bread and make it until we know it fully.  I think I am going to choose french bread.  My goal is to make it at least once a week for a while.  That means lots of bread to give away!  That also means I will be well on my way to fulfilling my New Year's resolution.

Baking School: Week 3

I had a friend in high school that used to quote an (unknown to me) eighties movie all the time.  We would be mid-conversation and she would spout off, "Shut your pie hole!"  I often took offense to it, but it was definitely memorable! 
So this week, the theme is, "Open your pie hole!"  Our class covered the very intimidating (to me) topic of pastry, more specifically: pie.  And I have a confession regarding pie-making:

I have never made a pie crust from scratch before.

I know, I know, this adventuresome kitchen rat, has never made a pie crust.  I have always been intimidated by the procedure.  It seems everyone has a recipe for the perfect pie crust.  They also have different techniques for creating the perfect crust.  Pile on this the fact that the crust has to be rolled out into a perfect circle and placed in a pie tin, and I am flustered and scared.

Well, not anymore.  Well, sort of!  Let me explain:

This week I learned a great recipe (butter is always better!) and a great method (hello, food processor!) to take all the intimidation away.  The procedure takes very little time and surprisingly few ingredients and is relatively simple to get together.  Our teacher was definitely a help in de-mystifying the pie crust for me.  She guided us through the right and wrong ways to make a pie crust and pointed out what we were looking for along the way.  I now know how to make a flaky pie crust and a mealy pie crust and when each is appropriate.  I know how to avoid "soggy-bottom" and make a pie so tasty, there is nothing left on the plate but crumbs.

So that's what I learned and I was so excited to get going and start practicing!  Then, I tried it...and my first pie crust fell!  AGHHHH!

But, I am not daunted...I think I have "figured it out" and I will be working on it again today.  I think the problem was docking.  I docked the sides of the pie crust as well as the bottom.  This time I am only going to dock the bottom of the crust.  Fingers crossed!   

If I get it right, I have a very strange idea up my sleeve.  Our textbook mentioned that back in the day, home cooks would make 21 pies a week because they had a pie at every meal.  This is because most pies back then were meat pies.  Although 21 pies would be a bit much (and unnecessary considering modern refrigeration), I am kind of getting the idea of having a pie week.  Drew would be scared, if I had shared this little idea with him.  He'll never know what hit him!

Off to the kitchen...

"Men may come and men may go...but Pie goes on for ever."  George Augustus Sala

Baking School: Week 2

This week was the first week we actually got into the kitchen for baking.  Last week, we just discovered the proper way to measure ingredients, crack and separate an egg.  This week, we separated into teams and baked three different items per team. 

The topics for the night were quick breads and cookies.  We read a couple of chapters in our textbooks ahead of time, so there wasn't a need for lots of lecture.  However the discussion of the different methods of preparation helped to clarify some of the things I have wondered for a long time.  Specifically, the instruction found in many recipes regarding mixing.  Have you ever wondered what they mean when they say mix just until ingredients are incorporated/wet?   And then when you are spooning the batter/dough into the cooking vessel, you discover a big hunk of unincorporated flour/dry ingredients?  And you wonder, should I mix this and run the risk of over-mixing, or not mix it and run the risk of having a hunk of flour in my sweet thing?
I might be alone in this, but I don't think I am.  I have come to the informed decision to err on the side of moist.  Over-mixing can lead to an unfriendly characteristic called tunnelling and tunnelling does not taste good (it does not taste actually, because it is basically a hole in the middle of your baked goodness, and that is not fun).

Anyway, my team made biscotti, zucchini carrot nut muffins, and lemon cookies.  Each of these recipes were selected because they allowed us to practice different methods of preparation: creaming, bagging, aggrandizing the eggs, etc. 
For the Biscotti, we chose to add lemon zest and pistachios.  This was a wonderful flavor combination, but I don't think they go with coffee very well.  I have never been one for citrus and coffee. 
The zucchini carrot nut muffins were actually very tasty.  We made them using the batter method where basically you dump all the ingredients into the bowl and mix.   The alternate method, used by most bakeries these days, is creaming.  The result of the creaming method is a more cake-like muffin - basically eating cake for breakfast (that is something I can get behind!).  The result of the batter method is a heartier muffin, something more wholesome and satisfying for breakfast.  These muffins were very tasty and hearty, even with the addition of bran (something I usually tend to keep far away). 
For the lemon wafer cookies, we got to work with the creaming method and the bagging method.  It was very easy to do the creaming method, because anybody who has made a cake from scratch has done this.  It is basically just creaming the butter and the sugar until a desired result is reached.  The bagging method is where you place the dough in a piping bag and pipe the cookies onto a cookie sheet.  I have never done this for a cookie; but I find it useful because it produced even sized cookies. 

The other team made corn bread, tea cookies, and a different variation of biscotti.   The best part is we all get to taste and take home some of the results! 

Back to School

I have always been a sucker for back to school.  I love the search for new school supplies, the difficulty of remembering your locker combination, the newness of teachers on the first day.  My brother and I used to "play school" every year, a few weeks before school was about to start.  While we ate breakfast or on the way to school, my dad would lecture us again about the importance of getting a good education.  He trained us to believe that school was our job; school was for learning, not for socializing.  So, I have always approached school as sacred: pay attention, get your work done, don't pass notes (and don't write on your hand!). 

When I was a kid, we moved a lot and I started at a lot of different schools, not always on the "first day."  I was forever introducing myself, hoping to find someone to sit by at lunch, and adjusting to different teaching styles.  It was different to move that much, but it prepared me for later in life.  When I was a young girl, I spoke so softly, that people constantly had to ask me to repeat what I had said.  I was painfully shy.  I still am today, but I have learned to overcome it by being thrust into new situations so often. 

So, yesterday as I got ready for another "first day of school," I was thinking about all the same things I thought about when I was growing up: will I do well? will I find somebody to connect with? will they think I am a total loser?   But, I was also thinking that this would be different than any other school experience I have ever had before.  This would be a hands-on, get-knowledge-where-you-can-get it experience.  This would not be the one where notes were passed while the lecturer droned on and on.  This would not be the read 100 pages and write a three page report kind of class.  And I was excited!

I walked into my Professional Baking class last night, met my fellow students, and got to work.  The lecture was a little long and the practicum was short, but I really am looking forward to the coming weeks.  Things I learned at class last night:
The proper way to wash dishes (in a restaurant)
How to work with ratios in formulas (not recipes) to work with the ingredients you have
How to crack an egg (and to think I have been doing it wrong all these years)
How to separate an egg (been doing that right!)
How to measure and weigh ingredients

Next week, we are learning quick breads and cookies.