sag wagon goddess

happy sunday everyone!  i just spent a fantastic day in the mountains as becky's sag wagon while she was training for her ride.  the weather was fabulous and the higher up the mountain you go, the nicer it gets.  there were a few clouds and a couple of raindrops, but overall it was a truly fabulous day.  we started out around 11am and i kicked becky and her bike out of the car around noon.  she rode the 32ish miles from bergen park to idaho springs and i drove along with her in the car.  

i had so much fun watching her ride and enjoying the view.  i love the mountains.  it amazes me that no matter how often i see the mountains, they always take my breath away.  today was no different.  a decent amount of the road was below the tree line so you couldn't really see very far, but every few miles, there would be a break in the trees and these stunning vistas just open up in front of you.  it is just truly beautiful and you can't be in a bad mood when the world around you is that pretty.  

while she was riding, i would drive ahead and find a place to pull off of the road to wait until becky caught up with me.  along the way i passed several other cyclists multiple times.  there was one group of three who were riding right along at around the same pace, so i passed them quite a bit.  when becky stopped to put her jacket on, they commented that they would love to have a support crew to which beck replied that it was even better to have a support crew that made pastry.  so at the very top, i shared some leftover croissant from yesterday with them.  they ended up riding down the mountain with becky and even waited on her when we stopped to take pictures at echo lake.  

overall it was a fabulous day and i would be happy to repeat it at any time.

here are some of the pictures that i took throughout the day.

the cake lady needs sleep

oh what a weekend!  between last night and all day today, i am unbelievably tired.  we did a super serious amount of baking today and a whole lot more eating than baking.  croissant and danish doughs are delightful, though brioche smells the best when it is in the oven.  brioche gets this magnificent cake like texture and a wonderful, buttery, yeast smell that fills the whole kitchen.  it is an amazing product that can be used for many, many different applications both sweet and savory.  

for lunch today we made savory croissants.  batch one of doughy, buttery goodness to end up sitting in your stomach like a rock.  included in our lunch buffet, were our brioche applications including cinnamon rolls, coffee cakes, and sticky buns.  i had eaten so much sugary, gooey, dough by the end of the day that i thought i was going to end up in a coma.  sticky buns straight out of the oven are truly fabulous, the topping is still amazingly gooey and fabulous, and the dough still has the perfect butter taste of being warm.  wow today was caloric!!

danishes are extremely fun to make and they smell very distinctive when they are baking as there is a small amount of cardamom in the dough.  add that to a berry filling and you get amazing results that i don't think anyone could resist.  plus you get to make all sorts of cool shapes like pinwheels and rosettes and bear claws and braids. 

luckily i didn't have to come home and make dinner.  thank you for the yummy tacos ron and becky!  and now i do believe it is time to finish watching harry potter so i can go to bed.

rich doughs and a plan

wow what an overwhelming brain day!  i started the morning by watching the end of the isner-mahut match at wimbledon, which was exceptionally exciting.  i'm glad that it didn't last as long as yesterday though or i would have been extremely under-productive again today.  

after the tennis excitement subsided, i had a seriously long talk with bryan and we came up with a really great plan for the immediate to possibly long term future.  after i get done with school, i am going to head back to the big IL and get this silly knee of mine fixed.  as soon as i am able to move well enough again, i am coming back to COLORADO!!!  my husband loves me so much that he's going to finish his degree at CU, so i can stay in this beautiful place forever.  he will probably have to do a semester at the local community college before he can start at CU because he needs another physics class and more calculus before he can start the engineering program at CU, but he seems really excited by it and it should help to resolve our residency requirements as well.  out-of-state tuition would really suck.  

so after this crazy, but delightful phone call i spent several hours researching residency requirements, veteran's benefits, and all sorts of other fun stuff.  i still have a lot of figuring out to do, but it is nice to be working towards something solid.  i also did a little apartment searching and i am unbelievably excited that i get to stay.  GOD is good!

school tonight was amazing, even though i felt horribly under-prepared for my quiz.  we made pastry cream for our practical today and i was not entirely happy with the way that mine turned out.  it was pretty tasty, but not as thick as i would have liked it.  sadly i think this means that it will end up getting weepy and possibly tasting a little starchy once it has chilled overnight.  pastry cream is so much harder than it should be and sadly is extremely essential for almost every item you make in a bakery.  much more practice will be needed.  i think i did well on the written quiz though, which is good.

we started our rich doughs tonight, which include croissant, danish, and brioche.  croissant and danish dough are yeasted, laminated doughs, which make them like puff pastry only yeasty and truly delicious.  brioche isn't laminated, but it has lots of eggs and sugar and butter, which make it delightfully silky and rich.  we made the de trempe or base dough for our croissant and danish doughs and mixed our brioche doughs.  tomorrow we will fold in the butter for our croissant and danish doughs and prep the rest of the ingredients for the weekend.  it is going to be a wonderfully tasty weekend and i am going to need to eat only salad for the next several days because it will also be quite caloric.  

i am also on the bread team this week, which means i have to help make the bread for lunch on saturday.  we are having savory croissants for lunch, so i think we are going to do a lighter bread, though it seems really crazy to be making one at all.  the whole point of having a bread team is so that we get practice with baking different kinds of bread.  hopefully i will get to do it again so that i can make a more difficult bread, but i think it is crazy to make bread that no one is going to eat because we have croissant out the wazoo.  we've got at least 10 different products that we are going to make with each of our doughs so there will be tons of left overs coming home with me saturday evening. 

time to go feed my little yeasty guys before i go to sleep.

tennis, a bike, and a new book

i'm not sure that anyone knows how much of a closet tennis freak i am, but this is my official confession.  i love to watch tennis, especially wimbledon.  i don't know if it is because of all the time i spent in london, but i get nutty about watching wimbledon.  i've watched tennis pretty much constantly since it started, but today was beyond insanity.  the isner-mahut phenomenon that occurred today was extremely addictive.  i missed the first half hour of today because i was talking to bryan, but i watched tennis for an entire morning and couldn't stop.  by the time they called the match for the day, i couldn't hardly watch anymore for the pain of it all.  i really hope i have enough time before class tomorrow to watch the end.  this is fair warning to anyone who might think about ruining it for me.  

after all of the wimbledon excitement, i did a significant amount of research for my locavore assignment and now have some really good ideas for items for my dessert menus.  i think i am going to choose new england as my location.  they have some really awesome farm to table initiatives and also some really great produce so it could make for a really interesting project.  i'm getting really excited about putting it all together.  oh, i should probably explain what the assignment is all about.  we have to choose a geographic location and then design a dessert menu for the four seasons using as much locally grown or produced ingredients as possible.  one of the biggest reasons that i chose new england for my region is that i get to use real maple syrup as an ingredients and they have cranberries, an ingredient that i feel has great potential in the dessert world.  

i went to the gym after i was done studying and totally rocked the stationary bike.  i feel bad for riding inside when i'm in such a beautiful place, but my knee still really doesn't like hills.  plus if i ride at the gym, i can read at the same time and finish off my cardio by swimming some laps.  it is a truly delightful workout plan minus the fact there is only one pool, so the lap swimming lanes are next to the swim lessons area.  i started a new book while i was biking and it is truly addictive.  i read 'pillars of the earth' last summer while i was in new mexico and i am glad to get started on 'world without end'.  ken follett is an amazing story teller and if you haven't read his books, you should.  don't be afraid of the length, they are really great books with amazing characters and story lines.  i have found that having a really good book to read while i am at the gym, keeps me going to the gym because i will only allow myself to read while i am at the gym.  it is a great reward system and will hopefully help me to keep up with my goals for the summer.

chataqua

after a massive amount of sleep, i went on a beautiful hike today.  i went up to chataqua, which is a mountain park in boulder that has some amazing views.  i went on the royal arch trail that ends up at a beautiful natural rock arch and goes up by the flatirons so you get to see lots of different rock formations.

it is a moderately strenuous hike that involves a fair amount of elevation gain in not a lot of distance so it is a really fabulous cardio workout.  i had a really good time, but my knee may not be too terribly happy tomorrow.  being in the mountains like that always makes me feel very calm and peaceful.  there is a scent from the pine trees and the crisp mountain air that cannot be matched and when combined with the high altitude it creates this lovely high that is part adrenaline part lack of oxygen in the brain.  i always find it fun to hike in places that have nice views and offer a good walk all at the same time.  

hiking on my own was a new experience and i found it rather enjoyable.  hiking is always very peaceful, but it is very nice as a solitary event.  i did a great amount of thinking and contemplating of the universe while i was hiking and it is nice to not have to talk to anyone if you don't want to.  the other hikers were very friendly and i had some fun random conversations with complete strangers as we were walking.  i even found myself following a guy with an illinois hat on, who gave a very enthusiastic response to the I-L-L that i yelled up the mountain.  

after my hike i had dinner with ron and becky and then went to see toy story 3.  if you haven't seen it yet, you should take your kleenex though it was a fun movie.  all in all, a lovely sunday with no complaints from me. 

check out some of the views i got to enjoy this afternoon.

if anyone wants to come visit and see for themselves how beautiful everything is here, let me know :)

fresh lovin' from the oven

i have had so much fun making bread this week, but holy schmoly i am way beyond exhausted and i think my feet might fall off.  today was a really great day in the kitchen.  we had a really intense production schedule, but it wasn't as nutty as i thought it was going to be.  we made potato rosemary bread, dinner rolls, challah, and pizza dough.  the rest of the class made whole grain bread, onion focaccia, soft pretzels, grissini (breadsticks), fougasse (kind of like focaccia), and pan rustique.  here are some pictures of everything:

1) our dinner roll dough while it was fermenting.  it is oh so fun to deal with such a serious amount of dough.

2) the pizza that i made for lunch.  artichoke hearts, sundried tomato, spinach, and mushrooms with herb infused white sauce, fresh mozzarella, and ricotta cheese that we made in class, which is a truly amazing process by the way.  and fresh ricotta is WAY better than store bought.

  

3) my potato rosemary bread.  this bread was amazingly tasty.  if you want an idea of what it tasted like, go grab the rosemary out of your spice rack and rub a little between your palms.  that overwhelmingly delightful smell is what the whole kitchen smelled like today while we were baking.  the shaping of this loaf was really awesome.  you take a ball of dough and turn it really quickly in a circle between your hands and you can actually feel the dough tighten on itself and make a beautiful round loaf.  it was such a  fun process and the taste was beyond phenomenal, though you have to like rosemary to really appreciate it.

 

4) our finished products from the day including challah with and without seeds, dinner rolls, and our 4 loaves of potato rosemary bread.  we used two different methods for proofing these loaves.  one was just to shape it as a circle and proof it on a sheet pan.  the other way is to form it in a wicker basket called a banneton, which gives the coiled effect to the flour on the dough.  

5) another group's fougasse and other doughs.  the fougasse has an amazingly soft crumb, which makes it just a little chewy and it can be flavored with just about any flavor.  a truly cool bread with some really great potential for any meal. 

6) the grissini, which are crunchy, buttery little breadsticks that make you want a big bowl of pasta or really yummy soup to go along with them.  i literally could not stop eating them.  when the weather gets cold, these are seriously going to need a big pot of pasta fagioli to go with them.  

after we finished our baking, we did a sensory analysis of different acids.  we had to taste buttermilk, fresh cultured yogurt, lemon juice, and champagne vinegar.  the buttermilk and vinegar were unbelievably awful, but the yogurt was made by chef marilyn and it was really tasty.  we also did an acid analysis of champagne, which was quite tasty and sort of worth having to taste the vinegar first.

so the coolest thing about bread is how everything about bread has something to do with the finished product.  the food geek in me is on a serious high because of everything that i learned this week.  did you know that the score marks on the top of a loaf of bread can help control the shape of the loaf depending on length, depth, and curvature of the cut?  food flat out rocks my world!

 

baguette

today was day 2 of bread week.  we got to spend the entire night in the kitchen and it was really, really fun.  we started by forming and scoring our baguettes, which is a lot harder than it looks.  you have to make sure that the gluten is properly developed and your yeast has fermented properly, without adding extra air bubbles so that you end up with a properly textured crumb in your final loaf.  the scoring part is pretty cool because you can use different types of cuts to alter the final shape of your loaf and to add to the final appearance of your product.  there is a technique where you cut the loaf and twist the cuts to make it look like a vine and it is truly beautiful.  

we also made preferments for the doughs that we are going to bake tomorrow including potato rosemary bread and dinner rolls.  the potato rosemary bread looks like it is going to be fantastic.  it has roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and mashed potato in it, so i think it will taste really wonderful and it gets baked in a round loaf, so it should turn out beautifully.  

the dinner rolls are pretty basic in composition, but i am a serious sucker for a good yeast roll, so i am really excited about those.  i've never baked rolls that weren't done in a muffin tin so i am excited to learn an efficient way to portion and shape rolls.  

we're going to have pizza for lunch tomorrow so that we could practice making pizza dough.  we made an herbed white sauce for ours and are going to top it with mushrooms, sundreid tomatoes, and spinach.  i am really looking forward to sensory analysis tomorrow.  bread tasting is going to be awesome!!!!!  

we also got to practice some fine line chocolate piping tonight.  i am really looking forward to practicing that over the next couple of weeks.  there are so many different patterns and things that can be done.  i love school and i love bread!

dough and a shiny new toy

I apologize for being a bad blogger at the beginning of the week.  We had a very significant chuck of reading to do for school this week, so my brain has been very busy!  It was really fun reading though and has lead to the beginning of a really awesome week of school.  

It is officially bread week and I am oh so happy!  Anyone who knows me very well, knows that I have a seriously deep love for yeast.  And now with all of my new knowledge about gluten, bread is even more fabulous.  We started with baguette doughs tonight and got our production assignments for the rest of the week.  I get to make dinner rolls and potato rosemary bread, plus we are all going to make pizzas for lunch on Saturday.  Bread is so cool.  SO cool!

I have enjoyed experimenting with bread in my own kitchen and I am thrilled to have someone with so much experience to teach me how to do it right.  Chef Marilyn used to be the manager at Breadworks, so she has more bread experience than anyone I have ever met and I am really warming up to her teaching style.  She has been a lot of fun the past couple of weeks and I am much more comfortable being in the kitchen with her.  

I find it really amazing that you can take just 4 ingredients and end up with an amazing product.  And really if you are patient, you can use just two ingredients and end up with a pretty good product.  One of the greatest things about bread is the kneading process.  After you work your dough to a certain point you can actually pick up the edge of the dough like a handle and fling the rest of the dough at your bench.  It is exceptionally noisy, but a great way to get rid of a little pent up anger and also just plain fun.   I am a little scared about getting into bread because it could become more fun than cake and I can't continue to be the cake lady if I don't make cake anymore.  Plus the bread lady doesn't sound as good.

The other exciting thing about today was that I got a new knife!  I feel a little strange getting so excited about buying a potential weapon, but it was a really great deal and kitchen tools and gadgets are always exciting for kitchen people.  One of the greatest kitchen stores I have ever been in happens to be less than 10 miles from my house, so I go look at cool things all the time and today they were having a knife sale.  I got a new Zwilling J. A. Henkles 7'' santoku for a really great price and I can't wait to chop something tomorrow.  It is a truly beautiful knife and I am having trouble deciding what I should use it for first.  Breaking in a new knife is very exciting, especially when it is a knife that you paid less than half price for! :)  I will have to cook something fun for lunch so I get a chance to use it before class tomorrow.  

YAY for bread!!!!

kitchen crack

so today in class we made a seriously fantastic new drug that will make an addict out of just about anyone.  we used our puff pastry to make a napoleon, which was so unbelievably delicious that i will probably be thinking about it for years.  the layers were as follows from bottom to top:

1) puff pastry sheet

2) dulce de leche

3) pastry cream

4) puff pastry

5) dark chocolate ganache

it truly was one of the best desserts that i have ever tasted.  even after we did our sensory analysis, i couldn't stop going back and picking at it.  it leaves the delightfully sweet taste in your mouth and the more you concentrate on that taste, the more you salivate and the more you have to have.  i could actually feel the sugar buzz in my brain.  doesn't this look fantastic!

we also got to finish baking off the rest of our puff pastry products including apple turnovers, guava tarts, palmiers, and cinnamon straws, and we got to taste our ice creams and sorbets.  our new product for the day was quick breads, biscuits, and scones.  my team made maple bacon biscuits and mango nut bread.  i am not a big fan of bacon or maple, but the actual biscuit was very tasty.  the mango bread was really great, though mango in colorado isn't the best mango in the world.  here are some pics of the product that we made today!

and look!  i got to torch something in the kitchen today!  and yes for all of you smart asses out there, the kitchen is still standing.  

after class a few of us went to a local brewery to grab a drink and get to know each other outside of class.  it was really fun and it is great to know a little more about my fellow students.  it was an extremely great weekend, but very tiring.  i am having trouble typing because i am so sleepy.  yay for being able to sleep in a little tomorrow.  i definitely need it especially if i am going to get as much studying done as a i want to tomorrow.  

the cake lady got an A

we got our first quiz grades in class today!  we got our written quiz back this afternoon as well as our evaluation of our pie dough.  i got a 99% on my written exam and a 91% on my practical.  while i am excited to have gotten an A on my first attempt, it is a little disconcerting that my higher score was on the book smarts stuff, while my actual baking was the lower score.

it is a commonly known fact that i am not a big fan of pie, so i don't have a whole lot of experience with it, but it is a lot less scientific than i like my baking.  there is a ton of food chemistry involved to ensure that you get a good flake and a tender crust, however, even if you put all the right ingredients in the bowl, you aren't guaranteed a perfect crust!  stupid gluten.  everything you bake is subject to some issue even if the recipe is perfect, but pie crust is seriously temperamental.  you put in sugar and acid to decrease the gluten formation and rest it at every possible moment to continue to inhibit gluten and yet you have to roll the darn stuff out, which starts the gluten going all over again.  seriously frustrating, but i'll get it right yet.  overall, food science is really going to be my friend this summer.

today we learned about sugars and some of the food science involved in sugar cookery!  i really am a dork when it comes to food.  if anyone is curious, i can go into a long discussion about how inverted sugars are formed and a bunch of other fun facts that probably no one else in the world is interested in.  and to further our learning about sugar, we got to make baked custards and several varieties of ice cream.  we also rolled out our traditional and blitz puff pastry doughs to make a very fun assortment of traditional pastries.  

i am so excited about doing sensory analysis tomorrow.  not only did we make palmiers, which are one of my favorite things to do with puff pastry, we made this truly amazing cherry-blackberry cabarnet sorbet.  it is definitely one of the better frozen confections that i have ever eaten and anyone who knows me very well knows that i LOVE frozen treats.  i am so excited to get to eat it after it has frozen overnight.  we are also going to make scones and quick breads tomorrow, so basically all of my favorite tasty treats.  i really need to find a personal trainer so i don't end up weighing a ton by the end of the summer.  for now, i am going to sleep a bit so my brain will actually work tomorrow.  SWEET DREAMS everyone!

the cake lady made a cake!

i finished my first colorado baked cake today!  i used some new class knowledge to alter my red velvet cake recipe for high altitude and i was pretty happy with the end result.  i'm not sure that it was the best that could have been done, but it was a decent first attempt.  i was a little concerned because a red velvet cake has oil as the main fat rather than butter and milk, which makes it moist and tasty.  however it is necessary to increase the liquid in a cake when baking at this altitude because of the lowered boiling point, but i felt that my finished cake was a little oily.  it did taste good though and the crumb was a delightful texture. 

the biggest issue overall was that it was an extremely wet, stormy day here in colorado.  normally the altitude makes things a little or a lot drier, however the change in temperature since yesterday made it humid and cool all at the same time.  so my fondant was very, very sticky!  VERY STICKY!!!  and sadly sticky fondant means that gravity is meaner to cakes that it normally is.  but in the end it turned out very well and the client was extremely pleased.

i am also very happy that it turned out as well as it did.  everything that i've been doing in class and in the kitchen this summer seems to validate everything that i have wanted to do with my life and everything that i know that i am.  there is still lots of room for failure this summer, but i am really enjoying the challenge and can't wait to be a pastry chef in september so i can get paid to spend my days in the kitchen. 

here are the results of my days work! 

adrenaline rush

wow class tonight was amazing!  we didn't make ice cream, which was a bit disappointing for a minute or two.  instead we made puff pastry!  and the biggest lesson that i learned was that martha stewart's puff pastry recipe sucks!!!!!!  i know that she always makes things 10 million times harder than they need to be, but holy shmoly batman puff pastry is FUN.  

i was one of the kitchen managers tonight so i went in early to set up the kitchen and get chef's demonstrations ready.  it was easier than i thought and actually helped to keep me from being terribly nervous about my quiz.  both the written and the practical quizzes were easier than i expected.  the practical quiz went extremely well and i think my pie crust turned out nicely.  the written quiz was pretty easy, though chef amy is really good at writing questions with tricky wording.  hopefully i actually knew all the answers that i thought it did.  we'll find out on saturday!

puff pastry making was truly wonderful!  it is such a cool process and a product that i love to use.  it is hard work, but also really fun and rather gratifying.  plus everyone was in a fun and playful mood tonight including chef amy.  everything is more enjoyable when the people in the kitchen are having fun and making jokes and telling stories.  the greatest part about making puff pastry is that you get to take your rolling pin and use it like a club to smash your butter into submission.  it is really fun and gives you an excuse to take out all of your frustrations.  

needless to say, school is fantastic and i don't think that i ever want to leave!!!!!!

hoping

the past couple of days have been completely crazy and yet fairly fabulous at the same time.  yesterday i got up and did a practice run of my pate brisee (pie dough) that i have to make for a quiz in class this week.  the catch is that i only have 25 minutes to prep the ingredients, mix the dough, and clean up my work station!   it is amazing how quickly time flies in the kitchen and i have to admit that i am more than a little nervous about our first set of quizzes.  i got my dough done in 22 minutes yesterday and am going to do another run tomorrow morning before i go to class to see if i can speed it up just a little bit more.  i also spent a significant portion of the day reading over my notes and studying for the written portion of my quiz.  i am nervous about the quizzes, but really ready to get them over with because then i will know what to expect for future quizzes.  

every week two students act as the kitchen management team (kmt) for class in order to keep everything going in the kitchen and to give an idea of how running a kitchen actually works.  the kmt is responsible for prepping all of chef amy's demonstrations as well as getting the ovens going, setting up proper sanitation and dish washing stations, and making sure that all of the supplies and ingredients that will be needed are available and ready to be used.  our time as a kitchen manager is graded and included in our overall evaluation at the end of the program, so i want to make sure that things go well.  we will get multiple opportunities to be kitchen managers, but as with anything, i want to make a good first impression.  while i know that all of this is a learning opportunity, i really wanna kick butt in the kitchen this summer.  the chef instructors that we are working with have amazing contacts and will be excellent references in the future so i want to make sure that they see what i am really capable of in the kitchen.  

today i got up and went shopping for cake ingredients and supplies because i get to bake my first colordao cake this week as well.  i am making an airplane cake for a birthday party and that is going to take quite a bit of time.  luckily my friday evening class has actually been moved to sunday, so i will have all day on friday to finish it.  it should be a really fun cake and the big design element is the 3D airplane that will be sitting on top of the cake, so once that is done, life will be good.  i'm going to bake tomorrow just in case my high altitude recipe adjustments don't work, but it is a lot less hard to bake here than i thought it would be.  :)

i went on a job interview this morning trying to find something low key enough that i can manage it and school.  i haven't found anywhere pastry-ish that isn't frightened by my school hours so i finally gave in and started applying for jobs outside of the culinary world for now.  i interviewed for a position as a caregiver for a man with a traumatic brain injury that would be kind of a no-brainer for me while i am finishing school.  it was a really fantastic interview and i think it would be a really neat position, so we'll see what happens with that.  keep your fingers crossed for me.  

we've also had some action with our house in champaign this week and it would be truly fabulous to get it sold and not have to worry about it anymore.  coming home to pack and get everything put in storage in 3.5 days will be a little stressful, but luckily i was blessed with great family and friends, who i am sure would love to come suffer the IL heat to help me move when the time comes ;)  and yes there is a subtle wink, wink, nudge, nudge vibe to my previous statement, but i'm attempting to draw out the pity and compassion, so the impossible might not be so impossible.  oh, by the way, anyone who might have access to boxes at work, please oh please start saving me as many as you can.  feel free to go dump them in my garage if necessary.

well with all the excitement happening in the next few days, i should probably close my eyes for a few hours.  lots of kitchen time is coming up quickly!

oh happy day!

the past 48 hours have been thoroughly fabulous and full of new experiences.  yesterday, i attended a truly wonderful church service with an amazing message and fabulous worship time.  then i went to the italian car show with ron, which was somewhat disappointing, but only because there weren't very many cars there.  it brought back all sorts of memories of going to car shows in the summer as a family.  kinda made me want a rootbeer float from the frost stop :)  AND then the greatest part of the day, we had lunch at Casa Bonita!  Casa Bonita is the Chuck E Cheese of the mexican food world.  They have a restaurant that seats up to 900 people, with a waterfall, cliff divers, puppet shows, skits, and a pressed penny machine.  The food isn't faulous, but how can you beat burritos, fresh sopapillas, and a pressed penny.  obviously i am pretty impressed with pressed pennies, but how can you not be?

today we got up and took the boat to the lake.  i spent most of the morning throwing sticks for hobbes because even though his hips don't work and he can't walk anymore, he can still swim.  after our adventure to the lake, i cleaned the kitchen and my bathroom, then i did a serious amount of studying and made some yummy dinner.  tomorrow i have to make pie dough in less than 25 minutes so that i can pass my quiz on thursday.  i also have to be kitchen manager this week, so i have to be seriously on my game!  but we get to make ice cream and we are learning about yeast, so it should be really fun.  yeasty guys are truly amazing and i am seriously excited to learn all about them.  yay for what should be an awesome week!

1 down, 14 to go

well, i made it through my first week of pastry school.  i have learned a great deal about food science, and many different aspects of being in the kitchen, all while having a really good time.  i'm going to have to do some serious studying to make sure that all of the information sticks in my brain, but it is so much easier to keep it all straight when i can walk right into the kitchen and use what i just learned to bake something really tasty.

the biggest down side to school is that you have to taste your product to know whether you were successful and we ended up tasting a lot of pastry in our sensory analysis today.  i'm going to have to do some serious cardio to not gain a ton of weight through all of it.  we made some really awesome food though.

today we put together all of the components that we worked on all week.  i made a fresh berry pie with struesel topping, a fresh fruit tart, lemon curd tartlets with chantilly cream, frangipane tartlets with dried fruits and toasted almonds, a pear and blueberry galette, and a mushroom and spinach galette with sundried tomatoes and feta cheese.  and then we had to taste everything.  the whole process of sensory analysis is really fun, but by the end of the day my belly hurt. 

it was very cool to get to play dessert fairy though after class.  we had so many leftovers that i took some to pretty much everyone i know here in colorado.  the greatest thing about baking is that you get to make someone's day with your end result.  no matter how long a day in the kitchen seems, it is always worth it when you see someone enjoy your product. 

next week we get to do creme anglaise, which conveniently enough is the base for ice cream!  however before that, i have to make a bunch of pie dough because i have to be able to do it in 25 minutes for my quiz next week including prep work and clean up!  yikes!

first and foremost, it a serious need for sleep.  good night everyone!

pastry cream

[a small disclaimer for tonight's post:  there is some extreme food-science nerdiness happening tonight so if you need to save your street cred, you might want to stop reading now]

wow!  another night of school done and my brain is exploding with new information!  tonight we made custards to go along with all of the different pie and tart doughs that we made last night.  tomorrow we get to put them all together and eat :) 

being the science nerd that i am, i had a blast figuring out what each ingredient was doing to my recipes and how they can be altered to change flavor, texture, color, etc.  it is going to be 100% amazing when i know enough to bake without a recipe or to modify recipes that i like to make them work for other purposes. 

being in the kitchen tonight was definitely a full sensory experience.  with pastry cream, you end up with your ingredients in a pot on the stove and they just look like an eggy colored liquid.  as the mixture comes to a boil, you are suddenly hit with this overwhelmingly inviting scent of vanilla that permeates the air around you.  as you continue to stir the mixture changes to a beautiful creamy custard that ends in a silky smooth vanilla concoction that would make anyone salivate.  it is a really neat process, especially once you fully understand the chemical reactions that are occurring right before your eyes.  i think that if everything in organic chemistry lab could have been done with food, i would have gotten a much better grade ;) 

we also made a lemon curd and candied citrus peel, which is a truly delightful bit of stickiness.  i'm not sure there is much more fun to be had that turning something that most people would end up throwing away into something truly delicious and beautiful.  it does also take something that might have a small amount of nutritional value and turns it into a glorious sticky sugar treat, but as paula deen likes to say 'i'm your [pastry] cook, not your doctor', so we can let a little extra sugar slide.

so far the greatest thing about this whole experience is that i have a truly legitimate excuse to hang out in the kitchen all day.  it is amazing how fun it can be and is one of the places in the world that i feel truly comfortable and where the real me comes out in full force.  for anyone who might live close enough to me at the moment, i plan on practicing some extra recipes next week, feel free to come by and help out with some good old quality control ;)

it has begun

hello all!  the excitement has begun.  i just got back from attending my first pastry school class and it was frigging fabulous!  the summer is going to be so incredibly amazing and i cannot wait to go back tomorrow night.

chef amy, the instructor for the course, is very nice and exceptionally funny, though i am betting that she has a pretty strong serious side hidden in there somewhere as well.  tonight though, she was friendly, informative, and very patient as we got started.  while it is said that pastry people have a tendency to be a little obsessive, she is not overly so and she is just scattered enough that her lecture style kept me focused and excited about the lesson.  

i fear that i am going to be labeled the science geek in our class because i have so thoroughly enjoyed reading about all of the cool food science stuff this week.  i even drew little cartoon glutenin and gliadin monsters in my notes.  (glutenin and gliadin are the proteins in flour that form gluten when activated with water and agitation)  i've been baking for years and everything has pretty much been trial and error.  after this i am going to be armed with the knowledge of how to perfect recipes without making a bagillion different versions of something.  for instance, did you know that you can prevent the formation of gluten by adding sugar to your dry ingredients?  it breaks up the protein bonds to inhibit too much gluten from forming!  how fun and cool is that?!  i know that most of you don't care anyhere near as much as i do, but suffice it to say that i am extremely happy with the amount of stuff i have learned already.

there are only 11 students in the class, which makes for a great learning environment and hopefully some great friendships as well.  i feel bad for rich because he is the only guy in a room FULL of girls, but he doesn't seem too concerned.  the others ladies in the class all seem really fun and have such a wide range of experience that i am going to learn a lot from them as well.  obviously most of us have been playing in the kitchen for quite a while and it was really fun to hear everyone's stories about how they came to be in the program and what they want to accomplish.   it is amazing to see how many people make such a serious career change to get into pastry.  we've got a nurse, an MRI tech, a social worker, and even chef amy has a BS in psychology that she put to use just about as much as i have mine.  

tonight we discussed the 6 main ingredients in the bake shop and their roles in the kitchen.  our main focus was flour and butter because we used them to make pie dough later on in the evening, but my brain is already expanding with new information.  i'm going to have to go over my notes about a thousand times to make everything stick, but at least this is interesting enough for me to stay motivated.  i'm not even really all that scared of the pace because everyone there is learning right along with me and we all want the same things out of the program.  i learned a really cool way to make pie dough tonight and i am super excited to bake it on saturday so that i can see how it turns out.  tomorrow we will start breaking into different groups and that is where the craziness will start because each group only completes a portion of the recipes for the day rather than all of them.  in order to be fully comfortable with everything that we are learning and will be tested on, i am going to have to do some serious amounts of cooking at home during the week.  

tomorrow we get to make a couple different types of dough and then saturday we get to do all of the fillings and stuff to go along with our pastry doughs!!!!  it is going to be seriously hard to not spend my whole summer eating nothing but pastry.  it may be time to start counting points again :)  

time to go read through some more recipes!

less than 48 hours

in 41 hours, i get to start pastry school!  this morning i got to go pick up all of my equipment and uniforms for the program.  i am so excited about getting started.  i've got all of my supplies and equipment labeled, most of my reading is done, and all i need to do is get my uniforms pressed and ready to go.  this week we are going to do pie crusts, pastry doughs, and all the appropriate fillings.  i've been reading all night about the food science behind a proper pie.  it is so unbelievable cool that you can add flour, fat, water, and salt to a bowl and end up with a flaky, crispy, crust that can be the perfect vehicle for any number of fillings and toppings.  normally, i am not much of a pie person, but that is mainly because of some serious oral sensory issues and pie crust gets soggy on the bottom, which is a horirble feeling on the tongue.  my goal for the week is to figure out how to make a pie crust that doesn't get soggy so i can truly enjoy it.  normally, i like to make my pie filling and have it in a bowl with pie crust 'cookies' on the side so that you don't end up eating soggy crust.  (odd sidenote:  the episode of scrubs that i am watching happens to be the one where j.d. does his improv conversation about pie)  i'm thinking i will make custard pie because it is absolutely the best even though it is seriously underrated among the rest of the pie eating public.  we have to make apple pie in class, but it will have a double crust and i feel that apple pie should have a struesel topping instead of a ton of crust.  luckily i don't have to make lemon meringue pie because meringue is terribly slimy and unfun to eat.  wow, who knew i could say so much about pie?  success and/or failure stories to come!  i can't wait to get started.

time warp

     this is an all points bulletin warning everyone that apparently the lakeside villa subdivision in sullivan has fallen into a time warp, that causes you to immediately lose several hours from your day.  i went home for 4 days and it went by so fast that there is no possible way that time was passing normally. 
     graduation was a fun and crazy experience that involved lots of really, really cute pictures of andy and jonathan in their caps and gowns.  check out how cute my family is!

it was actually a nice ceremony, the weather was gorgeous, and there was only one seriously long-winded speaker!  my idea of a perfect graduation ceremony.  if only the bleachers in sullivan were remotely comfortable.  after graduation we sat in the hot tub and drank wine until mom fell asleep, which is always a good time.

saturday morning is when the serious time suck happened!  we all woke up late because we stayed up too late on friday and it was suddenly noon and we still hadn't gone on our grocery run.  mom and i ran to shelbyville to get groceries before she had to leave for a wedding and i had to head to grandma's to bake a cake.  it was a seriously crazy day that involved lots of running around and nuttiness before the brandenburg family graduation party.

dinner with the bburgs was really fun.  it is always nice to see everyone and since i hadn't seen most of them since christmas, it was even better.  plus i got filipos pizza, which is always a bonus and we managed to develop a seriously great topping switch at our end of the table too!  dad got my sausage and pepperoni, i got everyone's mushrooms, and everyone was happy.

sunday we got to party, that is after we finished getting everything ready including making a great graduation cap cake and finishing up getting all of the pictures together and setting up alternative sources of shade.  it was rather warm, so shade was definitely necessary, even if it was fake. the party was really fun and it was great to see people that i don't get to see too often.  andy didn't even complain too much when we wanted to take a bunch of pictures :)

yesterday also super fun, even though i sat at the airport for like 7 hours before i got back to colorado.  i went to a barbeque with ron and becky, which was really fun and i got to go for a ride in the fiat spider convertible!  oh so much fun.

the best part of yesterday, however, was the four hour nap that i got to take when i got home.  overall it was a fabulous weekend even though it was seriously short and busy.  school starts in a couple of days so updates will be plentiful this week.  have a happy day everyone!