B&P Practical 1

Phase 4, Week 2, Day 8

Baking and Pastry is so weird. The whole thing is like hurry up and wait. After F3 last phase where the clock started and all you did was move as fast as you could for two hours, this phase is slow as molasses in January during an ice storm. It will take us two class periods to produce 2 loaves of French bread, 12 Peanut Butter Cookies, and 12 Biscuits, and some where in there we will take a written test too.

Our row (Jeremy, Jarod, Rachel, myself and two others) decided to do the bread on day one to completion and the other products and test on day two. The remaining members of the class did the opposite. It should work fine that way keep us out of the fray of the majority.

Now, remember, I didn't get to finish my French bread on Monday so I was flying a bit blind. Being a test of course, we are required to work individually and can't ask any questions of our classmates or instructors at this point.  I just kind of went with the flow of the group. We all needed to go into the oven  together because we had to activate the steam function for the crust. However, no one was sure how long we were supposed to leave the steam in the oven before we opened the flue to let the moisture escape. In a panic we released the flue after only 30 seconds. WRONG! Apparently the bread needs the moisture from the steam to make a crispy crust. We should have left the steam in until the crust began to turn brown (10-15 minutes). Oops! So we spent the remainder of the cooking time worrying about how our bread would turn out. Would it be hard as a rock? Too dry? Not the right color?

Baguettes

Result: Not too shabby! I had nice edges and shape, good color. I could have scored a bit deeper and needed more holes in the bread. A 9 out of 10 over all.