B&P Practical 1, Day 2

Phase 4, Week 2, Day 9

Yesterday was agonizing, it seems like we waited around for over half the class time for, proofing, benching or baking. What a change of pace from our last phase. Today we moved a bit more. I completed 12 peanut butter cookies, 12 cheese biscuits, and the written test.

Written test was ok- 86%

Peanut Butter Cookies- I had to start over because I forgot to cream the butter and sugar before adding my other dry ingredients. Just got a little a head of myself. Otherwise fine in production. Chef asked if I had any issues with the method during my grading, and I had to tell her I started over (full point deduction). I also had two that were not exactly the same size as the others, worth .25 points. They did, however, have great taste and good texture. Grade 8.75.

Cheddar Biscuts- For some reason I noticed during baking my dang biscuits looked miniature compared to everyone else's. I used the exact same cutter as Jeremy, and yet mine looked smaller in scale. I couldn't figure it out. But I had to roll with it because I couldn't start over at that point. During grading Chef said they needed to be "tighter in appearance" and could have baked longer for more color. Otherwise very flakey. Score 9.25.

Biscuits

PB Cookies

I think I might hurl!!!

Phase 4, Week 1, Day 4

Lecture: Bread
Demo./Production: Peanut Butter Cookies and Brioche

Today we covered a lot about dough for bread making. There are 2 basic types, lean and rich dough. Lean doughs are made for breads like French and Italian loaves, pizza dough, and whole wheat breads. They are typically low in fat and sugar, have strong gluten development, and are hard crusted. In comparison, rich doughs contain higher levels of fat and sugar, need less gluten, and are soft crusted. Examples of rich doughs might be challah, brioche, or sweet rolls.

There are also a few different methods to mixing your doughs. The straight dough method is essentially the dump and run method, where the yeast and water are added together to dissolve the yeast and then the flour and salt are added and mix. The modified method for rich doughs is a combination of the creaming method and the straight method. Finally, the sponge method  uses a preferment or starter. A starter is added on top of the yeast and a slurry of the other liquids is added. A preferment gives you a head start to the final bread fermentation stage. Pate Ferments, Biga, and Poolish are all types of doughs made from this "old bread." If you are familiar with Amish bread, this is the same concept. But what I didn't realize is that it is a common practice for most bakeries to save a piece of dough from the day before's bread and use it for the next days batch. Cool!

Today we made peanut butter cookies a type of molded cookie, cut our brownies from yesterday, and we also made brioche dough, a rich French dough.

When all was said and done, I had consumed 2.5 brownies and 2 cookies. I felt so sick and had a HUGE sugar rush and felt crappy all day. So much for not gaining any weight back....

These brownies were frigging awesome!!!

A decent PB cookie