Field Trips & Traybakes

Okay, so this is a catch up of last week, & I apologise for the delay.

The deadline for our Business Plans is fast approaching, & if I'm honest I think we've all been panicking slightly!  I know I have... =/

So, last Wednesday, we wandered down to the Cotswolds to FWP Matthews, to see the 2008 Bakery World Champion, Christophe Derbesee.  It was a long journey, so naturally we had an early start.  Luckily, there were fresh pastries on the minibus to ease the pain! =D

Once there, we watched as Christophe shaped a variety of breads.  The doughs had all been made the day before & retarded overnight, so we didn't see any actual mixing, but it was interesting to watch the shaping.

This was quite an interesting shape; Christophe used a rolling pin to pin out three sides of a ball of dough, then folded them up over the sides, before forming a dip in the centre & placing a separate ball of dough on top!

This was something similar, except dough at either end of a batard was pinned out, then folded back over the batard at an angle.

These were a soft, brioche-style dough, flavoured with tomato paste.

And this was really cool!  It was a vienoisserie pastry, pinned out & spread with creme patisserie, then rolled up much in the same way as a Chelsea bun or pain au raisin.  Then, Christophe made a series of slices most of the way through the roll, before slicing that whole chunk off, & spreading the slices out in a fan!

I must admit, I'm not *entirely* sure what the other doughs were, as Christophe didn't speak much English!

But the bread looked great anyway!  And it was certainly tasty with the cheeses, pates & olives they laid out for lunch  =)

The tomato-brioche bread was lovely, really soft & flavoursome  =)

And these were epically tasty!  Very moreish  =D

After lunch we had a tour round the mill, which was fun.  It's very similar to the other mills we've been round, although our tour guide this time was more interesting, actually showing us samples of the flour at each stage of the milling process.  We even saw the flour being packed & wrapped ready for shipping  =)

Thursday was our last Flour Confectionery lesson!  How quickly has that gone?!

We were looking at tray bakes; brownies, flapjacks and the like, as well as a few unusual ones, like Norwegian apple cake slices, & toscarners.

I chose to make the Norwegian apple cake, toscarner & flapjacks  =)

The Norwegian apple cake was lovely!  The bottom of the tin was lined with sliced apple, then topped with sponge mix, & finally sprinkled with a mixture of sugar & cinnamon - Delicious!

I went for a chocolate flapjack, rather than the traditional plain with fruit  =)

The toscaner was quite interesting; a sponge base topped with a mix of melted cream, butter & sugar, & flaked almonds.  This was baked again, then once cool, it was sliced & dipped in melted dark chocolate!

This week we're looking at viennoiserie products - croissants, danishes, pain au chocolate etc, as well as a range of brioches. 

So far it's been wonderful! =D

But, I think I've gone on long enough for today, I'll let you know how it's going tomorrow  =)

Pretzels & Beer Barms & Bries, Oh My!

Hello folks  =)

Apologies for the late update, I had myself a rather lovely weekend in Manchester with my little brother, & I must admit rather a lot of wine was consumed!

Wednesday saw us baking the last of our world breads, pretzels & panmirino's, & free styling the world breads we're thinking of baking in our assessments.  In my case, this was a traditional English beer barm bread  =)

First up though, pretzels!

This dough was fairly easy to mix, & was a fairly strong dough, requiring little in the way of folding.  Once it was divided, it was pre-shaped into balls & left to rest, before being rolled out & shaped into that distinctive pretzel shape.

These were shaped on the baking sheet, rather than the lifting & flipping technique I've seen on the TV, but it worked just as well.  I chose to leave two plain, with just a sprinkling of sea salt, & the other two were sprinkled with poppy seeds.

These were baked off in the oven, rather than using the slightly more volatile caustic soda method!

We made panmirino's next, two varieties, one with raisins & rosemary, the other just with rosemary.  This was a really soft dough, & needed quite a few folds to get the strength into it, but it actually baked off quite nicely.

Here are mine, waiting to go into the oven... The cuts on the round loaf, the panmirino with rosemary, were sprinkled with sea salt before baking.

And here they are fully baked & drizzled with olive oil  =)

Finally, my beer barm breads!  These were quite fun actually  =)

In order to make a beer barm bread, you need beer barm, so, Tuesday afternoon I wandered across the yard to the Welbeck Abbey Brewery for a pot of their finest yeasty, foamy loveliness  =)

I combined the beer barm with some malthouse flour & water, & left them to ferment overnight.  The dough was quite unusual really, soft & flowing, but strong at the same time, with a really great structure.  It was quite a pleasure to work with really  =)

I divided & shaped the dough into three pieces & placed them in banatons to prove.  Once they were ready, they were turned out onto the peel, & instead of being scored with a blade, a stencil was laid on top & the surface dusted with flour.  I used two different sorts; one with malthouse flour, the other two with standard white flour, to see which effect I preferred.

Now, originally I wasn't going to be allowed to post a picture of the finished breads, simply because the stencil I used was designed for Wayne to use in a top secret project... Now, I'm fairly certain he later said he wasn't going to use it & so I could keep it, but I'm not 100% certain, so I'm still not going to post a picture!  (Don't want to jeopardise my final marks now do I!)  ;)

I will say that they rose beautifully, & that the stencil worked well too, especially with the white flour.  The malthouse blended into the crust a little, so it didn't stand out that well. 

Flavour-wise, it's okay, but the level of pre-fermented flour was only 13%, so no great depth of flavour from that.  I think that if I do use a beer barm bread in my assessment (& I think I will) I'll need to up the pre-fermented flour, give it greater depth of flavour.  I also think I might use a different blend of flours, maybe throw some malthouse flour into the final dough, along with some wholemeal flours... Who knows, I might get crazy & experiment with a seeded beer barm bread!

Thursday was Dairy!  First time back in there since coming back from placement, & we were trying out the soft cheese recipes again, after our first batch sadly died...

Hopefully this time the cheeses will be more successful, but we'll have to wait & see!  The milk was a little more acidic then we would have expected, but everything else seemed okay so we carried on. 

All was going well until we added the rennet.  For a soft cheese, you want the curd to begin to form within 8 minutes (ideally) of the rennet being added; for our first batch of milk it took a staggering 31 minutes!  We increased the amount of rennet in the second batch, so that only took 18 minutes, but still a lot longer then we'd have liked. 

But still, curds did eventually form, so we cut, stirred & moulded as usual  =)

So now all we have to do is wait!  They should be safely tucked up in the maturing room now, so hopefully in won't be too long to go!

It's going to be rather quiet on the blog front for the next couple of days.  We're not actually doing any baking until Thursday when we have Flour Confectionery.  Today & tomorrow we're confined to the resource room doing research for our world breads assessment, then Wednesday we've got a field trip.

We're going to see the 2008 Bakery World Champion, Christophe Debersee, demonstrate a variety of breads.  It should be an interesting day & hopefully I'll have some pictures to share too  =)

The Petit Four Chronicals...

Well, it's been a pretty busy few days!

(Also, (don't laugh) I've just realised I can create a post title... Not the most IT literate, but who cares!)

So anyway, I decided on my petit fours for the Flour Confectionery assessment, so of course some extensive test baking was called for!

The first recipe I tackled was for Lemon & Poppy Seed Madeleine's (using the Madeleine pan I picked up in France!).  I'd recently bought the gorgeous Bouchon Bakery Cookbook, & naturally, they've got a recipe for Madeleine's, albeit plain ones.  So, I figured I'd give them a go, & fling in some lemon juice, zest & poppy seeds, & see what happened!  (Of course I weighed everything I added, I'm not that much of a cowgirl baker!)

They came out looking quite nice, & tasted lovely, if a little dense in the middle...

So, I played around with the recipe, adjusting to take into account the extra liquid from the lemon juice, & the next batch came out beautifully!  =D

They were light, fluffy, & held their shape far better than the first lot.  And of course they were scrummy  =D

Next up, some Ginger & Chocolate Tartlets.  I found a lovely recipe for some chocolate tartlets, so decided to do my usual & amend it with some chopped stem ginger & ginger syrup.

The first lot were lovely, but way too big.  The petit four's have to be no more than 40g in weight each; these came out at 55-60g!

So, I made them again using a shallower pan for the tartlet cases, & they came out at a much better weight  =)  These were 33-35g each, & looked far more delicate & petit four like than the first batch.  I just need to up the ginger in the recipe, to really give it a kick, & they'll be sorted  =)

I still need to sort out my choux pastry recipe, & decide on a filling for the resulting eclairs, but I feel quite good about the petit fours  =)  I'd like the opportunity to practise them at School, to make sure the baking times are appropriate for their ovens, & I think there is some free style time built in in the next couple of weeks, so that should be easy to arrange  =)


We've been just as busy at School.  Monday saw us baking donuts!  =D

These were mine & Rose's buns, ready for frying.  It was quite fun, if a little long winded.  We could only fir two in the fryers at a time, & me & Rose seemed to have gotten stuck with a slow fryer!  But eventually they were all fried, tossed in sugars & ready to fill with jam  =D

I choose raspberry jam & lemon curd for mine - Lovely!  =D

Other buns were baked off in the oven.  These we sliced & filled with jam & cream.

Today we had four doughs on the go; bagels, Pane Toscano, Pane Brie, & Panettone!

The bagels were quite simple to shape; we just rolled the dough into a long strip, which we curled round to form a ring.  Then we rolled the dough along the join, to seal it before they proved.  Then they went into boiling water!

After they had boiled for two minutes wither side, they went onto baking sheets & into the oven to finish baking.

The Pane Toscano is traditionally a salt less bread from Italy.  Ours was made using long fermentation & had semi dried tomatoes in to help give it more depth of flavour.  The dough started off quite nice, but because there was no salt in it, it eventually became stickier & more difficult to handle!  But, with some coaxing, we got them shaped & into banetons.

They do have some flavour, but you can certainly tell there's no salt in the dough.  This bread is traditionally eaten with a lot of salted meats, that sort of thing, so the bread doesn't need to be salted  =)

The Pane Brie has nothing to do with cheese, despite the name, & is actually a bread sailors would have taken with them on their long sea voyages.  In order for the breads to last, they were made with a very tight crumb structure, created by rolling the dough out quite thin, then folding it up again, much like you'd do with croissant dough.

Here's my loaf ready for baking...

And after baking!  The oven was rather full, & some of the loaves batched together, hence the lighter colouring on the bottom half of the loaf.  It's quite a soft, tasty loaf; full of lovely buttery flavours  =)

And finally, the Panettone  =)

We've made these before, but it's always a pleasure to make.  The dough is so lovely, full of butter & sugar & tasty fruits  =D

Once they were proved, they were sprinkled with sugar nibs & cut using scissors, then, into the oven!

And look!  They grew a huge amount during baking, proper tasty lovely fruity tasty monsters  =D

But for now, I need to go get some sleep.  All this test baking & fighting through epic winds on the bicycles has rather worn me out!

Well today was a whirl of cream & melted chocolate!  It was gateau day!

First off we made up some genoise sponges.  These sponges would be used to make up the gateau's & some battenburg cakes, & were either plain, chocolate, or coloured pale pink (for the battenburg's)  =)

I just went for plain & chocolate sponges in the end, although a small part of me now wishes I'd gone & made a pink sponge too!  But never mind  =)

As a result, I made a plain & chocolate battenburg, the sponges brushed with apricot jam & then rolled in marzipan.

To finish, I crimped the top edge of the battenburg, then piped a small amount of fondant along the top before adding a few small slices of mango & lime  =)

I'm quite pleased with the effect of the crimping; it adds another decorative element to the cake & lifts it somewhat.

I also made a little three tired gateau from the rest of the plain sponge.

I brushed the top of the first sponge with a little apricot liquor, then piped some continental buttercream around the edge.  I filled the inside of the cream with some mango jam/puree, then popped another sponge on top.  Then another layer of cream, before the final sponge, & more cream!

To finish, I smoothed some buttercream on the sides, which I then covered in chocolate curls, before adding a few mango & lime slices to the top, along with a chocolate swirl decoration.

I did something similar with my chocolate sponge, but that was just a two tired affair.

No liquor this time, just lots of cream!  Like the three tired gateau, I smoothed cream on the sides & covered them in more chocolate curls, & then popped another chocolate swirl decoration on top.

I'm not completely happy with the gateau's; the finish isn't perfect & I felt a little rushed trying to get them done, particularly as there wasn't much buttercream left by the time I came to assemble my gateau's.  It was also rather warm in the training room, making any sort of chocolate work tricky (bloomin' Wayne & his baguettes!).

But still, the ideas are there, & with a little less stress & a cooler environment, I'm sure I could create something that looks as pretty as I would like them to  =)

And even if they are a little rough round the edges, they'll still taste great!  =D

So, we've had a busy couple of days; meeting with Shelia & Wayne to discuss our placements & where we want to go next, & a whole load of flat breads to bake, including pizza!  =D

Flat breads first.

Tuesday we concentrated on unleaved flat breads, starting with chipati's.  =)

These are very simple to make, & take no time at all to bake!  Just a couple of minutes on the first side, then half that time for the second.

We also made roomali's, another type of Indian flatbread, also called a handkerchief bread because of the way they're folded up.  These were exceptionally thin, & once baked, were brushed with melted butter & folded up  =)

Wayne mentione that they were nice sprinkled with sugar, & that was it!  Out came the vanilla, cinnamon & cardamon flavoured sugars & many more sweet roomali's were made.  We ate quite a few of these in the end  =D

Then there was a Nordic potato flatbread, called lefse.  These were very tasty, & apparently they're eaten for breakfast, either brushed with melted butter & sprinkled with sugar, or topped with pickle fish, & then rolled up like a pancake.

We didn't have any pickled fish to hand, so we had them with sugar instead =D

Today we made pitta breads, naan breads, pizzas & Chicago pizza pies!

The pitta breads were very simple to make, & came out lovely, & again they took just a couple of minutes to bake.

Pizza was up next.  The dough is quite tricky to shape; you have to gently stretch out the rim of the dough, balancing it on your knuckles, passing it from one hand to the other to move it round... It's a technique that needs to be practised to be mastered!  Of course, the classic move is to throw the dough in the air & catch it again.  I didn't attempt this, but Wayne showed us how it was done  =D

Once they were shaped, it was just a case of topping them & baking them.  We opted for a traditional Margherita topping; tomatoes, mozzerella, basil & olive oil.

This was mine, all ready for baking  =)

Now, quite what happened I'm not sure, but somehow or other my little pizza never made it back to me.  I unloaded it from the oven a mere 4 minutes after it went in, looking all lovely & bubbly, then I popped it onto the rack to cool.  When I went to collect it a bit later, it had vanished!  =O

Luckily, Steph wasn't planning on taking her's home, so she gave it to me instead!

And very tasty it was too!  =D

The Chicago pizza pie is a very strange beast indeed.  Now, I'd heard of it, but never seen one before, let alone tried one.  It is literally a pie.  You line a deep tin with pizza dough, fill it with layers of cheese, tomato & goodness knows what else, then top it with a disc of pizza dough, before adding more tomato sauce & cheese & baking!

We had the usual grated cheeses & tomato sauce at our disposal, as well as peppers, onions, chillis, spiced meatballs, smoked sausage & pancetta (all the meaty products very kindly donated by Rich the Butcher).  I threw in a bit of everything except the sausage, as I wasn't much of a fan of the smokiness...

Most folks made big pizza pies, but there were only little tins left when I came to construct mine, so I have two, slightly more reasonably sized pies  =)

The naan breads were very similar to the pitta's in terms of shaping, except they were hand stretched rather than being pinned out with a rolling pin.  They were brushed with melted butter or melted garlic butter, then into the oven for a few minutes.

Wayne also showed us how to make filled naans.  All you do in flatten out a ball of naan dough, pop a spoonful of the desired filling (in this case a mix of whey cheese, chilli, lemon juice, mint & corriander - Yum!)  then fold it up a little like a pasty, before forming it into a ball again.  The dough is left to relax for 10 minutes, then gently stretched out into the classic teardrop shape  =)

This was mine.

So far I've managed to resist the urge to eat it, but my goodness it smelt amazing!

So all in all it was a good day.  Especially as Amy treated us all to cupcakes, decorated with all our faces!

Look!  It's me!  In icing!! =D

I do love how talented my fellow students are  =D

Well hello!

Today was the first day of our last Term!  Just 12 more weeks to go, then we're off on our own... But we won't dwell on that just yet  =)

We were eased back into things today with a series of test bakes; the group split into pairs, each of whom picked a different element or ingredient to experiment with.  Along with the usual suspects of salt, molasses & fats, we could also choose to play around with malt flours & extracts, dough softeners, dough improver's & powdered sourdough cultures.

Now, while the last three really aren't the sort of thing any of us want to be using in our future baking careers (after all, we're learning how to be artisan bakers), it was an fairly interesting prospect, to see if any of these so called improver's actually did improve or alter the dough significantly.

Rose & I chose to look at malt flours.  We made one loaf with Rich Cream malt flour, & another using Red Malt flour.  Neither of these did much to affect the volume or structure of the loaves, but that was expected.  The Rich Cream malt flour, a paler, creamier flour, did result in a darker crust, but that's down to it's diastatic properties; the resulting enzyme activity released more sugars into the dough, hence the darker crust.  The Red Malt flour has no diastatic properties at all, so no additional enzyme activity.

Another group looked at powdered sourdough vs the Schools actual sourdough culture.  There was a difference to the crumb colour; it was darker in the powdered culture loaf, probably down to the darker colour of the ingredient itself.  But when compared to an actual sourdough bread, it just didn't have that depth of flavour or aroma you'd expect...

Sara, the lady leading today's class, made the point that if you had a bakery & wanted to make sourdough loaves, but didn't have staff with the required knowledge, or the space or time to nurture an actual sourdough, then the powdered cultures could be a suitable alternative.  I disagree.

A sourdough culture doesn't take up all that much room, you just need a storage container large enough to hold it, & that doesn't have to be that large.  Equally, they don't take that much time to nurture.  Ten minutes or so to refresh at the end of the shift, or build to the level you need for the next days baking, not that much.  But then, what if you have a disaster?  What if you're culture is left out in unsuitable conditions, or refreshed with the wrong flour?  Or contaminated in some other way? 

Well, the sensible baker (& I've heard of a few who do this) would have a backup of that sourdough culture kept somewhere safe, just in case  =)

And as for bakers without the correct knowledge, it doesn't take all that long to educate someone who's willing to learn.  I can't really see that being an issue in an artisan bakery; if it is, maybe you have the wrong people working for you?  But this is just my opinion, & it could still be coloured by youthful (well, sort of...) enthusiasm for the craft.  No doubt once I am in the position of owning & running my own bakery I'll really see the reality, but I highly doubt any circumstances would persuade me to use dough improver's, or powdered sourdough cultures in my baking...

Anyway, rant over! 

Today we also found out the dates, times & recipes for our final assessments, for both Bakery & Flour Confectionery.  Flour Confectionery is up first, & while we only have four products to make in an 8 hour time frame, those four products do include choux pastry, meringues & our own petit four recipes.

Now, we haven't done any work on petit fours, or any really small scale stuff like that.  Each petit four must be a maximum of 40g in weight, & we need to have two varieties, & I must admit I'm at a bit of a loss... I'm sure I'll come up with something, but it's still a little daunting...

I think we have some free style time in the next few weeks, so that should give us the time to practise, & get it all right, now I just need to decide what I want to make!

Oh, & I apologise for the lack of pictures, but in my haste this morning I forgot to pack my camera  =/

Tomorrow I'll have my camera, & good thing too!  We're doing pizzas & flat breads!  =D

So I finished my second work placement a few days ago, & I think I've just about recovered!  A few aches here & there, & my hands are still a little sore, but I've gotten back into non-bakers hours pretty easily.

That last week at Holtwhites Bakery was much more hectic than the previous three, with much longer days; in fact, I think I worked a 11.5hr shift three of the five days!

We had 20 Simnel cakes to bake & decorate, on top of everything else, so of course that extended the days.  But they did look marvellous, & all of them sold, so it was definitely worth it!  =)

Then of course, we had Good Friday, & 1,000 Hot Cross Buns to deal with!  The prospect of making 1,000 Hot Cross Buns was a little daunting, especially as the most we'd made in a day prior to that was 210, but we were all fairly determined to see it done  =)

It involved an earlier start for everyone, & a fair bit of planning, but by the time I came in at 3am, the first batch of dough was well into it's bulk fermentation, & by 4am we'd scaled & shaped the first 6oo.

This was the proving cupboard, full from top to bottom, & that wasn't even all of them!

Once the first 600 were happily proving, the second batch of 400 was ready to scale & shape.  The team worked really well together, & we were able to keep up with demand for buns once the shop had opened.  We'd sold out by 2.45pm!

We had a rather ingenious playlist of songs to keep us going through the toughest parts of the morning, & it really did help!  The gang had a number of little tunes they sang around the Bakery, depending on the task at hand, like singing "Wholemeal Sponge" to the tune of "Girls on Film", & "Give me Rye, Give me Sweet Deli Rye" to the tune of the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies", things like that.  So of course the playlist included those little gems, & a few others! 

I still find myself singing or humming them now... Another little souvenir to take back to School with me next week!  =D

Saturday's shift was slightly less stressful, with just 700 Hot Cross Buns to make.  It was a rather more emotional day though, my last shift with the Bakery...

We had a lovely last breakfast at the pub, & then it was time for folks to start heading home... I had hugs from all the gang, & I might have gotten a wee bit teary... =)

It's silly really, I suppose, but when you spend four weeks working in a place, you get attached to it, & the people you work with.  Especially when the people are so lovely, friendly & funny, & make it so easy to fit in...

It was hard work, long hours & physically demanding, but I honestly loved every minute of it, & I'm very much looking forward to getting back to School!  Although of course, I'm going to take full advantage of the remaining few days of holiday to relax & sleep & catch up with family, & my lovely young man   =)

Might even get in a spot of baking while I'm at it!  ;)