Fussy in the Garden..and the Kitchen: Baking Boot Camp, Day Two

Wow, my head is still spinning from all the work we got done today! The theme for today was custards and fillings and the director for all the fun today was Chef Carolyn our resident pastry chef master and Claire as our pastry sous chef. Before joining The Chopping Block, Carolyn had taught pastry classes at Cordon Bleu, so her process was quite a bit more by-the-book than Chef Ethan was. She was very good at gaining everyone's attention and moving the class along at a brisk, but not frenetic pace. It was nice to be able to read the recipe and KNOW that's what we were going to do. Though I personally kind of liked Ethan's "that's-what-it-says-but-we're-going-to-do-it-a-little-differently" attitude since that's my approach to baking, it's not the greatest teaching technique. Claire? Well, she was just phenomenal and is poised to not only join our CDO club (that’s OCD, but if you’ve got it as bad as we do, you prefer if acronyms are alphabetized) but possibly to become president. All our ingredients were set out when we got in this morning in a certain area and in a certain way. Dirty dishes were immediately removed. Clean items were always available. She was the queen of organization. Both Noelle and I were ready to take her home.

Our fearless teachers

Shaping and Baking Brioche: Our Brioche dough from yesterday had proofed well overnight in the fridge. The first job we had in the morning was to shape it into dough. This is not the “pat-into-a-rectangle-and-roll-and-tuck” kind of bread loaf. Brioche gets divided into 36 equal parts and then rolled into small balls and placed side-by-side in a well-greased loaf pan. When it rises for the last time and is baked, it comes together as a loaf.

Here’s a pic of Diana and Linda rolling their brioche dough rolls.

And the finished product!

Pastry Cream: Carolyn started out talking about how pastry cream recipes can be thin, slightly thicker for piping into eclairs, or even thick enough to cut into slices. (I say we slap a slice of pastry cream in between two slices of brioche and cover the whole thing in chocolate ganache for the MOST DELICIOUS SANDWICH EVER! We can call it the Croque Fussée in my honor.) The recipe we used was for piping into éclairs. It should really be used only for cutting into slices. Here’s the recipe I use for pastry cream (swiped from Baking Illustrated):

2 c. half and half
½ c. sugar
pinch salt
5 large egg yolks
¼ cup cornstarch (the recipe calls for 3 Tblsp., but that’s not enough)
4 Tblsp unsalted butter (cut into 4 pieces)
1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract (I always toss in a little more)

Or sometimes I use this one (from Joy of Baking):

1 ¼ cups milk
½ vanilla bean. split lengthwise
3 large egg yolks
¼ c. granulated sugar
2 Tblsp all-purpose flour
Scant 3 Tblsp cornstarch

So, the thickening agents in a pastry cream are the egg yolks, the cornstarch and in the Joy of Baking recipe, the flour. (Usually you see either cornstarch or flour, but the Joy of Baking recipe has both and it works just fine—maybe a little thicker than the Baking Illustrated one, but still a great texture for filling éclairs.)

I didn’t bring my instructions home tonight (d’oh!) but this is what I remember of the pastry cream recipe we used:
2 c. heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 egg
3 egg yolks
½ c. granulated sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1/3 c. cornstarch

What the recipe we used today got right? The vanilla. It was bold and flavorful, though I get annoyed at having to scrape vanilla beans. What did it get wrong? It was WAY too thick. Heavy cream + the eggs + 1/3 cup of cornstarch = sheets of a substance that resembled Jell-o and not a thick pudding. It never even bubbled on the stove—only thickened. By the time Carolyn told me that it was ready to pull from the heat, it was about the consistency of English muffin dough. I usually pull it when it’s a slightly thin pudding texture. After all, it continues to thicken while it cools. To make matters worse, we threw the pastry cream in a quarter sheet pan and spread it to cool even faster. I learned a few tricks, but I’ll stick with the recipes I’ve used in the past.

Pate a Choux: The dough that becomes the éclair shell, or, if you feel like something smaller, profiteroles (cream puff shells). If you ever thought it would be fun to cook a dough in a pan on the stovetop, this dough is for you! There are a lot of eggs in pate a choux and since I’m not a huge egg fan (I mean, it’s fine for pastry cream, but that’s got dairy and vanilla in it, too) I’m not really a fan of this stuff, either. Still, I learned some tricks for piping the éclairs onto the pan. Yes, I said “piping.” Remember, this dough is a little different.

And here they are!

Chocolate Glaze: The eclair topping. Like a ganache, only with light corn syrup to help stabilize it a bit. It was fantastic, though it’s always so tempting to just eat it with a spoon.

Here are the final products!

Croissant Folds: Ye gods, this is going to be a massive failure! The dough is too slack, the butter is poking through in a million places and we’re not allowing enough time in between folds. I just want to refer everyone to my croissant post to prove yet again that I KNOW how to make croissants. I just think this process is too crazy and the recipe just a little off (though I like the slight variations on the folds and might incorporate them into my regular recipe).

Caramel Ganache: Have you ever made caramel? I have and it was a nerve-wracking experience. Check out instructions for making caramel sometime and you'll see the MASSIVE warnings about crystallization. It’s almost as if the “they” that writes recipes is anticipating your imminent failure. It doesn’t sound like a horribly difficult process: just place sugar and a little water and then brush down the sides of the pan to rid of the crystals. You can’t stir it. You just have to stand there and watch it boil…and pray that no crystals form. And you have to wait until it’s a deep amber color, but if you let it go too long, it burns. Gah! You have to worry about crystals AND burning?! Once the caramel is done, you add heavy cream to it and return it to a simmer. Then pour it over chocolate and some butter and you have caramel ganache. We set ours aside of a while to let it cool and whipped it up at the end of the day. That’s what we’re going to frost our Devil’s Food Cake with tomorrow.

Mmmm…cake optional. Let’s just eat this ganache! (that’s the glaze behind it).

Linzer Cookie Dough: Nothing too shocking about this recipe. We're going to roll them out, cut them and make them tomorrow.

Crystalized Lemon Peel: Easy enough here. We started this yesterday by cutting lemon peels very thin, blanching them 3 times and soaking them in a simple syrup with peppercorns, star anise and a vanilla bean. Today, we drained them, then tossed the peels in granulated sugar and put them on a rack inside a pan to dry overnight. They're supposed to be a garnish for a lemon-lavender cookies, but we made way too much, so Noelle and I were munching them as treats. I'm definitely making these and dipping them in ganache in the future.

Here they are on our tray!