Pro Pastry Class

I don't have a ton of time to write, but I wanted to tease you with this photo of a couple of the baguettes I and my classmates made at my Pro Pastry class this weekend (I think mine is the one on the right, but I'm not completely sure - it could also not be in this picture at all, but on a different table entirely. However, I did make one!). I'm having such a good time, and learning a ton!

For instance, did you know that the reason you should always use unsalted butter in baking is because every butter company salts their butter differently, so you lose control over the amount of salt you include. If you use unsalted butter and then add in salt yourself, you regain that control.

AND, I'm sure many of you know you should always use large eggs in baking, but did you know why? The thing to think about here is the whites of the egg - that's what adds liquid to your recipe, and most recipes are made specifically for large eggs. So if you use a medium egg, you end up with a drier batter. If you use a jumbo egg, you end up with a wet batter.

I also learned that I touch my pie dough too much (which melts the butter and makes for a less-than-flaky crust), so that's something to work on. But I also learned that I knead bread dough especially well (our instructor, Mary, actually made all the other students watch my technique) and whip a good pastry cream.

I have also taken on a quasi-mentoring roll for my class partner, who has hardly baked before and tends to approach baking as you'd approach regular cooking (that is, with non-exact measurements and a "that's good enough" attitude (seriously - she actually said that a few times), which is not acceptable). So I've stepped in to try to help a little, and she seems to appreciate that. There may be an opportunity for me to work as a TA in one of Mary's future classes (all of our current TAs are old students of hers, and Mary mentioned it as a general point of discussion) so I think it's a good sign that I'm already doing that with my own partner.

Mary is great - very down-to-earth and extremely knowledgeable. She trained with Nancy Silverton (an amazing baker) and worked at Wolfgang Puck's Spago for 20 years. She said she likes teaching better than anything she's done in the past, which is evident in the way she works with all of us. We're all at different experience levels, and she's put everyone at ease and made sure we're comfortable asking questions and making mistakes that we can learn from.

The weekend was a little nuts - we started with a Friday evening class from 6-9:30, then had class from 9-5 on Saturday, and then were supposed to go from 9 to 4:30 on Sunday, but Mary could tell we were all just exhausted (she did a demonstration of how to make the layers for a chocolate chiffon cake, and everyone just sat there and stared at her, instead of getting up and looking in bowls and asking questions), so she let us stop at 3:45 and do a little shopping in the store attached to the kitchen.

Our homework this week is to use her recipe and demonstration to create our own chocolate chiffon cake layers. We'll bring them in on Friday to have them assessed, and she'll be able to tell us what we did wrong or right. We'll then use those layers for the cake we'll be decorating sometime over next weekend.

It's hard work, but it's so much fun, and so interesting - and it's made me even more confident about my decision to make a career out of this.