Artisan Breads and a Sculpture

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend. I actually took some time off so I could visit lots of friends and family. It was a busy week followed by a busy weekend, but here are the pictures from last week.

We started Artisan Breads running. As soon as we came into class, Chef informed us that we were only going to have two days to complete a bread sculpture. This included rolling, cutting, and shaping all your pieces the first day so it could bake and dry overnight. Eek! No time to plan, just make a bunch of things and hope it all comes together. :P

I more or less had the idea of a doing a night and day themed piece so I made a sun and a moon. I also chose a colour palette to fit the theme (darker colours for night and lighter colors for day). As for the rest, I made some stars, some flowers, some leaves, and a bunch of swirled stick-like pieces.

The sun!

The moon with shooting stars

It turned out amazingly well! I was so happy with the result. I do think my piece looks better without the random buns at the base (a requirement), but for two very rushed days and bare minimum planning, I am happy!

The entire piece is made of bread but only the little buns have yeast in them. The sculpture part is made of dead dough, or dough without any yeast. It was then coloured with various powders like beet, tumeric, and spinach.

After finishing our sculptures, we dove right into our rotation. My first station is danishes - the station with the most work out of all four. We only make four danishes, but each one has so many additional pieces, like fillings, that it takes a lot more time than any other station. Friday was a huge scramble to finish everything, but today went much better!

This is a Triple Crown danish. It is an orange cookie bottom with a swirl of flaky danish on top with a little bun of orange brioche hiding inside. While delicious, especially if you like oranges, it feels a little dense because of all the dough, so I whipped up a batch of chocolate ganache and we added a little to the inside. So good! Just like a Terry's Chocolate Orange but in flakey, crispy, buttery pastry form!

Inside of a Triple Crown danish

Just pulled out of the oven

All prettied up with apricot glaze, icing sugar, and a bit of zest

We also make a Rising Star danish which is filled with almond cream and an apple cranberry compote.

And finally, a Pistachio duo danish. I really like this one because we laminate pistachio paste into the dough just like the butter so there is a layer of bright green in the dough. This beauty gets filled with cream cheese and raspberry jam.

Green!

Green, red and white!

One more day of danishes and then my group and I move onto croissants. I feel the urge to make pesto! Pesto swirled croissant, anyone?