It's Bread Time!

What am I?

Hi everyone! How are you all? I know this is major late, but I hope you all had a wonderful winter break and New Years. I spent time with family and friends and definitely got my bake on.

Classes actually started on the 7th. I spent that week learning about how to start your own business. While it was a lot of theory to sit and absorb all at once (6 hours a day!), I learned a lot. We broke up into groups of four and over the next two months, we have to write a business plan as if we were actually opening a business. On Thursday, during that ridiculous snow storm, our group drove out to Crowfoot Towne Centre to scope out a potential business space. We ended up picking a space currently occupied by a travel agency. It's a good size and already contains a bathroom. :)

Today I started Yeast Fundamentals. I love bread. The wonderfully crispy crust of artisan bread paired with the chewy insides or the soft fluffiness of sandwich bread. I went on a bread baking stint a few years ago, even inspiring my dad to challenge the baguette. There's something about mixing simple ingredients together, letting it sit, working with it, and watching it all come together into something beautifully delicious that inspires - that makes me go "Ahh...this is baking."

My attempt at garlic and cheese pain d'epi

Today and yesterday have been demo days and heavy in tasting sessions. :) In this class, we'll be making light rye bread, sunflower rye, cheesebread and buns, cinnamon knots and clover buns, kaiser buns, doughnuts, muffins, scones, and soda bread.

The first bread out of the oven was light rye. We exchanged some bread for some steaks with the Chef next door. Bread, butter, and steak, what luxury!

Our class demolished the loaf, we were hungry

Bacon cheddar scones!

Raspberry white chocolate muffins

Along the way we practiced shaping buns. This was my attempt at shaping a kaiser by hand. It is extremely rare to see a hand shaped kaiser bun these days but ones shaped by hand have much more crust than the ones you stamp out.

Stamped on the left, Chef's hand shaped on the right

Fancy bun knot shape

Mini baguette and swirl shaped bun!

Here's how my kaiser turned out. Such a cutie, I took him home. :)

One of the appeals of a hand shaped kaiser is that the folds are much more pronounced. The two buns below were both stamped, but the right one is more ideal because the star shape is deeper. The one on the left wasn't stamped hard enough so it is very round.

Most people in my class seem to have a love affair with cheese. We put it in as many things as we can. And plenty of it.

You better believe there's already a lot of cheese inside

While the cheese buns had a great fluff and chewy texture, it just seemed like something was missing. It would be amazing with some Italian sausage though!

Cheese buns!

Have you ever tasted soda bread before? I haven't and I was really interested. My first bite was actually quite off-putting. The taste of the chemical leaveners is so strong it makes the bread taste metallic. But after a few bites, it started to grow on me. Soda bread definitely wouldn't be my first pick (and the Chef really dislikes it), but it is surprisingly popular at The Marketplace.

Currents and icing sugar

Doughnuts are also part of our line-up of products. Fresh made doughnuts dipped in cinnamon sugar really reminds me of K-days and events like that.

Do you know what that giant smiley face is? Why, it's a giant scone, of course! We decided to push the leftover scraps together and make one giant one for the class to share. :)

If you are a carb lover like myself, look forward to more indulgently bready pictures to come!

Happy Holidays!

Finally! Exam week is over and  freedom ensues!

I must say, this week wasn't easy. I even felt like breaking down and crying at one point, but it is all done and I did pretty darn well, if I say so myself.

The first two days concentrated on baking, prepping, and finishing a sponge cake and a red velvet cake. I really did not want to spend the time tempering chocolate to make another lattice roll so I opted out and instead topped my cake with an extra snowflake from the red velvet cakes. I think it looked better like that. While it is fun to make the lattice roll, it seemed out of place before.

We ran out of the premade carrots for the carrot cake so most of us had to pipe cream cheese carrots. A little anemic looking, but I think you can still tell it is a carrot.

Wednesday was marzipan day. This time we had to make 12 each of bananas, apples, pears, strawberries, oranges, and peaches. So much fruit!

On top of that, we had to make three marzipan roses with two leaves each.

Marzipan doesn't take long so compared to the previous two days, Wednesday felt relaxing. We used the extra time to prep pie dough for Thursday.

Thursday Pie day. The worst day of the week. I'm not sure about you, but I still have yet to get pies down. Or maybe pies just don't want to be understood by me. My crust for the lemon meringue pie kept breaking over and over again. I had to remake it three times!! I was so frustrated I had to take a moment to breathe or else risk an angry cry face - the ugly kind, and no one wants to see that. I cannot send enough hearts to S who made the lemon meringue filling and meringue topping while I fussed over the pie crusts so that when the crusts finally turned out right, we could finish them up right away. Also, hearts to V who gave us her extra dough as I used up all of mine! Can I say "Yay for teamwork"? Yes I can. I'll shout it even. Saved my day. :)

While the apple pie ended up being a bit of a disaster (the filling burst out in several places, but I managed to patch it back together), the lemon meringue pies were great!

Disaster apple pie hiding in the background

The last task on our examination list was another fondant covered cake. The previous one I had made was my first time working with fondant and covering those corners was a pain in the derrier! YouTube to the rescue! V and I found a youtube video about covering a purse cake just like ours. It really helped and we managed to get that cake covered perfecty. :)

I decided to make a panda purse. Chef thought it was Mickey Mouse and another lady called it a polar bear. Really?

V made a Chanel purse. There was amazing detailing in the zipper and the individually made pears on the CC logo!

My favourite purse - S's alligator purse! I just love the mouth! So creative.

By today, most of us had already completed all the tasks and were just helping with cleaning the lab room in preparation for next semester. What is one to do with a leftover cookies base, meringue, and chocolate? Make a s'more pizza of course! Cookie base topped with toasted meringue, melted chocolate, and more toasted meringue. One delicious sugar rush!

So sweet, but so good!

Leftover roses from peoples' exams

The ridiculous amounts of sugar we ate this morning may or may not have contributed to a sugar high for V and myself. :)

Afterwards, the three of us went out for a celebratory lunch at a korean restaurant. Bakers tend to crave salt by the end of all those sweet sweet days. :)

Salty bibimbap goodness

Until we meet again, happy holidays everyone!

Exam Week

I have just delved into the void that is the first day of exam week and emerged alive. That being said, I won't be posting this week because I most likely won't have time to take pictures. But before I disappear back into the void, I'll show you pictures from the last few days.

Keeping with the Christmas season, we made swiss rolls. The Chef gave us creative reign while stressing the need for us to use up random bits of chocolate decorations. A really neat decoration was created by putting bubble wrap on top of tempered chocolate.

Bubble wrap is so useful

In our textbook is a picture of a swiss roll with a mix of light and dark fillings. I wanted to recreate it. I decided to use up some leftover chocolate buttercream and flavoured white swiss buttercream with passionfruit. I didn't realize how much buttercream I had layered on the cake and ended up having to try to scrape half of it off which made the final cross section a little messy looking but it still worked.

Start with chocolate lines

I used S's leftover mango swiss buttercream on the outside and then topped it all with random pieces of chocolate. :P

We also made purse cakes and let me say one thing: fondant is not my friend. It was my first time working with fondant and we got very little instruction. Working with the fondant in general wasn't too bad, but trying to get clean corners was painful! I ended up with wrinkles and folded edges. The best part about these bags, however, was that we got creative reign once again. Some of the bags were awesome! One girl did a zebra print with bright pink and brown.

Cut and fill the cake with chocolate buttercream

Drape the fondant overtop

Try to make nice corners, unlike these ones

Starting to add details

Magically it's done!

We made fun of V's cake and called it a whale purse. It's too bad she didn't keep that tail on. :P

Thursday will be marzipan day so I took home some marzipan over the weekend and practiced making roses.

Making petals

Put all the petals together to make a rose!

Today we had to bake all the cakes we will be working with this week and let us just say that the dish situation looked overwhelming. The poor dishwashers...

It looks like a Christmas tree...of dirty containers

Only four more days. Out of the giant list of things we have to do, I only dreaded two things: getting all the cakes baked on time, and pies. Since the first one is now behind me, it should be mildly bumpy sailing ahead until Friday, aka Pie day. Until then, my friends, stay warm! And check out the Christmas bake sale at the Market place this week if you have a chance. :)