November 3rd

For this week, we did laminated doughs - that's doughs with alternating layers of dough and fat. I think it's very relaxing to do this type of dough (if you're not in a huge rush!) We'd done puff pastry before, but this time we were making dough for Croissants and Pains aux Chocolats, which has yeast in the dough, and also has less folds (only three instead of six,) making it a little bit quicker to make. The croissant dough was made with butter, and the next day we made danish dough, which is essentially the same, but we used a type of pastry margarine instead of butter. We ran out of time during the week, so the danish dough is still in the freezer, hopefully we'll use it soon! I was happy with the shape of my croissants - it was surprising to see that some people's weren't really a good shape, and it made me wonder if they knew how the dough would bake, where it would rise, and if some of them had even seen a croissant before!

Thursday was the pastry practical exam! I had spent the day before, and the whole night before thinking about all the things that could go wrong, and panicking that I didn't know how it would turn out because I'd never made the recipe before. That, coupled with the fact that I'd reduced the recipe with something called a baker's percentage, meant that I was praying that all my calculations were correct and I wouldn't run short of anything! (Baker's percentage finds the ratio of all the ingredients and uses that to change the quantity that a recipe produces, and is a lot more precise than just dividing all the ingredients by a number. It comes in handy when you have a recipe that makes, say, three tarts, when you only need one tart for your pastry practical!)

I made a Vertechoc. What's that? An almond pastry tart shell, with a pistachio frangipan filling, and a chocolate ganache topping. I had never made this recipe before, and I knew that I was challenging myself with this one because there were a lot of components. The college refused to bring in pistachio paste for me, so I had to make some on the previous day, which I'd never done before, so that was part of the challenge too. The frangipan used required a pastry cream as well, made on the day. Preparation is the key to success, so on the train home the previous night I'd made up my schedule so that I wouldn't confuse myself or start doing things in an order that didn't make sense.

Not very many people garnished their pastry, but I'm really happy with myself for getting that done as well. Unfortunately, the oven temperature was a bit high, so the pastry was overcooked on the sides, and the filling was under-done in the centre. This wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't get to use a tart ring, and had to use a dish, which meant the bottom of my tart was double-panned, but not the sides. The instructor seemed otherwise happy with the way that I managed myself, and the final result. The chocolate should have been a bit more set on top, but I didn't have access to a blast chiller to cool it down, but the instructor understood and looked past that.