Producing Palmier, Pithivier and Paris Brest with Puff Pastry and Pâte à Choux…

Reminds me of a certain Sesame Street sketch…

Anyway, it was French Pastry week for us at LCB… those of us who even made it to class, that is! I have to admit, it probably wasn’t a good idea to come to class sick, but I didn’t want to miss any more days and so decided to just tough my way through it. Problem is, I think I took out half the class with me… ☹

Yeah, either I spread it ‘round or folks were gettin’ sick anyway, but we’ve had a bit of an attendance problem these last couple of weeks. Needless to say, those of us who got our sorry asses to class made… PASTRY!

We started by making some base doughs: blitz puff pastry and pâte à choux. Then we made a few kinds of pastry cream for filling, such as a vanilla cream, praline diplomat and crème Chantilly.

Production wasn’t exactly hard, just time-consuming, and since Val and I were both running on almost-empty (thanks for the cough drops, Val!), we had a bit of trouble keeping up. We basically prepped all our doughs the day before, and we baked off the basic shapes of the pâte à choux into puffs, éclairs and Paris Brest (which are bicycle tire-shaped wheels piped with a star tip). These cooled and went into a bag for the next day, along with the base pastry cream for our fillings later.

Below we have Val verifying the proper consistency of the pâte à choux using the ill-named yet ever-popular “Snot Test”…


So the next day, we finished the fillings by either adding butter & vanilla or almond paste to each half of the pastry cream. We also made whipped cream, or crème Chantilly (since we threw some vanilla in it). These fillings went into the various shapes we had made the night before:


We used the puff pastry to make a funky, round, um… pastry ravioli (!) called a pithivier… except time ran out and I didn’t get to mine. Bummer, ‘cause it’s on our two-day practical tomorrow and Tuesday! We were also supposed to make palmiers, which looked like they’d’ve been tasty. But, alas, another one bites the dust…

And finally we have cheese straws. Pretty simple: take some puff pastry, roll it out, sprinkle on a mixture of delicious parmiggiano Wisconsiano, some cayenne and some paprika, chill it, cut it into strips, twist ‘em up a little as you lay ‘em down on a parchment-lined pan, then bake ‘em…


I mixed the cheese mixture into the dough itself instead of just sprinkling it on top, which I wish I could say was an intentional thing. Nevertheless, they were pretty tasty.

So, practical time is upon us again, and here’s what’s on the board for Monday-Tuesday:

• Apple pie
• Pear-almond tart
• A 6” pithivier
• Six Paris Brest
• Six éclairs

I’m pretty confident in most of the above, except for the pithivier (since I never got to it before, it’ll be the first time I’m attempting it now). But I’ve got all the notes, we can take Monday to prep almost everything we can, so Tuesday will just be a quick assembly day.

Now if I could just kick this dang cough…

Baking & Pastryyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

Man, has it really been since last November that I posted?! Sheeit, how time flies when... yeah. Anywho, I can catch up on Foundations III Finals later, and I'm sure no one wants to hear about my travails with English Composition and Food Cost Control/Management... PHBT! :)

Really, the main reason for this post is because a certain bench partner has been out sick two days in a row! Needless to say, these last two days have been a LIVING HELL! (I can't bitch too much... I did ditch 'er two days last week, which just so happened to be two reeeaaaally heavy production days)

A'ight, Val - we're even!!!

Last night was all about making doughs for tonite. We made mealy dough. We made flaky dough. And we made something called sucree, as well as frangipane and some lemon curd stuff, too. All of this was in prep for tonite's cooking... Apple pie, pear-almond tart, Quiche Lorraine, key lime tartlets, and some other stuff I never got to... :)

Chef laid out the production for us on the board... holy SHIT it was a lot of work! Even those with partners had trouble getting to it all, and those without... we were pretty much SOL. I decided to just start at the top of the list and concentrate on getting each item done properly... no sense in rushing and then screwing it up (though I did manage to make that happen, too!).

I started with the apple pie by peeling then slicing a bunch of green apples. I then cooked them in a pan with some butter and a little bit of lemon juice, later adding in a mix of sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg (and a cornstarch slurry to thicken it up)...


I rolled out the mealy dough (the one where the butter is incorporated very thoroughly) as the bottom crust, and when the apple mixture had cooled, I filled the pan...


The last step was topping it with the flaky dough (the one where the butter is only a little bit incorporated), chilling it a bit, then brushing on some milk and sugar. The baking commenced...


Success!!! We get to save this one for tomorrow nite when we'll eat it with a creme chantilly...

Next I moved on to the pear-almond tart. I started out on the wrong foot by using the wrong tart pan (Hey! I saw a bunch of tart pans, I took one! How the frak was I supposed to know it was too big?! Oh yeah, Chef Leahy specified the size... damn). I lined the bottom of the pan with another mealy bottom crust, then sliced the pears thuswise...


Nice! We peeled the pears last nite and passed them to Chef, who placed them in a big ol' pot with wonderful ingredients like wine and sugar and various spices and such and whatnot. Anyway, she poached them in there for a while, then they went in the walk-in. We pulled 'em out tonite, Sliced 'em in half, then made cuts lengthwise starting at about 3/4" from the top and cutting all the way to the bottom. We then lightly pressed on them in one direction, and the slices, still attached at the top, fanned out...

Alright, so we filled the tart crust with the frangipane we made the night before, then topped that with the pears, like so...


Then I put it in the oven and... oh, there's my other mistake. I was supposed to chill the dang thing before I baked it! Sheesh! No wonder it came out looking like this...


Sigh! The team next to me of Steven and Cheryl, though, made an excellent pear tart...


So on I went. I actually spent so much time futzing with dough that I ended up having trouble with the next item: a Quiche Lorraine. I got the crust started, which involved filling the pan and trimming it just so. Then you line the crust with plastic wrap and fill that with these beans that will help keep the crust from 'poofing up' too much during the pre-bake phase. I got that part done, and it was already 9:30. Shoot! Dang! Golly! The next step was to cool that, then remove the beans and plastic, fill it with the quiche mixture (swiss cheese and bacon), as well as the curd, then bake it.

I did start the key line tart crust, which also had to chill, but I ran out of time so it had to be trashed!! Anyway, here's someone else's Quich Lorraine, just so we all have a good idea of what mine was SUPPOSED to look like!



So, what's on the docket for tomorrow?

• A quiz on cookies! (reach the chapter in the book and review what we've done in class so far)
• Pate choux (which will be for eclairs and such... mmm!)
• Blitz puff pastry dough (which will be for Thursday, more than likely)
• Paris brest (noooo... B-R-E-S-T! sheesh)

As a side note, I got a 93 on my written exam last week - woot!


Y'know, I talked to Chef about the whole production thing. See, theyz seen me coughin' and hackin' the last week or so, and some of 'em have even made comments about it (well, some were like 'Wow! You're such a trouper!' while others were like 'You shoulda stayed at home!'). And with Val out sick-as-a-dog (hey, she's NEVER missed a class since we started last July - NEVER!), Chef knew I was doing the best I could under the circumstances.

She doesn't ask us to bring up our production for review like we do in our culinary classes, so I was wondering how I was being graded. She tells me, "Hey, I look around the room and see who's working hard and who's slacking off. I won't bother checking your production, you're doing just fine in here."

Nice.

A'ight, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I wanna watch Lost... Peace out, and Namaste.