It's Bread Week!

So the way our course works here is that there are four different weeks.

     - Bread and Dough 

     - Cakes and Tarts

     - Chocolate

     - Plate desserts

For one whole week, we work on whatever subject the week is based on. As I am doing a three month course (12 weeks), there are three weeks dedicated to each subject, each time with different recipes and techniques going into the lessons.

As this week was once again bread week, we made lots and lots of different kinds. Our first bread week, we focused more so on the doughs and the proper techniques for mille feuille to be rolled. This week we  touched a greater variety of breads and doughs.

Our pastry class, in the month of February, was nice and small. We were only five students left after all the others left at the end of January. Because we were such a small class, and everyone already had the gist of things we work much more efficiently and produced better things.

This bread here is the "Paysan" loaf. It was made with rye flour and now only all-purpose flour. This rye flour gave it a more wholesome taste (and look.)

Somewhat like a baguette, it was soft and chewy in the inside and crunchy on the outside. 

Here is the unbaked "Pain de Mie Brioche." Slightly sweet, but not so sweet that it is more of a dessert bread. It is just right. It can be enjoyed with sweeter toppings as well as being served as a dinner roll. 

Applying egg-wash to our unbaked brioche.

Baked and bitten! :)

Topping the bread dough is olive oil and big salt.

The bread with big salt. 

I know, that sounds like horrible English. (Well, at least to me.) So I asked the teacher what he meant by bread with big salt. I thought, because he is a French man, and his English is not perfect, that he meant with a lot of salt. I tried to explain to him that in English that we don't say "big" to express large quantities. He just looked at me like I was crazy. And he took out a bucket full of big salt as well as a bucket of table salt, and came to me and said: "This is big salt and this is little salt."

So I got slightly ridiculed, but that's okay, because now I know a number of things.

1. The name of this bread is gramatically correct. 

2. The difference between "big salt" and salt.

3. Not to ask a question that can be interpreted as "I am stupid".

Anyways, here is one of my favorite things we made all week. 

"Pain au Chocolate", which is basically a croissant (though rolled and cut differently) stuffed with chocolate. 

mmm

Plate-full 

Inside the chocolate!

Though this one does look like a regular croissant, it is not. I guess the day that we were making these, the chef decided to get a little creative and go slightly off course. So well filled and rolled six with chocolate, and the remaining six with a good centimeter thick slab of butter. Now if butter oozing out of a croissant, sounds good, you won't believe what we added. Sugar! And lots of it. Then we rolled them up and baked them.

 Everyone that knows me, knows my love for butter. And everyone that knows butter, knows that butter and sugar fit perfectly together.

A match made in heaven, YUM.

This here is a little side project that we experimented with, using the left over brioche dough that we had.

First we rolled them into little balls.

Deep fried them.

Rolled them in sugar.

And filled them with orange marmalade.

Oh how I love our side projects!

This bread is a "Baguette Viennoise," our chef said any pastry or bread that has the word (or has something to do with the word) viennoiserie is sweet.

So basically, this baguette, is a sweeter version of the French baguette.

Above, were mini ones that we made.

(To practice our rolling and forming of the dough,because believe it or not, getting the perfect shape for a loaf of bread, but especially a baguette, takes a lot of time and even more pratice.)

 Our large ones.

(Mines one the left!)

Oh the carbs we had at the end of the week!

We gave probably 90% of it away.

(And the other 10% is what fed us on our trip to the ever so expensive Monaco.)

Although this is more of a cake than a bread or a dough, we added it into this week.

This my friends is one of the best things that I have ever tasted.

It is a chocolate and pistachio marble cake.

Normal sounding, I know. But oh so delicious.

(Desiree and I froze a one of our cakes so we can re-enjoy it!)

Silly chef and I!

A la prochaine!

xoxo