donuts!

Sometime during breakfast station I found it very odd that we didn't make donuts - they're a pretty ubiquitous American pastry and breakfast food, after all. So I decided to make some, deviating from the station task list.

This was the first thing I made involving yeast - which meant that it had to proof (be in a warmer and moister situation than room temperature) so the yeast could grow and dough expand. So the dough was put into a oiled container and covered to rise overnight, and the next day I cut them using a donut cutter, and Sydney helped me fry them.



Then we glazed them (milk and powdered sugar again), both plain and chocolate.



Some we added crushed almonds or chocolate sprinkles. And some unglazed ones we rolled in powdered sugar.



Unfortunately we made them too late for them to be sold in the cafeteria, so everybody in the class got a chance to eat one. Apparently the last class had a "Bagel Friday" tradition going on. Maybe ours could be donuts? Heart Attack Fridays here we come!

dough and cinnamon rolls (breakfast station part 3)

Ever wonder how things like croissants and puff pastry got so puffy? I certainly did. With puff pastry especially, since the grocery store version comes as a flat sheet of dough and yet, when you throw it in the oven, it just expands and fills with air and layers of soft crispness that manifest themselves seemingly out of nowhere.

In breakfast station, I learned just how this phenomenon is brought about - through lamination of the dough. So after dough is made, it is run through the dough sheeter (which rolls out dough to a certain consistent thickness) and folded in half with butter sandwiched in between. Then it's run through again, folded in fours, left to sit for half an hour, run through and folded in threes, then left to sit again for half an hour, and run through and folded in threes. So now, even though the slab of dough has only three apparent folds, it secretly harbors 36 folds (4x3x3), butter between each, and the butter is what creates the layer. Butter, along with any other type of fat used in pastry, is a shortening - that is, it shortens gluten strands and prevents them from uniting the entire pastry into a chewy whole (which is desirable in things like bread, but not so much in things like croissants).

Using the dough sheeter is fun. (And a good thing I learned how to use it too, since we had a practical exam on it.) Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the sheeter, but I do have a picture of Sydney and I with our "dough babies", croissant and danish doughs we finished laminating one day.



Aside from muffins, quick-breads, croissants and danishes, the last thing we make in breakfast station are cinnamon buns. They're made using the scrap dough left over from cutting croissants and danishes. It's funny they're made from scraps, because I like them best out of all the sweet pastries. (And it seems like many good things are created of scraps and leftovers, french toast and paella being two examples that come to mind.)

So first the scrap dough pieces are kneaded together, then run through the sheeter to 2.5mm thick. The dough is laid out on our floured marble table (the marble is so the dough can stay as cool as possible) and topped with copious amounts of brown sugar and cinnamon. Roughly an inch at the top is left untopped.



Starting from the bottom we roll up the dough so it becomes a long dough snake. We cut it into pieces about the width of four fingers (or a hand, if you have small hands like me). Each piece gets the un-sugared segment of the dough folded underneath (to form the bottom of the bun), then is smashed into a spot on an oiled muffin pan.



After they puff up and brown in the oven, they're taken out and rolled around in cinnamon sugar.



And there you have it, a delicious treat that's crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, with layers of sugary cinnamon goodness.

croissants and danishes (breakfast station part 2)

Everyday we also baked off 3-4 dozen croissants and 4 dozen danishes. We were able to do this right at the beginning of the morning because the croissants/danishes were shaped and egg-washed the day before, so all we had to do was stick them in the oven.

This of course meant that after we baked everything off, we would get busy dough-rolling and croissant/danish-prepping for the next day. I'll talk about the dough process a little more in the next post, but basically the dough would be rolled out to be 4mm thick, then cut into triangles (croissant) or squares (danish). Besides the shapes, croissant and danish also differ in that croissant dough has less sugar and butter.



Also, croissant dough had to sit and relax for 5-10 minutes after it was cut - this was because we would stretch the triangle shape before rolling it into a croissant. Without letting it relax the dough would simply split when stretched, and that's because the two proteins in gluten result in dough being alternately extensible (stretchy) and elastic (bouncing back). (As a side note: learning things like this make me really excited to be in culinary school.)



So then croissants would be rolled.



And egg-washed (seals the pastry and gives it a sheen when baked).



Meanwhile, danish dough would be cut and/or folded into different shapes. And egg-washed too.



The next day we would add different fillings (raspberry jam, apricot jam, cheese and cinnamon apple) before baking them off.



After baking we would glaze the danishes with simple syrup (but not the croissants).



Occasionally we would do something special. Like frost the danishes. Frosting was surprisingly easy to make, just milk and powdered sugar.



And one day we made chocolate croissants - rectangle instead of triangle shapes, with the addition of a bar of chocolate inside.



Oh and chocolate-glazed them of course.

muffins and quick-breads (breakfast station part 1)

After I left Cakes and Tarts, I went to Breakfast Station, which was fun because it was less ambiguous. Not that freedom/ambiguity isn't fun, but being a pastry beginner, it's more important/enjoyable to me to master a set of tasks before I think up things on my own. Breakfast Station was definitely a task list type of station. Everyday there was a set amount of items (and quantities) we had to turn out.

We had to do three batches of muffins: bran, lemon poppyseed, and another one of our choice (often blueberry because that was what customers requested). Here was a cranberry white chocolate one I did:



Then we had to slice one loaf each of pumpkin raisin bread and banana bread (usually made in a big batch once a week and frozen, then put into the walk-in to thaw the day before).



Something about using gigantic utensils makes everything feel so hard-core.

cake on me

Over the course of my time in Cakes and Tarts, we got better at making and decorating cakes.



This was a devil's food cake Sydney put together.



This was a chocolate caramel cake slice I decorated - I really love the saucing part, it's almost like painting.



These were mini carrot cakes I put together, with cream cheese frosting and candied carrot shreds on top. (Candy-ing was quite an easy process, just simple syrup and the carrot shreds in a pan over heat!)



Once in a while though, Chef would still come by and show us a trick or two on how to disguise one of our "homelier" cakes. Here he is coating the cake sides with chocolate crumbs.



And here he is showing us how to mirror glaze the mousse cake that was my crowning achievement, made on my last day in Cakes and Tarts.



It practically took the entire team to cut the darn thing, it had just come out of the freezer (required for the mousse to set, another reason why mousse is so effort-intensive!). There was so much mousse I made three cakes, which the team was able to use after I left.

Yay cake!