Week 3 of BP

I didn't write my blog last week 'cos I've been really busy lately, and I'm always tired from school work.  But I'm happy to know people are actually interested in reading it.  Thank you all!

Wednesday:
Demo Class#5: Today's demo, Chef Jocelyn made Croissant dough, Brioche dough, Pâte feuiletée (Puff dough) and Savarin aux fruits et à la crème.  If you have made feuilletage, you know it's all about folding butter into the dough.  Since the doughs need to be rest, Chef only showed us how to mix the doughs.  And he would show us how to fold the butter in the next day.  The only finished product today was Savarin.  Chef said it required so much labour, not many people/bake shop are making it from scratch nowadays.  The amazing part about this Savarin is that it needs to be soaked into the syrup and rum (imbibing syrup), a lot of rum!

See how happy Chef Jocelyn was when he was soaking the Savarin with the "rum" syrup!

After the demo class, Cindy and I went to have poutine at Smoke's Poutinerie.  http://smokespoutinerie.com I was a little disappointed with my pulled pork poutine, it was hot enough when I ate it.  But then my classmate Erin tried it the other day, and told me that even after she got home, the poutine was still very hot! It's my luck I guess. But then again, Erin never had poutine before.... actually a lot of people in my class never had poutine before, it's a Montreal/Canadian thing.  But if anyone has a chance to visit Toronto, you have to try it in Poutini's House of Poutine http://www.poutini.com check out their page on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/Poutini

Poutines from Smoke's Poutinerie

Thursday:
Practical Class#5: It seemed simply to just make three doughs today.  We were making Brioche dough, Croissant dough (2 tours/turns), and Puff dough (2 tours, puff dough for next week).  But for some reason, I lost time at the end.  Overall, I was happy with the doughs.  Oh! Well, I somehow left the sieve on the hot stove without knowing it was hot until Chef Jocelyn showed me the burned sieve.... I must ask that why didn't those classmates turn off the stove after they finished melting the butter?

Demo Class#6: Chef was doing Brioche à Tête, Brioche Nanterre, Couronnes des rois, Brioche Mousseline, Fruits Brioches, Brioche Tressèes, Croissant, Pains au chocolat, Danoises, Pain aux raisins from the Brioche dough and Croissant dough.  It seemed that the hardest to make were Brioche à Tête and Brioche Tressèes, at least for me.

Friday
Practical Class#6: For practical, we needed to make Brioche à Tête, Brioche Nanterre, Brioche Tressèes, Croissant, Pains au chocolat, and Pain aux raisins, also 2 tours for the puff dough.  It was a crazy class, A LOT to do! The room was quite hot because we had the 7-10pm class, having the ovens on the whole day wasn't good for making dough with butter.  So the butter in my croissants melt quickly, so they didn't turn out flat.  Also, I could have done better job on my brioche à tête but the rest of the products were fine.

Oh I almost forgot to show you guys what Chef Jocelyn did for his croissants! Check it out!

Cute, eh? :-)

Saturday:
There's no way I could finish all the products I made in class, so I went to visit Stephanie and Sean.  They were generous enough to adopt all my little brioches and croissants.  It was funny how they both grabbed the chocolate croissant first.  It was nice to see them, and Leighton.  He grew so big now!  I think last time I saw him, he was still a baby.  I didn't see Liam 'cos he was busy playing video game :-)

Sunday:
Had food court food with Tanvi.... then went to check out some places with her.  She was dying to move out of the house with 12 people/university students.... PARTY, SLAMMING THE MICROWAVE DOOR, PANTY HANGING IN THE TOWEL FLUSH HANDLE, SEX WITH DOOR OPENED...... How exciting!!