Breakfast Pastries - Day 8

It's Thursday! Which is my Friday...so sweet! Today was a pretty easy day. We sheeted, cut and shaped our croissants and popped them in the proof box for a bit while we worked on our croissant and danish dough for our practical coming up on Tuesday. To get those doughs ready, we had to laminate both of them (butter block, 3 fold, rest 30 minutes, roll out, 3 fold, rest 30 minutes, roll out, 3 fold) and then wrap them in plastic and throw them in the freezer for the weekend. Monday we'll move the laminated doughs to the fridge to bring them back down to a workable temperature. I'm not sure if we'll go ahead and run the doughs through the sheeter and then cut them on Monday or wait until the practical on Tuesday for that step. I'm sure Chef Issac told us three or four times today, oh well, always a million things going on in the kitchen. If we go ahead and sheet and cut them Monday, the practical on Tuesday will be a breeze. All we'd have to do then is shape the croissants and danish and proof and bake. Pretty darn easy since we have 4 hours to do complete. Of course while that's going on we will have to do two quick breads as well. I believe Chef chose banana bread and biscuits. Nice! This should be a breeze.
I think I forgot to mention the other day that we had a quiz. We were supposed to have a little "progress check" with Chef the other day after the quiz but that didn't happen until today. Maybe that's why I forgot to mention it. Anyway, I made a 100 on the quiz Yay Me. I also have 100% for professionalism and teamwork as well as attendance. So I guess it's safe to say I'm doing ok. :-) The only thing I need to work on is my speed. I need to work a little faster. But really I think most of the problem is everyone is trying to scale their recipes at the same time or run dough through the sheeter and even with only 11 people in the class it tends to get hectic. I guess I need to start beating everyone to the sheeter because it's hard to get a place in line because you start working on other things in the meantime and then someone jumps in front of you. Oh well. One remedy for the scaling will be easy. I'm going to start taking my own scale that way I will make sure I have a scale of my own and not have to share one with my table partner and wait on them to scale so I can finally scale my ingredients. Anyway. All in all...I'm doing good...putting out good products....working clean...
While our croissants were baking, we made voulavents using the puff pastry dough we laminated yesterday and then rolled and cut into rounds. Chef also showed us how to make Napoleons with some of the puff pastry dough. So so good. I wish I had cut and saved a straight sheet of puff pastry dough so I could make some myself. I'll have to try them at home for sure.


 These are the voulavents made from puff pastry rounds. You can cut the top circle off (made by making another smaller cut in the dough with a circle cutter...but don't go all the way through the dough with the cut) and then stuff with your favorite stuffings and serve as appetizers.

Chef Isaac demoing the Napoleon. 

 

My croissants today...