Day 8: Commercial Baking

The theme of today was baking quickly and in large quantities. To that end, we made a quick puff pastry dough, a pâte à choux recipe, lots of pastry cream, and some cookies. It was quite a production. First we made the puff pastry dough which required lots of rolling and folding to make all the layers. As it rested, we made pastry cream and the pâte à choux, and we used that to pipe little puffs onto some of the puff pastry dough (for the St. Honore and the Venus Arms at least) and baked them. My partner and I made a batch of cookies and another group made another batch. Sadly, the batch I made burnt in the oven (I was washing dishes and didn't catch them in time) and initially Chef wasn't going to have me make them again but gave me another chance, if I could "make them in 5 minutes." I think I made them in 10 minutes which, considering it was a new recipe to me, wasn't too bad. But I did feel badly about burning them!


After the cookie fiasco, we started getting the flavored pastry creams together, added whipped cream to make mousseline creams, and started filling everything. Along the way we also made fondant, hazelnut praline, writing chocolate, and extra little cream puffs because we had extra pâte à choux and creams. Finally it was time to assemble the Napoleons. One whole sheet pan of puff pastry was baked, flipped, sprinkled with sugar, baked some more, and then cooled. It was sliced into three equal pieces and then rum mousseline cream was spread in between the layers. Once it was stacked it went into the freezer to chill; otherwise the fondant for the top wouldn't set and it would be hard to cut. After freezing for a while, Chef topped it with fondant and chocolate and made the patterns in the top and then cut it into (very large) individual pastries.

The other really nice thing about today is that the savory students were making soups and shared their creations with us. We shared ours with them. Everyone was happy.

And, as promised, here's my uniform. The embroidered coats arrived today!