Making Puff Dough

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This one’s simply an instructional post where we see Chef Marina Brancely making a puff dough. This video was uploaded to YouTube by Chef Ciril Hitz, who also posted the ingredients list with the video in the comments section. Unfortunately, the YouTube comment section severely lacks any formatting ability and the results were a little garbled.  So I thought I’d repost the recipe in a neater table format here and make it a little more readable for people.

As you watch the video, you’ll see Chef Brancely add white wine to the dough. Say what? Yes, a little white wine, specifically for its acid content. Why add an acid to the dough? Chef Hitz explains:

Acid build strength in doughs without having to mix it more, however the more that you add the weaker the gluten membrane becomes so it is of great importance that once acid is added that it be in the right proportions.

First, let’s watch the video:

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Now, the formula which I’m giving in weights as well as including Bakers’ Percentages:
(As always, mouse over the grams to get the converted ounces)

Ingredient

Grams

Bakers’ %
DOUGH    
Bread Flour 1,600g 100%
Water 550g 34.4%
Butter, softened 400g 25.0%
Salt 40g 2.5%
Malt 20g 1.3%
Egg 100g 6.3%
White Wine 200g 12.5%
     
BUTTER BLOCK    
Butter, cold 1,600g 100.0%
Flour 400g 25.0%

If you would like to know how many cups or teaspoons all these are, sorry, I only have weights. You don’t want to be assuming that these are volume ounces, either; an 8 ounce measuring cup of flour doesn’t weigh eight ounces after all (more like 4.5). Here’s where I would urge anyone who wants to really get into baking to please consider investing in a scale and learning to use weight for measuring. I’ve previously posted my thoughts about why weighing is a much preferable way to bake which you can read here.

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BREAD by Jeffrey Hamelman, 2nd Edition

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Order your copy of Jeffrey Hamelman’s

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Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques
and Recipes

This new Second Edition of the original landmark 2004 book includes:

  • 140 recipes, including 40 new ones
  • Many tweaks and updates to the previous recipes
  • 252 illustrations of step-by-step techniques
  • 41 full-color photographs
  • Updated information on working with locally grown whole grains, understanding trends in milling technology, and teaching hand mixing techniques.

This edition is slated to be available mid December 2012, just in time to be found under your local holiday shrubbery.

Click the links or image above to order your copy from your local Amazon today!

Happy baking to all!

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Catching up: Weeks 2 to 5 of Pastry II

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Where did we leave off? Ah yes, a few weeks back Kevin and I were doing Cakes Week of the Pastry II, our first station in the rotation.

The following week saw us on Ovens duty so nothing to discuss or show here except to note that we made sure the ovens were running smoothly and all the required product was being baked and sent off to the upstairs and downstairs cafeterias as needed. That was week 2. I’d point out here that we really did plow through this (as we have all other stations in the Pastry or Bread sections) even though we are the only 2-person team. Not sure if this hobbled team situation is being noted in our marks; we’re managing to keep up in spite of having 33% less manpower than other teams.

The photo? Just a little fun around the oven with Sara and Josie. Figured this was better than a photo of the oven baking stuff.

After Ovens came the Deserts section which consisted of producing Mousses, Puddings and a German Dough (sweet tart dough) and a Mousse cake, while still making sure regular bar productions (Nanaimo bars, etc.) were kept up.

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I love Paris in the Springtime

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Tomorrow, we leave for Paris.

Yes, this ragtag bunch of breadheads from Vancouver Island University’s Pro Baking and Pastry Arts course is heading off in all our bright red splendour into the skies, eventually landing some 20 hours later (largely due to time differences) in Paris.

I will eventually get posts and photos added on this blog here but during the trip, Vancouver Island University has asked me to be their official blogger for the Field School so I’ll be updating things from the laptop they lent me directly to the Official VIU Blog space:

VIU Blog: Paris 2012

So those of you interested in following our antics as we visit the 2012 Europain World Bread Baking and Pastry Exhibition, watch the best bakers in the world compete, see the latest baking techniques and equipment and all the usual trade exhibit fun. Then we’ll be hitting a slew of bakeries in Paris and (hopefully) get in “behind the scenes” a bit, visit chocolatier Barry-Callebaut in Brussels at the end of the first week, l’Ecole de Boulangerie et de Patisserie in the second week, and of course get a wee bit of plain ol’ Paris culture in between.

l’Ecole de Boulangerie et de Patisserie a Paris

So hop back in over the next couple of weeks to keep updated and trip about the “City of Lights” with us, even if just virtually.

A bientot! 

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Cake Week in Pastry Level 2

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With the end of the first section in the CIVIU course, we begin this second half with Level 2 of Pastry where we’ll be upgrading the products we put out. Finer quality items, more detail, a little more complex construction are expected. Likewise, when we get to Breads 2 a few weeks from now, we’ll need to up the ante there as well. This first week in Pastry Level 2 finds me in the Cakes section.

And who’s on the team for this section? Surprise! They didn’t change the teams. So once again, it’s Kevin and I, the only team of two, doing what the other teams of three are expected to pump out. This means bigger workload for us, since we won’t have that third person to help produce all the regular production requirements (cakes, bars, pot pies all for the cafeteria). Fortunately, they’ve decided to cut back on the quantities we have to produce but that applies to teams of three as well. We’re still out one person.  We’ll see how that goes.

Some of the production stuff we needed to do for Cakes week included making a few sponge cakes and carrot cakes (iced), genaches, simple syrups, cheese cakes, simple buttercream and a giant load of Italian meringue buttercream. Since Kevin hadn’t done buttercream when he was on cakes during the previous Pastry section, he got to do it this time. I made the carrot cake. Both of us made a sponge cake. Then we got on to the individual items. Oh, and a special order birthday cake for the end of the week came in… on Wednesday.

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End of Pro Baking Section 1: Exam baking and a few breads

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This post will be mostly baking photos so that I can get the last bit of the Bread Section recorded in here.

The last bit of the Bread Section (Part 1) at The Culinary Institute of Vancouver Island had us repeating, for the final two weeks, the several areas we had been through during the first six weeks, except we hit each station for just two days. Sort of a “Rapid Fire” version of the original stations which wasn’t actually that stressful as we already “been there, done that” just a short while before.

So here are, not necessarily in chronological order, a whole bunch of photos from theis Bread Section for your visual enjoyment.

 

Here’s Kevin, my “partner in crime” for this Bread Section, readying a recipe.

And (finally) I managed to get a snap of Angelique, the bakery department’s Assistant; she’s the one who knows where everything is, orders stuff for us and is generally the “power in the background” that makes the whole thing run smoothly. She was a student here a couple of years back herself so she also has a few tips on how this all works.

   

Pita Breads in two varieties, getting baked.

Amazon Image The white breads are made using Peter Reinhart’s Lavash Crackers recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. the recipe includes a little honey and veg oil, so the bread is enriched and softer than it would be with a straight, flour-water-salt only dough.

The whole wheat ones are made using a basic Whole Wheat Bread recipe we use for, well, plain ol’ whole wheat breads. This would show that pretty much any decent dough can be used for pita breads. This is the same whole wheat bread we used in the loaves at the very top of this post (beautifully slashed, I’ll add, by Chelsea who was on Ovens that day).

The bread disks are put in a very hot oven where they puff up very quickly. They are removed once puffed and flipped over so the opposite side faces the hearth or top. Watch out for steam escaping from the very hot interior of the bread, though, and act fast. Once they puff up once more, they are taken out and stacked as shown to cool; stacking them this way helps them deflate before they harden and keeps them from drying out too fast. The whole baking process takes just a few minutes from raw dough disks to finished bread cooling off.

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The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard to be MellowBakers.com’s next project

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The Handmade Loaf becomes our Group Baking focus

With Jeffrey Hamelman’s wonderful “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes” now completed, the Mellow Bakers have chosen to set their collective sights on Dan Lepard’s highly praised book, The Handmade Loaf available from Amazon UK here. Elsewhere, it is available as  “The Art of Handmade Bread” and in Spain, a translated version titled “Hecho a Mano“.

 

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