Chef Herve started with a discussion on pastry terminology:
Detrempe - Dough w/o butter
Paton - detrempe with butter
beurrage - the act of adding butter
tourage - layering
tour simple - a single turn
dorure - egg wash
fleurer (from yesterday) - throwing flower across the table
Mille feuille - 1000 layers
Panade - the batter for gnocchi, made with water, salt, flour, butter and eggs
Puff pastry has three major types:
Classic - the butter is inside the detrempe - lightest, flakiest
Reverse - the detrempe is folded inside the butter - less flaky, but shrinks less
Blitz - short crust, "emergency" mix together
Crepes are NOT pancakes. Much thinner - from Latin, Crispus; curly or wavy
Miscellaneous information: Use cool water when mixing dough and add a bit at a time.. never add more flour than the recipe requires, this can throw off the other ratios, such as salt / sugar / yeast. For doughs without a yeast, do not mix too much. Store doughs at the bottom of the fridge to rest.. it's cooler there. That's why vegetable bins are always on the bottom of a fridge.
Chef Herve made allumettes au fromage (flake pastry coated with egg wash and cheese, and then baked - DELICIOUS), Gnocchi a la Parisienne (flour based Gnocchi that is baked in a mornay sauce), Crepes au Sucre (standard crepes rolled in white sugar) and Fettucini Alfredo (hand made pasta in a whole peppercorn sauce).
After every demo we get to try out the dishes (or the next day if it requires cooling) so this was quite the heavy cream and butter tasting. I actually felt heavy after sampling but what can you do? It's French cuisine.
One thing I really liked about Chef Herve is he went over exactly what we needed to do in the Practical during the last 10 minutes. Since we were only doing the puff pastry dough for the Allumettes au Fromage, it wasn't too complicated, but we needed to carefully do each step.
After a short break, it was back to the lab again for Practical #6. I'll briefly describe how you make puff pastry to give you an idea of the complexity of it:
Puff pastry has no yeast in it. The puffiness is caused by the butter being layered between the dough and "lifting" it. Thus, it must be folded a ideally six times in order to be "fluffy" enough. First of all you sift the flour onto a table, make a well with the salt in the middle. Adding cold water, a bit at a time, in a circular motion you draw in the flour, and make a dough. MIX GENTLY and DO NOT OVER MIX. The dough will not be smooth, but the less you mix it, the better it will rise. You score a cross on the top and wrap it up, and let it rest for about 30 minutes in the fridge, covered of course with saran wrap. Now pound out butter into a square, about 1/2 inch thick and about a scraper and 2 fingers wide. Wrap in parchment paper and store in fridge as well to keep cool. Once the 30 minutes are up, dust the table with flour, and remove the dough first. Since you score a cross in it, you can now roll it out as a "four leaf clover" shape, with a large square in the middle. Now take out the butter and put it in the middle.of the dough and fold over the four "leaves". This is now called a Paton. Gently roll out the dough to triple length (roughly 1.5 rolling pins) and then fold over the dough so that it has a right seam that you open like a book or magazine. This is ONE turn. Store the paton in the fridge for another 30 minutes to let it rest. When you remove it from the fridge the second time, it may be possible to do two turns based on the elasticity of the dough. DO NOT FIGHT THE DOUGH! If you really have to work at it, no good. You are not the boss, the dough is. Anyway, once you do 6 of these turns, you are done. Doing more turns doesn't really make a difference.
Since this lab had no actual cooking in it, we didn't turn on the stoves or the burners, so it wasn't too hot in there, which is good because we were working with butter. I'm not sure, but I think in a later class we have to do it in a warm environment. That'd suck. Side comment / observation. In the real world, just go out and buy commercial puff pastry.. it's going to be either the same or better than what most people can make on their own.
During the 30 minute periods where the puff pastry dough was resting, we turned vegetables. I also asked Chef Herve to teach me again how to sharpen my knives. It'll take some practice, but at least now I understand the concept and the feel of it. Sharp knives are critical to turning vegetables and doing proper french cuts.
NOTE: Sharpen knives this weekend.
The final session was a seminar on safe food handling standards: HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points). If you're really interested go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points
It was taught by Chef Benoit, so as usual there were some interesting points and funny anecdotes:
Top 3 reasons why food is returned:
1. loose change in food
2. cigarette butts
3. plastic / tinfoil / dust / chips of paint (from ceiling)
4-60C is the range for bacteria to grow
Leave meats in the fridge as long as possible and only take out when needed.
Hand washing is the #1 prevention.
Two years ago, a student brought a puppy for a visit early in the morning, and every student went over to play with the dog. Afterwards, they went to a practical class and Chef Benoit noticed they did not wash their hands. He did not say anything for 1.5 hours, and then told everyone to stop. He said that they had handled a dog, had not washed their hands, so everyone dump what they had, go back to production kitchen, get the goods and start completely over. The dog never came back to the school again.
NOTE: Make sure Chef sees me washing my hands at the start of every class.
The HACCP seminar ended early, around 6pm, so some of us headed to the pub after class and had a bite to eat and a couple drinks. I didn't have anything since I was driving and also had a soccer game at 8pm. There's definitely teamwork building in the team, and I think most of us realize we aren't going to get through this if we don't work together. Awwww....
So in the end, I made it through the first week, and aside from some cuts to my hands, relatively unscathed... I can't remember how hard University was, but this seems (at least at the moment) to be much more difficult, because it's a combination of physical (standing on your feet, cutting, chopping, kneading, boiling, carrying heavy pots and pans) and mental (learning all the theory and terminology). Obviously, this is the intensive program, so it's to be expected, but it's still a lot to digest, especially since I haven't been in school for awhile... and I can't remember the last time I stood for up to 7 hours in a day.
Luckily, with the long weekend coming, I'll have a chance to review my notes this weekend and practice turning some veg. And maybe even put up some pictures!
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