Traditionally, I’ve shied away from making my own bread. I’ve never really considered myself to be much of a baker and when the weekly grocery trip includes a stopover at a great produce market that also has their own excellent bakery on-site, I’ve never really felt the need to make my own bread. After taking [...]
Posts under ‘Baking’
Week 16, Day 1: Review
While last Wednesday’s class served as a review of all things relating to mother sauces, the review session that we had in class today was much more comprehensive. We covered almost all of the topics and techniques that we’ve learned over the last 15 weeks in order to prepare us for our two upcoming exams…the written exam (which happened this evening) and the [...]
Some Homemade Desserts
A few weeks ago, the wife and I made a weekend trip to visit family in New Jersey. If the only view of New Jersey you get is from the window of a car speeding down the NJ Turnpike, then you may find yourself wondering who the witty fella was that came up with NJ’s ironic nickname, ”The Garden State”. [...]
Week 15, Day 1: Commercial Baking
I find it hard to believe that this is the 15th week of class…I guess time does really fly by when you’re having fun. Even harder to believe is that this is the last week of instruction during my first ‘semester’ of culinary school. Next week’s Monday class will be devoted to a review of [...]
Week 13, Day 2: Bavarian Cream
The topic of today’s class was totally new ground for me…I had no idea what a bavarian cream dessert was before Wednesday. Now that I know, I can tell you that it is similar to jello, except much more upscale. Like jello, bavarian creams are desserts that employ the use of gelatin in order to achieve [...]
Week 13, Day 1: Meringue
A meringue is a light, airy, and sweet dessert product that is made from two main ingredients: egg whites and sugar. There are three ways to make a meringue: French method (aka ‘classic’ method’) – Beat egg whites until they form soft peaks, then beat in the sugar (in small increments) until the mixture becomes stiff and shiny Italian method [...]
Week 12, Day 1: Chocolate
There’s no disputing chocolate’s popularity in the modern world. It is rare that you find the person that doesn’t care for the smooth and rich taste of, and comforting feelings, that are often elicited when eating chocolate. It turns out that certain substances in chocolate actually do have effects on body chemistry. Chocolate contains caffeine and [...]
Week 11, Day 1: Genoise
Cakes…I can’t think of anyone that hasn’t sampled a cake at some point in their lifetime. Even those people that haven’t tried cake at least know how to identify one. In the baking world, there are certain techniques and procedures that make a cake a cake. For definition purposes, in cooking school we consider a cake to be “a baked [...]
Week 10, Day 1: Cake Decorating
This class was a bit different than our other classes to date in that we didn’t do any actual cooking this week. Class began just like all of our classes, with a lecture…this one was about all things related to sugar. After lecture, Chef D began a cake decorating demonstration, taking the class through a wide [...]
Week 9, Day 2: Strudel and Phyllo
Last week we concluded our 4 week series of classes on yeast and bread making. My hands couldn’t be happier; for now there will be no more lengthy, carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing kneading sessions. This week’s class was focused on strudel and phyllo dough. It makes sense to combine these two products into one class session as there [...]
