Pâte À Choux

It's the second day of baking. The pastry we made is what is used in eclairs and cream puffs. It's a very easy pastry to make and Chef said it's one of the most forgiving in pastry, that is why we are starting with it. It takes about 15-20 minutes to make the dough, but it's mostly stirring and your arm hurts terrible after! I also noticed that I had a small blister right below my pinky from stirring so hard. It's gone today though, but I should learn how to hold the spoon better.

To make the dough you bring your liquid (water or milk) and butter to a boil. Once it's there, you remove it from the heat and stir in all of your flour. Once that's incorporated, you put it back on the heat for about 3-5 minutes to remove any moisture. You can tell you have done this correctly when you see starch on the bottom of the pan and the spoon can stand up in the pastry. From there, you transfer it to a bowl and let it cool. Once it's cool, you start adding the eggs in. The eggs should be added in 4 sections. Once they are all incorporated, you can start piping them to bake! The master recipe is something that I will need to know, not only for my quizzes, but also for my mid-term and final in case I should get this pastry. The master recipe is 4 eggs, 1 cup of liquid, 1 cup of flour, 4 ounces of butter and a little salt. Once you have this down, you can add whatever you would like to it.

The recipe I made (at the top and bottom of the picture) is a small, savory appetizer. This is a good example of adding ingredients to the master dough. I also stirred in dill, parsley, Gruyere, scallions, salt and pepper. I piped about 50 little puffs about 1 inch in diameter. They bake until they are a dark golden brown and crispy. Once they are out, I cut the tops off and let them cool. Once cooled, I piped in a filling of chive cream cheese and topped with a Spanish olive for a little salt. They were so good. The pastry tasted like a really flavorful cracker and the filling was nice and creamy. It was one of the hits of the day with the rest of the class too.

To be honest, today was the first day I wasn't thrilled to be there. I chalked it up to a few factors. I think I was irked just because it was the first true baking class and, again, I HATE BAKING. The other reasons include that it wasn't the teacher it was suppose to be as she called in sick (the one I was expecting was the one that competed on some Food Network Challenges). The other reasons were because I missed the inauguration for something that I had no desire to participate in and that there are just way too many students in this class. That gets annoying, not to mention unsafe, when every time you turn around you run into someone! Ok, I feel better now!

Since it was Tuesday, I also had my seminar. Tonight's was Tasting and Finishing. It was fun to learn how you are tasting things and was proper seasoning can do to a dish. We started by tasting and comparing tonic water with salted tonic water. The first was very bitter (also, I found it to be missing Gin!) and the second was salty, obviously, but then there was also a sweetness too. However, there was no sugar added just salt. It's amazing how salt and remove bitterness and change the flavor all together! Next we had bitter greens with mild greens and 2 vinaigrettes. We tried radicchio with a vinaigrette less salted and meant for something soft like spinach. The bitterness took over the whole dressing, but, then we tried it with a heavier salted vinaigrette and it completely made the radicchio a subtle and a lot less bitter. We also tried a soup that was left chunky compared to the same soup that was blended to compare textures. I usually like chunky soups, but not this time. The blended soup seemed to be more creamy and rich. It tasted Delicious! The last dish was a medium-rare steak compared to a well done steak. I think that one is easy to figure out! Well done is not the way to go people!!! We also discussed plating. Basically, what I got from that was always try to use a white, unfancy plate, and don't do a pyramid of food, it doesn't look good. The seminar was short today, but still fun!

Today's Recipes: Pâte À Choux, Eclairs with Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream, Eclairs with Orange-Ginger Party Cream, Cream Puffs with Chocolate Pastry Cream, Cream Puffs with Cinnamon Pastry Cream, Profiteroles with Strawberry-Rhubarb Sorbet, Gougère with a Cheese Soufflè Filling, Cheddar Pearls, Paris-Brest, Savory Cream Puffs with Caponata Filling, Pâte À Choux Strawberry Shortcake