I'm in Baking School and on the High Carb Diet!!!

16 years ago

Wow what a couple of days IÂve hadÂGood Days!! IÂm taking a 3 day baking class at the Community College and we are baking our bippys off. (Actually nothing is coming offÂbut I suspect we may have added a pound or two in the two days.)

I didnÂt take my cameraÂdarn, Âbut things go so fast that we can barely stuff the first goodie into ourselves before thereÂs another one.

First day we made piecrust by handÂwith CriscoÂ;-( Âbut I have to say, I now have the feel of the mix of flour and fat. Most of ours didnÂt roll out as nice looking as our teacherÂs except for one woman we swear is a ringer. Says she doesnÂt bake but if not, she has the hands. Our edge pinching again resulted in some creative looking shells. They got wrapped yesterday and plunked into the huge walk in freezer to be baked as Candy Apple Pies tomorrow. Not liking apple pie, IÂm not over anxious on that one.

We also made pate au chou and baked it as cream puff rounds and mini eclairs. Another recipe that was easy to make but watching us with our piping bags was another laugh session. I wasnÂt bothered because when I make them I am just as happy to plunk them down with a spoon and make plain old rounds. My partner and I had very creative shapes. Just holding the pastry bag was a learning experience for me.

After lunch one woman said she'd never quite 'got' madeleines Oh, says our teacher, why don't we make some!! YES!!! Well, measure, weigh and mix and then into the pans. There were some deep sighs that would have made Proust happy. I brought 6 home and Dick got 1....

Our teacher demoÂd baguettes and we each took home 2 or 3. I gave two to a friend and kept one which partially became melted cheese on toast for tonightÂs dinner. I am still full from the items we made today. I am carbÂd out in a soothing way!

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Comments (33)

lindac
16 years ago
Sounds heavenly!!
wizardnm
16 years ago
Maureen, that sounds like a great day. Can't wait to hear about the next class.

Isn't retirement fun????

Nancy
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sally2_gw
16 years ago
I am soooooo jealous! I'd love to take a short course baking course like that. What fun for you.

Having seen some of your pictures of what you've baked, I think you could teach that class.

Sally
deborah_ps
16 years ago
I'm envious too! Would love to see photos if you can.
There are no cooking/baking classes offered in my neck of the woods :(
Lucky you!
deborah
Marigene
16 years ago
Oh, what fun! I am jealous.
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Sally, I'll take flattery any day, but a natural baker I'm not.

Yes, I have been fortunate to have a CommCollege so nearby and one that really works to get adults involved and also into specific job training. We have a Hospitality and Culinary section that has wonderful classes and prepares students for immediate jobs or for transfer into one of the $$$ 4 yr schools. I am especially blessed and I mean that word, that as a senior, I can take the classes for free. They started this over twenty years ago when 60yr olds didnÂt go to school that much. We current seniors LOVE it.

The two versions of challah that were made today. We had broken into pairs and only one pair made challah and they did a fantastic job of braiding and washingÂthose seeds really stuck.

The final breads were the Pain de Campagna two pairs made (one round boule per person) and the MultiGrain Extraordinaire that one pair made and was formed into 6 small loaves. The boule is about 6 or 7 inches across.

One especially nice thing about this class is that it is smallÂonly 6 students Âwhere the classroom is designed for 16. When I took an earlier class we had 16 and it was wild.

What I have no pictures of are Âthe Ã©clairs which were filled with pastry cream (OMIGOD) and then glazed with dark chocolate and drizzled with white. Let me say that if piping the chou pastry was a hoot, the piping the filling in wasÂ.uhÂwell Jessy would have had a fielday with us trying to shove the piping nozzle into the little holes we made in the baked shell. Nuff said.

But good??? Oh dear godÂI ate 4 little ones and almost went comatose. ThatÂs why I decided to give my other six to a friend. AND,,the two pairs who didnÂt make challah made cinnamon buns. I couldnÂt even look at these, and gave my whole pan to my partner, taking only 4 extras to my friend. If Dick were home, I would have brought a few home but by that point I had crossed my own eating line. But those Ã©clairs were soooo sooo good!!
kathleen_li
16 years ago
That sounds wonderful! I would love to take a class like that. What a wonderful assortment you are making!
jcrowley99
16 years ago
Sounds like great fun!
michaelmaxp
16 years ago
I remember fondly my 5 quarters of baking school at Seattle Central Community College. At the time it was a full scale commercial baking and pastry course, long since replaced by just a baking segment of their culinary school.

We supplied product to the bakery store for students and the Seattle public so we worked our buns off, so to speak.

What fun it was working in a full production scratch bakery led by two great geezers from the old school of baking. I didn't realize until many years later that I was in the presence of two masters of a bygone time. When they died, the world took a few steps closer to the frozen baked goods section of the neighborhood super store.

I remember mixing pie dough by hand like you did; ours in a huge round bottomed stainless bowl that rocked all over the top of the bench- I never really understood why we had to use that big unstable bowl. It was fun for the first week or so but at about a hundred hand rolled crusts a day, it became the dreaded "pie station duty" where we all had to start out. We couldn't wait to move on to cookies, or french bread, the esteemed mixer station, and the final stop- the big rotating oven- where we became a hero, turning out perfect loaves of bread or the devil, burning 20 sheet pans of cookies at one time by becoming distracted for only a minute or so.

Maureen, hopefully you'll get to spend some quality time with my favorite jobs; croisants and danishes. We rolled out massive quantities by hand and by sheeter; I loved the feel and smell of those doughs. And the bread... those fragrant blocks of fresh crumbly yeast dropping through my fingers into the 80 qt Hobart...

Oh, I'd love to put in another stint at school. After that, I worked a couple years at a scratch bakery in a grocery store, but nothing has ever recaptured the magic of those many months in school.

Sorry to go on and on but you triggered a lovely memory.

michaelp
sally2_gw
16 years ago
DS starts baking class next week as part of his culinary school training. I'm certainly looking forward to him bringing home what he learns. I'll tell him about the good time y'all have had in your classes.

Sally
ann_t
16 years ago
Now that is my kind of diet. Great looking breads.

Ann
annie1992
16 years ago
You bet your bippy, Maureen. LOL

That bread looks perfect. Mine is never perfect, I always maintain that taste is preferable to presentation. (grin)

Like you, though, I'd have been a goner with the eclairs. I just love the darned things, and so I'll never make another one.

You get to take classes for free? Now THAT'S really awesome.

Annie
msafirstein
16 years ago
WOW>>>WOWL>>>>WOW!! How fun and such a nice variety of lessons too, pie crusts to bread to madeleines!!

The Breads look fab!!

Michelle
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Well...I am very sure that I am not cut out to be a professional cook or baker - at my age. ;-) Boy, was I tired of food by the time I came home today, and that's not a great feeling. Several of us continued to eat the eclairs yesterday, but for the most part there was not a great interest in too much sugar today.

I will put a couple of pics here but then link at the bottom has the whole album. Oh how I wish I had taken my camera the other two days!!! I'll just have to take another class and take pictures (and NOT eat).

Today we started by making ice cream, a fairly long process esp as my partner and I made cinnamon. We used 10 egg yolks!

Then came the apple pies...lots of hand peeling (my partner's job) and the streusel topping (my job).

I should have peeled.

But in the end, we had darn good pies.
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
While our cakes (more on them later) were baking we made tuiles. Not a great success but good technique lesson.

They ended up too thick and hard to form in or on the tarlet shells, but they did corkscrew but didn't taste very good...too tough.

Back to the cakes...these felt like an anticlimax to me as I had NO interest in cake by this time, but make them we did. Note that the streusel is on the bottom and is a pita, imho.
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Now came the piece de resistance which I thought I had no interest in.... Well, the making was long (esp for the cinnamon) and the Italian machine it churned in cost $7,000. but aside from that...it can be done at home.

We had pie with a scoop of each of the flavors (if we wanted) and then we packed our goodies, incl the ice cream and staggered out.

I WISH YOU WERE THERE!!!! Maureen

Here is a link that might be useful: Cooking school pics
msafirstein
16 years ago
OMG.....that is how I want my apple pies to look!!! So nice and thick and the topping is perfection!

What kind of cake is it?

Michelle
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Michelle, the cake is a orange poppyseed (cardamom) cake with a streusel on the top as it bakes that becomes the bottom when it is taken out of the angel food pan. It was easy enough but several of us thought the streusel was overkill, and a mess to have on the bottom. I think she might have considered having us glaze the actual top but we ran out of both time and personal steam.
kathleen_li
16 years ago
Great, thanks for taking us with you!
Solsthumper
16 years ago
"Well...I am very sure that I am not cut out to be a professional cook or baker - at my age."

Maureen, you may be due for a good lynching if you believe you're not cut out to be a professional baker. I just checked out your pictures on flickr, and have come to the realization that you are a baker!

Sol
canarybird01
16 years ago
Maureen it all looks like great fun and good looking baked goods as well!

SharonCb
sally2_gw
16 years ago
Thanks for the pictures. It was fun looking at them.

Sally
pat_t
16 years ago
Maureen - sounds like fun. Wish I could get my Mom involved in some classes as I think she'd enjoy them too.

Annie - you took the words right out of my mouth - "You bet your sweet bippy!"

I'm beginning my semester of baking class in Culinary school too. We have a new Master Chef teaching the class. He is from Hungary and quite an interesting character. If you're interested, you can read my school blog here: A Culinary Interlude

I'm thinking of picking up an additional class this semester - Pastry.

But - I really don't need to get "carbed-out"!
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Michael, we never did get to do croissants which were on the schedule. Our teacher wasnÂt feeling up to snuff with the remains of a cold, and we asked a lot, a LOT, of questions. She is teaching a class later Â a one day-er Â on breakfast pastries that a few of our group are taking. I think that might be going into dangerous ground for me. As much as I like them, I donÂt have the metabolism to handle a batch of them.

However, for those of you who are thinking of making them, she suggested taking them to the point of final rise, wrap well and freeze, then take them out the night before, thaw in fridge, then take out in the a.m. for the final rise and baking. This way you CAN have one or two or eight fresh when you want them. Most baking does seem to require some advance thinking; otherwise thatÂs why god invented bakeriesÂfor the rest of us.

Sally, where is your son studying? If we didnÂt travel so much, I would take more courses. LOL Free food!! (actually as a taxpayer, I kind of pay in advanceÂ)

Annie, one day you two will be "mature" (that = older!!) and possibly live somewhere that has money for student education. ItÂs a shame about Michigan.

Michelle, that apple pie is a snap. Basic (your fave) one unbaked crust pie crust shell in a 9" pan. 5 or so green apples, peeled, cored and sliced about the thickness of your little finger Â well my little finger. Pile them into one good layer and add a good coating of brown sugar. Continue to pile high

And then pat the streusel topping all over to coat the apples and seal them in. I didnÂt do a very good job at that as my streusel kept falling off. We also noticed that things were drying out as we made them in stages. The streusel was brown and white sugars, butter and walnuts, made in the KA. The pies that had the apples sealed in did a lot better, tho the pie I took home had apples that were still firm but cooked. I know one of us cut her apples much thicker than I would have, so mine might be ÂhersÂ. Bake and learn. ;-) As our teacher said, apple pies are darn cheap to make Â her mother had 6 children to raise and feed and seemed to know fast and good pretty well!

If anyone wants any of these recipes, feel free to send me your snail mail, as some are long and I donÂt know if I will have time to scan this week. I also have not played around with my scanner enough to know how well it does the written material. Maureen
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Pat, we posted the same time...I love the term Culinary Management!! I think mine is still somewhat unmanageable, or maybe that's just me that's unmanageable. You are really doing good grlfriend - solid incentive there. Thanks for sharing your blog...I'll look to see if there's a RSS for it.
san_
16 years ago
i'm absolutely and totally impressed, maureen! seriously!
pat_t
16 years ago
Maureen - to subscribe to the RSS feed: Click here
homesforsale
16 years ago
Green with envy here:)

The premises look cool too..What fun..Enjoy~Off to see your pics..
msazadi
Original Author
16 years ago
Am I really one of the only..the few???...who has a Comm College with cooking classes? We have them day and evening. When I said they are geared to adults, that is more or less a State mandate...to make education available to those who otherwise could not afford it with very specific work-study plans, i.e. serious vocational/academic education

If so, MD really has its act together here.
wizardnm
16 years ago
Maureen, looks like fun. I wish there was a program like that around here...a good way to meet other's with a similar interest.

Nancy
sally2_gw
16 years ago
My son is going to the community college in Dallas (El Centro) that has the Culinary Arts program. There are other schools in the area that cost literally 10x as much, but I think this one's just fine, and he's enjoying it.

I just checked their continuing ed classes, and the only culinary classes they offer are boooorring. They are aiming to the professionals, with classes in sanitation and stuff like that, not fun baking like you got to do. Oh, well. I didn't check out the seniors classes, though, cause I don't think I'm there, yet - close, but not yet. I could enroll along side my son in the credit classes, but I don't think I want to do that. Maybe after he's finished.

Sally
lsr2002
16 years ago
Maureen, thanks for sharing the class with us. It looks like loads of fun.

Lee
centralcacyclist
16 years ago
I love bread, really I do. This looks like a lot of fun AND a lot of work. Thanks for sharing.