Artisan Breads

Well now that I am finally done with Cakes, I now get to start learning about different kinds of breads. We have learned a lot in this class so far but it is very similar to what we learned in How Baking Works. When we make our breads they are pretty much the same process. There are four main ingredients to bread; bread flour, salt, yeast and water. This is known as a lean dough. You scale all of these ingredients following the recipe and then just mix them all together. It's pretty simple but makes amazing breads. The fun part comes in when we get to shape the dough. We made Challah bread the other day which was really fun to make. This type of bread is called an enriched bread because other ingredients are added to the main four such as sugar, eggs and fats. A lot of people think that Challah bread is defined just by its braiding, but it is actually called Challah bread because egg yolks are used in this bread which is rare. The shape of the dough does not matter just that it has the yolks in it. It is most common to see it braided; you can make a three, four, five or six braid Challah bread. I made a three and a six. Now if making the six braid, you start off with six little balls of dough and roll them out to eight or nine inches long. You then pinch all six strands of dough at the top and then move them in a certain way to get a nice braid when you are finished. Each strand is numbered one through six and it is determined by the position of the strand. So if you move a strand then its number will change. The pattern for a six braid is: cross two over six, one over three, five over one and then six over four. It may look odd at first but if you keep repeating it then it will come together. This bread was personally my favorite that we have made so far, it's also really good for french toast. The picture above is my six braid challah bread that I made in class. Now you can add seeds on the top of these as well to add flavor and texture. It's delicious either way. I really like this class and I'll tell you more about all the cool things I learn.

More and More Cakes

This past week has been very crazy. I've been trying to study and do other things so I'm sorry it's been a while since I've posted anything. This class was unfortunately not one of my favorites. I was really excited about it and learning all new tricks and tips about baking and decorating cakes but I didn't learn that many new things. Granted I did just learn a lot of it in How Baking Works but I thought there would still be more to learn. But anyways, like I said before, each day we either bake our cakes and icings or we decorate the cakes we made the day before. We have made some really pretty cakes but honestly my favorite was the simple German Chocolate Cake we made at the very beginning. Of course that might just be because I'm a chocolateholic. Now don't get me wrong, the cakes were good I just prefer chocolate. Anyways, for our final we had to make two cakes. The two cakes I made are the very first two pictures I have posted. They both have three layers which are 1/16th of an inch tall. The picture on the left has a mocha buttercream which is why it has coffee beans on top. And the one of the right is a chiffon cake. It says Congrats Mom and Dad because it was their anniversary on October 18th. Now as you can see on all of our other cakes we have never done roses or writing on our cakes so why we had to do it on our final I'm still wondering about. I think it was crazy to critic us on something we never done before but oh well. I liked the class but I also think it could have been better. But it doesn't matter because it's over now. On to Artisan Breads for my next class!!

                            

                                                                                     

Intro to Cakes

I have now started my third class, Intro to Cakes. I am really excited about this class because I love decorating cakes. So pretty much in this class one day we bake the cakes and icings and then the next day we decorate those cakes. So for example, yesterday was my first day of class and we made carrot cake, German chocolate cake, the filling for the German chocolate cake, and the icings. And then today we decorated and filled both cakes. The first cake we decorated was the German chocolate cake. You, of course, have to start off by making the top of the cake level. In my opinion, I just think this is a waste of cake but on the other hand I just eat the extra during class so I'm okay with it. You then cut it in half, which is really hard when just using a knife. When you have it cut, you take one half and put half of the filling on top and then put the other half of cake on top making a sandwich. Once you have this done, you can ice the cake and put a shell border on top. The very last step you do is put the filling on top, this is so that is looks nicer and has a nice edge on it. This is my final cake that I made in class today. It was sooo delicious!!!

  

The other cake we made was carrot cake. You  start off the same way and level it off. Then apply icing all over the cake and also put a shell border on the top. The reason why we don't pipe shell borders on the bottom is because they don't stick well to the cake. This means that when you serve the cake this border is often left on the platter because it fell off which is just a bad look for the cakes. For carrot cake we normally put pecans on the sides for decoration and they taste great with the cake. The other decoration that we used was piped carrots on top. Well we wanted to make sure that every person got a carrot so we had to portion the cakes first. This is really hard when using a knife because you have to make sure that each piece is exactly the same size. But after we got that done, we piped a carrot on each piece. To the right is the cake that I made today. I really liked making these cakes and they taste really good too.

How Baking Works Final

There was a lot to do with our final for this class. We had a written test and also a practical where we had to actually bake something. Our practical was done with our group. So everyone's practical was to make a pound cake. The problem was that each group had to make this pound cake either gluten free, egg free or fat free. My group luckily had gluten free. We had to take what we had learned in class and substitute different ingredients to make the regular recipe gluten free. For the original recipe, it called for 9.3 oz of cake flour but that has gluten in it so we had to use other kinds of flour that wouldn't produce gluten. So on day 8 we made the original (control) recipe of pound cake and then five experiments using different kinds of flour to try and make it taste like the original. Most gluten free cakes use a mixture of flours. The most common is rice flour, potato starch and xanthan gum. We tried this and used it as one experiment. Another test we did was use the same mixture but replace the rice flour with sorghum flour. Then we used all almond flour for the third experiment. Out fourth experiment used half almond and half hazelnut flour. The last try we did was with all coconut flour. Once all of these were baked you could see how differently they turned out. We made all of the pound cakes in muffin tins so that they could bake faster and it makes it easier for each group to get a sample of your experiments. So most of our pound cakes came out with a lot of grease on the bottom. There were puddles on the bottom of the tins. It was gross. We figured out that this happened because all of the flours that we used were nut flours. Well nuts have oil in them and so when they were baked the oil came out plus the cakes already have butter added to them as well. This gave them too much moisture. This then affected the structure causing some of them to fall in the middle. Other experiments like coconut were the opposite and had way to much structure. Below is a picture of all the different experiments we did. You can see how different they turned out.

                           
*The top is our control then going down is the almond/hazelnut mixture, the common mixture, all almond, sorghum and then coconut on the bottom*

We thought that our experiment using all almond flour turned out the best. It didn't have a good structure but it had the flavor that we were going for. So the next day, our final day, we had to take the best recipe from day 8 and try to perfect it. Basically we had to take our almond and do at least three more experiments to make it even better. So we did a almond and sorghum mixture because we liked the taste of the almond but the structure of the sorghum. Our chef brought in sweet potato so we decided to just try all of that in one batch. And then we did another almond but we reduced the butter so it wouldn't have the puddles on the bottom. These experiments turned out really well. We had to look at the texture, structure and the flavor to decide which one was the best. In the end we thought that the almond with reduced butter was the best. It had the right flavor and had a pretty good structure like our control.  It was amazing seeing how different the experiments came out and then figuring out why that happened. We did very well on our final and ended up getting an A on it. It was fascinating and I will actually miss this class.

     I have been very busy this past week with all of the new information I have had to learn. Each day we have had a new topic such as gluten free, sugar free and egg free. They have all been very interesting. The gluten free day was pretty interesting. We know that flour is a structure builder which just means that it helps provide a strong structure when it is baked. And it also absorbs liquid, contributes to the flavor and color and adds nutritional value. The most important components of flour are 71% starch, 6-18% protein, moisture and gums. Glutenin and gliadin make up about 80% of the proteins. Glutenin provides strength and gliadin contributes to the elasticity of the bread. Gluten is activated by moisture and motion.  When moisture is added, glutenin and gliadin absorb the water and then swell up. Then when mixing, every surface is exposed to the liquid making it easier for the proteins to absorb more water. Also the mixing incorporates more air which strengthens the gluten when it is forming. There are many factors that affect gluten development such as the type of flour, amount of water, amount of mixing, water pH and many other things. To make a gluten free recipe you have to use specific flours that will not produce gluten. These will include millet flour, white or brown rice flour, garbanzo flour, tapioca flour and xanthan gum. More than one flour is normally used in recipes for gluten free.
     Sugar day was very informative. There are basically three different types of sweeteners; crystalline sugars, syrups, and specialty sweeteners. Crystalline sugars are granulated sugars, coarse sugars or powdered sugar. Examples of syrups are obviously molasses, honey, maple syrup and malt syrup. And lastly specialty sweeteners are isomalt, dextrose, sweet-n-low and splenda. All of these sweeten, contribute color, and tenderize. Although they have a lot of the same functions they can taste very different. For example you can't just replace granulated sugar with maple syrup because it will give it a completely different taste and texture.
     Egg day was very similar to our sugar day. There are many egg products that you can use but there are advantages and also disadvantages when using them. Egg products are easier to store and measure and to work with but they are normally more expensive than fresh eggs. Eggs provide structure, help emulsify which means that they help mix oil and fats that don't normally mix well, they also contribute flavor and color. Just like the sugar, when you use different egg products than in the recipe you will probably get a different result. Either the texture or taste or color will be different in the final product. We make experiments everyday with one recipe and switch out one ingredient with several alternatives and look at the differences. It can be very dramatic what the results will show but it proves that you need to follow the recipe completely to get the correct conclusion.
      We have done many experiment each day and have tasted horrible results but it has shown what each ingredient does and how it affects the product. Well tomorrow is day 8 so we are going to start on our final. My group has to come up with four experiments to do for a gluten free pound cake . So we'll see how that goes, hopefully well.