Today I stayed home and did lots of research all about baking, and I did some baking too. Going into today, I had 2 main goals: to understand some of the science behind baking, and to bake something I had never made before. I actually expected to get a little frustrated when baking, only because I knew I was going to try something new which tends to not turn out perfect. I started the day off by doing lots of research. I started by going onto youtube to see if anybody had made videos explaining the science behind baking. The first video I watched was called “Baking School for Beginners”. I figured there would be some helpful tips in that video about baking, however it really was for very beginner bakers. The whole video explained how to correctly measure certain ingredients (ex. flour vs brown sugar), sift flour, separate an egg, line a baking tin, and whip cream. Since I already knew how to do these things, I moved onto another video called “Oven 101”. This definitely took a more scientific approach and talked all about the different types of ovens and tips to properly use one. I thought that using an oven was pretty simple, but after watching this video I found out that the way you control an oven can have a lot of impact on your baked goods. To see everything that I learned today, click the button below called "Research Information" and look at "First Day of Research". I use some of the tips I learned while baking later today. After I had done my research, I moved onto baking! The third video I watched showed a lot of tips and tricks to get a really good bundt cake, so I decided I wanted to make one. Since my goal was to also bake something I had never made before, I decided to also make some biscotti later. First, I made my bundt cake. I started out by preparing the bundt tin with soft butter and flour to make sure the cake doesn’t stick. This was a trick I learned while in the bakery. Then, I creamed my butter and sugar together. Something I learned in the third video was that you actually need to cream the butter and sugar for about 5-10 minutes, which is something that I had never done. So, I began mixing. I mixed for just about 8 minutes until I knew the butter and sugar were fluffy and a much lighter color than when I first began mixing. Next, I beat in the eggs, making sure to do it one at a time (another trick I learned while doing research). After that, I added in the vanilla and almond extract. Then, I mixed my dry ingredients together in a bowl and then incorporated the dry mixture into the wet ingredients, making sure to sift the dry ingredients even though the recipe didn't call for it (learned in my research). I also added in the milk. Afterwards, I put the mixture into the prepared tin, making sure to smooth out the top. Then into the oven it went! When it came out of the oven, I let it cool for about 15 minutes before taking it out of the pan. When I did, I left it to cool completely before putting the glaze on. To make the glaze, I mixed together powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract, and salt. Then I put it in a plastic bag to make piping the glaze easier. While I waited for the cake to cool, I put this in the fridge. Once the cake was all cool, I put the glaze on it. Here is are some pictures of the finished cake. After making the bundt cake, it was time to attempt the biscotti. I expected this recipe to be challenging, but it was not at all! First, I beat the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, almond extract, and baking powder together. Then I beat in the eggs and stirred in the flour. After this step, the batter was already made. I moved the dough to a baking sheet with parchment paper. Then I divided the batter in half. I turned each half of dough into a 9 inch log. Before putting it in the oven I smoothed out the edges and sides with a wet bowl scraper and topped it with a little granulated sugar. The biscotti then baked for 25 minutes. When it came out, I sprayed the dough with water (making it easier to slice) and then I sliced the dough into biscotti pieces. After this, it baked at a lower temperature for another 25 minutes. Once the biscotti came out, it was all ready to be served! I really enjoyed today. Doing research helped me understand baking more and how vital certain seemingly small things are like mixing the batter for a long time and incorporating eggs one at a time. To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to doing research, but once I started I became very interested and loved learning all about baking. Making the bundt cake and applying some of the knowledge I had just learned was also very cool. I think one reason the cake came out so nicely is because I took the extra few minutes to really whip the butter and sugar together. Finally, I loved making the biscotti because it was something new that I have never tried before. One of my main goal sof this intensive was to learn how to make new desserts, and today, I actually got to do that!
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Going into today, I had one main goal: to get to actually make (alongside a chef) a dessert. While yesterday I got to fill some cannolis and put pastry into tart tins, I wanted to start getting more in-depth with baking today. I expected to also do some of the same things as yesterday like fill in missing desserts from the front and measure out some ingredients. However, I did also expect to be hands-on with desserts, hopefully, more than yesterday. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure what I would be doing. When I first arrived, I was once more put in charge of getting some of the empty trays from the front of the bakery and refilling the missing desserts from the extras in the freezer. After that, I was put to task at cracking 28 eggs into a container. The head chef showed me a new way of cracking eggs by using one to crack the other so that you don’t get egg on the table. The next instruction I got was to sift powdered sugar… a lot of powdered sugar. The head chef gave me a huge (garbage can sized) container filled with powdered sugar and told me to sift it into a bowl. When I asked how much, he said as much as you can. So I ended up sifting a whole lot of sugar. Next, I was told to weigh out three different bowls of almond flour, the sifted powdered sugar, and cocoa powder. Then I was told to separately blend each bowl of weighed ingredients with a food processor and then put the mixed ingredients into three separate bags. The chef did not tell me what this was for, however, I assume it was to make macaron batter that he made later in the day. After that, I was told to wrap all of the vanilla cakes on the cooling rack in saran wrap. Below is a picture of 1 of the 8 trays of cakes I wrapped. Finally, the chef made macarons, and once they were cooled he had me take them off of the tray and put them inside of a box. I put a total of twelve trays of macarons into the box, separating each layer with parchment paper. On top of these things, I also cleaned up after the head chef and washed dirty dishes.
Overall, today was pretty uneventful. To be quite honest, a lot of the day was me asking how I can help and nobody having any tasks for me. I was hoping to get to work more with actually making some desserts, and today felt like a lot of busy work. Today the second chef was not in the kitchen, and it was she who gave me a lot of tasks yesterday. The head chef is very particular with his desserts and does most of it by himself. That being said, I am still very glad that I get the chance to work in the bakery. It is very fun to watch the head chef create beautiful desserts so effortlessly. Tomorrow, I am going to do some of my own research at home and try making a dessert that I have seen in the bakery that I have not yet attempted! I will go back to the bakery Friday and Saturday, and then take Sunday and Monday (the slow and uneventful days) off. Today was my first day shadowing at So Sweet Bakery. Going into today, I definitely had a few goals. My main goal was just to get the hang of what I am going to be doing for the next few weeks. I knew I was going to be helping in the kitchen, but beyond that, I wasn’t sure what I would be doing all day. I also wanted to work with some desserts! I knew that eventually I would be doing this, but I wasn’t sure how much I would really be working with desserts my first day. Walking in this morning was pretty nerve-wracking, but I was excited to start shadowing. When I got into So sweet Bakery, I was shown around the kitchen and where I would be working for the next three weeks. It was really cool to see the behind the scenes of a bakery, something I have never experienced before. I met a few people working there, including a chef and the head chef. Right away, I was put to work by helping to refill some of the pastries that are displayed in the front. The chef and I took the trays that were missing some desserts to the back and replaced them. All of the extra desserts are made ahead of time and kept in a freezer so they can be refilled first thing in the morning. Once we had done that, my job was to mix the cannoli cream together and fill the cannoli shells. Today I didn’t think I would deal too much with the desserts since it was my first day, but I was very wrong! The chef helped me mix about half cream, half custard, and chocolate chips together to make the filling. Then, we got out the cannoli shells (that the head chef had made and stored previously) and I got to fill them all and then dip both sides of cannoli in chocolate sprinkles. Finally, I added powdered sugar to the top and stretched out cupcake liners and placed the cannoli inside! After finishing with the cannolis the chef and I made a large batch of custard. She showed me where all of the ingredients were and then showed me how to weigh the ingredients and how much of everything. Once the milk mixture was all measured out, we put the ingredients into a very large mixer that mixes and heats at the same time. While that was mixing, we creating a powdered sugar and cornstarch mixture and added that in. Finally, we made an egg mixture to add to the mixer once the milk had begun to boil. To make sure that the egg mixture didn't cook when it was added to the hot milk, the chef added some of the hot ingredients from the mixer to the bowl with the egg mixture to introduce the heat and then added it to the rest of the ingredients. After some time, the custard mixture turned from a liquid to a custard. Then, the custard was scraped out of the bowl onto 2 sheet pans which allows for the custard to cool easier. Next, the chef had an order for a cake that needed a printed picture on top. I found out the way that bakeries add pictures onto cake is actually printing the picture on to edible rice paper and then adding it onto the cake. While the chef and I had been making the custard, the head chef had been making a biscotti mixture. When he lined up the dough onto a baking sheet, he had me add coffee grounds to hot water and then paint the coffee mixture onto the biscotti. After that, I added an almond-sugar mixture to the middle of a hollow pastry. I have never seen or heard of this pastry before, but it was delicious. I asked the chef what it was called and she said she didn’t know and it was a recipe the head chef had brought to the bakery. I added this mixture to about 5 sheet pans of pastry, and then they were put in the oven to bake! The last big thing I did today was put pastry into tart tins. I loved doing this because I have never really worked with pastry before. This was a little bit harder than some of the other things I had done because I had to make sure the pastry was even which was very precise. Though it was more challenging, it was very cool to learn! Overall, today was very busy and very fun. Working here all day made me realize how much work it really is to be a chef and how tiring it is. Though it was tiring, it was so much fun and I learned a lot even though it was only the first day! I loved being able to really be hands-on with the desserts and doing much more than I thought I would. After today, I have no doubt that I am going to learn so much over the next few weeks.
Tomorrow is my first day shadowing at So Sweet Bakery in Toledo, Ohio. While I am very excited (and nervous) I actually had a lot to get done today, as well. First, I needed to update my website. At the beginning of today, my website was still a template, so I needed to update and create an organized website to document this independent study. Second, I needed to pick up some clothes to wear to the bakery. My mentor suggested that I wear black or khaki pants (neither of which I had) and solid colored shirts (of which I only had 2). Finally, I wanted to do a little baking. It has been a while since I last baked something, so I wanted to practice a little before starting at the bakery tomorrow.
I started the day at school updating my website. I first deleted the sample website and began to create my own home page and blog page. While I messed around a little bit with the title and logo I wanted on the website, what I really wanted to do was add in some photos of things I have baked. The problem was that all the pictures I have of my baking were at home...and I was at school. That left me at school with nothing else to do since everything else I wanted on the website was already done (which really only included some titles, a logo, and a little snippet about me). With nothing left to do at school, I decided to run out to Target and American Eagle to pick up 5 solid colored shirts and 2 pairs of pants. Then, I went home and started to test out my rusty baking skills. I decided to opt for an easy (but delicious) recipe of butter pecan cookies. I wanted to make a time lapse of me baking these cookies, so after setting up my phone camera (which took about an hour of engineering my phone to the ceiling with packing tape) I began baking! To check out the short video I made of me baking the cookies, you can click the button below this blog post. After baking (and cleaning up the now very large mess in the kitchen) I finished off the night by adding photos of things I have baked throughout my life to my website and adding captions to the photos. Overall, while I expected this day to be somewhat boring and useless, it turned out to be very helpful. I accomplished all 3 of my goals and got to reminisce about the things I have baked in the past. Moreover, I am actually very glad that I did some baking today. I feel like it did prepare me more for tomorrow, and it was very fun. It made me even more excited about all the things that I am going to learn while shadowing at So Sweet Bakery. I would love to bake some things at the end of the independent study and compare it to some of my bakes from earlier this year, and hopefully, I will see a big improvement in skill. I hope not only to see an improvement in skill, but I hope to learn about new desserts I can bake at home. Baking cakes, cupcakes, and cookies are only entertaining for so long, so by the end of this independent study, I hope to have a few more types of fun dessert ideas to make. Looking forward to tomorrow! |