week 8 - half time/ mid term

Happy St Patrick’s Day! It's the luck of the Irish today and we get to test it today in the kitchen with our laminated doughs that we prepped last class. Then we challenge our knowledge base in the classs room as we write our mid term exam. YAHOO! can't wait.

Team France and our fellow classmates had a special visit down the street from Phoenix college kitchen to practice our baking skills at Metro Tech High School kitchen that Chef Colley teaches at during the day. Originally this was going to be the host location for our class but was changed to the college kitchen. It was nice for a change to work in a beautiful kitchen. However, give me any kitchen to work in and I will be happy.

Chef demo'd how to operate this large industrial size roller to roll our laminated dough to make croissants, danishes and turnovers. We then shaped/cut our croissants with a pizza cutter on an angle that made a 90 degree triangle. Then filled them with various filling.

Croissant Dough:
1 qt milk
1 1/2 oz dry yeast
3/4 oz salt
3 oz salt
5 oz butter
3 # 8 oz bread flour

straight dough method 10 -12 minutes with dough hook. Relax in fridge for 30 minutes or more.

Roll-in butter 1 # 8oz. roll



Once we mastered the croissiant dough rolling then we learned various danish styles like the snail, the ring and the fold. There are many styles of danishes to choose from so you can offer a great selection or variation to keep your customers coming back to your bake shop.

The biggest challenge I had with today's tasks was the execution of the cutting of the dough. I never had do it before so it's something that if you keep doing you will get better over time. Then with the danishes it was then we had so many options to choose from it was hard to pick so I think when you’re learning it’s better to just to be told what to make. Then have it evaluated so you can learn and improve on it. An excellent tip I picked up today was when we put icing on the Danishes. Place a food glove and use your five fingers to drizzle it onto the pastries. It’s very quick and efficient to cover a large amount of food.








After that we made our way into the classroom and I felt very good with my answers on the mid term exam. We picked what flavor of cake we wanted to bake for next week so on the menu for me next week is carrot cake.



















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