It’s about 5:30 in the morning, which means that I’ve been asleep for about 11.5 hours. Yesterday, as soon as I got home from my parents’ place I just plopped down on my bed and passed out. I really only had two activities. In the morning I had my run, and in the afternoon I had my bread class. Both are really draining but manageable on their own. What I didn’t anticipate was the effect that both would have put together. So yes, I fell asleep at 6, woke up briefly at 2 a.m. to turn off the lamp besides my bed, and now here I am feeling like I missed something important. I think next time I have to work on keeping my energy levels up…or perhaps rely on stimulants. I can’t afford to lose 1/8 of the weekend like this, you know what I mean? Argh.
Tag Archive: baking
Breaking bread
Well, after the successful completion of my introductory baking class at GBC I decided that baking would be yet another hobby that I would actively pursue provided there’s enough time and energy to do so. I spent a lot of time looking at the offerings and tried to figure out how each one could fit into my already hectic schedule. Eventually, due to the fact that I seemed to have more events/parties/invitations landing on Saturday afternoons/evenings I decided to take a class scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Between the cookie class and the bread class I opted for the bread one thinking that I might be more likely to meet someone from my old class. Upon arrival…nope: I didn’t know anyone. Actually there was one person there that knows me from Markham RR. Small world, eh? I haven’t coached her (yet) but at some point I gave a talk to her clinic regarding race day preparation. In any case, in the class I ended up with a totally brand new partner and after a slight rough start we were successful with the execution.
Pretty cool, eh? I got to take home half of this. Almost looks pro. There’s something about doing it there in class that I have trouble replicating at home. No, I don’t think I’m imagining it. Perhaps it comes from having a partner there who’s able to act as a second pair of eyes to verify everything. I don’t know. When I try to execute these recipes at home I end up bungling something a good percent of the time. Last night out of boredom (as it often happens) I tried to repeat what I did on Sunday. I didn’t want to do the whole thing so I cut the ingredient weights in half. I had to do a bit of extra work with regards to the yeast. In class we use fresh yeast, but here at home I have the active dry stuff. The teacher said that the conversion was that I’d only need about half of the active dry yeast to replace fresh yeast. Well, all right then. So, I took the weight in the booklet and cut that in half. As things were mixing I added more water to get things going. I really must have added too much. The resulting dough wasn’t all that tough. It was quite soft and sticky. I could have added more flour to balance things out, but I chose to just work with it. Heh. Well, after proofing and baking the resulting loaves were sort of flat. When I ate them they tasted a little odd. The crust wasn’t quite so good. Nope, not a good result at all. I had to analyze my moves to figure out what went wrong. Well, just like the last time I had to do an ingredient conversion prior to cutting the amount in half, I forgot cut the amount of yeast I needed in half. Yeah, and the wet dough made things hard to handle. Eeeeeeeeeeh. I know I can do better. Thing is, I’m now stuck with a lot of average bread. I’m sure I can do something with it like make an awesome bread pudding. All the same…bah! I know that if I want to get better I have to practice, so I don’t mind. In any case, this is something I enjoy. The next few weeks are going to be some tasty ones.
Jason’s 2011
I really should have started writing this post a few days ago, but I didn’t feel like forcing myself to do it. The words weren’t flowing. Well, here I am on the final day of the year and I really need to get these words out. This year, 2011, was a bit of a harder one than the last. I remember declaring somewhere that it would be a year of buckling down and riding out tougher times. I was right. That’s not to say that this was a bad year for me. I’m just likely to label it as a challenging one. Did I rise to the challenges thrown at me? I think I did.
Anyway, enough blabber. In depth text follows…after the jump!
Cake dump
Eh, what a mess. With plans to visit my parents today I decided to make a cake. It just so happened that the last time I made a black forest cake they didn’t get to try it so I decided to attempt to do that. The recipe for devil’s food cake I have in my book from George Brown produces two cakes, so I had to cut the quantities in half. All was well until I got to an ingredient that I didn’t have on hand. Without milk powder, I had to make a substitution for real milk. Generally the ratio of milk powder and water is about 1 to 4. The book called for 40g of milk powder. So, to replace 40g of milk powder you’d also remove 160mL (water is 1g to 1mL) of water and replace both with 160mL of milk. I mixed it all according to plan. The batter was actually rather smooth. I was kind of shocked. I poured it into the cake pan and put it into the oven. It’s supposed to bake for about 30-40 minutes. By the end of that time i checked the oven but it wasn’t ready. It actually took another half an hour or so before I decided to take it out. After letting it cool I took it out of the pan to discover that it didn’t rise as much as I had hoped. I found it strange but I pushed forward anyway. I took out my serrated knife and started cutting it into layers. Since the cake didn’t rise much the layers were pretty thin. The cake was ridiculously moist and fudgy. Well, I had to find places to lay the layers. I put one on a cookie sheet which was rested on a ledge. That…was a mistake. The cookie sheet tipped over and the layer landed on the floor. The cake crumbled into a heap of stuff on the floor. Well, with only two thin layers I decided to just restart.
I started again and quickly put everything together just like I had done last time. It wasn’t until after I had mixed in the milk that I had realized my error. I had converted the missing milk powder correctly but I forgot to cut the quantity in half. I was using way more liquid than I needed. Well, with the milk already incorporated I figured that if I add a bit more flour everything would balance out. There was an open plastic bag of what I thought was cake flour. I added a handful or two of that to the mix. It wasn’t until after that I realized that the bag contained baking powder and not cake flour. Of course, baking powder is a leavening agent, and with a heck of a lot more of that in there I expected the cake to sort of explode. I tossed in some proper cake flour like I planned and just hoped for the best.
I plopped the cake pan in the oven and waited patiently in my room. After about 30 minutes or so I started smelling something burning. I went to the oven and saw that the cake had indeed risen well above the cake pan. It wasn’t quite as bad as I had hoped though. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, though I did continue to smell something burning. Upon further inspection I saw that the other side of the cake pan did indeed overflow. The batter had spilled onto the bottom of the oven and formed a pile. It looked as if the cake had taken a shit right at the bottom of the oven. The cake dump was starting to smoke. I had to shut off the breaker to the smoke detector. At that point it was already well beyond midnight. I didn’t want to set the thing off. I opened the patio door, turned on as many fans as I could and started venting the oven. I took the cake out, and managed to get the cake dump off the floor of the oven. It so happens that my smoke detector is on the same breaker switch as my bathroom circuitry. I wanted to turn on the bathroom light, but when I did my smoke detector went off. In order to not have it go off at 1 a.m. I had to keep that switch off. So yes, peeing in the dark is about the culmination of a night of bad baking. I have to metaphorically flush this cake turd and move on. Can’t always rock it, right?
Cake walk
In this past Saturday’s class we covered how to make a black forest cake. As chef was showing us how to put it together I started thinking that it would be rather complicated. I remember thinking “there’s a lot that can go wrong!” However, once me and my baking partner got going the process of assembly was easier than expected. I mean, so much of it was based on stuff we’d done in previous weeks. A few weeks ago we worked on masking a cake. That same week we started working on our piping skills. We got to practice piping further when we made cream puffs and eclairs, and when we did shortbread. With all of that my piping skills have improved a fair bit. Making those rosettes on top wasn’t hard at all. I think the most difficult part of the past week was just making sure that we didn’t fall behind and that we kept moving in an efficient manner. In previous weeks my partner and I had a tendency of falling behind and holding things up. This time we moved swiftly and decisively. It was great!
This cake is visually impressive, but it’s actually not that bad to do. Cutting and filling the cake is one bit. Then masking isn’t so bad. Adding the chocolate sprinkles to the side was kind of fun. Then piping the rosettes and putting the cherries on top didn’t take long at all. The chocolate shavings were entirely a nice touch. So yeah: manageable! And with such a high visual impact this seems to be one of those recipes that’s high value.
When I posted a picture of this up on Facebook it got a lot of great comments. Not bad, right? One of my aunts was one of the people that commented on it. She was joking that I should open a bakery or something of that sort. Obviously such thoughts have crossed my mind. Things is, there’s just no way to switch career tracks at this point and still maintain my current lifestyle. I’m not giving up my condo, for example. So, as much as this would be an awesome thing to pursue I can’t do so just yet. Meanwhile, I can continue taking classes and sharpening my skills. One day a window will open or an opportunity will present itself. I need to keep an eye out for it and hope that when it come time I’ll be able to make the necessary jump.
Wonky knotting
This post is kind of meant to give a little bit of insight as to what it’s like in baking class. In today’s baking class we tackled a recipe for soft rolls. Putting it together was fairly simple. There wasn’t anything terribly out of the ordinary in the ingredient list. We got to use the big mixing machines with the big dough hooks to bring it all together. After forming a big ball of dough we covered it in plastic and covered that with a big bowl to let it rise. From there we all gathered back to the front of the class to watch chef demonstrate how to knot the bread. He was very deft in tying the dough. For some of the knots he did it so fast that it was almost a case of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speeds.
After the demos we were all sent back to our stations. The ball of dough belonging to my partner and I had doubled in size causing the covering bowl to come off the table. We divided the big ball into 36 pieces, giving us 18 each. From there we rolled each piece into a tight ball before rolling it into a long tube. We had to knot each tube using the techniques we were shown. When I was giving it a go I ended up screwing up the knots several times. I was having trouble with doing a simple single knot. Each time I did it I thought it didn’t look right and I ended up re-balling the dough to start over. This carried on several times. As a result I started falling behind. There came a point where everyone else was done knotting their dough, topped everything, and racked the sheets in prep for oven time. Meanwhile I was scrambling to get my act together. I eventually figured out the single knot, double knot and even some braiding. Once I finished I started running around the classroom finding different items to top the rolls. I ended up choosing cheddar, sea salt, poppy seeds, and parmesan cheese for the different rolls.
Honestly, at out low levels things aren’t all that stressful in class. Once in a while though there are moment where I feel like I’m under the gun. I say it’s better not to rush things. The act of rushing can result in shoddy work. If I hurried my knots I probably would have ended up with more wonky rolls than I’d want. In the end, I’m rather proud of the results. Thing is, I don’t like it when I’m holding up the class either. I’ve got to find a balance point, I guess. In a real life bakery kitchen scenario I’m sure things would be a lot more hectic. Better to know that I can handle things under pressure, right?
Chocolate spice bran muffins
After tonight’s workout I had a craving for some freshly baked bran muffins. I knew I had most of the ingredients, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough of each. After checking my stocks I decided to go for it. I didn’t have any nuts or dried fruit, but I had cocoa powder and warm spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, ginger) so I decided to improvise and make chocolate spice bran muffins. I figure this would be a good warming mid-autumn muffin. Putting it together was fairly simple since the recipe I had on hand had the ingredients listed by weight. It was simple enough to plonk the bowl onto a scale and measure things out. Oh, and having a recipe by weight means that cutting a recipe in half is pretty exact. I only did a half batch because I had no desire of ending up with 3 dozen muffins. Nope. Anyway, this is the end result:
At first taste it’s rather good. The cocoa powder is making its presence known, and it’s a little bitter. I wonder if I should have cranked up the sugar a little bit since there’s no dried fruit in it. All the same, this is only a taste test with them straight out of the oven. Usually these things taste better the day after. Who knows. If in the morning I decide that it passes I’m going to bring a few into office. Free food, you know? And having less in house means having less waste and less in my belly.
Pie pun
このアップルパイがアップルいっぱい、ね？
(Kono APPURU PAI ga APPURU ippai, ne?)
[This apple pie is full of apple, eh?]
Lifted that pun from Sailor Moon, episode 107. Translation isn’t punny at all, but in Japanese it’s totally corny.
Made this pie tonight. Used the skills I picked up in GBC. Sending it to a Thanksgiving get together tomorrow. Should be good eats!
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