A year of Gastronomy

Zwetschkeweihe!! Bless you

Ah week 5. Things are beginning to gel nicely now.  The routine is comfortable, the first round of quizzes is behind us and we at least have a better idea of what is expected of us.

Baking this week was all about Danish and Croissants...just in case you hadn't had enough butter in puff and semi-puff over the last two weeks. Just one batch of Danish have 1 and a half CUPS of butter.  The croissant weighs in at a scant cup of butter per batch. 
Every time someone would wander through our kitchen on their way to another kitchen or to find a display platter they would get all glassy eyed and wistful.  They would cock their head like a German Shepherd and say 'Oh...Danish week.  I loved Danish week.'

Light isn't the only thing they like

During our sanitation lecture this week one of the things we discussed was putting anything that had been opened like flour, sugar, salt, etc., in a sealed and labelled container.  Resist the urge to just roll the bag of flour back up and shove it in the cupboard for later. It only took one moth infestation for us to realise that glass jars and rubber seals were the cool kitchen accessory for the new millenium.  I went through a phase of the Martha Stewart retro apothecary looking ones, but the seals aren't that great and the tops have loops for handles so stacking is difficult.

Mmmmm Tin Foil balls

Ah, week four we're barely a month old.  I think we've all worked together long enough now to have some feeling of each others style and personalitites.  Rob and I seem to have comandeered a certain section of the kitchen to work at every week as well as Brian G and Lynn.  We're all getting pretty good at dancing around each other whether we are diving to one end of the room to get a cutting board or heading to the sink to drop off dishes or creeping around the tight corner with a giant sheet pan to head to the convection oven.  Yells of 'Behind You' or 'Hot pan, Hot pan!' can be heard every afternoon.

Back to the grindstone

After an enforced week off with nothing to do but watch the snow fall and then shove it around with a shovel we were all ready to get back in the kitchen.
Baking III kicked off with puff pastry.  Pastry is one of those things I just assume that I'm never going to get right.  Delicate is not thy name.
Chef Deb gave us our lecture on good old 1459, that's the layers of dough and butter when you are finished your six roll and fold, chill, roll and fold, chill, roll and fold, chill, fo...