I Wonder if Danish Dough Has Ever Been Used as a Weapon...

The last couple of days have been interesting.  We had a day of rich doughs (challah, brioche and egg rolls) on Tuesday.  Then, on Wednesday, Chef Katie had to stay home to take care of her sick little boy so we had a substitute instructor.  This is one of the main reasons why things were so crazy on Wednesday, but more on that later.

Challah (holla)!  I love challah so much...it's the only food that's served at dress-up dinners that is acceptable to literally rip apart with your hands...in front of your Grandmother!  That's an awesome food.  It's funny, I don't think I've actually made challah since I was in religious school, so this was still kind of new for me - and a lot of fun.  Julie and I made our tasty-delicious dough, split it in half and braided it up.  As you can see, Julie is a much better at making braids than I am (she's probably better at braiding hair too, sigh).

Unbaked Loves of Challah

So after braiding the loaves and letting them spend a little quality time in the proof box (side note: why don't I have a proof box? Oh right, it's called my apartment in the summer...), we brushed them with an egg wash, stuck them in the oven and let the magic happen.

Don't they look awesome?  I'm savings ours for Friday night so that the ripping apart can take place at the traditional time

While our challah was proofing, we got to work on making our brioche dough.  Brioche is crazy delicious, really rich and buttery bread.  It's usually baked in fluted cups (appropriate called, "brioche molds"), which I actually have a couple of - I'll definitely have to play around with those on y own some time.  Brioche is usually either made in a basic round shape, or you can make what is called a brioche a tete.  The way you make brioche a tete, is by taking some of your dough, roll it into a ball and then make a small well in the middle.  Then you take another small piece of dough, round it, and place it in the well.   Unfortunately, I think we a. used too much dough at one time when making the brioche a tete and b. didn't affix them correctly because we wound up with some pretty deformed looking brioche.

Sad, lopsided brioche head...

Did you know that the phrase uttered by Marie Antoinette was actually "let them eat brioche" and not "let them eat cake?" Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. You learn something new every day...

Now to Wednesday.  As I mentioned previously, Chef Katie had to take the day off, so we had a substitute teacher that has actually subbed for her twice before.  He is a really nice guy, and a talented chef, but his teaching style is drastically different from Chef Katie's.  He's more quiet, and will occasionally walk around and maybe talk to a couple of people without addressing the group as a whole.  On the other hand, Chef Katie is loud, exuberant, demos everything and is easily accessible by yelling, "Chef!" across the kitchen.  Now, yes, it's not really fair because we're used to her and not him, and it's probably hard coming into a kitchen where you don't have a comfort-zone with everyone, but our work day was very difficult.  To start with, 5 people wound up not coming in that day.  I'm sure that most of them have valid reasons, but 5 is a lot when there are only 19 people in the class.  Plus, unfortunately, two of the people out were one whole team - our table partners this week.  Also, Wednesday was pretty much a day of prep work, meaning that we weren't baking much, but making a lot of things for the next day.  Julie and I had just mise en placed (everything in it's place!) our first dough, when I looked at her and said, "What are they going to do tomorrow without any dough??"  That's when we decided to try and make enough dough for both ourselves and them.  It definitely made the day more interesting and a little more stressful (you have to roll out and fold croissant and danish dough several times, resting it for half-an-hour in between each turn), I'm glad that we did it.  There's too much random drama in our kitchen to begin with and it feels really good to do something nice for someone else.  So even though Wednesday was a total cranky-pants day, it was really rewarding to see how relieved our friends were to find out that they had dough to work with today.  Plus, I think they would've done it for us if both Julie and I had been out on the same day.  In Chef Katie's immortal words, "You guys....you know...it's just that people suck...and it's really nice when people don't suck."

Words to live by.

Danish dough wore Mark out so much, he had no choice but to use it as a pillow

So, without further ado - here's the reason why you're really here...pictures of pastry!  As annoying as the dough was to make, I'm really happy with how our croissant and danish turned out.  Brunch at our house is going to rock your socks off!  Everyone's invited:

These are my flaky croissants and chocolate envelope croissants

Pinwheel, Vol-au-vant and Envelope Danishes

Mini Cinnamon-Twist Danishes - since they're tiny and bite-sized, by law can they be considered petit-fours? I'll have to confer with Chef Katie tomorrow...

So that's it...we're doing enriched doughs tomorrow.  I can't wait till next Thursday and Friday when we're making bagels - I may no longer be at the mercy of Brooklyn Bagel!  That'll be the day...

I also have to come up with an international bread recipe to bring to class next week - any suggestions?

Have a good night everyone!

Love and danishes,

Brooke