Day 8: Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Wednesday was loooong and Friday was even longer!  Wednesday I got up at 7am, left the house at 7:30am, attended a demonstration class from 8:30-11:30am, attended a practical class from 12:30-3:30pm, attended a Bikram yoga class from 4-5:30pm, and stopped at the grocery store on my way home, reaching my front door at the top of the 5 levels of stairs I climb each day at 6:45pm.  Phew!

Wednesday was full of excitement and challenges as we tackled Puff Pastry and learned about dry butter.  We made Apple Turnovers and Palmiers which are a traditional French pastry combining puff pastry and sugar.  Once again the chef made all of the desserts equally attractive and tasty, but this time he did NOT make it look easy.  While watching this very tall, strong, typical chef looking man roll out the puff pastry I could feel my eyes getting wider and wider.  I figured if he was putting this much muscle into the task of rolling out the dough I was certainly going to have a hard time.  I tried to take comfort in the fact that he had quadrupled the recipe I'd need to make later, but that did not do much to allay my fears.  Rolling the dough looked like it was going to be strenuous and take forever.

Our instructions were to roll out the dough out in a straight long rectangle.  When the dough got to be about 1.5 feet long we had to fold one end in on top of the other end like a tri-fold book.  Once folded into a book we had to rotate the dough, dust the flour off of the dough, and begin the process over again.  All the while we needed to be sure to have enough flour on the work surface so as not to let the dough stick to the counter and we needed to be sure and only rotate our dough 5 times.  So not only did this dough require strength, but concentration as well.  It was tedious and messy and I, among other students, spent a large portion of the 3 hours with flour all over my face, hands, and shoes.

I also need to take a moment to talk about the newest baking ingredient this project introduced me to: dry butter.  While American butter has a fat content of 80% to 82% European butter has a fat content of 82% to 84%.  Dry butter is essentially the name for European butter and is probably the answer to the question why are croissants and pastries so much tastier in France.  Dry butter is any butter that has a fat content of 82% or higher.  Once we had made our dough, but before rolling it out we put dry butter in the dough.  We basically stretched out the dough a little bit, put strips of dry butter on it, and folded the dough around the butter like an envelope.  While constantly turning and flipping the dough after rolling it out each time we equally spread the dry butter throughout the dough.

After the dough was successfully rolled out we divided it into two long strips.  One strip was rolled out once more and cut into three or four 6 inch circles.  The other strip was folded from either end in on itself several times until it looked like an accordion from the side.  The circles were topped with apples and folded together to form apple turnovers.  The accordion dough was thoroughly covered with granulated sugar, cut into strips, and laid out flat on a cookie sheet.

Palmiers

Apple Turnovers

When the very artfully put together baked goods were put in the ovens it was time to clean up.  Working with puff pastry was certainly a challenge and makes croissants start to look all that much scarier!  I was extremely thankful my family was coming back from Prague on Friday to work on eating all of my Puff Pastry items as there certainly were A LOT of them.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!