My oh my! How is my midterm here already?? I can't believe that I'm already half way done. My midterm days have been totally crazy, and I can't wait to tell you about them! There probably won't be too many pictures on this post, since I was so crazy busy all three days, I didn't really have an opportunity to pull out my phone and snap photos.
My midterms were laid out over the course of three days, and the first two days were our "production" days, and the third day was the "mystery" day. I'll get into explaining that after I get through these first two days.
Midterms were right around Christmas time (Dec 23rd was the 1st day), so I got to wear my Santa hat :)
At the beginning of the first day we got right into making our two kinds of dough. There were two potential options for this day: either puff pastry and croissant dough, or puff pastry and danish dough. I ended up with the latter, and while it was okay, I really would've preferred croissants. It wasn't that I had anything against danishes or whatever, that's not the problem at all! I love danishes, they so delicious! The problem was that I hardly remembered making danish dough at all, and this was how the other 4 people in my class who got danishes felt. We rushed through danish day so quickly, that the whole thing was sort of a blur, whereas we spent a lot of time on croissants, and had croissants on a test, so there was just a lot more time that we could have practiced those guys. But, that aside, I had no other options than to just make it work.
I started off with my puff pastry dough, just because I knew what I had to do there. We had the choice of making whatever type of dough we wanted (classic, inverse, or quick). I chose classic, because that was my favorite, but with any type of laminated dough, you need to let it rest in the fridge before you continue to fold it too much, otherwise it creates too much gluten and then your dough is going to end up being super super dough. So while that was resting, I moved on to the dreaded danish dough. (dun dun dun)
I followed along with the recipe that I had, but the problem was, that the steps in the procedure were so vague, whereas in the croissant recipe, the instructions were so precise. For example, in the croissant recipe, it would tell you to roll the dough to a 12" X 12" square and to place the butter block in the middle and then fold the two pieces of dough in half to the middle. For the danish recipe it said "roll dough per Chef's instructions. Place butter block per Chef's instructions." Wow, thanks guys, super helpful. Everybody in my class that had danishes sort of had discussed what we all vaguely remembered, so that's exactly what we did. Folded in the butter block, did the turns, let it rest, and repeat until all the turns were in. The dough felt right, but it was so hard to say since no one really had any kind of solid idea of what we were supposed to be doing.
After this first production day, we had a week off for Christmas, so all of our doughs got to live in the freezer until we came back a week later.
Upon our return, day two of production was lots of shaping and lots of baking. But before we could even start on that, we had to take our written test. I had studied so much for this stinkin' test, I was so worried about it. When I sat down to take it, however, 75% of the things that I studied weren't even on there. So, do I have a lot of knowledge about the stuff now, yes, but did I need to spend all that time stressing out and studying and making an almost 40 page study guide? No. (and yes you did read that correctly; almost 40 hand written pages of notes. Oye vey.) From my doughs, I had to make palmiers, cheesy straws, and vols aux vents (all puff pastry), and bear claws and snails (danishes). I made the vols aux vents first, since part of that thing had to be rolled to 1/4" thick, whereas everything else was 1/8" thick. I cut out my 8 little circles, then rolled the remainder of my dough to 1/8". The next thing I did was cut out a square for the palmiers and got that shaped. Even though we were making the palmiers that day, they didn't have to get baked off until the third day, so I just made the little sugary dough log and let that guy hang out in the fridge until the next class so it had lots of time to get all gooey and delicious! The last thing I did was the cheesy straws, because I had to let those sit in the fridge for at least half an hour before I could bake them. Now, it was onto forming the danishes.
Production, day 2!
You might be thinking, oh no, how are you gonna form danishes if you didn't remember? But not to fear, forming the danishes wasn't the problem, everyone remembers that part of danish night very vividly (of course). The issue more just stemmed from making the actual dough. So, I just had to hope that my dough was good enough and that I did it correctly and that my danishes would turn out like they were supposed to. I had to make bear claws and snails, so I did the bear claws first, since those also had an almond filling (which I needed to make), whereas the snails were just filled with jam. Once the filling was made, I cut my little squares out, filled them, and folded them over, and cut the "toes" of the bear claw. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Onto the snails! Those had a little bit of cinnamon sugar in between two 1" strips of dough. It was stretched out a teeny bit, then rolled into a nice little spiral. Both of those had to proof for about 45 minutes, so I threw those in the proof box just before dinner, and got to take a break and had an opportunity to sit down and breath for a minute.
After dinner, I pretty much just was working on baking my danishes, since I had baked all of the puff pastry stuff long prior. Fortunately I was keeping a close eye on the oven, because when we made danishes in class way back when, they took the full 35 minutes that our recipes said, and usually with people opening and closing the ovens, things take much longer to bake, but both of my danishes were finished in 20, maybe 25 minutes. I just had to pull them out of the oven for fear of them burning! I coated both danishes with their respective glazes, and while that was cooling, I made the final icing for the bear claw. I drizzled that on top, and bam! I was done! Just had to wait for grading.
And now we're come to day 3, which was by far the most stressful of days. Today was "mystery day," so not only did we not know what we were making until we showed up to class that day, we couldn't have any recipes with us, either. The only sheet of paper we were allowed was the itinerary that we wrote in class that day, and the sheet of paper passed out to us with our directions. I really felt like I lucked out when it came to baking on the third day, because I ended up with a mixed nut tart, spritz cookies, writing 'Happy Birthday!' in chocolate on a marzipan plaque, piping 3 rosettes of chantilly, and making 3 strawberry fans. Plus, baking the palmiers I made on day 2. This may sound like a lot, and it was, don't get me wrong, but I had made the tart on my tart test way back when, and the spritz cookies were pretty simple, honestly. I don't know how I got so lucky, because everything was passed out totally randomly, and everyone had something entirely different. But hey, I'll take it! It was a pretty hectic night just because there was so much going on, but I finished everything on time and all was well with the world.
My mystery day midterm
My class & I with Chef Jeanne!
And with that, I'm officially done with my first HALF of culinary school!! So hard to believe how quickly I've gotten here. I'm off to kitchen 2, where I'll start working on chocolate, sugar, plating, a wedding cake, and so much more!
Stay tuned for my next blog, and if you want more frequent updates, you can check out my Instagram.
Thanks for reading!