First Day Baking

Well I survived the first week. A lot of book work, A LOT of homework, even more feeling lost and out of place. By Thursday I was thinking...what did I get my self into? I felt like I was in WAY over my head and wasn't sure how I was going to do. With a lot going through my mind dealing with other things as well I kinda broke down and while talking to my friend Thursday night, I started crying. It felt good to get it all out. Then when I went to class on Friday I knew I had done what I was supposed to do the night before and I had brought the right things. We had some more lecture and review and then we had a lab.

We had 5 minutes to get our mise en place (everything we need) and then we were going to start. And when Chef Zamora (my pastry chef instructor) said 5 minutes...she meant 5 and that was it, you better be ready. We were practicing a few basic knife skills. We grabbed a potato, a lime and an orange. With the potato we ended up doing dice cuts and diamond cuts. We zested the lime and orange. Then we peeled them with our paring knife. After they were peeled we had to cut out the wedges. They couldn't have any white on them from the peel. It wasn't hard but you definitely had to pay attention to what you were doing. Then at the end of the class she looked at our cuts and told us if we passed or not. If we didn't then we had to practice at home and take a picture and show her. If we did that she would give us full credit for the day.

She came around as I was cutting the lime wedges out and noticed that my lime was rotten. I knew that it was but I was running a little behind so I decided to try it with this lime anyway. I shouldn't have because by the time I got the wedges out, most of the lime had fallen apart. And when she did my grading she asked me to try the lime at home again because I didn't have enough pieces to grade. But that was the only cut that I didn't pass. I was very proud of myself...and guess what, I still have all 10 fingers. :-)

Here are my cuts from classAnd since I had to pracitce my lime cuts at home here is what came out
Today I had my Intro to Baking again and it was Quick Breads day. Quick Breads are breads that don't require fermentation time because they don't use yeast. So they are quick. :-)

After standing at my table a little lost for a few minutes the boys at my table helped we find everything I needed. Not only was I the only person at my table that was in their first quarter but I was also the only girl. Awesome. The boys really helped me out and I had a lot of fun today.
Here is a photo of what we made.

Going clockwise: The bread loaf that is cut into slices on the top left is banana bread; then we have a savory scone with scallions, pine nuts, and goat cheese; a few country biscuits; a few blueberry muffins; another savory scone; sour cream coffee cake is the bread looking thing cut into slices; another country biscuit; a cream scone; more blueberry muffins; more biscuits; and finally another cream scone.

The day for the most part was a success. Our blueberry muffins didn't turn out that great and when you squish them they rise right back up like nothing ever happened. We called them out "stress muffins" like the stress balls. Chef Kim (our chef intructor) thought it was funny and brought one of them to the kitchen next to our. The chef intructor thought it was very funny as well. We had fun, ate some pretty good food and got to bring some home. So today was a good day! Next week in baking is yeast breads...I can't wait!