Baking and Pastry - Apple Pie, Bisquits, Quiches and Scones

We were baking fools today. Flour was flying. We made four different types of dough. One bonus was you can keep making the doughs in the same bowl, which made for minimal dishes, the other was that you experienced the taste of unbelievable biscuits (above) and scones, (below) fresh from the oven. The biscuit melted in my mouth and transported me right back in time to my grandmother's kitchen.

We began this morning with a flaky pie crust for an apple pie. Very different from the more crumbly short dough we made on Friday. This dough was made with cold butter and cold water. The key is to make sure you have pieces of butter (about the size of peas) incorporated in your dough that will melt and create steam that lifts the dough up to make little air pockets and creates the flakiness. That went right in the refrigerator to chill and we moved on to scones. This dough, made with flour, sugar, baking powder, fruit, heavy cream and honey came together very quickly. You shaped the dough into a round then cut it in wedges. A dryer dough than the biscuits and very easy to work with. The biscuit dough was a bit wetter but still fairly manageable to roll and cut.














We made a pate brisee which is not a very common dough anymore. It is made with room temperature butter and has eggs and a little lemon juice in the dough. We used this for our Quiche.

Lastly, we finished our apple pie. Chef Doug came from the kitchen next door to give us the demo on All American Apple Pie. I guess Chef Thomas felt that a true American Apple Pie needs to be taught by an American.
Chef Doug teaches the morning pastry class in the kitchen next to ours so I see him daily and have talked to him on occasion. He very nice and has quite the sense of humor. He looks stern but you see him laughing behind his eyes. We baked our pies in his revolving oven and he was giving me a bad time about the height of my pie and my hesitancy to operate the oven. These kitchens feel so territorial to me and I get so shy about over stepping boundaries. Plus there's the whole intimidating Chef thing. I turn into a bobbling fool.
Anyway, I made my pie, cooked it and brought home my wares to feast on. It resembled the Matterhorn. Maybe I was subconsciously offering tribute to my European Chef, Thomas. Or maybe I'm a loser pie maker.


Jim and Ginna came over to sample the whole lot. Biscuits, Quiche and Apple Pie.

How lucky are they?
Goodnight.