Baking and Pastry, Pate a Choux, Puff Pastry

I guess the field trip yesterday took a toll on some of the people in the class, for as I walked in this morning, I found about half of my classmates missing. I have to say that having a class of only eight people was pretty nice. We all were able to spread out and have our own mixers. It was much less chaotic.

Chef Thomas demonstrated the making of Pate a Choux dough.

This is really more of a cooked roux that you cool and add eggs into.

You begin by heating milk, butter and salt in a sauce pan on the stove top until it comes to a rolling boil. You add flour into this and stir constantly until a mass is formed and pulls away from the edge of the pan. This is then transferred into a mixing bowl where it is cooled slightly then slowly but surely you incorporate the eggs into the mixture one by one, fully mixing in between additions until all the eggs have been added. It is fairly thick dough that it them piped into shapes. We made classics crème puffs (top) and

éclairs (right).
No swans for us culinaries. We leave the fancy stuff to the full time Baking and Pastry students.

Next we took our puff pastry and made some diamonds and pinwheels with them. It was fun. This is definitely an art that takes some time to master.

The day went quickly and we finished early.

Having only eight people in the class has its advantages. I will now be able to get a jump start on beating the traffic out of the Bay Area. I’m heading up to my cousin Jeannie’s house in Boonville for a weekend getaway. I get to help out at a wine dinner at Handley Vineyards (my cousins works there), then the following day we’re running in a local 5K race.

Wine tasting, cooking, a little exercise, rest, and catching up with my favorite cousin.

In my book, this will be pretty close to a perfect weekend.