Boulangerie: Part Deux

Yesterday afternoon in a stroke of genius, the invisible person who plans our schedules each week gave our ragged, dog-tired group a break: boulangerie class.  Last time we were in Boulangerie, we learned how to make the ubiquitous French baguette.  This time around, we tried our hands at croissants, pain au chocolat, and brioche.  Who doesn't welcome that kind of delicious departure from cuisine?  Apparently about half our class since they didn't show up.  The rest of us, though, had a ball, except maybe for the Boulangerie Chef who continued to tell us that if just kept playing with the dough and talking to each other we would never finish.  I guess even adult students still get giddy the week before holiday break (especially those that are having a hard time thinking straight after a grueling four months in culinary school).

Here are some shots of our attempt to be boulangers for a day...

Walking into the Boulangerie lab is like walking into heaven on earth.  The smell of fresh baked bread and brioche is intoxicating and you suddenly must have bread at any cost (as seen above).

What are they vying for in those bags? None other than this deliciousness.

Walking around in the boulangerie, you find random bread sculptures like this one.

Ant this one.  How do they do that?

Finally, we got to work weighing out the ingredients.

Then, adding them all to the giant mixer.

While the dough mixed, we beat up our butter in order to make the dough for croissants/pain au chocolat.

When it was ready, we divided it.

And put it with the butter in the fridge to rest.

Once rested, the Chef began rolling out the pastry dough and explaining why he had used yeast.  That is when we realized, no one had actually put yeast in the dough.  Oops.

To confirm the lack of yeast he dropped some dough in hot water.  Since it did not rise, he knew there was no yeast.  At this point, I think he knew it would be a long afternoon with ol' Group B.

Back into the mixer went the dough with some yeast.

And Chef waited semi-patiently while our mistake was being fixed.

Next, we incorporated the butter into the dough.

Pounded it some more and did a few "turns."

When it was finally ready, Chef showed us how to roll the dough out at an angle so as to maximize the use of the dough and not have too much "loss."

Then, we began to roll the croissants.

Gorgeous.

Next we made pain au chocolat.

And onto a tray they all went to rest.  Too bad that Chef had been right earlier.  Between our yeast mistake and our gift of gab, we didn't have sufficient time to let the croissants/pain au chocolat rest.  So, into the freezer they went and we will bake them on Monday.  Really put a dent into my Saturday morning breakfast plans.

Moving on - Chef showed us how to work with brioche and pain au lait.

Look at Sonja work her brioche.

These three were made for the trellis brioche.

And then we talked some more.

Once Chef had our attention, he showed us how to make the trellis.

Start in the middle and braid.

And eventually end up with this.

Get your sugar and chocolate on and it's ready for the oven.

We also made the traditional round brioche.

We cut the pain au lait into little pieces.

Rolled those into balls (not as easy as it looks).

And then went to town, making shapes like fish.

And mushrooms.

Finally, we baked the brioche and pain au lait.

In a really fun oven that spins the rack constantly.

Out came this deliciousness.

And this adorable mouth full of goodness.

And this ridiculously huge and yummy piece of greatness.

Walking home with bags full of warm brioche and pain au lait, my Saturday morning breakfast started looking pretty darn good.