Week 4 of class

Ok, so I'm not sure if our Chef instructor had a good holiday weekend or a bad one. I"m not sure if the reason he had us preparing 8-10 different items was because he was Happy to see us, or if he was Pissed to see us (I guess I'll never know).

Wednesday's class we basically prepped and prepared the following items to be baked on Thursday: Poolish, Milk Bread, Fermented dough, Orange cream, Lemon Cream, Almond cream, Pastry Cream, Italian meringue and sweet pie dough. All of which was simple to make, however the instructor made us "switch" groups and that ruffled some feathers (I loved my "old" group).

Last night (Thursday) we were in full speed. The class thought we were getting ready to take our weekly quiz, however the Chef wanted us to begin working at WARP speed.

So we were OFF to the races!

We smashed, mixed, played in powdered sugar, stuck our hands in a pot fille with boiling hot sugar to make (a soft roll), diced and sliced tomatoes and onions and baked our first BAGUETTE. I wasn't able to stick around for the finish bread, but I did take home all of our yummy pies, rolls and foccassia bread (YUM!)

So I think the craziest thing that happened in class is when we were told that we had to check the temperature of COOKING SUGAR with our hands. We were suppose to stick 3 fingers into cold water, then into the hot boiling sugar (grab some sugar), and then back into the cold water. We should be able to form little small "soft roll" balls with our sugar into the cold water. If we are able to then our sugar reached the optimal temperature of 121 degrees F (what ever happened to a candy thermometer)?