Red, White, and Cordon Bleu: Pastry Update: First Quarter

After Week 3 at Cordon Bleu, we're already a quarter of the way through our first semester! (Wow time flies!) Before arriving, I often wondered what kinds of pastries the chefs would start us on. After all, how basic is "Basic?" So, here is a review of our first three weeks' pastries. The basic of the basic!

Leçon 1

Basic Pastry starts with doughs, and with reminding us that we really are doing everything by hand - no tools allowed (excluding our scale and knife kit). So, we dove into the first week with a demo of basic flour, butter, and egg-based doughs: Pâte Brisée (for savory pies), Pâte Sablée (for large tarts and for shortbread cookies), Pâte Sucrée (for tartlettes, or small tarts), Pâte à Foncer (for sweet pies), and Damier (checkerboard-style cookies made of chocolate and vanilla shortbread dough). The practical was only the Brisée, Sablée, and Sucrée; and I did really well! See: my Petits Sablés Nantais (shortbread cookies) look pretty good!

The chef's shortbread cookies (in the center)

My shortbread cookies

Leçon 2

Chef Jocelyn demonstrating whipped doughs:
Our first experience whipping by hand

We continued the week with Whipped Doughs, machines still outlaws in our kitchen. These included Génoise (sponge cake), Biscuits à la Cuillère (Lady Fingers), Biscuit Roulé (spiral cake with jam), and Dacquoise. In the practical we tried our hands at Génoise and Lady Fingers, learning exactly how under-developed our pastry muscles were. We even purchased huge balloon whisks to aid in our hand-whipping of egg whites into a meringue, but even then it was excruciatingly exhausting. My results were pretty nice, though, and Chad loves the Lady Fingers so much that he wants me to teach him how to make them. Great!

The Chef's Genoise (right) and Spiral Cake (left)

The Chef's Dacquoise (usually used as the bottom for cakes)

My Lady Fingers

The Chef's Lady Fingers

Chad thinks they are so tasty! (These are mine, again)

Leçon 3

Italian Meringue meant the return of the
huge balloon whisk

Next up were the creams: the bases of many a French pastry. The Cream Demo consisted of Crème Chantilly (whipped cream with icing sugar and vanilla), Crème Patissière (pastry cream), Crème Anglaise (English custard cream), Crème Bavaroise (Bavarian Cream), Crème d’Amandes (Almond Cream), Crème au Beurre (French Buttercream), Ganache, and three types of Meringue: French, Italian, and Swiss. The demo was almost hard to watch, knowing that each of these creams required a lot of whipping, and that the Balloon Whisk was going to return to our practical. The Meringues, especially, would be difficult. In the practical we did the Italian Meringue twice, the Pastry Cream, Crème Anglaise, Ganache, and Almond Cream. All of mine turned out very well, even the Italian Meringue.

Italian Meringue involves whipping hot syrup with egg whites. “Doing everything by hand” also means “No thermometers allowed,” so when it came time to test our syrup for the correct temperature (121 Celcius), we did it by hand by scooping hot boiling syrup out of the pot with our fingers (which had been iced). It was scary, but we all made it through blister-free.

Leçon 4

Lesson 4 was the first time we would actually assemble something in our practical, rather than just making the elements of a pastry. Lesson 4: Tarts. Chef Jocelyn demoed three different tarts with three different techniques: Tarte au Citron (lemon tart with meringue), Tarte aux Pommes (apple tart without cinnamon – score!), and Tarts aux Fraises (strawberry tart). Our practical was simply the Lemon Tart.

The Chef's Apple Tarts

The Chef's Lemon Tart

The Chef's Strawberry Tart

The practical went very well, initially. We were to make most of the pieces: the crust (from Leçon 1), the lemon cream, and the Italian Meringue from the previous lesson. The tart also contains almond cream, which we had saved from a previous practical. For me, the crust went smoothly, my almond cream looked awesome, and the lemon cream turned out really well. When it came to the Meringue, though, something just wasn’t working out for me. I ended up failing it twice before it finally worked out, with the help of the chef. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one – about half of the class had to re-do their meringue at least once, and many of us ended up using our third meringue of the day. My piping was nice, though, and the tart turned out really well.

What was left of my Lemon Tart after dropping half of it

The Chef came around and judged my tart very positively: The crust could’ve been baked for a few more minutes, but it wasn’t bad, and my lemon cream had a great taste. My piping looked really nice, and the meringue was a great color. The positive critique made all the meringue whipping (and my really sore upper body) worth it, so I packed the tart in my cake carrier to take home.

The piping was nice, though!

Now, there’s something that has to happen at least once to everyone, and that day was my day: when I lifted my cake carrier, the pie slid out onto the ground. Whoops! I was glad it happened after the Chef had made his critique, and I caught it quickly enough to save half of the pie from falling. It was still a lot to clean up off of my shoes and pants and knife bag; but it meant that Chad and I only had half of a pie to eat, which was a plus in the end (though it was super delicious!)

Leçon 5

Our fifth lesson was on rising doughs, and we were demoed Croissants, Brioches (white French bread), Pâte Feuilletée (puff pastry), and Savarin aux Fruits et à la Crème (a light little shortcake with pastry cream, fresh fruit, rum syrup, and Chantilly cream).

Rising doughs mean extra-careful time management,
being sure they all get time to rise properly

Savarins: the Chef's favorite! They were really really tasty

In our practical, we just made the dough for Croissants, Brioches, and Puff Pastry (or “Flaky Dough,” as Chef Jocelyn says). The dough was really fun to make, as it involved whacking the dough against the counter, swinging and slapping it, for 8-10 minutes straight. It was loud in the kitchen, and we were all having a good time. We simply refrigerated our finished doughs in anticipation for…

Leçon 6

Lesson 6, our most recent lesson, was the finishing and shaping of the doughs we made the previous day. The Chef showed us how to do Danoises (Danishes), Pain aux Raisins (little raisin rolls, kind of like cinnamon rolls), Pains aux Chocolat (chocolate croissants, a favorite of my classmates when I studied in France), and a few different shapes for Brioche: Brioche Tressée (braided), Brioche Tête (“Little Head Brioche”), Brioche Nanterre (balls of dough in a loaf pan), and Couronnes des Rois (“King’s Crown” Brioche). We would practical many of these, and I was really looking forward to it.

The Chef's raw Danishes

My raw Danishes (Ignore the reject I made
with the leftover dough, bottom center)

The Chef's raw Raisin Rolls (top), Chocolate Croissants(Center), and Croissants (by his hand)

My raw Raisin Rolls (top), Chocolate Croissants, and Croissants

The practical was the most fun, by far. We removed our dough from the fridge and set to recreate the Chef’s shapings. With the croissant dough we made traditional Croissants (which I accidently measured in inches rather than centimeters, so mine were monstrous), Pain au Raisins, and Pains aux Chocolat. With the Brioche, we did the Brioche Tressée, Brioche Nanterre, Brioche Tête, and turned the rest of our dough into little balls with course sugar on top. It was a great time, and the Chef was really proud of my work! I even had enough leftover croissant dough to make fresh Danishes for Chad and I the next day. Tasty!

The Chef's Brioches. Round one at the bottom: Couronnes des Rois;
Left center: Braided; Right center: Nanterre; Top left: Brioche rolls
with candied fruits; Top right: "Mousseline Brioche"

My Brioche Nanterre

My Braided Brioche

The Chef's smaller pastries. From right to left: Little Head Brioche
(None of them could stand like they are supposed to -- they're tricky),
Cinnamon Rolls, Brioche Balls with Course Sugar, Raisin Rolls, Croissants, Danishes