If you go down to the (green) woods today you're sure of a big dacquoise

Today (in between the stages of the 6hr Brioche challenge, see post above) we polished off another large entremets called a Bois Vert ('green wood'). This is a nutty pistachio job, consisting of, from the top down:

1. White chocolate decor

2. Clear gel glaze

3. Wood effect in cocoa cigarette paste

4. Pistachio sponge imbibed with kirsch syrup

5. Pistachio crème mousseline dotted with morello cherries (preserved in Kirsch)

6. Hazelnut dacquoise

7. Hazelnut mousse

8. Hazelnut dacquoise

Quite a beast. Here are some snaps, starting with two wood effect combs. The lines are simply portions of concentric circles so the wood effect they generate is quite unexpected.

You place your paste at one end of a baking sheet and drag the comb through it while gently rocking it back and forth in the same plane. It's pretty tricky to make work. This is what you get:

The pistachio sponge is spread directly on top (after the choco-paste is frozen) and the two cooked together. The dacquoise sheets are also separately cooked on baking trays while the mousses are made, then the whole thing is assembled, upside down since the wood print is on the bottom. Here is a shot of the glazed cake before being chopped:

And after chopping and variable decor:

This is the 6 person issue as it might be seen by, say, a passing thrush:

Here is an individual portion with non-classic decor. In fact, the decor above would not be appropriate for the CAP exam when we are advised to go traditional and fancy to show off our cornet skills. Unfortunately, mine are yet to be discovered.

I think the thing looks pretty nice and all the component parts are really yum. But IMHO the whole simply does not work. The pistachio and hazelnut work against each other and the lovely alcoholic cherries get lost in the stodgy mass. This is a typical style of French entremets but it doesn't whisk my egg. Which is unfortunate, since it took a bloody long time to make.

Day in the life of a millefeuilles (for Mum)

I forgot to mention that yesterday, while struggling with that full plate, we also had to make a pâton of puff pastry from scratch, complete a Pithiviers and prepare a millefeuilles base. It was busy.

First off today we cooked the Pithiviers which came out looking like this... (The whole time I made it I was thinking about my sister who asked me if we ever made galette-des-rois type things.)

Some people whip the thing out of the oven, sprinkle with icing sugar then pop it back in to caramelize it. We go for the shiny look which is achieved by painting with a heavy sugar syrup the second (well, minute) the thing comes out of the oven.

While that was roasting we polished off our millefeuilles. Here is a photo journey. First, the base once cooked (on a perforated oven tray to ensure even drying). This is normal puff pastry which has been very well pricked so it does not puff up like the Pithiviers. Half way through cooking (once it starts to colour) we also add a perforated oven tray on top to weigh the thing down.

The base is then trimmed into three equal panels, each 55 x 10cm:

The panels are layered with crème pâtissière (with a piping bag). The top panel is placed upside down so it is completely flat and then glazed to make it easier to ice:

The white icing is applied and smoothed with a palette knife then horizontal lines of choco-coloured icing are traced with a cornet. A paring knife is dragged first one way, then the other through the two colours to achieve the marbling. All this has to be done swiftly before the first icing has set:

The hardest thing about the whole operation is simply cutting the buggers up. You have to saw them with a serrated knife because a normal knife would chip the pastry irregularly. But the sawing action is very hard when you've got two layers of crème pâtissière to wobble and only sticky icing to grip them by. We cheat with a speed-freezer but the cream cannot be properly frozen for hygiene reasons, so it's still a minor nightmare. The end product, for me, very sweet and with as much appeal as a hundred-year egg. They're Mummy's favourite:

I talked in this post about the construction of the famous Opéra entremets and there is a photo of the assemblage prior to cutting up yesterday. Here are the finished jobs. I was trying a new cornet technique I found on YouTube (...) and I'm pretty weak at the best of times so this was not a proud moment. Practice needed.

We also started another similar but more complicated pistachio based entremets. I'll describe this in full when finished so the photos don't end up scattered willy nilly.

Croissants can lick my plums

Today was one of the hardest days yet. Very testing of patience. We began easily enough with the cooking of yesterday's tart. Despite liberal lemon-juicing it had still gone a bit brown overnight (but that's simply a result of too many things to cook in too few ovens, not a planned hiatus). Those brown bits coloured a little more than one might like but, well, here it is:

This kind of apple tart is a great way of using up puff pastry trimmings. We work a lot with puff pastry so end up with oodles of offcuts. If you are the same, here's how to make the tart above:

Assemble the trimmings into a pile. Do not ball, simply layer the pieces on top of each other. Bash the pile flat with your rolling pin, roll out (c.2-3mm) and prick very generously (so the thing does not rise in the oven). Butter and line a tart ring of any size (above is 220mm). You can then put a fine layer of either crème d'amandes or apple compote before lining with the fine apple slices. The similar tart we made at Aurillac had a layer of crème pâtissière which I thought worked supremely well as it added a lovely texture. Cook around 200°C until lightly coloured then lower the oven to 180°C to dry the tart out gently. Glaze generously (this can be done with a melted, slightly diluted, clear apricot jam).

Here is the enormous Opéra we started assembling yesterday. Today we cut it into four rectangles to share between the four people in my group and iced them with a poured chocolate icing. They'll be finished tomorrow.

So, the heartache: our first pâte levée feuilletée, the kind of pastry used for croissants and pains au chocolat. In a classic puff pastry or pâte feuilletée, you create layers of a simple water and flour dough (called the détrempe) and fat. In a pâte levée feuiltée, that simple dough is replaced with a leavened dough. This gives croissants &c. their unique texture and is why you can't make croissants with shop bought puff pastry.

Here's the catch. The gluten in a leavened dough is much more excited than in a normal pastry. Gluten is an elastic protein-combo released from the flour when pastry is kneaded. It enables the pastry to stretch without breaking and also traps the CO2 released by the fermenting yeast, causing the dough to rise. But the gluten makes the dough so elastic that whenever your roll it out, it pings right back. So when you're trying to roll out a large flat (e.g. 60 x 50cm for our croissants), this is hugely difficult. You roll with all your (in my case significant but diminishing) bodyweight only to watch the pastry slowly creep back into its previous dimensions when you step back to admire or catch your breath.

The only way to lessen the effect of the gluten is to refrigerate the pastry, but the action of rolling it creates friction which warms it up again. So every few minutes you have to stop, put the pastry in the fridge for 15 mins and weep when it comes out smaller than when it went in. It is a constant and infuriating battle. I nearly smacked someone round the head with a rolling pin with sheer frustration since it took me 5 or so fridge dips (with all the time in between) to roll out my pastry and that does not count the rest time while making the ruddy thing in the first place.

Still, I got it out to 60 x 50 in the end, cut out my triangles and rolled the bad boys. After all that effort, the croissant I marked for munching was bound to taste good. And it jolly well did. Here are the ones I brought home for my surrogate family:

P.S. I just presented the apple tart to my host family. They asked if I used a machine to cut the apples so finely. I liked that.

A wee chocolate surprise

In the middle of our practical today, our chef called us into the neighbouring labo. A welcome relief from my croissant nightmare. Here is the sight that awaited us:

A short-course (for experienced patissiers) on special Easter products was just coming to a close. They had churned out some cracking stuff, all in chocolate. The velvet effect on the elephant and dog (?) is created by spraying on liquid cocoa butter with an airbrush.

Best thing was I got to take home one of the elephants (which was imperceptibly damaged) for free. Dread to think what you'd pay for something like this, all hand made, in a patisserie.

In which a risen dough, opera, apple tart and an intercourse pause

Today we prepared a lot without finishing...

...we set our pâte levée feuillitée to rise overnight so we can make croissants tomorrow

...we prepared a large base to cut into Opéras tomorrow

...we assembled apple tarts to bake tomorrow

The Opéra is a coffee delight. I don't like coffee. Nevertheless, you've got to please the customer. It's a pudding made of 9 layers (in our version, at least). From the bottom up:

1. A very fine layer of chocolate

2. A viennese sponge soaked in coffee syrup (this is less than 1cm thick)

3. A layer of ganache

4. Another layer of syrupy sponge

5. A layer of coffee flavoured crème à beurre

6. More syrupy sponge

7. Another fine layer of crème à beurre

8. A shiny chocolate icing

9. Decor

We are making one large Opéra of Wagnerian proportions (40cm x 60cm) which we will dechop demain. Photos then.

The opera is an example of what the French call an entremets. This is a word with no real equivalent in English and took me a while to understand. A dictionary would probably say something like 'dessert' but this loses some subtlety. An entremets is a kind of dessert which involves many layers of different textures. A chocolate mousse is a dessert, for example, but not an entremets because it's just one homogenous blob of yum. Pop it on a biscuit base and give it a glossy icing, however, and it becomes a simple entremets. Our Opéra, for example, is also an entremets because there are layers of ganache, sponge, crème à beurre and chocolate.

The word comes from the word mets meaning 'dish' via the novelties that used to be served in between courses at smashing banquets. These days, the entremets forms a major class of French patisserie and some examples can be seen here and here.

A rather crappy photo of some rings in our labo which are used for assembling entremets.

Icing eclairs

EDIT: I just re-read this post and it seems it is monumentally boring and not even of any use... those who know know, and those who don't won't find enough info to be able to ice an eclair. Bother. I'll leave it up, though, just so I don't have an empty day...

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There are many different methods for icing eclairs but the Armitage Shanks way is to use a base of fondant. Fondant is an extremely thick sugar made by heating a syrup to c.135°C, cooling it on a worksurface and then working it until it crystallises and turns white. The result is an extremely viscous, opaque sugar mass. Most patissiers buy this in huge buckets.

To use, a few knobs are placed in a saucepan and slowly melted. This has to be done gently. If overheated, the fondant will be dull and liable to crack when it cools (see photos below). This is because overheating, rather like overheating chocolate, provokes incorrect crystallization. The fondant should melt at around body temperature (never heat beyond 40°C) so I find it easiest to take the pan on and off a low flame. This can take some time. The best way to test the temperature of fondant is with your tongue. This is no longer allowed (but might still be done by a golden oldie in a patisserie shop near you...) so best just to dunk in a finger. No need for a thermometer.

Coffee flavour/colour courtesy of coffee extract.

Chocolate flavour/colour courtesy of melted pure cacao.

Any other colour courtesy of food colourings.

Once the fondant has melted and is at the right temperature, you can regulate the consistency by adding water. It seems everyone has their preferred consistency. Too runny and it will drip off whatever you are icing, too thick and it becomes difficult to ice neatly and may not leave the smoothest finish. 

Techniques for applying fondant to eclairs are hard to put into words... but the dunk technique is simple, effective and pretty guessable. You can also use a palette knife, your finger or, the hardest, let the fondant flow off a spatula in a ribbon and drip a perfect strip onto the top of the eclair.

Here are some examples of fondant which has been overheated leaving an extremely matte finish with cracks. One of the Asian contingent was very flattered when I asked to take a photo of her choux. Little did she know...

And here is an eclair heading in the right direction. I added a spot too much cacao - it did wonders for the taste but maybe prohibited the final notch of shine.

Sunday - to church

My sister is visiting with her boyfriend. We trooped past the cathedral (shut as usual). Spot the man pissing up against its 13th century walls. Looks like a tramp but he was actually rather bourgeois once he swung round. (Waited to see.)

And just a good moustache/beret combo from the bus stop.