Yesterday was our first day of school (haven’t said that in awhile!)! And it was such a perfect day. In the morning, we take the bus to school – it gets us there early so we have plenty of time to chat and change into our cooking clothes. Mine are all hilariously baggy on me – guess they are counting on me gaining some extra weight!
We have pastry in the morning. Our pastry teacher is really nice and extremely talented. His English is not great, but it is 10000 times better than my French. Yesterday he taught me for 3 hours, and I taught him the English word for squeegee. We mad pain au chocolate (recipe to follow) – a sweet bread with a stick of chocolate in the middle. I wanted to take pictures of everything, but I was too busy watching and furiously writing notes. We also made croissant dough – it has to ferment for at least 24 hours, so hopefully we will be making croissants today! Every Monday we get our list of recipes for the whole week, but we don’t know exactly what order we will make them in.
We have an hour for lunch and there is an awesome outside area with picnic tables to eat at. My roommate and I went to the marche and got tons of veggies, so that’s what we eat for lunch. In cooking, we made a “strong lemon” spread/jam type of thing – I actually really liked it and we put it on our chicken last night for dinner; it was delicious. We also started working on a tomato confit for today. I learned a lot of knife skills and the proper way to julienne. I am terrible at it though. I guess since I live in a hotel Monday-Thursday, I never learned how to properly cook. The chef (professor) is so nice and helped me a lot.
I walked home from work with some classmates (about 3.5 miles). Then I went for a run. There are trails/paths everywhere here. I found one that went to the top of a “mountain” (it was really just a large hill) – when I got to the top, I could see 360 degree views of the town and the ocean. I need to trek back up there with my camera to share photos. Also.. I ate four pain au chocolate. Today I’m going to have to give more away.
Pain au Chocolate (Chocolate Bread)
Notice everything is in weight. A kitchen scale is the first thing on my list to buy when I return. It was so easy.
Ingredients:
370 g pastry flour
50 g whole eggs
170 g water
12 g yeast (we used a special yeast here that doesn’t keep very long; to substitute dry yeast, use 30% of this, so 3.6 g)
30 g sugar
8 g salt
4 g honey
75 g butter
20 g milk powder (can use milk instead – not sure of the substitution)
10 sticks chocolate
Instructions:
1. Weigh out the dry ingredients. Pour them onto your working surface (also… I need granite countertops) and mix them with your fingers. Use a pastry cutter to make a large ring that is empty in the middle.
2. Weigh out your wet ingredients, keeping the water separate. Pour the eggs and honey into the middle of your circle and most of the water. Start mixing with your fingers and the pastry cutter, incorporating the liquid into the dry ingredients. Eventually, you will get something representing dough. It should be fairly sticky – if not, add more water.
3. Knead. It’s basically two steps – frassage and claquage (it is also really hard to master. I’ve done it like 4 times and finally started feeling good about it the fourth time). For frassage, you are using the heal of your hand to knead the bread. Every few minutes, cut the dough into four pieces and start kneading again (this is to get the moisture from the inside to even itself out). Once the dough is an even texture, start claquage. You pick up the dough ball with your fingertips, slap it on the table (it should make a loud noise and be really fun), use your other hand to loosely fold the bottom half over the top (there should be air – this makes the dough lighter), and use your right hand to pick up the right side of the dough. Do it again. You will end up with a smooth dough ball. Put it in a lightly floured bowl for 30 minutes to rest. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap – once loosely over the dough, and one on top of the bowl.
4. Repeat. Punch the dough and repeat, but you don’t have to do it as many times. Let rest in a covered bowl for 30 minutes.
5. Cut the dough into 10 equal parts. Flatten a dough ball with your hand. Fold the dough in thirds, then in half. Put the ugly side on the bottom and cover 1/2 of the dough with your right hand. Apply pressure and begin rolling. Once you feel the ball shape has formed, lessen the pressure and keep rolling until it is smooth. Repeat for all dough pieces.
6. Flatten the ball with your hand. Roll it out into about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Don’t worry about making it an even shape – an oval will make the final product cuter. Add a chocolate stick (or two!) in the middle and fold into thirds. Place the bread on a nonstick baking sheet with the folded edge to one side, touching the sheet (folded edge points down).
7. Not sure if this is a real step (we went to lunch) – let the dough rest. They expanded a lot, so I might limit it to 15 minutes. Also – you could put it in the freezer overnight if you want to at this step. Let come to room temp before baking if you do.
8. Use a steam oven to bake for 15 minutes at 170 degrees celsius (338 degrees fahrenheit). But who has a steam oven? If you don’t, then you can just put a cold bowl of water in there while it’s preheating. Keep it in for the first half of the baking and then take it out.
Let them cool and they are good to eat. This would be a good breakfast bread (or a snack for your walk home, or two snacks, or dessert… that’s how I ate them) because it’s not too sweet.
More Croissants, Please! 