Day 2. Just coming back from spring break it was a little hectic because there was a lot of demos . Day 2 was very stressful trying to get back into the 9 day cycle and being pushed to our limits. This experience will only make us better bakers in the future helping us with time management, and get our creative juices flowing.
Day 5 Things are starting to move more smoothly. I feel like everyone is getting back into multi-tasking and time management. It is a lot easier to do more than one thing and still have time to do other things. Every second counts in this class that could be lost when getting side tracked. Once you come in at 6 or 6:30 I feel like the next time you look at the clock it is 11:30 and you need to start to clean up. It can be very stressful at times but once you are organized and work efficiently then there is nothing to worry about.
Think of stress as something that will become like breathing, you will not have to think about it since it will become second nature to all of us in the food industry.
I am so happy to have Chef Hitz teaching me in Advanced Decorative Breads. What I love about his him is his teaching style. He is very well organized, knows what should be done throughout the day & is very thorough about what he expects. Also what I love about his teaching techniques are when a group is doing a project, he calls all the students to the table & explains every step, & why he does things a certain way.
Day 1, Chef Hitz, showed us how to make a Miche showpiece. It came out amazing. All the small intrique details on the breads. Day 2, our group made rosemary raisin suns, which were delicious. We used the intensive mixing method. Chef Hitz told us that the next team making these, we would have to coach them. I am pretty confident to coach them. I can't wait until the next day to finally build our Miche showpiece. Our them is christmas. (:
Today we finished our Miche showpieces catastrophe-free, which was a little surprising. I usually feel so rushed (on some days it’s borderline panicked) in all my classes that I make mistakes with the task I’m doing at that moment because I’m already focusing on the task that’s coming up next. However, for this class there’s a more vague sort of urgency and I now understand the point of that is so that we can really put detail and thoughtfulness into our sub-pieces and where we place them.
I’m so glad we started off with the Miche, it’s a good way to introduce working with dead dough without the pressure of having to build vertically. I found it a little strange to think of a showpiece in 2D though, I wasn’t quite sure what was the appropriate height for the piece and what was too flat, so it made me second guess myself a lot while brainstorming ideas. I highly recommend Pintrest for inspiration and ideas. I hate that we have this huge break right in the middle of the lab- it makes things feel more complicated and rushed when we get back. I’m telling myself I’m going to do as much prep work as possible before returning to school to ease the transition, I hope I can stick with it or I know I’ll regret it on Monday. I’m going to try to do most of the cut outs tonight before my enthusiasm wavers and my brains realizes I’m on holiday. I’m quite sure the key to surviving the next 6 days is always thinking and preparing a step ahead. Kind of starting to wonder why I don’t see more dead dough showpieces out in the real world, it’s so much easier to work with than chocolate or sugar, and while it’s not as sophisticated, it certainly has a homey sort of charm to it.
I’ve also decided that after standing outside of the CCCE in the cold two days in a row waiting for the building to open, I will now walk out of the Village at 6:00, that way I won’t freeze and I’ll only be 5 minutes “late”.
Day 1 was easy nothing bad happened Chef finished both of his showpieces with ease god only knows how. I pray that all of mine come out as good as his do. Day 2 well lets just say its a good thing mixing dead dough doesn't involve a lot of ingredients haha. While I was mixing the dough I felt that it was quite dry so I added some more syrup just little drop but still felt it was dry so I added more...needless to say it was a bit too much and the dough had to be thrown out. From that experience now I know that a small amount of syrup goes a very long way and you just need to put a lot of elbow grease into it while kneading the dough and it will come together perfectly.
So today ended up being a Sunday lab so we could get everything done. I finished my rooster and I'm proud to say it did NOT collapse or break at all while moving it or putting it together so I must have done something right. There are many things I would have changed on the piece itself especially color wise but I didn't notice these things until the piece was put together. One thing i should've done was put all of my piece together in a model fashion and see how the colors blend together and if they didn't look right change them before it was too late. My column also did not turn out the way i wanted it to be but there were some difficulties with baking and sizing. My overall concept was shown throughout the piece and could be easily understood which was a good sign and made me very happy but as the creator and artist of the piece I notice every detail that should be changed and that I should have done differently.
Today was day 7 and I have finished my miche showpiece and to be honest it wasn't exactly what i wanted it to be but it still looked beautiful. The overall concept was Earth Day and no where on the piece was that concept drawn out except for the Earth in the middle. The theme that was being shown was more spring time and when I realized this as we were putting the pieces together I told my partner that we should rethink the concept and change the center piece so that it fits the theme more. Although all of the detailed pieces were well done and pretty it did not suit the theme. We should have done more research and developed a better design all together for the final showpiece.
Throughout the production of these 7 days my teams products have come out quite good and very delicious. There were a few mistakes on some products such as not sugaring the top of the pumpkin brioche and slightly over proofing the rosemary raisin suns everything was great. Little problems such as those tend to be due to the fact of having so many people in the kitchen and all using the same oven at the same time, proofing at the same time and also focusing on your showpieces as well. Overall I am very happy with the way my team's production has come out over the past 7 days.
Day four and I'm ready to move into the freezer. I'd forgotten how quickly a 9 day lab goes by because boy howdy do I not feel prepared for the rest of this week. Today I spent a while kicking myself in the butt for not photographing more of the process of building the miche showpiece while also trying to organize myself into photographing the pieces for the rooster as I built them. I'm really hoping that the pieces for the rooster all come together in the end because I sometimes feel like I've left class having accomplished less than when I walked in at 6a. Tomorrow my group is making rum raisin brioche for the first time and I'm rather nervous due to the constant reminder from chef that they ferment slower than molasses in January. We cannot afford a mistake which doubles up production the next day. We've made it this far, we just need to continue juggling the 17 irons in the fire and all will be well. We may get burned a few times but I've faith it'll all work itself out in the end.
Walking into the first day of class, I was expecting it to be tough. I knew that it was going to be an early day, and a rather long day. One of the most stressful things for me was to nail down one solid idea for my rooster showpiece. I could be classic and go with a Christmas theme or a farm theme but I really wanted to think outside of the box. I wanted to make my rooster into something that I knew was unique but something that I could also make sure I had plenty of details to help me cover my piece. Something that I struggle with is making sure that I don't overcrowd a piece when I am creating it. I have the tendency to fill the space. In some applications, that is good, I have yet to run into a problem of crowding because the amount of detail I place on a piece just works. One thing I definitely learned from was to prepare for this class and really sketch and make a list of everything you want to make. It really helped me from letting my mind wander and helped me with having plenty of time to build my rooster. My decided theme was Dwight from The Office.
Day 4 was a big transition. My group was transitioning from working on the rooster individually to working on the Miche in partners. Balancing the work on the decorations was so much easier between myself and my partner, however, we both wanted a chance to make the groups doughs so we both wanted to be in the center of that so we definitely put off our Miche until everything was done. On day 5, we definitely found the proper balance between making sure we were both involved in each process, working together very smoothly. A mistake that I leaned from today was when we were making the pumpkin brioche, we added the butter too fast. This made us have to focus a majority of our attention that day on the dough to see if it would work out. In the end, we were able to successfully turn the dough into a beautiful product and finish all of our decorations for our miche so we have a majority of day 6 to glue.
Procrastination will be the death of most assignments. Luckily, I have been picking away at the homework assignment. My partner and I were so far ahead in designing our piece, we had almost a full class day to focus on designing and detailing our marketing piece. During the last few days of class, focusing on designing the final piece, I definitely neglected the ending of my homework project and not it is left for the weekend. Do not procrastinate...
Today I made the realization that my vision for my rooster showpiece was a bit larger than the time to complete it, given my tendency to focus on fine details. This always takes up more time that isn’t always available. Now I have a large framework to fill in with a small amount of time left including the assembly and gluing (with regular production as well). I suppose I was being overly optimistic in thinking I could get it all done in time with the detail I want considering this is a new medium to work with. The learning curve takes time. I think it should come together alright, though now I’m really understanding Chef’s statement along the lines of: when is art ever really finished?
Even though I had many partial sketches of ideas with room to fill in, a more complete sketch from the beginning may have helped this dilemma.
Today I assembled my rooster showpiece and it was a definite learning experience. It had many components and some finishing that needed to be added after gluing most of the pieces together so it was a bit nerve wracking to make sure I was doing all the steps in order and to get it done in time. I was surprised at just how much the rainy weather and humidity affected the baked dead dough and how long it took for it to bake/ dry out enough to be sturdy. I was grateful I had some pieces that were extra to be used as I assembled and things fit together differently than what was imagined, including the pieces that were broken off or used as spacers during baking. These ended up becoming my support for some of the branches on my tree. Some pieces that were sturdy before it was humid, now benefited from the extra supports and hot glue as well. I think I could have gotten my assembly done more efficiently if I had reevaluated my initial sketch after “taking inventory” of all the finished components and comparing it to the overall picture.
time flies. its already day 7 and I feel like we havent done a lot of things but in actuality we finished our miche and i just have to present my chicken. i had a lot of small decorations that i had to make at home so i left class the previous day for the following day. when making the small components it was fine but when i got to some larger pieces i realized i didnt have enough dough to get the sizes i needed. the only thing i could think of was to make a core out of crushed foil and then wrap the dough around it. i was making "abstract sculptures" so the irregular textures worked out for this application but i dont know if you could get by doing this for something more conventional. i also tried making a moss texture by brushing syrup on my par baked base and then dusting it in spinach powder. it didnt come out the way i wanted it to exactly but it will still work i think. its a weird feeling completing a showpiece in this class because theres always another one around the corner, and the next one up is the marketing showpiece. our model was a little out there but we regrouped and fixed it and we feel pretty confident in it as a group which is interesting, because it takes a whole lot to get 4 people to agree on a creative concept. i just hope there will be enough time
yesterday was day 8 and we had to finish our roosters and work on our practical bread. out of the 4 people in my group there where 2 who needed more time on their roosters so me and my other group mate went and mixed our rum raisin brioche. we got it mixed and in the proofer, from there i attached the rooster to my base and was ready for its presentation. i was happy with it, i feel the theme was clear and it looked pretty dope however there was a lot of negative space on the left and right of the rooster which i guess i over looked. i was relying on using the same striped pattern that i weaved through the whole project to provide a cohesive color story which hopefully ties everything up together. our brioche was not proofing properly and to gif it that extra kick we put it in a proffer for 20 minuets at 120 degrees to help it get there. when it comes to this marketing showpiece i honestly have no idea how this is going to get done in one day its very overwhelming and i feel there was too much time for the other projects and not enough for this one. overall feeling very overwhelmed
tomorrow is day 9 and that means one thing, assembling the the marketing showpiece. i feel that we as a group are prepared which is good. everyone in my group went in on friday the extra day to work on stuff, i couldnt because of work so i felt guilty but my partner gave me dead dough so i could work on stuff at home. i worked on a rather large decoration which is a jukebox. it goes with our American dinner theme and our salute to sandwhich bread. it took sometime to figure it out, its such a large piece that if it was soild dough it would probably make the showpiece lean over so i made a skeletal structure out of crushed foil so its a lot lighter than it would have been otherwise. i pray that everything runs smoothly and that it all goes according to plan so we can put the last nail in this coffin
Today was day 4 and I am pretty satisfied with how today went. However, there were a few areas that we could improve on. First of all, when making our production schedule, we overlooked the fact that the pain rustique needed an autolyse. So, when we went into class, the production schedule that we made was already off. In addition, even though we scaled the final dough flour the day before, we had to rescale it because we did not separate the salt and the flour for the autolyse. This taught us that we should read through the formulas thoroughly and review the formulas the day before so that we have a general idea of what we need to mix. I was very satisfied with how our miches came out today. I think for the first dead dough showpiece, we did an amazing job. Some things I would definitely be careful for next time is to not overwork the dough to prevent bubbles from forming. Also, some of the pieces cracked, so I need to make sure it doesn’t dry out too much or be exposed to too much moisture when handling the dough. We finished our miches in a timely manner, however we were not able to start working on our roosters, which was unfortunate. I think that next time a more detailed production schedule is needed to avoid confusion or loss of time.
The Miche project was probably one of the first pieces we have been able to be completely creative on throughout my time here at JWU. It was nice to have free reign to do whatever we wanted, but at the same time, made it a bit more challenging to gage how long things would take and think how and when we could fit in baking our hearth breads and viennoserie items along with it. My group decided to go with a Christmas theme. We had good ideas, but I don’t think it came out quite the way we would have liked. Our "Dear Santa" letter needed to look more like a scroll, so we should have baked it with foil inside to help hold it up. If the time had be managed more efficiently, we probably could have added more words to the letter. I would have liked to give Santa, his sleigh, and the reindeers some height, but that would have taken quite a bit longer. I also should have made the bow in brown dough, because it doesn’t bubble quite as much.
My rooster was a disaster. I began this project with a Darth Vader rooster. The mask I was actually very proud of, but the rest just wasn’t coming together. I went home and changed a few things, but returning the following day, I saw a fellow classmate with a very similar model. Great minds think alike I guess. I decided to switch themes and go with Rapunzel, or Tangled, the Disney version. Let me just say that I envisioned it completely different in my mind. In my head there was a story. How the characters all went together, then bringing my showpiece together. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly translate when I began building the pieces. The planning started off well, but slowly went down-hill. Once I began finishing up the pieces and started building, I realized that nothing looked the way I had wanted it too and Repooster wouldn’t fit properly in her tower. The whole thing was just a mess. And to top it all off, I didn’t get to spray the piece in time, so they broke down the spraying station, which left my rooster inside the classroom. This lead to Repooster being knocked out of her tower and onto the floor in pieces. Chef Alexandr was kind enough to allow me to try to glue the pieces back during his freshman class that afternoon. Needless to say, I don’t think I will be getting the grade I desired for this showpiece.
It is day 8 and we are supposed to be prepping for our buffet presentation tomorrow. This is the first trial of the new P4 schedule, so things are a little hectic. Our dead dough showpiece is supposed to look like gears and metal beams. It’s then should hold our viennoserie items that we have been developing since segment 4. We have been working on a variation of the Miso Buns we made in Chef Miscovich's class. Through development, and many trials, we have turned them into a savory/sweet bun that is made with millet and cornmeal; filled with cream cheese, mace, honey, and cayenne. It's then topped with a cornmeal crumble and a honey glaze. We also have been developing a jalapeno cheddar bread that has really come a long way since we started out in segment four. It now has pickled jalapenos and cheddar cheese inside and on top and is smothered in an herb oil after baking. These two labs combined have taught us a lot about time management, preparation, thinking ahead, research, and if this particular medium is one that you may or may not want to pursue.
Day 4 Today was a learn day! We had to laminate our Danish dough and make our purple barley dough so Chef could try and bake the miche showpieces. I never used dead dough before, so working with it was different, but kind of easy. It reminded me of working with fondant. Baking the things were a little trickier because some of the pieces baked longer than they should have and some of them did not bake long enough, so I had to put them back into the oven. When making the purple barley the dough felt a little dry and tight but most time before making it was somewhat dry. When laminating the Danish dough, Chef came over to watch us sheet it out and we realized that the entire time we had been doing the lamination the wrong way and have not gotten a lot of layers because of it. Doing it the right way, changed our Danish dough design and shape so much better and prettier. When it came to shaping them, Chef showed us some new ways that we really liked. He also asked what would make me come to your bakery just to get bread? This really made me think about it. The shapes, I had been doing were very boring and simple, just a round circle with scoring, but the new shapes he showed us were different and unique
Day 6 . It was a very busy day today, but also at times it was slow waiting for things to be done. We made our purple barley preferment. When making our purple barley preferment, we tried something new this time. We added more purple barley so it would be in every bite and also be chewier and not so hard. Chef told us to cook it like you make rice with water, butter, and very little salt. We made pain rustique. When making the pain rustique and we had to divide it, we did not make them all the same size and thickness. We also waited too long after shaping them to put them into the oven, so they over fermented. When it came to baking them, there were so many we had to use three different deck ovens. Some of them cooked too fast, so they were darker than the others, which was not good, because they should all look alike. We also completed the final pieces for the rooster. This was not bad until it came to the football field and the columns. The football field lost color because it was in the oven too long, but it had to be in in there that long to become hard and solid. The back of the columns cracked when taking them off the pole, but luckily it was not that bad. I used hot glue and put it back together and it was still strong.
Today was a very hectic day. We had to make all of the pieces for the dessert showpiece. The good part was that all of the dead dough colors were already made in advance for the whole class which saved us a lot of time. We did it in a group of four instead of two, so there were four of us sheeting and cutting the pieces out. When we baked the pieces, three of them warped and the tip broke of off one. We were able to glue the tip back on. The other two were so unleveled that it would take more time sanding it down than just make them again. The new pieces we made came out so much better. The only bad part about re-making the pieces is that they were too hot to put the coffee pasta and chili powder on it to make it look rustic, so we have to wait until tomorrow to do it. When making the base of the showpiece, if you want it imprinted, you really have to push down on the rolling pin to make a good impression. On our piece, we did not push down hard enough and the imprint did not come out as good as we wanted it to. Due to the baking, the base had some bubbles, but there is nothing you can do about them. When we painted the base silver, the imprint stood out much better.
Today we finished the niche. It was hectic and we were afraid that some of the things would not fit how we wanted. Although, I was initially scared that we wouldn't have enough pieces we actually had more than enough. I think it would have been a lot more helpful to have had a sketch of the miche so we would have more of an idea were to place things. Overall, I liked the way our niche came out after a lot of contemplating where to place pieces.
on day 4 we finished our miche and it felt great. surprisingly it wasnt as hectic as i expected it to be considering we had to create two miche's instead of one since we're a group of three. everything on our miche was pretty steady, only thing chef was a bit worried about was out farmers market sign because it was tall in height and we didnt really put any support in the dough to keep it from topping over or breaking in half - so for next time maybe wrapping a wooden dowel in dough and baking it would make it more secure!!
on day one of our class, after scaling out everything for our miche - we had to rescale everything again because the preferment was left behind on the table and forgotten about. we did not notice it was not added in until the last stage of mixing ... oops. luckily we didnt fall behind but we made sure not to make that mistake again.
its day 7 and we finally finished our chickens - thank god. i have never felt so stressed out and annoyed with myself. overall im pretty content with how my end product looked but would definitely make some changes if i was able to. like keeping in mind the colors i have used for certain components of my piece and making sure things arent going to blend in. looking forward to buffet tomorrow.
Today my group finished both our miche, as a group of three we had to push through to stay on track and we did exactly that. We started off stressed with the number of things we had to complete today but we were able to accomplish it all and were happy with the final miche. Along with having to completely assemble two miche, we had a trail of our enriched product to do. Our enriched did not turn out exactly like we had thought it would but with the help of chef we came up with some things that we can try to make the product better.
Day 7: Yesterday was day 7 and I finished my rooster. I'm happy that I finished him, and he did have some good parts to him, however, if I could do it over I definitely would change quite a few things. Because we make the pieces separately I didn't realize some of the colors I used were from very similar to the same. My rooster, trees and base happened to be very similar in color which resulted in a little too much blending of everything. Overall though, I'm fairly happy with how he came out.
On a day full of playing with dead dough to get one step closer to finishing the rooster showpiece there was a hiccup in the end. Once all work for the day was done, almost done with all components for the showpiece, as well as another trial of our apple brioche, which was quite delicious and almost finalized, things then took a turn. Coming close to the end of clean up, moving tables back where they belong, a loud crash took over the room, that crash being a full sugar bin crashing directly onto my foot. What started as a normal day in lab ended in a night waiting for results at the hospital.
Stressed and tired from the night before, now having to come to class in a hospital issues shoe (non-slip of course), but rest assured I was ready to work through it, nothing to stop me. My group and I produce Pain Rustique, and continue to work of the rooster showpiece, I finish all components just in time for cleanup (steering clear of any falling bins). We complete clean up and stick around to finish the constructing of my rooster. Struggling greatly as there was a huge lack of cold spray. Blowing onto each attached piece to ensure it was on there as good as it could. In the end it worked out as well as it could and I was relieved and happy with the final product.
Day 6 of Labs~ Today my group and I made rosemary raisin suns as well as work on the different components for the rooster showpiece one important thing that i learned while making component today involved my column. The showpiece structurally is actually pretty simple, it just has a lot of embellishments and little details. One of which was the column, that was originally blank but now is a keyboard! The lesson arrived when i actually made the column. I made the column like normal rolling it through the sheeter and then rolling it through the sheeter. The problem comes in after i scored it to look like keys. It looked great, but all of the lines I cut into the dough we gonna crack once i baked them. Which would then lead to my showpiece collapsing. Unfortunately i learned this a little too late because the column was already forming a skin, and the clear solution is to just remake it. Well I like to say that God is like Nationwide, because he is on my side, and when i took the column off the copper tube, the inside was still soft and squishy. So much so that i could flatten it with no cracks. So I sheeted a fresh piece of tan and used it as a support for the column. It worked like a charm!
Day 8 of Labs~ Today I went in at 5 am to finish glueing together my Selena Showpiece. I knew that I needed the extra two hours to work on it and thank God I did, because when I pulled the sheet pan with my components i saw that the crown i had made was shattered into pieces. In retrospect I should have anticipated this whit how cold the weather was this past weekend. Plus the crown was on the thinner side. The extra hour gave me time to make more green dough to replace it. ( the crown is super important to my showpiece, it is inverted and ruffles and leaves get glued onto it to look like flowers being draped off the stage. The actual process of glueing the ruffles was very time consuming and i did it upside down out of fear of it being to heavy. Thank God I had nothing to worry about but the stress really did act as a safety net! In the end everything came out beautifully, however I wish that the white was more discernible form the tan.
Day 2. Just coming back from spring break it was a little hectic because there was a lot of demos . Day 2 was very stressful trying to get back into the 9 day cycle and being pushed to our limits. This experience will only make us better bakers in the future helping us with time management, and get our creative juices flowing.
ReplyDeleteTry and use this more as a reflection of what you have learned and can improve rather then a retelling of a story.
DeleteDay 5 Things are starting to move more smoothly. I feel like everyone is getting back into multi-tasking and time management. It is a lot easier to do more than one thing and still have time to do other things. Every second counts in this class that could be lost when getting side tracked. Once you come in at 6 or 6:30 I feel like the next time you look at the clock it is 11:30 and you need to start to clean up. It can be very stressful at times but once you are organized and work efficiently then there is nothing to worry about.
ReplyDeleteThink of stress as something that will become like breathing, you will not have to think about it since it will become second nature to all of us in the food industry.
DeleteI am so happy to have Chef Hitz teaching me in Advanced Decorative Breads. What I love about his him is his teaching style. He is very well organized, knows what should be done throughout the day & is very thorough about what he expects. Also what I love about his teaching techniques are when a group is doing a project, he calls all the students to the table & explains every step, & why he does things a certain way.
ReplyDeleteDay 1, Chef Hitz, showed us how to make a Miche showpiece. It came out amazing. All the small intrique details on the breads. Day 2, our group made rosemary raisin suns, which were delicious. We used the intensive mixing method. Chef Hitz told us that the next team making these, we would have to coach them. I am pretty confident to coach them. I can't wait until the next day to finally build our Miche showpiece. Our them is christmas. (:
Today we finished our Miche showpieces catastrophe-free, which was a little surprising. I usually feel so rushed (on some days it’s borderline panicked) in all my classes that I make mistakes with the task I’m doing at that moment because I’m already focusing on the task that’s coming up next. However, for this class there’s a more vague sort of urgency and I now understand the point of that is so that we can really put detail and thoughtfulness into our sub-pieces and where we place them.
ReplyDeleteI’m so glad we started off with the Miche, it’s a good way to introduce working with dead dough without the pressure of having to build vertically. I found it a little strange to think of a showpiece in 2D though, I wasn’t quite sure what was the appropriate height for the piece and what was too flat, so it made me second guess myself a lot while brainstorming ideas. I highly recommend Pintrest for inspiration and ideas.
I hate that we have this huge break right in the middle of the lab- it makes things feel more complicated and rushed when we get back. I’m telling myself I’m going to do as much prep work as possible before returning to school to ease the transition, I hope I can stick with it or I know I’ll regret it on Monday. I’m going to try to do most of the cut outs tonight before my enthusiasm wavers and my brains realizes I’m on holiday. I’m quite sure the key to surviving the next 6 days is always thinking and preparing a step ahead. Kind of starting to wonder why I don’t see more dead dough showpieces out in the real world, it’s so much easier to work with than chocolate or sugar, and while it’s not as sophisticated, it certainly has a homey sort of charm to it.
I’ve also decided that after standing outside of the CCCE in the cold two days in a row waiting for the building to open, I will now walk out of the Village at 6:00, that way I won’t freeze and I’ll only be 5 minutes “late”.
Day 1 was easy nothing bad happened Chef finished both of his showpieces with ease god only knows how. I pray that all of mine come out as good as his do.
ReplyDeleteDay 2 well lets just say its a good thing mixing dead dough doesn't involve a lot of ingredients haha. While I was mixing the dough I felt that it was quite dry so I added some more syrup just little drop but still felt it was dry so I added more...needless to say it was a bit too much and the dough had to be thrown out. From that experience now I know that a small amount of syrup goes a very long way and you just need to put a lot of elbow grease into it while kneading the dough and it will come together perfectly.
So today ended up being a Sunday lab so we could get everything done. I finished my rooster and I'm proud to say it did NOT collapse or break at all while moving it or putting it together so I must have done something right. There are many things I would have changed on the piece itself especially color wise but I didn't notice these things until the piece was put together. One thing i should've done was put all of my piece together in a model fashion and see how the colors blend together and if they didn't look right change them before it was too late. My column also did not turn out the way i wanted it to be but there were some difficulties with baking and sizing. My overall concept was shown throughout the piece and could be easily understood which was a good sign and made me very happy but as the creator and artist of the piece I notice every detail that should be changed and that I should have done differently.
ReplyDeleteToday was day 7 and I have finished my miche showpiece and to be honest it wasn't exactly what i wanted it to be but it still looked beautiful. The overall concept was Earth Day and no where on the piece was that concept drawn out except for the Earth in the middle. The theme that was being shown was more spring time and when I realized this as we were putting the pieces together I told my partner that we should rethink the concept and change the center piece so that it fits the theme more. Although all of the detailed pieces were well done and pretty it did not suit the theme. We should have done more research and developed a better design all together for the final showpiece.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the production of these 7 days my teams products have come out quite good and very delicious. There were a few mistakes on some products such as not sugaring the top of the pumpkin brioche and slightly over proofing the rosemary raisin suns everything was great. Little problems such as those tend to be due to the fact of having so many people in the kitchen and all using the same oven at the same time, proofing at the same time and also focusing on your showpieces as well. Overall I am very happy with the way my team's production has come out over the past 7 days.
Day four and I'm ready to move into the freezer. I'd forgotten how quickly a 9 day lab goes by because boy howdy do I not feel prepared for the rest of this week. Today I spent a while kicking myself in the butt for not photographing more of the process of building the miche showpiece while also trying to organize myself into photographing the pieces for the rooster as I built them. I'm really hoping that the pieces for the rooster all come together in the end because I sometimes feel like I've left class having accomplished less than when I walked in at 6a. Tomorrow my group is making rum raisin brioche for the first time and I'm rather nervous due to the constant reminder from chef that they ferment slower than molasses in January. We cannot afford a mistake which doubles up production the next day. We've made it this far, we just need to continue juggling the 17 irons in the fire and all will be well. We may get burned a few times but I've faith it'll all work itself out in the end.
ReplyDeleteWalking into the first day of class, I was expecting it to be tough. I knew that it was going to be an early day, and a rather long day. One of the most stressful things for me was to nail down one solid idea for my rooster showpiece. I could be classic and go with a Christmas theme or a farm theme but I really wanted to think outside of the box. I wanted to make my rooster into something that I knew was unique but something that I could also make sure I had plenty of details to help me cover my piece. Something that I struggle with is making sure that I don't overcrowd a piece when I am creating it. I have the tendency to fill the space. In some applications, that is good, I have yet to run into a problem of crowding because the amount of detail I place on a piece just works. One thing I definitely learned from was to prepare for this class and really sketch and make a list of everything you want to make. It really helped me from letting my mind wander and helped me with having plenty of time to build my rooster. My decided theme was Dwight from The Office.
ReplyDeleteDay 4 was a big transition. My group was transitioning from working on the rooster individually to working on the Miche in partners. Balancing the work on the decorations was so much easier between myself and my partner, however, we both wanted a chance to make the groups doughs so we both wanted to be in the center of that so we definitely put off our Miche until everything was done. On day 5, we definitely found the proper balance between making sure we were both involved in each process, working together very smoothly. A mistake that I leaned from today was when we were making the pumpkin brioche, we added the butter too fast. This made us have to focus a majority of our attention that day on the dough to see if it would work out. In the end, we were able to successfully turn the dough into a beautiful product and finish all of our decorations for our miche so we have a majority of day 6 to glue.
ReplyDeleteProcrastination will be the death of most assignments. Luckily, I have been picking away at the homework assignment. My partner and I were so far ahead in designing our piece, we had almost a full class day to focus on designing and detailing our marketing piece. During the last few days of class, focusing on designing the final piece, I definitely neglected the ending of my homework project and not it is left for the weekend. Do not procrastinate...
ReplyDeleteToday I made the realization that my vision for my rooster showpiece was a bit larger than the time to complete it, given my tendency to focus on fine details. This always takes up more time that isn’t always available. Now I have a large framework to fill in with a small amount of time left including the assembly and gluing (with regular production as well). I suppose I was being overly optimistic in thinking I could get it all done in time with the detail I want considering this is a new medium to work with. The learning curve takes time. I think it should come together alright, though now I’m really understanding Chef’s statement along the lines of: when is art ever really finished?
ReplyDeleteEven though I had many partial sketches of ideas with room to fill in, a more complete sketch from the beginning may have helped this dilemma.
Today I assembled my rooster showpiece and it was a definite learning experience. It had many components and some finishing that needed to be added after gluing most of the pieces together so it was a bit nerve wracking to make sure I was doing all the steps in order and to get it done in time. I was surprised at just how much the rainy weather and humidity affected the baked dead dough and how long it took for it to bake/ dry out enough to be sturdy. I was grateful I had some pieces that were extra to be used as I assembled and things fit together differently than what was imagined, including the pieces that were broken off or used as spacers during baking. These ended up becoming my support for some of the branches on my tree. Some pieces that were sturdy before it was humid, now benefited from the extra supports and hot glue as well. I think I could have gotten my assembly done more efficiently if I had reevaluated my initial sketch after “taking inventory” of all the finished components and comparing it to the overall picture.
ReplyDeletetime flies. its already day 7 and I feel like we havent done a lot of things but in actuality we finished our miche and i just have to present my chicken. i had a lot of small decorations that i had to make at home so i left class the previous day for the following day. when making the small components it was fine but when i got to some larger pieces i realized i didnt have enough dough to get the sizes i needed. the only thing i could think of was to make a core out of crushed foil and then wrap the dough around it. i was making "abstract sculptures" so the irregular textures worked out for this application but i dont know if you could get by doing this for something more conventional. i also tried making a moss texture by brushing syrup on my par baked base and then dusting it in spinach powder. it didnt come out the way i wanted it to exactly but it will still work i think. its a weird feeling completing a showpiece in this class because theres always another one around the corner, and the next one up is the marketing showpiece. our model was a little out there but we regrouped and fixed it and we feel pretty confident in it as a group which is interesting, because it takes a whole lot to get 4 people to agree on a creative concept. i just hope there will be enough time
ReplyDeleteyesterday was day 8 and we had to finish our roosters and work on our practical bread. out of the 4 people in my group there where 2 who needed more time on their roosters so me and my other group mate went and mixed our rum raisin brioche. we got it mixed and in the proofer, from there i attached the rooster to my base and was ready for its presentation. i was happy with it, i feel the theme was clear and it looked pretty dope however there was a lot of negative space on the left and right of the rooster which i guess i over looked. i was relying on using the same striped pattern that i weaved through the whole project to provide a cohesive color story which hopefully ties everything up together. our brioche was not proofing properly and to gif it that extra kick we put it in a proffer for 20 minuets at 120 degrees to help it get there. when it comes to this marketing showpiece i honestly have no idea how this is going to get done in one day its very overwhelming and i feel there was too much time for the other projects and not enough for this one. overall feeling very overwhelmed
ReplyDeletetomorrow is day 9 and that means one thing, assembling the the marketing showpiece. i feel that we as a group are prepared which is good. everyone in my group went in on friday the extra day to work on stuff, i couldnt because of work so i felt guilty but my partner gave me dead dough so i could work on stuff at home. i worked on a rather large decoration which is a jukebox. it goes with our American dinner theme and our salute to sandwhich bread. it took sometime to figure it out, its such a large piece that if it was soild dough it would probably make the showpiece lean over so i made a skeletal structure out of crushed foil so its a lot lighter than it would have been otherwise. i pray that everything runs smoothly and that it all goes according to plan so we can put the last nail in this coffin
ReplyDeleteToday was day 4 and I am pretty satisfied with how today went. However, there were a few areas that we could improve on. First of all, when making our production schedule, we overlooked the fact that the pain rustique needed an autolyse. So, when we went into class, the production schedule that we made was already off. In addition, even though we scaled the final dough flour the day before, we had to rescale it because we did not separate the salt and the flour for the autolyse. This taught us that we should read through the formulas thoroughly and review the formulas the day before so that we have a general idea of what we need to mix.
ReplyDeleteI was very satisfied with how our miches came out today. I think for the first dead dough showpiece, we did an amazing job. Some things I would definitely be careful for next time is to not overwork the dough to prevent bubbles from forming. Also, some of the pieces cracked, so I need to make sure it doesn’t dry out too much or be exposed to too much moisture when handling the dough. We finished our miches in a timely manner, however we were not able to start working on our roosters, which was unfortunate. I think that next time a more detailed production schedule is needed to avoid confusion or loss of time.
The Miche project was probably one of the first pieces we have been able to be completely creative on throughout my time here at JWU. It was nice to have free reign to do whatever we wanted, but at the same time, made it a bit more challenging to gage how long things would take and think how and when we could fit in baking our hearth breads and viennoserie items along with it. My group decided to go with a Christmas theme. We had good ideas, but I don’t think it came out quite the way we would have liked. Our "Dear Santa" letter needed to look more like a scroll, so we should have baked it with foil inside to help hold it up. If the time had be managed more efficiently, we probably could have added more words to the letter. I would have liked to give Santa, his sleigh, and the reindeers some height, but that would have taken quite a bit longer. I also should have made the bow in brown dough, because it doesn’t bubble quite as much.
ReplyDeleteMy rooster was a disaster. I began this project with a Darth Vader rooster. The mask I was actually very proud of, but the rest just wasn’t coming together. I went home and changed a few things, but returning the following day, I saw a fellow classmate with a very similar model. Great minds think alike I guess. I decided to switch themes and go with Rapunzel, or Tangled, the Disney version. Let me just say that I envisioned it completely different in my mind. In my head there was a story. How the characters all went together, then bringing my showpiece together. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly translate when I began building the pieces. The planning started off well, but slowly went down-hill. Once I began finishing up the pieces and started building, I realized that nothing looked the way I had wanted it too and Repooster wouldn’t fit properly in her tower. The whole thing was just a mess. And to top it all off, I didn’t get to spray the piece in time, so they broke down the spraying station, which left my rooster inside the classroom. This lead to Repooster being knocked out of her tower and onto the floor in pieces. Chef Alexandr was kind enough to allow me to try to glue the pieces back during his freshman class that afternoon. Needless to say, I don’t think I will be getting the grade I desired for this showpiece.
ReplyDeleteIt is day 8 and we are supposed to be prepping for our buffet presentation tomorrow. This is the first trial of the new P4 schedule, so things are a little hectic. Our dead dough showpiece is supposed to look like gears and metal beams. It’s then should hold our viennoserie items that we have been developing since segment 4. We have been working on a variation of the Miso Buns we made in Chef Miscovich's class. Through development, and many trials, we have turned them into a savory/sweet bun that is made with millet and cornmeal; filled with cream cheese, mace, honey, and cayenne. It's then topped with a cornmeal crumble and a honey glaze. We also have been developing a jalapeno cheddar bread that has really come a long way since we started out in segment four. It now has pickled jalapenos and cheddar cheese inside and on top and is smothered in an herb oil after baking. These two labs combined have taught us a lot about time management, preparation, thinking ahead, research, and if this particular medium is one that you may or may not want to pursue.
ReplyDeleteDay 4
ReplyDeleteToday was a learn day! We had to laminate our Danish dough and make our purple barley dough so Chef could try and bake the miche showpieces. I never used dead dough before, so working with it was different, but kind of easy. It reminded me of working with fondant. Baking the things were a little trickier because some of the pieces baked longer than they should have and some of them did not bake long enough, so I had to put them back into the oven. When making the purple barley the dough felt a little dry and tight but most time before making it was somewhat dry.
When laminating the Danish dough, Chef came over to watch us sheet it out and we realized that the entire time we had been doing the lamination the wrong way and have not gotten a lot of layers because of it. Doing it the right way, changed our Danish dough design and shape so much better and prettier. When it came to shaping them, Chef showed us some new ways that we really liked. He also asked what would make me come to your bakery just to get bread? This really made me think about it. The shapes, I had been doing were very boring and simple, just a round circle with scoring, but the new shapes he showed us were different and unique
Day 6
ReplyDelete.
It was a very busy day today, but also at times it was slow waiting for things to be done. We made our purple barley preferment. When making our purple barley preferment, we tried something new this time. We added more purple barley so it would be in every bite and also be chewier and not so hard. Chef told us to cook it like you make rice with water, butter, and very little salt.
We made pain rustique. When making the pain rustique and we had to divide it, we did not make them all the same size and thickness. We also waited too long after shaping them to put them into the oven, so they over fermented. When it came to baking them, there were so many we had to use three different deck ovens. Some of them cooked too fast, so they were darker than the others, which was not good, because they should all look alike.
We also completed the final pieces for the rooster. This was not bad until it came to the football field and the columns. The football field lost color because it was in the oven too long, but it had to be in in there that long to become hard and solid. The back of the columns cracked when taking them off the pole, but luckily it was not that bad. I used hot glue and put it back together and it was still strong.
Day 8
ReplyDeleteToday was a very hectic day. We had to make all of the pieces for the dessert showpiece. The good part was that all of the dead dough colors were already made in advance for the whole class which saved us a lot of time. We did it in a group of four instead of two, so there were four of us sheeting and cutting the pieces out.
When we baked the pieces, three of them warped and the tip broke of off one. We were able to glue the tip back on. The other two were so unleveled that it would take more time sanding it down than just make them again. The new pieces we made came out so much better. The only bad part about re-making the pieces is that they were too hot to put the coffee pasta and chili powder on it to make it look rustic, so we have to wait until tomorrow to do it.
When making the base of the showpiece, if you want it imprinted, you really have to push down on the rolling pin to make a good impression. On our piece, we did not push down hard enough and the imprint did not come out as good as we wanted it to. Due to the baking, the base had some bubbles, but there is nothing you can do about them. When we painted the base silver, the imprint stood out much better.
Today we finished the niche. It was hectic and we were afraid that some of the things would not fit how we wanted. Although, I was initially scared that we wouldn't have enough pieces we actually had more than enough. I think it would have been a lot more helpful to have had a sketch of the miche so we would have more of an idea were to place things. Overall, I liked the way our niche came out after a lot of contemplating where to place pieces.
ReplyDeleteon day 4 we finished our miche and it felt great. surprisingly it wasnt as hectic as i expected it to be considering we had to create two miche's instead of one since we're a group of three. everything on our miche was pretty steady, only thing chef was a bit worried about was out farmers market sign because it was tall in height and we didnt really put any support in the dough to keep it from topping over or breaking in half - so for next time maybe wrapping a wooden dowel in dough and baking it would make it more secure!!
ReplyDeleteon day one of our class, after scaling out everything for our miche - we had to rescale everything again because the preferment was left behind on the table and forgotten about. we did not notice it was not added in until the last stage of mixing ... oops. luckily we didnt fall behind but we made sure not to make that mistake again.
ReplyDeleteits day 7 and we finally finished our chickens - thank god. i have never felt so stressed out and annoyed with myself. overall im pretty content with how my end product looked but would definitely make some changes if i was able to. like keeping in mind the colors i have used for certain components of my piece and making sure things arent going to blend in. looking forward to buffet tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteDay 4
ReplyDeleteToday my group finished both our miche, as a group of three we had to push through to stay on track and we did exactly that. We started off stressed with the number of things we had to complete today but we were able to accomplish it all and were happy with the final miche. Along with having to completely assemble two miche, we had a trail of our enriched product to do. Our enriched did not turn out exactly like we had thought it would but with the help of chef we came up with some things that we can try to make the product better.
Day 7:
ReplyDeleteYesterday was day 7 and I finished my rooster. I'm happy that I finished him, and he did have some good parts to him, however, if I could do it over I definitely would change quite a few things. Because we make the pieces separately I didn't realize some of the colors I used were from very similar to the same. My rooster, trees and base happened to be very similar in color which resulted in a little too much blending of everything. Overall though, I'm fairly happy with how he came out.
Day 6
ReplyDeleteOn a day full of playing with dead dough to get one step closer to finishing the rooster showpiece there was a hiccup in the end. Once all work for the day was done, almost done with all components for the showpiece, as well as another trial of our apple brioche, which was quite delicious and almost finalized, things then took a turn. Coming close to the end of clean up, moving tables back where they belong, a loud crash took over the room, that crash being a full sugar bin crashing directly onto my foot. What started as a normal day in lab ended in a night waiting for results at the hospital.
Day 7
ReplyDeleteStressed and tired from the night before, now having to come to class in a hospital issues shoe (non-slip of course), but rest assured I was ready to work through it, nothing to stop me. My group and I produce Pain Rustique, and continue to work of the rooster showpiece, I finish all components just in time for cleanup (steering clear of any falling bins). We complete clean up and stick around to finish the constructing of my rooster. Struggling greatly as there was a huge lack of cold spray. Blowing onto each attached piece to ensure it was on there as good as it could. In the end it worked out as well as it could and I was relieved and happy with the final product.
Day 6 of Labs~ Today my group and I made rosemary raisin suns as well as work on the different components for the rooster showpiece one important thing that i learned while making component today involved my column. The showpiece structurally is actually pretty simple, it just has a lot of embellishments and little details. One of which was the column, that was originally blank but now is a keyboard! The lesson arrived when i actually made the column. I made the column like normal rolling it through the sheeter and then rolling it through the sheeter. The problem comes in after i scored it to look like keys. It looked great, but all of the lines I cut into the dough we gonna crack once i baked them. Which would then lead to my showpiece collapsing. Unfortunately i learned this a little too late because the column was already forming a skin, and the clear solution is to just remake it. Well I like to say that God is like Nationwide, because he is on my side, and when i took the column off the copper tube, the inside was still soft and squishy. So much so that i could flatten it with no cracks. So I sheeted a fresh piece of tan and used it as a support for the column. It worked like a charm!
ReplyDeleteDay 8 of Labs~ Today I went in at 5 am to finish glueing together my Selena Showpiece. I knew that I needed the extra two hours to work on it and thank God I did, because when I pulled the sheet pan with my components i saw that the crown i had made was shattered into pieces. In retrospect I should have anticipated this whit how cold the weather was this past weekend. Plus the crown was on the thinner side. The extra hour gave me time to make more green dough to replace it. ( the crown is super important to my showpiece, it is inverted and ruffles and leaves get glued onto it to look like flowers being draped off the stage. The actual process of glueing the ruffles was very time consuming and i did it upside down out of fear of it being to heavy. Thank God I had nothing to worry about but the stress really did act as a safety net! In the end everything came out beautifully, however I wish that the white was more discernible form the tan.
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