I'll spare you the pain of going through each of these first three classes in detail. Suffice it to say they were pretty painful. With all of my home baking experience, I felt like this program would be a piece of cake (that idiom finds no better use than here), but I was so wrong. My blood pressure rose before every practical class to the point where I started to question my reasons for being here. I got so nervous about making a mistake, that I worked painstakingly slowly, to the point where someone watching me would want to scream in frustration. To tell you the truth, I am writing these posts about Basic Pastry months after the fact; from the viewing seat of Superior Pastry. And I can say without a doubt that I was a serious mess when I started.
Lesson 1 was all about different types of dough; we had to make 2 sweet (Pate Sablee and Pate Sucree) and one dry (Pate Brisee) within 2.5 hours. Sounds like a breeze? It wasn't. We didn't even have to roll them out and we barely finished on time. I messed up the first one I tried by not mixing the egg in enough. The sugar started to burn the yolks, so I had to painstakingly work it back together. I don't even want to talk about the pate brisee with it sanding technique. Pah! Chef J said that we could make the sable nantais cookies with the sablee dough, but it didn't even cross my mind.
Lesson 2 was an introduction to sponge: genoise and ladyfinger; dacquoise was only touched upon in demo. It was also an introduction to our balloon whisk, the single most heinous torture device known to basic pastry students. My arm still aches in memory of the whisking I used to do. For everything we do in basic pastry needs to be done by hand. Literally. Just wait until lesson 3 for that to sink in... Anyway, this class I actually had time to make 2 genoise cakes and the requisite ladyfingers. I had made ladyfingers at home and expected it to be just as easy. So wrong. My piping was such a mess!
Lesson 3 was all about different types of creams. We had to make italian meringue, pastry cream, ganache, almond cream, creme anglaise and italian meringue again, if time enough. There wasn't. The thing I mentioned about doing everything by hand? Well, that meant testing the sugar for the italian meringue with our bare hands. No thermometers allowed. And that sugar has to reach a soaring temperature of 121 degrees Celcius. Ouch. We all saw Chef J doing this in demo class and winced in sympathy. It actually wasn't that bad, if you cooled your fingers enough in ice water before submerging them in the hot syrup. And if you're quick enough about grabbing a sample. This class is also a fair example of how slow I was: two girls beside me starting making their creme anglaise at exactly the same time. They scrambled theirs and had to start again and were both finished by the time I finished my first batch. I was so nervous of overcooking it that I kept the temperature ridiculously low.
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