Today started with another full agenda: more puff pastry work, Bavarian cream, parfaits, Sacher tortes and pastry cream. If some of that sounded like I was speaking another language, don't worry, keep reading and all will be explained!

Yesterday, we made the dough portion of our puff pastry - the "le detrempe." Today it was time to make our butter block - the "le beurrage." We started off by using a European butter - which has a higher fat content (about 83%) than regular butter. Butter is made up of two things: fat and water. When you bake with butter, the fat melts and the water becomes steam, which creates rise, or the "puff" (hence, puff pastry). It's essentially your leavener, whereas in cakes you might rely on meringue (as we did yesterday with the chiffon cake) or using a chemical agent, like baking powder. But you want to get just the right amount of puff - so for puff pastry, it's important to use European butter, because it has higher fat content, thus a lower amount of water and it results in giving you just the right amount of steam.

European butter - has a higher fat content and is optimal for puff pastry

We measured out our butter and then began beating it down into a four by four inch square. This is rather fun to do - especially if you've had a bad day and need to let out some aggression!

Next, we rolled out our dough just large enough so that we could fold it over our butter block and fully encase it, like an envelope.

A perfect puff pastry dough package - no butter peeking out anywhere!

Then it was time to start making the puff pastry magic. The way that puff pastry gets its layers is through a process of rolling out the dough, folding it on top of each other and repeating at least 4 times. At the beginning, we had three total layers: dough, butter and dough. Once we started folding and rolling it out, the layers grew exponentially. Most classic puff pastries get almost up to a thousand layers!

When starting out, we learned it's important for the dough and the butter to be about the same temperature and consistency. Think back to when you've tried to spread cold butter on a piece of bread - basically, it doesn't spread and you end up tearing the bread. Same principle applies here. By having the dough and butter at the same temperature, they play along with each other very nicely. To help tenderize the cold butter and make it more pliable (without making it warmer), we learned to firmly tap on top of the dough package with our rolling pin to help soften things up before starting to roll it out.

Once it was a bit more pliable, we rolled the dough out into a long rectangle with a short side closest to us. Then folded it into thirds (top folded down and then bottom folded up), turned the dough so that the short end was again closest to us and rolled it out again. Then we folded it one more time into thirds. By this time, the butter had gotten too soft to keep working with it, so the pastry went back into the fridge to chill.

First rolling out of the dough to 8 x16 inches

Here's my dough after two single folds (two rounds of rolling out and folding like a business letter). At this point, we have 19 layers!

After the second fold - 19 layers of doughy, buttery goodness!

While our puff pastry dough was chilling, we turned to the chiffon cakes we made yesterday. It was time to take them out of the pan and cut one of the cakes into small cubes. The other cake is being set aside for us to work with on Day 4.

Cubes of chiffon cake for Bavarian cream parfaits

Once we had our cake cut into cubes, we focused on making our Bavarian cream. This is a mousse-like cream that is thickened with gelatin vs. corn starch or egg. We also added some fresh fruit puree to the mixture to give it a great flavor. Then we built individual parfaits layering cubes of chiffon cake with raspberry or mango puree and throwing in some fresh blueberries as well. I don't think they look the prettiest - nor did they seem to taste super great. But once they had a chance to set up in the fridge, the flavors really gelled together and this was quite the delightful and refreshing dessert.

Our individual Bavarian parfaits - mine are the pink ones, Mom's are the pink and yellow ones (she wins the presentation points!)

While the parfaits chilled, it was time to move onto something chocolatey (yum!) - a Sacher (SOCK-er) torte. It's a traditional Viennese cake filled with apricot jam and covered in a chocolate glaze. Similar to the chiffon cake, we had a batter made with fat, butter, egg yolks, sugar and flour - and in this case, also chocolate - and then had a separate mixture of whipped egg whites and sugar. Again, this cake relied on leavening from the air in the creamed butter and sugar, the air in the sifted flour and the air in the whipped egg whites. Once the two mixtures were folded together, it was into the pan and then the oven to bake. We'll see those cakes again tomorrow for the final assembly.

Folding the egg whites into the chocolate cake batter

The last thing we did today was make the pastry cream for the Napoleon pastries we'll complete tomorrow (that's the treat that all this puff pastry work is building to). And speaking of, we had a bit more turning and folding of our puff pastry dough to do before the end of the day. We turned and folded our dough a few more times until we had a total of 289 layers (if we were to roll and fold it one more time, we'd have over 1,000 layers!).

But back to the pastry cream. This is a delicious cooked custard that is comprised of milk, sugar and eggs and is thickened with corn starch. We started by boiling milk and sugar together (by adding sugar to the milk, it helps keep it from scorching on the bottom of the pan). Meanwhile, whisked together cornstarch, sugar and salt and then added eggs. Once the milk was ready, we tempered the egg mixture by adding a little bit of the hot milk and stirring it and then adding the egg mixture to the rest of the hot milk. When eggs meet heat, they start to cook right away. So if we were to have poured all the egg mixture straight into the hot milk, we would have had a scrambled mess and there would be no way of correcting it. So adding a little bit of hot milk to the eggs, it eases them into the heat and keeps the overall mixture smooth. Then, while constantly stirring, we heated the pastry cream until it was boiling in order to activate the corn starch and its fullest thickening potential.

Everything was going great until we tasted the cream - and it just wasn't right. We could really taste the corn starch in it (not pleasant) and were kind of bummed that we had gotten this wrong. Our instructor had enough extra ingredients for us to try again - so back to the beginning we went.

Since we were making a double batch of the pastry cream, we thought we had maybe measured the corn starch wrong (which was Mom's job). Turns out, we measured the milk wrong, using only the amount for a single batch - not a double. So we had half the liquid we needed - no wonder it tasted like corn starch! Well, measuring the milk had been MY job - so this mistake was squarely on my shoulders...oops! At least we were able to try again and get a MUCH more satisfactory result!

The BAD pastry cream on the left...the CORRECT pastry cream on the right

Tomorrow, we get to actually bake the puff pastry and assemble our Napoleons as well as finish making the Sacher tortes. Looking forward to sharing tomorrow's learnings with you! Here's to no more near-fiascos and accurate measuring!

After four years away, I'm finally back at King Arthur Flour for a four-day baking "camp" or "bake-cation" as a fellow student called it! This time, it's all about pastry, and I brought my mom along with me!

The baking education center where we learn all the things

We arrived at King Arthur's beautiful campus a bit early to scope out their store and grab a bite to eat in the cafe before class began at noon. We were then greeted by our instructor Melanie and her co-instructor Sharon and got settled into our work stations.

First on the agenda was to make a tender tart dough that was going to be the base for some lemon tartlets. When making dough for tart crusts, you can either take the fresh dough and press it into the tart or chill the dough for about an hour, roll it out and then form it into your tart pan. Since we were going to be making two 4-inch tartlets, I decided to give both methods a try and then compare and contrast as we went along.

Trying out two methods of forming tart shells: pressed and rolled

Once our dough was chilling, we moved on to the next recipe: a vanilla chiffon cake. We learned that, unlike most pastries, which have their origins in Europe, the chiffon cake is purely an American invention and was developed in the 1920s. It combines the essence of a sponge cake and an oil cake so that you get the lightness of a sponge with the tenderness of an oil cake.

Aerating and lightening your ingredients is important at nearly every stage. Dry ingredients are sifted twice to ensure even distribution of the ingredients and to aerate them for lightness. The egg whites are whipped to stiff peaks and the added sugar helps aerate the egg whites into a perfect meringue while the cream of tartar provides stabilization. Side note: learned the fascinating history of cream of tartar - it comes from the crystals that grow in wine casks and is then ground into a powder after fermentation!

Chiffon cake in-the-making: egg white meringue on the left to be folded into oil/egg/flour batter on the right — Chiffon cake in-the-making: egg white meringue on the left to be folded into oil/egg/flour batter on the right

Once we had our dry ingredients mixed with some oil, egg yolks and vanilla, we carefully folded in the egg whites until we had a nice thick batter and then divided into two cake pans. They were baked in a walk-in oven (at least 6 people could fit in there, if you tried!) and were set aside for us to use in other recipes on Day 2 and Day 4.

After the chiffon cake, we started in on puff pastry. Traditionally, a well-made puff pastry takes THREE days to make! We started with just the first part, the dough or the "le detrempe". We started with 3 simple ingredients: flour, salt and butter. We worked the butter into the flour and then added cold water to form the dough. This is a similar process to making biscuits, scones or pie crust. But then we kneaded the dough to form more of its gluten structure. Once we had our ball of dough - off to the fridge it went to chill overnight - we'll see it again tomorrow.

First stage of puff pastry - the le detrempe

Then it was back to our tartlets - this time to prep them for blind baking (a fancy way of saying we're going to bake the crust without any filling). But in order to make sure the dough doesn't puff up in the middle or slide down the sides, we filled them with beans to help keep the dough in place. The crusts were baked with the beans for about 8-10 minutes and then removed and back in the oven for another 8-10 minutes, until fully baked and the edges and bottoms were browned.

Baked tartlet shells - ready for filling!

Last, but not least, we made our lemon curd filling. I've tried making lemon curd before - and to not very great result. So I was eager to learn the secret to a good lemon curd. Turns out it's patience and quite a bit of butter. The curd was made with fresh lemon zest and lemon juice along with some sugar and eggs. It was then cooked over a double boiler until the egg mixture reached 175 degrees and just started to thicken. Then the bowl was removed from the heat and we started adding in 6 ounces of cold butter, one cube at a time. It probably took about 10 minutes to get all of the butter added in and fully melted and incorporated. Then we poured the curd into our shells and let them set up in the refrigerator before decorating with some fresh whipped cream and local, hand-picked blueberries.

We learned a lot today and covered a range of techniques: creaming, foaming, laminating and thickening. We started on the makings of several recipes for which we'll build on in the upcoming days and we had our fully completed lemon tartlets to take home and enjoy for dessert (and breakfast tomorrow!)

Come back tomorrow to see what we learned on Day 2!

King Arthur Flour Bake-cation: Day 2

King Arthur Flour Bake-cation: Day 1