CordonBlues’ blog

Celebrating Canada Day, I'm wondering what is Canadian food? I would define it as food enjoyed by all that is local, simple, and fresh. On the baking and pastry side of gastronomy, what comes to mind first is pancakes drenched with maple syrup and topped off with butter – even better, blueberry pancakes. I believe this is the stuff that Canadians eat, morning or night, rain or shine, for any occasion. Other items that are authentically Canadian: butter tart, the close cousin sugar pie from the “belle provence,” Nanaimo bars, apple pie with a good piece of cheddar cheese, other pies: pumpkin or Saskatoon pies, doughnuts, and of course, and oatmeal cookies that dates back to 1892. Strawberry shortcake only because it has the colours of the Canadian flag, I really don’t know if it’s truly Canadian.

On the cuisine side, signature Canadian dishes would have to include these ingredients and more: pork, bacon, salmon, smoked salmon, lobster, bison, and, of course, PEI potatoes. Sauces would have to include Saskatoon berries, wild blueberries, maple syrup, and pickles. Tortière is a meat pie originating from Quebec, usually made with ground pork and/or veal or beef --I think it is the quintessential Canadian food, so is Newfoundland Cod Cakes, all not loved by my family for various reasons. 

Bannick, perogies and wild rice would make the list of all-time great Canadian food. And of course, Quebec’s gastronomic contribution to Canadian cuisine: poutine. The holy trinity of fries, gravy and cheese curds. One more from Quebec: Montreal-style bagels, they are the best in the world!

For drinks, we have Canadian Rye Whiskey (sours are my favourites, can’t drink the smell of straight-up whiskey—pew!), beer, ice wine and apple cider.  Wines from BC and Ontario are good. Labrador tea, I’ve never tried by wouldn’t mind a sip or two, supposedly tastes like Jasmine tea.

 

Happy Maple Syrup! 

Paid off in tunes---here’s the deal, thanks to my hard work in the intensive Baking and Pastry Program, I have been invited by the College to be on a team of chefs for the Bluesfest, here in Ottawa. In return for my cooking time I get free passes to all the shows at the Bluesfest. I wonder who I will meet?  The schedule of artists is impressive. I will definitely like to see Stars, one of my favourite bands right now.  A Montreal indie rock band that is smart, wistful and ironic. Their music says the world is not reliable -- all the living are dead and all the dead are all living. Perfectly said in “In Our Bedroom After the War.” I love all the songs sung by Amy Millan——The Night Starts Here, My Favourite Book, Window Word, and more.

The other band I would like to see is Wintersleep from Halifax. Not all of their songs blow me away, but I really like the song "Weighty Ghost."

Clafouti is a rustic, no-fuss French country dessert that takes less than one hour to make. This is simply custard that is poured over fruit. Cherries are traditional, but you can use berries, figs—I used pears. You can even combine fruit as well. If you are using cherries and leaving the cherry pits--I strongly recommend warning your guests. This lovely confection can be served warm or cold, for breakfast or for dessert. How versatile is that?

I’ve never had this before, but when I took one bite of this, all I can say “ravissant.”

Here is a clafouti recipe—it’s a bit sweet. Next time I make it I will reduce the sugar level, nothing bad will happen to the recipe. You can add any kind of flavour vanilla, Grand Marnier, and orange zest.

While you poach the pears, you can prepare the custard sauce.

Directions: In a large pot, combine water, sugar and cinnamon stick, and bring to a boil. Peel the pears, leaving stems intact, cut them half, take out the core and place into the hot syrup for up to 15 minutes or until pears are soft.  To poach evenly, stir occasionally and keep them submerged. Cover the pot with parchment paper. If you are using the same day, let them cool down before using them. If you are not, keep the pears in the syrup cover with saran wrap and refrigerate.

 

Directions: Blend dry ingredients together. Whisk liquids together and combine to the dry ingredients.

This is easy to assemble: using a paring knife, thinly slice pears and push them forward from bottom to the top to have them overlap. Place fruit evenly into the glass baking dish and cover with custard sauce just to the top of the pears so that the pattern is revealed. Place the dsh in a hot water bath until the water comes about halfway up the sides (just like if you were making a crème brulee). Bake at 375 F/200 C for about 40 minutes. It should be firm when it is done. Remove from the water bath and let cool 15 minutes. Tightly cover with saran wrap, make sure the plastic does not touch the surface of the custard. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Not sure if I can keep up re-writing my notes for my blog. Who has time? Really. I rather write about a new recipe I’m trying out. So this is it with the notes.  I  sure hope these notes are useful to someone out there.

I can't believe how complex baking is. Everything is about precision, so weigh everything--dry with a scale not a measuring cup, please. And flour. Wow! Who knew you can write a  book on it.  I will never take that one for granted. I am saying good-bye to all-purpose.  When you are making bread, use bread flour, not all-purpose, it toughens up the dough, making it a tougher product. It's true. We did an experiment in class, the bread flour won hands down--with all-purpose you will need a serious muscle power. It was harder to knead.  It was harder to chew on.

Here's day 2.

Eggs
In Canada, there are four egg grades: A, B, C and Canada Nest Bun. As a pastry chef or baker you will not be concerned so much with the firmness of yolks and whites. Rather, you will want eggs that are clean and fresh testing, free of bad odors caused by spoilage or absorption of odors. One bad-smelling egg can ruin an entire batch of cakes.

Proper storage is essential for maintaining quality. Eggs keep for weeks if held at 36 °F but lose quality quickly of held at room temperature. In fact, they can lose a full grade in one day at warm temperatures.

Large eggs are the standard size used in baking. One whole egg without shell weighs approximately 1.67 oz or 47 g.  One egg white=1 oz or 28 g. One yolk = 0.67 oz or 19 g.

Yeast
Yeast is the leavening agent in breads, dinner rolls, Danish pastries, etc. Fermentation is the process by which yeast acts on sugars and changes them into carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. This release of gas produces the leavening action in yeast products. The alcohol evaporates completely during and immediately after baking.

Because yeast is a living organism, it is sensitive to temperatures. It works best at 60 to 70 °F or 20 to 32°C; it’s killed at 140°F or 60°C.

Yeast is available in three forms: fresh, active dry yeast and instant dry yeast. We only worked with fresh. To convert fresh yeast to regular active dry yeast multiply the quantity by 0.5. To convert fresh yeast to instant dry yeast, multiply the quantity by 0.35.

Chemical leaveners are baking soda, baking powder, and baking ammonia.

Gelatin
Gelatin is a water-soluble protein extracted from animal connective tissue. When a sufficient quantity of gelatin is dissolved in hot water or other liquid, the liquid will solidify when cooled or chilled.

Culinary gelatin is available in a powdered form and in sheets (or leaf gelatin). One sheet gelatin = 1 t gelatin powder: one package of gelatin=7g=2 ½ t.

Bavarian creams and many mousses depend on gelatin for their texture.

Cocoa Powder
Chocolate and cocoa are derived from cocoa or cocoa beans. When the beans are fermented, roasted and ground the resulting product is called chocolate liquor, which contains a white or yellowish fat called cocoa butter.

Cocoa is the dry powder that remain after part of the cocoa butter is removed from chocolate liquor.  Dutch process

cocoa is processed with an alkali. It is slightly darker, smoother in flavor, and more easily dissolved in liquids than is natural cocoa. Natural cocoa is somewhat acidic, whereas dutched cocoa is neutral or even slightly alkaline. You use the dutched cocoa for truffles.

There are five different types of chocolate: bitter chocolate, sweet chocolate, milk chocolate, cocoa butter, and white chocolate.

1.    Bitter chocolate or unsweetened chocolate is straight chocolate liquor. It contains no sugar and hast a strong bitter taste.
2.    Sweet chocolate is bitter chocolate with the addition of sugar and cocoa butter in various proportions. If the percentage of sugar is low, sweetened chocolate may be called semisweet, or with even less sugar, bittersweet.
3.    Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate to which milk solids have been added. This is seldom melted and then incorporated in batters because it contains a relatively proportion of chocolate liquor.
4.    Cocoa butter is the fat pressed out of chocolate liquor when cocoa is processed. Its main use in the bakeshop is to thin melted couverture to a proper consistency.
5.    White chocolate consists of cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids. It is used primarily in confectionary. I wouldn’t call this one chocolate at all, it doesn’t even deserve the title—it contains no chocolate nor nay of its components.

You can substitute semi-sweet chocolate for dark but not with milk chocolate. For the ganache you can substitute dark for milk chocolate, but you have to reduce the liquid content. Always swap your liquid for liquid ingredient, and dry for dry ingredients.

To melt chocolate, first, break chocolate into small to medium size pieces. Then Place it in a stainless steel bowl and place it over a bain-marie of hot water and stir occasionally. Water drops or steam will cause the chocolate to “seize” or form hard lumps you can’t work with. This will also occur if the temperature is too high, scorching the chocolate, yielding a granular mess.

If chocolate is exposed to sudden temperature changes—from hot to cold, the cocoa butter separates from the rest of the chocolate causing it to “bloom” or to have white spots on the surface. This change in heat allows the cocoa butter to melt and rise to the surface of the chocolate. Bloom is not attractive, but you can still eat it this way. It doesn’t affect the quality or flavor. Reheat it and the chocolate is back to normal and ready to use.

Flour
The characteristic of a flour depend on the variety of wheat from which it is milled. The most important thing for a baker to know is that some wheats are hard and some are soft. Hard wheats contain greater quantities of gluten when the flour is moistened and mixed.

Strong flours, that is, flours from hard wheats with high protein content—are used primarily to make breads and other yeast products. Weak proteins—that is, flours from soft wheats with low protein content –are important in the production of cakes, cookies and pastries.

There are six principal classes of wheat in Canada:

1.    Hard red winter: This wheat is grown in large quantities. It has a moderately high protein content and is used primarily for bread flours. The term red in the name refers to the dark colour of the bran and husk layers of the wheat berry, not the interior of the grain, which is white.
2.    Hard red spring: The wheat has the highest protein content of wheats and it is an important component of strong bread flours.
3.    Hard white: This high-protein wheat is grown in small quantities for bread flours. One interesting use for this wheat if for making whole wheat flours that are lighter in color and not as strong in flavour as whole wheat flours from red wheat.
4.    Soft white: This is a low-protein wheat useful for pastries, cakes, crackers and other products in which a softer wheat is required.
5.    Soft red winter: This is another low-protein wheat used for cake and pastry flours.
6.    Durum: This is the hardest of the six wheats. It is used primarily for making pasta.

At this point Chef Simone drew a kernel of wheat, and explained three main parts of wheat. The bran is the hard outer covering of the kernel. It is the  present in whole wheat flour as tiny brown flakes, but it is removed in the milling of while flour.

The germ is the part of the kernel that becomes the new wheat plant if the kernel is sprouted. It has a high fat content that can quickly become rancid. Therefore the whole wheat flour containing the germ has poor keeping qualities. It should be kept in the fridge or freezer.

The endosperm is the starchy part of the kernel that remains when the bran and germ are removed. This is the portion of the wheat kernel that is milled into white flour. This is white flour.

For a baker, the most important characteristics of flour is its protein content, because the protein content determines how much gluten can be developed.

The higher the protein content of the flour, the more water it can absorb.

There are three wheat flours: cake flour, pastry flour and a bread flour. We went through the exercise of identifying and feeling each flour. Bread flour feels slightly coarse when rubbed between the fingers. If squeezed into a lump in the hand, it falls apart as soon as the hand is opened. Its colour is creamy white. Cake flour feels very smooth and fine. It stays in a lump when squeezed in the hand. Its colour is pure white. And finally, pastry four feels smooth and fine like cake flour and can also be squeezed into a lump, but it has a creamy colour of bread flour, not pure white colour of cake flour.

Other wheat flours are: all-purpose flour is formulated to be slightly weaker than bread flour so it can be used for pastries; self-rising flour is a white flour to which baking powder and, sometimes, salt has been added. Its advantage is that the baking powder is blended uniformly; whole wheat flour is made by grinding the entire wheat kernel, including the bran and germ, which can only be used for bread making; bran flour is flour to which bran flakes have been added.

Rye flour contains some proteins, these do not form gluten. Therefore, breads made with 100% rye are heavy and dense. To make a lighter rye loaf, it is necessary to use a mixture of rye and hard wheat flours.

Starches
Starches are used to thicken puddings, pie fillings, and similar products. The most important starches in dessert production are: cornstarch, maize, and instant starches. Chef Simone only explained what is cornstarch, she said that product thickened with cornstarch set up almost like gelatin when cooled. 

Sugars
Briefly, sugars have the following purposes in baking:

•    The add sweetness and flavour.
•    They create tenderness and fineness of texture, partly by weakening the gluten structure.
•    They give crust colour.
•    They increase keeping qualities by retaining moisture.
•    They act as creaming agents with fats and as foaming agents with eggs.
•    They provide food for yeast.

There are three types of sugar: regular granulated sugar, also called fine granulated or table sugar is the most familiar and the most commonly used; icing sugar or confectioners sugars are used for making cakes and cookies because they make a more uniform batter and can support higher quantities of fat; and brown sugar are coarse and are used for coating cookies, cakes and other products.

In general, finer granulations are better for mixing into doughs and batters because they dissolve relatively quickly. Coarse sugars are likely to leave undisclosed grains, even after long mixing. These show up after baking as dark spots on crusts, irregular and syrup spots. Also, fine sugars are better for creaming with fats because they create a finer, more uniform air cell structure and better volume.

Syrup
Syrup can be classified as: molasses, corn syrup, glucose syrup, honey, and malt syrup. Corn syrup is a liquid sweetener consisting of water, a vegetable gum called dextrin, and various sugars, primarily dextrose. Corn syrup is made by converting into simpler compounds through the use of enzymes. Corn syrup aids in retaining moisture and used in some icings and candies. IT has mild flavor and is not as sweet as granulated sugar.

Sorry if I bored you. Back to recipes.

Going back to baking or pastry school?  Maybe my old academic habit of taking detailed notes will be of use to you. Here is day one of class notes. Once again we started the day  started with a talk about tools and ended the day with butter.

What tools are essential to baking and pastry?

• Silicone bags
• Palette knife
• Spatulas of all sizes
• Whisks
• Paring knife
• 12 inch serrated knife
• Lemon zester
• Tongs
• Melon baler
• Pear/Apple core
• Mixer and attachments—whip, paddle and hook
• Tart pan
• Spring form pan
• Rolling pins
• Scraper
• Turntable
• Sieve
• Blow torch
• Digital scale is a must!

 

What you will learn?

• Baguette
• Dough
• Sauce anglaise
• Bavarian Cream
• Sorbet
• Granite
• Working with chocolate
• Crème caramel
• Fruit flan
• Choux paste
• Chocolate genoise
• Lemon Meringue
• Cinnamon rolls
• Tuile
• Plated desserts
• Brioche
• Black Forest Cake

How to write recipes?

• Write them in the order of the recipe even the sub items.
• Sugar and butter are always creamed together for a sponge cake.

How to read abbreviations?

• t=teaspoon
• T=tablespoon
• c=cup
• 1 l=one liter
• 1lb=one pound
• oz=ounces
• g=gram
• kg=kilogram

 

How to plate a dessert?

The basic elements of a plated dessert are the following: main item; garnish and sauce. In it’s simplest form, a dessert can be a portion of a single main item, such as a slice of cake or a wedge of pie on a plate. More often, other items are added to give additional flavor, texture, and eye appeal. In some cases, a presentation may have two or more main items, as in the case of dessert samplers. Usually, however, the secondary items on the plate are considered garnishes. They serve to enhance and add contrast to the main item.

Flavours should enhance each other, such as caramel sauce with a caramelized fruit gratin, or do a contrast--crème 

anglaise with tart fruit. If the main item is soft, such as a mousse or ice cream, add a crisp or crunchy garnish, like a tuile to give contrast and texture. Temperature contrast can be a spoonful of ice cream with a warm fruit tart.

Garnishes include fruit, ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate decorations, choux lattice, and tuile.

 

Basic points for key baking and pastry ingredients

Butter

Fresh butter consists of about 80% fat, about 15% water, and about 5% milk solids. Butter is graded in Canada as Canada 1, Canada 2 and Canada 3.  Butter is available salted and unsalted. Unsalted butter is preferred in baking. If you only have salted butter, reduce the salt from the original recipe. Doughs made with butter are much harder to handle. Most pastry chefs use butter over shortening because it has a highly desirable flavour, and butter melts in the mouth, and shortening does not and you are left with a unpleasant film of shortening coating in the mouth.

 

The theory is learning vacation. Super tired, I found the extra energy today once I cooled off to make pie and soft roll dough and pipe a number of cakes. I finished off the day with the pie with chocolate mousse.

Pie is only as good as its crust. The best pie crusts are made from the coolest pastry, made in a chilly kitchen and surface. Overworking the fat and flour and adding too little water can make a crust rough rather than flaky, and mixing with your finger tips, not your warm palms, will give you the best results. Don't even think of using a food processor or mixer for  making pie dough. Minimal dishes are required for a good crust. 

Pie Dough

375   g pastry flour

250 g shortening

125 ml water

7 g salt

15 g brown sugar

 

Directions:

1. Measure your ingredients. 
2. In a large bowl or over a cold surface, rub shortening and flour with your fingertips until reduced to pea sized crumbs.
3. Dissolve salt and sugar in cold water, add all of the water to the bowl, mix just enough to incorporate flour.
4. When the dough forms a rough, cohesive mass, cover the dough with saran wrap and allow to rest  in the fridge for 15 minutes or more. You're almost done!
5. Over a floured table top, pat the dough with the rolling pin into a smooth circle. 
6. Do most of the rolling from the centre out to the edges of the dough, lifting and turning it slightly every 3 rolls to keep it round.  If it sticks on the bottom, slide a long palette knife underneath to loosen it, tossing some more flour under the dough as you lift gently. 
7. If the dough doesn't hold together, put back in the fridge, freezer, if you are in a hurray for about 10 minutes. Let it cool. 
8. To fit a 8 inch or 9 inch pie pan, roll the dough up 12 inches onto the rolling pin. Then put the edge of the dough at the edge of the pan and unroll it, letting it drop into pie pan.  Trim away excess until the edge. Crimp the edges with your fingers at even intervals.
9. Fill your pie as indicated by your recipe. At the last minute we whipped up a chocolate mousse that separated from mixing the milk based ganache to the cream based ganache (see photo below)--the milk has a lot of water that causes this effect. 
10. Place tray into oven and bake for about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or starts to brown.
    

    Rolling out pie dough
    

    Dough on the dish
    

    All thumbs crimping
    

    Baked pie crust
11. 

    Imperfect Chocolate Mousse Pie