Jason has worked hard to get us ready for this: getting us really into biking and fresh summer salads and hiking. And so I thought what I would do to contribute to this endeavor was to register for a French Pastry class. I know....I am always so helpful, you don't even have to say it.
Actually, the wheels for this were already in motion, as my friends K and J and I had already been conspiring to take a baking class for sometime. So french pastries it was. What better way to emerge into a healthy, nutritional lifestyle than learning to cram as much butter as humanly possible into some flour, filling it with chocolate and then eating it? None, I say, none.
The class we chose at the local Culinary Arts school was advertised as a "Morning Pastry" class and billed as a way to "learn the techniques" used to make breakfast treats with croissant, puff pastry, and brioche dough.
Thankfully, it was also an unadvertised opportunity to work alongside some totally wacky characters, which delighted me as I knew it was going to be a blog worthy experience from the get-go.
Class began when "Chef" called us to order by taking attendance and then casually informing us that one could not make a quality croissant in less than two days. Since our class was two four hour sessions a week apart, we wondered what on earth we were doing there, but this did not seem to phase him. Chef was French of course, mostly very disorganized and unclear, and fortunately, incredibly talented at making pastries and jokes. For most of the four hours he wandered around showering us with puns about France, throwing flour everywhere while drinking wine from a paper cup that magically continued to be filled out of nowhere and periodically slamming down a rolling pin on the aluminum table for effect. Perfect.
Also present:
-The "know-it-all" couple, sadly placed at the cooking station directly across from me, who clearly gain a sense of self worth from taking courses such as this one and then pretending to know everything and spewing their half-formed knowledge around the room in the form of thinly-veiled criticism of others' work. ("Excuse me, but I think you're dough is a little too dry." or "You're going to need to roll that thinner.") If you imagine that this particular type of input is especially irritating to me, you are correct, but in the name of culinary compatriotism, I withheld the many witty and stinging retorts which I composed in my mind during our many hours of rolling.
-A VERY pregnant woman and her mother....pretty much nothing more to say here than "You are a genius and that's exactly what I would do if I were as pregnant as you."
-A somewhat awkward young man, maybe in high school, there with his mother, who was quite endearing and funny, though not completely adept at the detailed process of pastry making.....ultimately his turnovers ended up looking like some sort of CSI crime scene, with raspberry oozing out of odd places all over the place, but it was fun to get to know him.
-One of the more hilarious women I've met recently who I desperately want to be friends with forever and who continued to make jokes the entire time in step with Chef.
-And my friends and I.
And there gathered, for two weeks on Monday nights, we made pastries. But how do you make pastries, you ask? Like this:
1) Mix a bunch of ingredients (such as flour, salt, sugar, milk, eggs and water) in a stand mixer.*
2) Let that dough rise for one hour.
3) Punch it down. Hard. I said HARD, damn it. Punch it until your knuckles hurt from smashing them accidentally on the edge of the bowl if don't have the "techinique" quite down yet. This is easier if you are an especially passionate* person already.
4) Refrigerate this abused dough overnight or, in this case, for one hour.
5) In the meantime, take several POUNDS of butter (no joke) and bash them together as hard as you can with a rolling pin until they form an 8X8 square slab about a half inch thick.
6) Roll out the dough into a square about twice as big as the butter slab. Fold the dough around the butter and roll it. And roll it. And roll it. And roll it some more until it is a very long rectangle the thickness and consistency of which is a secret they must only reveal to you in the advanced pastry program. In our case, we rolled until chef said "ENOUGH."
7) Once finished, fold this slab in a very special pattern the purpose of which was not explained in the introductory level class and put a dot in the top with your finger (This is called a "turn").
8) Refrigerate it for another hour and then take it out.
9) And then roll it again and again and again and again until your arms hurt, all the while throwing flour on the table and dough and the floor and yourself until every inch of you is covered with flour including the insides of your shoes for week. When finished, fold it in the special pattern again and put two dots in the top.
10) Repeat steps 8 and 9 four times or until it is either midnight or you can't feel your triceps.
11) Roll the dough out a final time. Cut it into triangles. Fill with delicious things like almond paste, chocolate, cinnamon, nuts, whatever.
12) Bake.
13) Eat.
14) Die of happiness.
15) Return to life.
16) Bring home three boxes of pastries to husband who will eat them for breakfast and dinner for two weeks because they are SO good it's impossible to stop eating them and feeling amazing.
I'm completely serious about this last part. These were LITERALLY the best pastries I have EVER had. They were like a little puffy piece of heaven covered in satisfaction and glazed with joy. On the spot I vowed that I would never waste my time or calories on a mediocre pastry again in my life (a promise I quickly broke the next time I found myself hungry and at Starbucks, but the sentiment was legitimate.) It is amazing what a few pounds of butter can do, isn't it?
So here's to pastries, chef, and health plans out the window. Vive la France!
*Apparently, in the culinary world, a "recipe" serves a different purpose than it does in the actual world. A progressional "recipe" is just a list of ingredients in insane proportions with absolutely no directions at all. Here is what we were handed when we got to class as a "recipe" for croissants:
5 oz yeast
5 cups water
6 lb flour
3 oz salt
10 oz sugar
14 oz milk
2 eggs
4 lbs butter
1/2 tablet vitamin C
WHAT?!??!
*Read: Angry.
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