Introduction to pastry and bakery September 2014: Hectic Friday!

Hi people!

Last Friday, (31 November 2014) was a hectic day in pastry class for us DC 9 group 5.
There's quite a lot of things to do that day, and one of the recipe that we made were meant for assessment. And yes we had to finish on time!
So here's the rundown.. *drum roll*

Danish Pastry Dough
Cream Caramel
Assessment on Aumoniere Crepe

Let's start with some histories and fun facts about those desserts above

Danish Pastry

We call a certain kind of pastry, filled with cheese or fruit, “danish pastry.” Is this pastry really from Denmark?Well, danish pastry may have come to the United States from Denmark. But its name in Denmark suggests that it did not originate there.

The Danes call this pastry Wienerbrod, or “Vienna bread,” and Vienna is a city in Austria! superbeefy.com

The ingredients include flour, yeast, milk, eggs, and copious amounts of butter or margarine.

Butter is the traditional fat used in Danish pastry. In industrial production, other fats are also commonly used, such as hydrogenated sunflower oil (known as "pastry fat" in the UK). A yeast dough is rolled out thinly, covered with thin slices of butter between the layers of dough, and then the dough is folded and rolled again and again into numerous layers. If necessary, the dough is chilled to ease handling. The process of rolling, buttering, folding and chilling is repeated multiple times to create a many-layered dough that, once baked, is fluffy, crispy on the outside, buttery and flaky. However, although this is the traditional method, not all Danishes are made this way. The dough is sometimes not even laminated.

Danish pastries as consumed in Denmark are usually topped with chocolate, pearl sugar,glacé icing and/or slivered nuts and may be stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as jam or preserves (usually apple or prune), remonce, marzipan and/or custard. Shapes are numerous, including circles with filling in the middle (known as "Spandauer's"), figure-eights, spirals (known as snails), and the pretzel-like kringles.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry

Cream Caramel

Caramel Custard, crème caramel or caramel flan is a custard dessert with a layer of soft caramel on top, as opposed to crème brûlée, which is custard with a hard caramel top. The dish is eaten throughout the world.

Caramel custard is a variant of plain custard (crème) where sugar syrup cooked to caramel stage is poured into the mold before adding the custard base. It is usually cooked in a bain-marie on a stove top or in the oven in a water bath. It is turned and served with the caramel sauce on top, hence the alternate French name crème caramel renversée.
Flan is found in recipes as far back as ancient Rome. It was during Roman times that domesticated chickens were first kept for laying eggs. The Romans, with eggs in surplus, and consulting the Greek’s knowledge of the art of cooking, developed new recipes, one of which turned out to be a custardly concoction known as flan.
October 3rd is National Caramel Custard Day.
When does caramel become caramel? When the heat on the milk solids combine with the sugar ingredients, a caramel flavor is created, therein creating the caramel.
According to Platina’s De Honesta Voluptate,(On Right Pleasure and Good Health), an Italian cookery text published in 1475, custard-type dishes were considered health food. mobile-cuisine.com

Aumoniere Crepe

In French, the word aumônière is derived from the word aumône, which means “giving money to someone in need”. An Aumoniere represents a small purse (the pastry) with coins inside (the filling). To make an aumônière, you typically place a sweet or savory preparation in the middle of filo pastry (you can also replace filo with crêpe for dessert) which you then close so that it has the shape of a small purse. Eating an aumônière is about creating excitement and suspense of what you are about to discover inside. mslimalicious.com

Interesting, right? Now i'll show you some photos on that fun Friday in the pastry class, enjoy!