Ah, lab day.. sweet, messy, delicious lab day. Today was day 7, and – you guessed it – it was student lab/production. But first, we had our first written exam. It wasn’t bad at all. I’m feeling very confident 🙂 We should get our grades back tomorrow, so I’ll see then!
Lab was busy… and FULL of dough. We made what Chef K demoed yesterday, flaky pie dough, mealy pie dough, biscuits, and scones. We started off with biscuits and scones since they dough needed to relax, as well as be cooked before class was over. Jo made some cheesy biscuits while I made the scones. As far as I know, everyone else who made the scones did the lemon recipe that Chef K gave us.. I ventured out and make some fantastically delicious chocolate scones. Oh my gosh! I have a new favorite breakfast pastry (for now)!! The original recipe called for 10.5 oz milk, but I cut 1.5oz out and replaced it with 1.5oz orange juice and about 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels.. The orange juice was just enough, in my opinion, to amp up the flavor without actually tasting orange. Before baking, I used a French egg wash and then sprinkled some sanding sugar on top. I think the sanding sugar was the perfect finishing touch. I’ll type of the actual recipe soon so you can try it out if you’d like.
mmmmmm
Pie crust… ugh. Well, I should say “Mealy pie crust.” It was simple, however it was SOOOO time-consuming. I thought to myself “oh, I’ll take on the mealy crust since it uses small butter pieces and the scones I just did required large!” Bad choice. It took forever! Oh my gosh! You have to break up the butter small enough so when you’re looking into the bowl, you can’t notice clumps of butter.. “bread crumbs or cornmeal” is the texture you’re going for, according to Chef. I shouldnt have been so ambitious. OH well. I guess it’s for the better i practiced. Jo was lucky and got to do the flaky pie dough. Friday, in the next student lab/production, we will be making apple pie and blueberry pie. Yum!! I’ll definitely will be bringing in extra tools/goodies to fancy up my pie crust!
It was a simple day in my Food Safety and Sanitation class as well. Chef Nathan gave us back our graded quizzes. 90%!! I missed two questions, and both made me slap my forehead, big-time, when I glanced at them. The first one was “temperature danger zone.” I selected 35-141 degrees Fahrenheit.. the answer was 41-135. I know this like the back of my hand, but I have a painfully fantastic habit of switching around numbers. I can’t tell you how often I would get in trouble at work because I would have to write-up totals and write them out wrong.. I would have correct numbers in the wrong order. Lets say the total would be 4,695… I would write something like 6,459 or the likes of that. The second answer I missed was “What does TCS stand for?” its TEMPERATURE Controlled for Safety… not TIME Controlled for Safety. D’oh! But, hey, 90% is an A, and I am more than happy with that. We also ventured into Chapter 3 of our ServSafe books. Physical contaminates and food allergies, FTW!
Road To Pastries 
Here is my easy day go to school two 45 classes at main then pastry artw go home for luch come back for gym which is something i do anyways