Tuesday, March 9, 2010

A, B(rioche), C(roissant), D(oughnut)

It's been breakfast for the last week - well, in class, anyway. Last Friday we made the doughnuts above. They are part way between a cake doughnut and a raised doughnut. We made them with a sweet dough. The trick is to make sure your oil is the right temp or your doughnuts will be too greasy (too cold) or burnt on the outside and doughy in the middle (too hot). We also made cinnamon rolls, which I forgot to photograph.
We also made brioche - a great bread for french toast or bread pudding. Pictured above is the traditional "tete" shape with the little knob on the tob. Brioche is actually a pretty basic bread to make; I think I could do it at home with no problems.
Next up - danish and croissants! Both are made from the same laminated dough (think layers and layers of butter rolled into the dough), they get their puff from steam as they bake. As you can see, my pinwheels (above) were a little thin so the points started to get a little too dark. They are filled with cream cheese filling and maple pecan filling. Also, my croissant-shaping (below) could use some work (they still taste delicious, though!)
This last pic is a little tin of monkey bread (also called pull-apart bread). We're encouraged to use our scraps for monkey bread whenever possible; it's a shame (and expensive) to waste all that butter.

2 comments:

Liz said...

I WANT DOUGHNUTS!

Unknown said...

And to think, all these Thanksgivings you could have been practicing your croissant shaping.

Everything looks so delicious.

~drool~