Sometimes when you expect the worst, you end up pleasantly surprised at how things are nowhere near as bad as you think they'll be. At other times, when you think that things aren't really going to be that bad, they inadvertently end up worse. Then when you think the best of a situation, there's still a small part of you that wonders if you're just asking for trouble.
There's no experience that highlights the above moreso than working in the pastry section. Our team of three were in charge of making dinner rolls, hamburger buns, and crusty loaves for the restaurant menu, and whatever ADF required for bread during the day - usually rolls, sweet and/or savoury scrolls, as well as the three desserts and associated accompaniments/garnish for the restaurant menu.
To some people, it doesn't seem like too big a deal. Whip up a couple of 4kg or 5kg doughs first thing in the morning, weigh up the dinner rolls and get them in the prover. Then weigh up the slightly bigger hamburger buns. Then weigh up and roll out the loaves for restaurant. Bang stuff into the prover as you prepare tray after tray, hoping that the chef next door doesn't get too annoyed at you walking in and out of the room. Why the prover isn't in the restaurant kitchen, I don't know.
And while the first batch of rolls and buns is proving, with the second dough you could be making scrolls. If you have time, you can chop up some herbs, or dig up some fruit for sweet scrolls, hunt down some ingredients to put into the scrolls. Then pin out a blanket of dough, ready to roll up with some godforsaken flavour that you can only hope the ADF troops will like. Then the giant rolly poly of dough gets sliced up into scrolls, ready for the prover, if there's enough room in it.
Don't be mistaken here, there's only one baker in the class, and he's not always on hand to help. Even though there's three people in the section, you're usually on your own if you're doing bread for the day. Other classes have wondered why the scrolls seldom make it out in time for lunch, or in the instance when there's only been rolls available, why there aren't scrolls on offer. There's only some solace in the fact that once they get to K1, they'll understand why ordinary bakers start their day so early. Unfortunately, I won't be here to see them go through the same pressure of getting commercial amounts of bread mixed, proved, baked and ready within a couple of hours!
Meanwhile, there's desserts to be started. One of the main pains is the vanilla bean pannacotta, which takes about four hours to set. I'm not sure whether the instructors have noticed that the time between arrival in the kitchen at 0800 and lunch service starting at approximately 1200 means that we have to somehow make pannacotta and have it setting in the fridge instantly in order for it to be ready on time. Thankfully we have the powers of extra gelatine leaves, and a blast chiller on hand.
The second dessert is quite straightforward; a raspberry and frangipane tart. Apart from the base which is blind-baked sweet paste, it's pretty much a mix and go recipe. Unfortunately, for the people who equate mere baking time with prep time, they need to be made aware of that annoying yet necessary process of rubbing in butter and flour. I'm not sure how rubbing in happens when dealing with commercial quantities, and never got around to asking Chef about it because I didn't get a chance to make the tart, but that's one thing I should look up some time. Although, if I knew how to make cakes, tarts, and cookies without having to deal with rubbing in and creaming, a little knowledge could indeed be a very dangerous thing.
Our final dessert option was a chocolate jaffa cake, which was a rich, moist, boozy concoction. I'd tried a bit of it the day before I looked properly at the ingredients and made one myself. Just over half a kilo each of dark chocolate and butter, fifteen eggs and almost a cup of brandy, with nominal amounts of flour, cocoa and orange zest to turn it into a cake, I suppose. I kept telling myself I'd stop eating it as soon as I knew what went into it, but it was frighteningly irresistible. Sometimes I wonder if working permanently with sweet products will eventually turn me off them, but I am yet to really find that limit. While doing unit work on pastry, yeast and baked goods, and hot and cold desserts, I didn't so much get turned off such items, as merely stopped craving them. I craved savoury and salady things instead!
Once the bases for dessert were covered, it was time to tackle the sides. We had to poach pears in red wine to go with the pannacotta, make some clotted cream to serve with the tart, and make an anglaise for the jaffa cake. Just to kill time we would work on garnishes and discuss how the desserts were going to be plated up for service, in between madly putting in and taking out trays of breads. I think I covered a few kilometres, racing between the prover, the oven, and the pastry section.
It's a far cry from getting four individual dishes or portions/servings ready to present to the Chef, and prepping/making commercial quantities of four things for ADF lunches and the restaurant. Monday's definitely the toughest day prepwise, because you have to start from scratch, with a relatively empty fridge and nothing on hand from the day before, so there's not even serves of dessert to start off with. By the end of the week I was quite comfortable serving things from the restaurant menu, and didn't want to scream from the pressure of getting bread ready every day.
I think things would be improved greatly if the prover was in a more convenient location (some of our things were almost forgotten in the prover because we got distracted by goings on in K1), and if there was another half hour to get the bread ready for service. We found that the restaurant always got their food ready on time, but no matter how organised and on track things seemed for ADF, there was still a last minute push each day.
I'm glad my time in patisserie is over, and that I actually got my perceived-toughest section done first of all. I have even more respect for bakers and dessert chefs now, and will continue to appreciate the wonders that ovens can bring. Next week I'm on ADF lunches, so I'll be getting no escape from the pressure of whipping up commercial quantities of food within a couple of hours, but at least the menu's going to be changing every day so I'll have no chance to get lazy.
The class is doing really well in K1, much to the surprise of many people, including myself. I think Ma'am is finally going to give us a break, because she has started getting stuck into some of the other classes instead of ours, and she's also told people that she's impressed with how our class has pulled together during the restaurant phase. I think it's pretty awesome that we're now part of something that we can all truly be proud of.
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