Wednesday, September 2012

Today was day one of baking with chef Sciarrapa. She graduated from the culinary arts lab in the mid 90s. In the morning session, Chef told us everything we ever wanted to know about the ingredient components of most baking, and perhaps also some things we didn’t want to know (by which I mean only that it was very, very thorough). We learned about the different types of wheats, flours, fats, sweeteners, leaveners, and dairy products that are used in traditional baking operations. In the afternoon we reconvened and made sables, almond biscotti, and graham crackers. While things were baking, Chef did a demo for us and made chocolate macadamia cookies. They were distinctive in that they only contained about 1/3 cup of flour. The majority of the batter was the nuts, chocolate, butter, and an egg. They were tasty, mostly because she used chopped Callibut chocolate. Yum!

My group of three had a pretty easy time of the mise en place and actual baking of the cookies. The only thing that was tough was cutting the biscotti so that they would maintain the proper shape and not crumble away as we cut the loafs into individual pieces. Can I just say that I have no desire to ever purchase store-bought graham crackers again? Really…these ones were kind of a bitch to make but far more tasty than the boxed ones! I would, however, like to compare nutritional info, as the ones we made today were pretty rich with butter.