Week 7 Focaccia

Bread time! 
Today we learn about yeast. All the recipes for today had yeast and flour as the basic ingredients. What is interesting is that even though all had similar ingredients, the end result for each was so different. By just changing the ratio and also cooking method, it creates something totally different to one another.
Today's menu had Focaccia, Chelsea Buns, Savarin and Brioche. 

That is my focaccia having it's first prove. 

The focaccia has no butter and is a fairly whitish dough but the Chelsea bun dough on the left is so much yellower because there is butter in it. It is so cool to see the dough double in size when it was proving. I was getting worried when my focaccia took much longer than others to rise. I thought I killed the yeast! Luckily it did rise after almost 2 hours. 

Our brioche

I have never seen or heard of Brioche before this. The texture is more like a cake and has strong buttery taste. The dough was more like a paste than a dough. It was rather wet and when proving it, it doesn't only rise, it has blisters in the paste. I too got a blister on my thumb from stirring the butter into the paste. It was so tiring. Luckily we work in pairs, so my teammate and I had to rotate the stirring task. Phew! We now all have popeye biceps.

Our Savarin Aux Fruits

Savarin... once again, I have never heard of this dessert before. It has it's own special savarin moulds which had a hole in the middle. It comes out like a ring and then we pour sugar syrup over it to let it soak it all up. Then fruits and whipped cream are filled in the centre before serving. I tried to carve a rose with the strawberry. Does it look like a rose? Well, it was good practice.

Pouring syrup into the savarin. 

I thought I wouldn't dare eat the Savarin because it must be very sweet. To my surprise, even though we poured sugar syrup over the savarin, it wasn't too sweet. That is because we use light syrup which was more water than sugar really. And because there were whipped cream and fruits to accompany it, what's there not to like about it. 

Our breads at the end of the day, we have focaccia with rosemary, chelsea buns which has raisins, currants and orange peel and the brioche which was plain. 

Focaccia, Chelsea Buns and Brioche.

It was a great week. We have a new trainer and he is just great. He is very organised, explains things clearly, doesn't mind people asking questions, demonstrates and gives tips to make things work better. I think I will learn a lot from him.