Day Eighty-Five

Friday was the last day of exams, and it really couldn’t have gone better.  I was surprised how smoothly everything went last week.  I even finished the test a little early!  I felt so proud of myself when I walked out of class.  My past exams weren’t as smooth, and our chef said this was the hardest exam we would have to take. 

My gum paste flowers were ten times better.



On Saturday I competed in a brownie competition sponsored by Pastry Chicago.  I was contestant #8.  I ended up winning third place and an immersion blender!  Whoo hoo.  I was pretty surprised because there were a ton of amazing-looking brownies there. 


The next month’s competition is gingerbread houses, so I’m not sure if I will enter.  I would like to enter, but I don’t know anything about making a gingerbread house.  Any advice?  We have to recreate a Chicago building.

Today we started a new subject: breads!  The class is being taught by…

Jacquy Pfeiffer!  The dean of the school, and star of Kings of Pastry. 
I caught him in mid-bread action today. 



I didn’t look quite as powerful when I held that huge bread peel.  Someone in class called me the Keebler Elf.  Which I totally agree with because I’m very elf-like. 

I started out being scared of Chef Jacquy, but I got over that pretty quickly when he grabbed my hands and started showing me how to knead the bread dough properly.  Then he told me he wasn’t leaving my table until he saw me do it myself.   

He’s kind of a jokester.  I wasn’t expecting that. 

We made “Toast Bread” today, which is basic white bread.  I don’t care if it’s only basic white bread – it was good.  I love all bread.  I actually have a bread problem.  I rip into loaves of bread, right out of the oven, before they’ve even had a chance to cool.  I’m like a wild savage. 



There’s nothing like scalding your mouth on a hot blueberry muffins.  We made these too. 

They were made with fancy French blueberries.  In a fancy mold.



I’m going to love breads class.  There’s lots of science behind bread baking and I like that.