A Humbling Experience

I thought I could bake. In fact, I believe I recently told someone I was a "kick-ass" baker. That was before I started Culinary School and took my first baking class last night.

What a humbling experience.

I was so excited that I arrived early, took my seat in the front row and prepared to learn. Our teacher, Suzanne Griswold, formerly of Spago, told us that the first night we would be making quick breads, ie scones and blueberry muffins.

Here's what it says about Suzanne in the school's brochure: "Suzanne began her culinary career at the California Culinary Academy. After
graduation, Suzanne soon became the Pastry Sous Chef working under the tutelage of renowned
Pastry Chef, Sherry Yard at Spago. During Her tenure at Spago, Suzanne traveled abroad studying under French Masters refining her skills."

OK. Back to quickbreads. I was a little irritated. I've been making muffins since I was eight-years old, I even made some that had raspberry jam baked in the middle. I learned the recipe from my Betty Crocker Boys and Girls cookbook, which also had a recipe for making a rocket ship salad with a ring of pineapple, a banana and a cherry. As I got older I realized it looked less like a rocket ship than...well I digress.

So Suzanne, who looks more like a dancer than a pastry chef, began to demonstrate. She is lithe and light and moves with a grace akin to a ballerina. It's like she's performing a beautiful dance sequence when she moves around the kitchen.

She is also very thin, which struck me as odd for a pastry chef. It turns out she has an intolerance to wheat. Can you believe? A pastry chef with an intolerance to wheat. The irony is not lost on her. She said that all her life she had stomach and GI problems but it wasn't until she moved to LA and found a good GI doctor that they determined what it was. By then she was already ensconced in her field. She can taste the pastries, she just can't eat big hunks of them. Hence the thinness.

So back to the scones and muffins. Suzanne began the demonstration. Immediately I realized she was speaking a language I was unfamiliar with. Not only were some of the terms in French, which I could figure out because I took French forever even though I can't speak a word, put there were a number of methodology terms that were news to me. Uh-Oh. I thought as my ego dropped a notch or two.

First were the scones. Looked easy enough. Wait, how did you get the butter? I didn't get that can you do it again? Wait, how did you know how much butter you just put in? Wait, you don't use a mixer, you mix it with your hands? Wait, how did you just separate that egg? Wait, wait, wait!!!

By the way, in a class of 12, 11 women and one man, I was the only one asking questions. Not because I'm dumb mind you, but because for starters Suzanne speaks very quickly and number two, I really want to learn and could tell within the first 5 minutes that there's a lot I don't know.

One thing I really like about Suzanne is that she explains the science of why things are added at a certain time or mixed in a certain way or used at all. She said that she plans to explain this every week and that eventually it will not sound so scary and will sink in. It's interesting and I think if you know why you are doing something it helps you to do it correctly. For example, if you know why you use baking soda and baking powder in a recipe (soda cuts the acidity of some of the other ingredients ie sour cream in the recipe we were making) then you won't leave out the soda!

OK. So the demonstration is over and it is our time to cook. We paired up. My partner was Valarie. I liked her because she reminded me of someone I know but I couldn't think of who, I just felt it was someone I liked and because she spells her name like one of my models from the P&C.

So we set out to make our scones first. I was in charge of the dry ingredients and Valarie the wet. I set off to the measuring section of the room and set out gathering my dry ingredients. Suzanne had shown us the proper way to measure dry ingredients the key being you fluff before you measure but you have to be careful not to fluff too much. OK, long story short, our dough was dry and the butter was more than pea sized meaning I had overmixed it, with my hands mind you, and so our scones wouldn't have the flakiness that pea-sized butter would have given them. Suzanne told us to cut the the dough into smaller scones and bake them at a higher temperature to minimize the dryness. UGH!

Blueberry muffins were much better. I did wet this time and was very proud of my browned butter. Did you ever even think to brown butter for a blueberry muffin? I never did. I never knew there was a difference between browned butter and burnt butter.

Valarie made the streusal topping and to my relief, had too much dry ingredients and decided to start over. So I wasn't the only one who had the measuring difficulty. Phew!

Actually, it turned out almost everyone had the measuring difficulty as we found out when we gathered round Suzanne and she examined our wares. See what I mean? Who knew measuring could be so difficult?

Anyway, our scones were first on the chopping block, literally she chopped them up so we could see inside and see the texture and the grain. Ours did look a little dry, the layers just weren't there. I had not been "gentle" with the dough. Suzanne looked at us and said even though they were dry she wouldn't throw them away? I was bit taken aback, it had never occurred to me to throw them away. "Feed them to the birds," I asked? No, not that either. She suggested we break them up and use them to add texture to another recipe such as a cookie dough, biscotti etc. Hmmm. Valarie and I looked at each other. We thought they tasted pretty good even though they weren't as flaky as they should be. See, what do we know!

Everyone got a turn on the chopping block and it was really interesting to see the differences. Some, like ours were too dry, some were too liquidy which happens if the dough gets too warm and the butter starts to separate. That can be avoided by stopping the process before rolling and folding the dough and putting it in the fridge. Cold is good for dough, warm not so much. She said if you have naturally warm hands or the room is warm, that can all affect the dough.

So the blueberry muffins were less dramatic. Ours were pretty good. Suzanne liked the browned butter and could tell immediately that we had used it. We had a little bit of tunneling which means once again, not so gentle with the dough, but not too bad. The one big problem was they were a little too cooked on the bottom, the result of having to use the bottom shelf and using a dark muffin pan. Next time we double the pan so that won't happen.

So much to take in in one night. I was exhausted, not to mention full since we got to taste everything everybody made! I can't believe how much I learned the first night and I still have questions, like "how do I plump the cranberries for the scones using the heated method." Suzanne said we could email her any questions during the week and she would answer them ASAP.

Me and this other girl hung back after class and Suzanne told us some good books to get that will explain further the how's and why's of baking. She also told us it would be a good idea to practice each week at home what we learned in class. That's my homework for the week. I hope my friends like scones.