Eat until you're happy

BAKING!

Aren't you excited?! Have you ever made bread from scratch before?

Neither have I!

(By the way, putting this all in perspective, I can't believe I get to wake up every morning and make things like baguettes, sourdough loaves and pastries and get "stressed" about it. It almost seems silly! But I love it).

My first week of class I brought home a ridiculous amount of bread. I mean, I love bread just as much as the next person. But my parents and I could not keep up! You can only eat so many sandwiches. So we ended up sharing some of that beautiful bread with other members of my family. (So far we haven't been very good about sharing anything). :)

We made baguettes, whole wheat dinner roll, sourdough and sourdough rye bread. And then I made the baguettes and rolls AGAIN for testing! YIKESSOMUCHBREAD!

Then we moved on to really sugary, really buttery breads - i.e. the good stuff.

--Brioche--

That lovely, golden - and phallic - looking bread is called Brioche. The phallic looking shape is called "a tete," which means "with head" in French.

Yeah, it just keeps getting more and more suggestive.

BUT it actually is supposed to represent a solder hiding in the trenches. So get your filthy minds out of the gutter and feel bad about yourself for thinking that "tete" looks like "tit". These breads were made to honor soldiers, not anatomy!

The loaf sitting behind it was a magical cinnamon sugar brioche loaf. It had beautiful swirls of cinnamon-y goodness and made AMAZING French toast!

PIZZA DAY :/

Not my finest moment. Clearly my pizzas are awkward and small. I had a mini-nervous breakdown while rolling out my pizza dough.

We make most of our doughs in advance - that way we have time to make sure everything can get baked off in the oven. So I believe we made our pizza dough on a Friday and came back after the weekend to roll it out and bake it.

Now, okay - I could have sworn that we were supposed to put olive oil around the dough to keep it moist over the weekend. However, mine were a little too moist. They kept sticking to the table and my rolling pin and my hands and just about everything they got near. So the dough wasn't stretching out to a decent pizza shape and the more I kept trying to stretch them, the more they ripped and fell apart.

After tears had welled up in my eyes because my stupid PIZZA DOUGH wasn't working for me, I stopped and thought - pardon my language - "F*ck it, this is just stupid pizza dough anyway. They're gonna be small and that's the end of that."

I rolled out my gnome-like pizza doughs, decorated them, baked them perfectly and presented them. After all my worries and woes, the teacher said, "Well aren't they cute little pizzas?"

. . .

As if the size didn't matter all along! I exhaled a huge sigh of relief and dug into my version of a meat lover's pizza. And it was excellent.

Danishes

One of my favorite days. They were gorgeous and amazing. Ya can't get danishes like this at Starbucks. These were sinfully delicious. (Oh, and that's a Brie en croute in the upper right corner. Brie wrapped in puff pastry and baked in the oven. mmmMMMMmmmmm).

Fruit Tart

Probably one of the most beautiful and presentational pieces we have made yet. (The resolution isn't that great here because I used my iPhone to take the picture. My old camera died because it got drowned in vegetable oil.)

As I was saying - one of the most presentational pieces we've made yet. Which is why it was SO awesome when I DROPPED my tart as soon as I got home.

I suppose this wasn't the WORST thing that could happen. It had been graded, I had taken some so-so pics on my phone and, when I dropped it, it still remained in the tupperware and didn't hit the ground.

HOWEVER, I tantrumed like no child has tantrumed before.

I couldn't believe that my first real piece of art had just suffered a 9.0 earthquake and would never be the same again. Plus I was tired, hungry and hot - never a good combination.

In order to recover from this terrible fate, I did what any level-headed 25-year-old would do:

throw your keys across the room, slam your knife kit into the nearest chair, rip off your chef coat, undo your hair, kick off your shoes, toss your glasses and start crying...and then slowly pick up your shattered tart and eat it. And I ate and ate that tart until I calmed down and felt better.

Looking back now, I wish I had taken a before and after picture of The Great Tart Disaster. But that would have meant having a sense of humor about things - which CLEARLY was not happening.

So let's remember the tart the way it was...happy and all in one piece...