Dough Week: Round Three!

After returning from Barcelona and Ireland on my week off, we jumped right into our final dough week!  We didn't make a lot of different dough this week because Thursday and Friday were completely devoted to making desserts for a really important cocktail the school was catering for, but I'll show you some of what we did make.

Two of the breads we made were "Tradition" baguettes.  Traditions are actually my favorite kind of baguette you can get from the boulangeries around here, so I was pretty excited about that.  We made the classic Tradition baguette and then we made a second one where we added a bunch of seeds.  Both were very good. We also made another bread that the chef called "Tranchoir."  "Tranche" means "slice" in English, and that's where this bread gets it's name.  It's wide enough to be cut into slices and used for sandwiches or toast.  It was pretty good, but I don't have a photo.  

This week we finally made croissants!  I've been waiting to make them ever since I got here.  I'm really proud of the croissants my partner Merav and I made, they were so pretty.  Also, we got the right number of croissants we were supposed to get from the amount of dough we made, which I'm pretty happy about.  

The cocktail the school was catering for was kind of like a promotion for the school so a lot of important people were there.  The mayor of Agde was one of the guests, and we spoke about the school and we posed for a bunch of photos with him.  I'm really not 100% sure what it was about to be honest, but the desserts we made for it were pretty sweet.  We made Paris Brests but with a twist.  Hazelnuts are usually the preferred nuts to use but instead we used pecans.  They were very good and I ate about three of them.  Nom.  We also made tiny tarts made from chocolate sugar dough and filled with almond cream, and on top we put a raspberry coulis that was frozen and dipped in gelatin so it holds it shapes.  When you bite into it the coulis kind of explodes out, so you have to pop the whole thing into your mouth at once.  The third dessert we made were macaroons smoked with wine wood and filled with chocolate cream.  It was the strangest thing.  It almost tasted like it should be filled with something savory like a cheese instead of chocolate because of the smokey taste.  Another thing we made was pannacotta layered with passion fruit juice.  That was very good, and I liked that we used juice instead of jelly because it gave it a different texture/consistency.  The last dessert was a cheesecake square filled with orange marmalade on a sugar dough square, topped with a piece of chocolate.  I would have liked it if it didn't have the orange marmalade.  Marmalade in France is too bitter for my taste.  Overall though the desserts for the cocktail were delicious and they went over pretty well. 

Next week is the final cake week-- can't wait!