A biscuit, a tasket

Nothing says come and get it like a plate of freshly made buttery biscuits.

I should know. When I was in the 5th Grade, my mother asked me what I had learned in school, and all I could recall was the day's lesson in home ec class: the art of biscuit-making. Mother was delighted and promptly assigned me to make the house biscuits every Sunday. I got the look and feel from an early age and kept up the weekly chore. Mother was insistent that I press on, telling me, "If you can make a good biscuit, you can keep a husband." Or was it "you can get a husband"? It works either way.

I've seen good versions come and go across the years - biscuits topped with grated cheese, jalapeno biscuits, biscuits slathered with bacon grease, "angel biscuits" made with yeast, and our household favorite, buttermilk biscuits. Jeanne even had me make a version for Better Homes & Gardens years ago, topped with grated red beets. They were gorgeous in the presentation.

As good as I thought my homemade biscuits were, they pale in comparison with what we rolled out in the College of Hearts and Sciences.

I watched Chef ever so carefully, making note of what he did differently from the usual course of action, and broke a few ingrained habits to do things his way, including shoving the dough into the fridge so it takes a chill.

Et voila! The biscuits were impressively stacked, richly golden and Texas-sized. I couldn't wait to get them home for everyone to try - and to my astonishment - try them they did, for there was only one half piece to be found this morning. Somewhere in the night, people had feasted with reckless abandon.

Some of the differences:
using a mix of pastry and bread flour
adding sugar
using only very cold butter
using milk (I suspect it was not 2%)
chilling the dough at least half an hour
rolling out to one-half inch, and using a wide cutter
brushing with a beaten yolk to brown the top

The actual recipe belongs to the textbook Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen so you understand, I can't reprint the biscuit recipe here without permission. Just go hands on and do what I did as a young girl, work it, work it, work it.

Brownies and Chips Off the Old Block

It's a new semester and a brand new beginning in the baking and pastry program at the College of Hearts and Sciences. With help from my class partner, today we shoveled together brownies iced with chocolate ganache and white chocolate ganache, and chocolate chip cookies. Have you ever wondered why the Toll House beauties you've made for years turn out differently from time to time, even when you follow the classic yellow bag's directions to the last chip?

We learned about the properties of "spread" - properly mixed dough and its ability to either hold its form in baking or flatten out and run for the pan corners. Some spread is good if that's what you want, but for a uniform cookie every time, it's important to understand the chemistry between fats and sugar in the creaming stage, how moisture affects spread, the amount of sugar, the type of flour, the precise measurement of ingredients.

Did you know that if you split the butter the recipe calls for and do a 50-50 with shortening, you can impact spread in a way that brings joy? Shortening melts at a higher point than butter, but shortening tastes like Dippity Do for hair styling, so you need that butter to add flavor. The shortening helps the cookie set its shape before melting, so butter and shortening together can make for a fine, shapely outcome.

Our strategy was to make sure we didn't overmix the dough nor undermix it, not bake it too long in the convection oven (which dries out cookie dough) and have a good shape to show when we presented our board to Chef. We've only just begun to ponder the chemistry of sugar molecules and their hygroscopic quality, how coagulation and caramelization happen, bicarbonate this and ammonia that.

Hard corpus callosum work like this deserves a treat, and we just happened to have a full tray of brownies and cookies at the finish line. Here you have the shape of things to come.

Knife Cuts, the Final

Once again there is flour all over my arms and my dance pants. It's been a whole semester since I rolled out croissants in Singing Wheat Kitchen, and I've missed them more than I expected. With final exams over now at the premier cooking college, I can play with dough until next week, when the introduction to baking and pastry class begins. Here is a photo of the partial board in my final exam effort - a "citrus supreme" with half of the orange zest required, just to the right, so Chef could count the number of strips; also a mince of shallot and of parsley, and a "concasse" of tomato.

There were carrots cut into circles (rondele) and potatoes cut into 1/4 inch logs, plus varying sizes of diced spuds and a few "tourne" of new potatoes. I cut as well as I had ever done it. Was it a perfect effort? Well no, not by Foundations 1 standards of judging (never be the first to be judged, just like in ice skating). It was, though, the best I had ever done, and of that I feel a sense of elan.

Almost near the end of the exam, a woman who's a gracious lady exclaimed "Oh no! I just cut off my finger!" If this were France she would have yelled "au secours!" I'm amazed she didn't scream "merde" or worse. Chef talked with her and watched her bandage up, telling her the hospital wouldn't be able to do anything about the tip. I've talked with a surgeon and another chef since, and they agree that this is true; they can't do anything much in that situation. Well, she wrapped it herself and returned to finish the knife work. Can you imagine the courage to pick up the knife? The whole moment presented one of life's dilemmas when something goes very wrong: Do you stop and render aid, or do you keep going to finish your work?

As it was, Chef was there and in command, so the rest of us just kept going, feeling terrible all the while.

That lady is a champion. I would have vaulted to the floor in a dead faint.

Mind if I just depart here and roll out a few croissants? There's no cutting involved.

Final Exams

Practiced the knife cuts all weekend, as if entering Med School. Here is the simple yet surprisingly hard Citrus Supreme. Please don't grade me on the plating; I'm still trying to get all the white pith off.

Tomorrow is the spice test - identifying 100 spices and fresh herbs. A pinch of this and that. The two most likely to trip me up? Ground marjoram versus ground oregano. Not to mention ground thyme and ground basil.

How's this effort for mincing around? There used to be parsley stems on this board. Tomorrow is the final in Sanitation, with the spices/herbs drill in the afternoon. Tuesday is the national certification exam for ServSafe - and the knife cuts practical. Wednesday brings the final in Foundations 1 and in the career portfolio class. I am fresh out of funny words. My head is full of numbers for the proper concentration of chlorine bleach and the exact steps for producing clam chowder.

My pat answer for anything I don't know: Add butter.

Clarified Butter

Today in Singing Wheat Kitchen I have made a golden clarified butter. Why, you say? Who wants to stand over the stove, eyeball to the pan, carefully skimming the surface of whey and watching for the quintessential moment between carefully loved butter-watching and a toss everything brownout?

Chef has been making beautiful sauces lately - and you can't get there if you don't start with strong foundations. Clarified butter is one of those devices that make a noticeable difference in how stable the flour cooks when introduced to the butter in the pan for a roux, or how quickly the butter burns when you tear off the paper of your butter stick and lop it into the hot pan. It makes a world of difference. And so I try it, keeping my other eyeball to left, on the pot of chicken stock burbling in its own rhythm. When I finally get these two together, it will be in veloute, a marvelous white sauce.

The foundation of French classical cuisine - stocks and sauces - isn't something that jumps off the page of a recipe in a cookbook. It takes practice in patience to acquire the feel. Chef has told me another secret that I am applying to my work on the knife skills: It's important to work in peace.

And so I watch, and try, and feel my way.

Peace be with you, buttercup.