viennoiserie

I spent the last two weeks on dough rotation, which was basically viennoiserie-- breakfast pastry. Viennoiserie combines bread and pastry by making sweet yeast doughs. We made danishes, croissants, cinnamon rolls and fritters, using laminated doughs (alternating layers of dough and butter) and sweet dough (for cinnamon rolls). This rotation is tough because laminated doughs are a pain in the ass, and we were always the last ones out of the bakeshop at the end of the day.

This is nothing like baking at home (if you don't own a sheeter--and you don't-- don't bother trying laminated doughs. You will hate your life.)



On the left there is my partner. We work in pairs or in threes on each rotation. It's nice to have company, and she's probably my favorite person. Good to have on the hardest rotation.

This is danish dough rising for pinwheels before it's eggwashed and baked. Look how puffy it gets! That means we didn't fail.



When they're filled (in this case with vanilla pastry cream and orange jam) and baked, they look like this:



This is another shape, but the same idea, filled with lavender pastry cream and orange-lemon marmalade:



This is what I was most terrified of, because all the baking books I have talk about how hard it is: CROISSANTS. It's true that there's a lot to be careful of, and a dough sheeter makes your life better, but overall they weren't that bad. And they turned out lovely. The worst part was obsessive-compulsively watching the convection oven, because that thing sucks and will burn your food just to spite you.



My personal favorite, pain au chocolat:



Bear claws, with a delicious filling of walnut cake blended with hazelnut franigpane and pastry cream:



And the final haul last Friday:



These are a "garbage pastry" in that they use leftover scrap dough (from croissants, danishes, sweet rolls or all three) and just add apples and cinnamon sugar, (and butter. lots of butter.) but I think they might be the tastiest thing we made-- fritters:



cinnamon rolls (these are rather easy and we did them once with vodka apples):