Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Midweek Kitchen Confessions 29: I have a lot...

...to learn.

Last weekend, I attended the first cooking class of my life. At Les Madeleines. Where Romina Rasmussen makes magic. She taught me (and others) a lot. Most of it about croissants and danish. But also about baking in general. And baking resources. Here are the most important things I came away from the class with:
  • If I'm ever going to successfully make croissants or danish, I need one of these:

so I can measure by weight, rather than by volume. And one of these:


so I can beat the living daylights out of the butter that gets folded into the dough.

  • I need to start baking with European (83% butterfat) butter.
  • I would probably be better off just buying croissants and danish from Romina rather than trying to do it myself because it will take me hundreds of tries before I can get my dough to have perfect layers like these:

Take a close look. There are so many beautiful layers of folded dough/butter, it's ridiculous. I didn't make this dough. Romina did. And gave it to me. Honestly, it's like a brick of gold sitting in my freezer waiting for me to shape and bake.

  • I will never have a bakery. I'm not nice enough. Or motivated enough. Or enough of a food scientist. The amount of knowledge in that one woman's head is astonishing. And she just holds it in there. She hasn't written it down for posterity.
  • I need to take more classes from her.
  • And eat there more often.

1 comment:

shannon said...

SO wish I could've gone! Let me know the next time you take a class. That dough is gorgeous.
(PS the night you were at the class, I got to talk to your darling girls backstage. LOVE them.)