For my baking final exam I decided to make a little video to reflect my journey making croissants for the first time in my life. I never realized how long it took to make this pastry and I came across some struggles making it but that is how I can learn and grow as a baker. I decided to cool the dough overnight instead of 4 hours, so the process was much longer, taking 2 days in total to make. If I were to reflect on my learning journey for my grade 11 year, I can definitely say I feel more confident with baking (especially converting measurements). I believe the outputs of all the treats I made this year do reflect my growth. Though I went through some obstacles, especially during the constructing of the gingerbread houses/castles, I overcame them and ended up successful. Before this year, I did not even know how to make a blog. This experience has been really exciting and new, and I think I did a good job with updating my blog and trying to incorporate different elements into each post. Unfortunately I will not be continuing my learning journey in a baking or cooking course for my last year in high school. Regardless, I still am passionate and yearn to grow and learn new things everyday so here and there I will definitely bake and even cook for my family!
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For the sourdough bread assignment, out of all the King Arthur Recipes, I decided to bake the Rustic Sourdough Bread. With some of the starter left, I made Sourdough Pretzels along with the bread. I must say that the turnout was well done seeing as it was my first time ever making bread. I would definitely do this again or try another type of bread in the long list of options. My favourite part of doing this was definitely the kneading portion because I was definitely getting a work out from it! One thing I would change when making the pretzels would be making rolling it out thinner so that the end result is not as thick. Below is the process with a little fun video of my kneading: Through this process, my dough doubled by day 3 and actually overfilled as shown in the first picture. However, it was surprisingly just a huge bubble. To be honest the smell of the sourdough starter is not pleasant at all, I guess I really am not a huge fan of the "sour" smell it is supposed to give off... it possibly makes me want to cry and puke! Otherwise, I think it went pretty well, as in the end it turned out to be bubbly as the website described it would be by day 5. I am thinking of making the Rustic Sourdough Bread soon as my family prefers it :)
My father and I made many delicious pizzas with a variety of topping! Here is the process: The last recipe before Spring Break was Cinnamon Swirl Muffins (made with a biscuit dough). To be completely honest, I really loved this treat because since we used the biscuit technique, the exterior of the muffins were crispy (also because we baked it in muffin tins). Therefore, since I do love that type of texture when munching on food, I would definitely bake these again!
For this lab, there were two parts to it. Between my partner and I, I was in charge of the base also known as the crust while she was in charge of the choux. My part was honestly the easiest as there was not many steps to it. But here's how it turned out: This sweet dessert was just phenomenal to the tongue (in my opinion at least)... To be honest the Swedish pastry tasted so so much like an egg tart, especially the inside. I loved how much it rose in the oven and the flaky texture on the outside. It definitely was not too sweet but not so bland that there was not any taste. I would say that it is indeed one of my favourite things that we have baked this year.
I always thought these were very difficult to make but afterwards I realized they are actually pretty simple and very delicious. Coming from an asian culture, I have eaten these before however never thought to make them. From my experiences, they usually come in a box and are frozen so when you want to eat them, you just pop them into the pan and cook to preference. I prefer when they have that layer of crispiness on the outside and a doughy type of texture on the inside. When making these in class, my partner and I ended up having that consistency. Though they are pretty simple to make, the time to make them was atrocious. We ended up having to stay a couple extra minutes after the bell but I would not complain as they ended up being very scrumptious.
Below is a slideshow to reflect on our health unit and the baked goods we made during this time. As you can see, we had to convert from cups to mL, working on our conversion skills. In my opinion, I really liked it because it helped me explore the different ways I could be healthy by just small adjustments to the recipes. One of the days, we had to find a healthy recipe and buy any ingredients that were not provided in the classroom. Sophia and I decided to make Carrot Cake Cinnamon Rolls. To be honest, it does not sound the healthiest as carrot cake itself is said to be quite unhealthy so as we were baking it, we decided to substitute whole wheat flour in for all-purpose flour and we added flax seed in it. The product turned out much better than I expected and I enjoyed this assignment. Today Ms. Siverson gave us a fill in the blanks recipe with no instruction and told us to fill it out and make the cookies. At first, I was stressing because I totally blanked out on what ingredients a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe had but over a few minutes, I remembered that the first thing in any chocolate chip recipe is to cream the margarine. Once I figured that out the rest of the recipe was quite easy however I could not decide how many mL's of chocolate chips to add. I remembered it was to be something close to an overfilling 60mL cup therefore I made it 80mL's of chocolate chips. After filling out the blanks, Sophia and I proceeded to bake the chocolate chip cookies. It turned out really well seeing as we had not made cookies in a while. The texture of the cookies were baked to a crisp, not burnt nor raw. One thing I would change about it would be the amount of chocolate chips added to the recipe, I am the type of person who prefers more chocolate therefore it would not hurt to add 5-10 more mL's. Otherwise, the result was great and I believe we passed the test with no struggle in the end.
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