Baking week FOUR

Baking week four was a BIG Success!

We made a great deal of things; butter cookies, spitz cookies, orange cranberry muffins, herbed cheese biscuits and whole wheat rolls.

Chef thought all of our dishes were great; the butter cookies turned out a little too dry (needed more fat). Our spitz cookies were awesome, the muffins had no tunneling and were very moist. The herb biscuits needed a little bit less time in the oven, but overall they were flaky and tasted great! The whole wheat rolls I was in charge of and they turned out GREAT!

I started with the straight dough method and combined all of the ingredients; wheat germ, milk powder, whole wheat flour, egg, yeast, honey, salt. After I had the dough starting to combine I added the butter and let the mixer do its job. I greased a bowl and placed the smooth dough into the bowl, covered with plastic wrap and in the box to ferment. After doubling in size, I punched it down, portioned the rolls and put them on a sheet pan to proof in the box. After doubling in size I then egg washed the rolls and placed them in a 375 degree oven to bake. Chef said they were soft on the inside, good color, good texture and tasted GREAT!

The cookies were done using the creaming method and the biscuits are very similar to the muffin method. However, when making biscuits you use cold hard fat (butter) and break it up into small pieces. The muffin method for the orange cranberry muffins were done using liquid fat (melted butter).

Overall our team kicked butt...we just need to focus on making sure we get the creaming method down pat. For some reason our cookies are always dry; except for the spitz cookies that we made.