How to fail at croissants and other life lessons

It was another one of those days today. I think that now I can pretty much tell if it's going to be a not so great day by whether or not I forget my glasses. Today I forgot them. I once again procrastinated on homework/studying for a quiz so my plan was to get up early so that I could take a shower and get to school early in order to do said homework/studying. I decided it was a better idea to sleep. Somehow though I managed to get up, shower, and get to school early. I finished my homework in, like, three minutes and got some last minute studying in. I was in such a hurry though this morning that my glasses got left behind. Anyhow, today we had a quiz first thing and I was feeling not so great about it. When I finished I was thinking that I got a B. At the end of class we got our grades back and I got a 97%, which means that my overall grade is still a 99%. haha
I just realized that I never posted about last Sunday's class and I have pictures! So, I will just combine the posts since I didn't get any pictures today. Last Sunday we made doughnuts, bagels, pretzels, brioche, pain aux raisin, and probably something else I'm forgetting. For the bagels my partner and I decided to make cinnamon raisin bagels (sans raisins) topped with a cinnamon/sugar topping. I don't want to brag, but they were delicious! Here's a picture (they kind of look like doughnuts)

As for the doughnuts, my partner and I made lemon with some icing and sprinkles on top. I am not a huge doughnut fan and if I am going to have a doughnut I prefer a plain cake doughnut, not a yeast doughnut, but what can ya do? Anyhow, the doughnuts came out looking super cute, I tried an unfrosted one and it was pretty decent, not too sweet which was nice. Here's a picture!

Today we made a few doughs that we'll be baking tomorrow. We made croissant dough (which I screwed up), danish dough, and a tart dough. We also made shortcake, biscuits, and scones. We only had a little while to make four doughs so me and my partner split the duties. So she made the chocolate chunk scones and tart dough. While I made the cheddar and chive biscuits and the shortbread. They all turned out great. The cheddar and chive biscuits were amazing! We were the only team that made that recipe so a bunch of the other students were sampling them and singing their praises. (Not literally of course, that would be weird) Anyhow, the croissants almost gave me an aneurysm. My dough came out super dry and sort of crumbly. In school and professional kitchens we don't use measuring cups to measure ingredients because it's not super accurate, instead we use scales. On our scales there is a lock switch on the bottom, it's always supposed to be unlocked, but mine was loose so it was toggling back and forth between the two without my knowledge/consent. So, my measurements were all slightly off and my dough came out super crappy. We laminated the dough (with butter not plastic) and I don't have high hopes for it tomorrow, oh well, at least it wasn't some stupid mistake that I myself made. It was equipment error I tell you! (I'm not bitter, I swear...) On the bright side, I got to Macgyver my scale so that I won't have the same problem in the future. 

Random things from my week in the city:

This is just a building that is right by my school and it's really pretty; the picture didn't turn out great but it has a really pretty clock on it.

There is a homeless lady that frequents my store and she is always giving us clothing from thrift shops. This was my gift (seriously, it had a bow wrapped around it.) On the one hand it's really sweet and generous, and on the other hand... well you saw the picture. 

I just started watching "The Walking Dead" on the advice of a co-worker and it's really good - so check it out if you're interested.

I went and saw the movie "We Need to Talk About Kevin" last night after work. I read the book a couple of weeks ago and the film was pretty good. It was slightly different from the book but still managed to be a decent adaptation. I also noticed that the theatre is hiring, so I think that I'm going to apply and see if I could work there as well. (It seems like a good fit - independent theatre that only plays indie movies? sign me up). 

I think that's it for today, Aunt Kathy - I'm going to try my best to get some Christmassy pictures this week!

Kayla

Carb coma, Dry eyes, and other hazzards of culinary school...

Too. Many. Carbs.
That's a phrase that I didn't know I had in my vocabulary since I've never met a carb that I didn't like, but dear lord after today's class I feel like I've od'ed on them. Today we made savory breads/pizzas and by jove they were delicious. (I have no idea why I'm speaking/writing in this manner, I think that my brain may be slowly rotting). The first thing we did today was to get our report cards. Guess who's got a 4.0? Obviously me, I really wouldn't be blogging about my classmates good grades... Anyways, after getting our report cards, we started on making a ciabatta dough. We turned half of the ciabatta into focaccia. For the ciabatta half of it was mixed with rosemary and shaped into "rings" and the plain dough was made into loaves. For the focaccia we divided the top into quadrants and put tomatoes in one section, potato in another, onions and olives in the third section, and rosemary in the fourth. So it looked something like this:

We ran out of rosemary so I just did another section of olives and onions. My eyes hurt so bad today because they had chopped like 20 onions (other students, not my eyes) and after the pizza baked there was a lot of smoke in the air so it really dried my eyes out. The good news though is that I didn't burn myself or cut any fingers today. Here's a picture of the ciabatta:

After we made those breads we moved onto pizza! I decided to just do a very simple pizza with my favorite combination of sauce cheese and basil. It turned out really great.

I think that's it for today, hope everyone is well.
-Kayla