Oh My Everlasting Lucy Ways: Gallette Pastry Exam

January 31, 2012

Blogging Naturally, Entry #10

Oh My Everlasting Lucy Ways:  Gallette Pastry Exam

Lately I am so about truly trying to keep things short and sweet!  Love that pun!  I just had my pastry exam at the Natural Gourmet Instititute of Health & Culinary Arts and thought I would pass on a laugh that my classmates and I enjoyed at my expense.

Yes, my Lucille Ball ways are still shining through regardless of how I try to contain them!  I must set up the scene for you to appreciate it (I hope you do anyway).  We are swiftly coming to the end of our Chef’s Training Program (CTP) at the NGI and we just were given our pastry exam.  We are actually given the ingredients of a Vegan pastry crust to form a hopefully attractive little French Galette.  We are also given the ingredients for the apple filling that is to hopefully fit into our Galette in an attractive manner.  There are no procedures given from the temperature to cook the pastry to the how to prepare the dough to cooking of the filling to finally firing in the oven.

So, with approximately 4 hours sleep the night before I went into the City via the LIRR, then a ride on my French White Scooter (who some kids at the train station told me was cool, but not my own kids).  No silly, not a motorized scooter but one that is powered by my rather large legs.  Just a side bar, they have gotten bigger due to where we are in the program……Baking, cakes, pies, pastries….which followed Pasta and we are now looking forward towards bread, foccacia and pizza!  I am mentally moving the buttons on my chef’s jacket…because I ain’t got time to actually sew one stitch!

The recipe calls for ¾ cup whole wheat pasty flour (you know so that it is health supportive, I think in some way!)  and ¾ cup all purpose flour.  Well my sleepy head starts out with my 1 cup measuring cup and my ½ cup measuring cup.  I proceed to start my mise en place (gather my ingredients for my preparation).  I get all of my flour after waiting for some of my classmates to gather theirs, Momma taught me to be polite.  I am in no rush and apparently am operating on less than full faculties.  I gather the rest of my items and bring them back to my real estate (I love saying that!).  Now I start racking my brain to remember the steps of the procedures.  I amaze myself that I actually remember them and begin, up until the mixing and rolling of the dough, a perfect execution of my little French Galette!  Ooh La La or shortly after the exam was over and grading commenced Ha Ha Ha!

When I was adding the moisture to my dough…..I could not understand why I had to keep adding and adding and adding.  Truly I felt like there was something in that bowl that was drinking my water.  I know that the Chef who demonstrated our first Galette said don’t worry about how much water you use “just use your instincts and add what your gut tells you to, does that make sense?”  I kept working that dough and have to tell you I didn’t feel anything but raw dry flour! That’s when I realized I left out the maple syrup that was sitting to my right just begging to dive in.  Still no relief, I resigned to adding a few more tablespoons of water and finally gathered my specimen into plastic and placed in the refrigerator. 

Then came what I used to think was the fun part!  Roll that little ball out.  I did take a little notice when I put mine into the fridge it was considerably bigger than my classmates.  I don’t let these little details bother me when I am finally in the zone!  So out comes my dough and down goes my rolling pin.  I am rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling and rolling.  No kidding here, I was the last person to be rolling.  It started to remind me of the blob!  It totally took over my workstation and aggressively took over my classmate’s real-estate!  Thank God they were done at this point.  With that, all could and did take notice of my ever-growing blob!  I actually snapped out of my Zen like mode and started to realize something is terribly wrong!  But, the test must go on as does life.

I once again felt like that episode of Lucy with the chocolates at the factory where the conveyor belt spun by way too quickly and she compensated by hiding the chocolates on her person wherever they would fit after shoving them in her mouth to full capacity!  I must cut my 9 inch circle and hope…maybe pray….yeah why not….that the grading Chef does not see the extra dough that could easily make what looks like one or two more pastries!

While my Galette is cooling and waiting to be graded a few of my classmates start discussing my abnormal rolling adventure.  Shhhhhhhhhhhhh I said a judge must not be presented with preconceived notions.  Please let him tell me what, if anything is wrong with my pretty little Galette.  I have to say it truly looked spot on.  But you know how deceiving looks can be……Chef looked at it and commented on how nice it looked…but did say that he noticed me “overworking” my dough and made notes during the test.  Little did the Chef or I know for that matter what the problem actually was.  Chef then tried to cut into my little beauty with a butter knife….looked more like the action of sawing at this point….after much labor the cut was made.  Comments, very doughy but nice taste and texture on filling and looks appealing.

When the Galette was done being graded my classmates told me that they saw me use the 1 & the ½ cup vs. the ½ & ¼ cup for measuring the flour!  Does that make sense!  I laughed so hard with them that I couldn’t stand still long enough to take a good picture of the poor little butchered Galette of mine.  Turns out I got a 95 on that!  Thank you Chef.

I didn’t fail this exam; however I did fail to make this short!  Sorry.  Till next time,

Naturally Respectful,

Cindy D