Foodbuzz 24 x 24: Lessons from a Pastry Chef

Lessons from a Pastry Chef

My friend's daughter, Rosie is a recent graduate of the Baking and Pastry Arts program at the prestigious Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. Tyler Florence is an alum! She earned her Associates degree and is heading back for her Bachelor's degree. On Saturday, I threw a "learning" party where my friends and I baked with this newly minted pastry chef!


Instead of bringing her beautiful portfolio to the party to impress all the guests, Rosie brought this Totally Awesome bread she made! Rosie's got skills.

Chef Rosie completed a study abroad program in France during her studies. Every great chef needs to be able to teach others the craft, and Rosie did a great job at the party! We made two of her favorite items: entremets and breads!


Chocolate Mousse entremets. It is like eating delicious chocolate ice cream but it's not frozen! And we made it ourselves! Even better!

Entremets can have a zillion layers and Rosie has made some amazing entremets. Since we were novices and pressed for time (it wasn't a slumber party), we decided to make ours simple...but no less delicious! Our entremets had a layer of yellow cake (we used Flour Bakery's yellow cake recipe), raspberry or chocolate mousse, and the raspberry one was topped with a raspberry mirror glaze.

We made Raspberry and Chocolate Mousse Entremets (such a fancy word that I think I'll use it twenty times in this post). I've known Rosie since she was THREE years old when her mom and I worked together in Los Angeles!

To make the mousse, we combined lots of yolks, sugar, milk. It was heated up, strained and softened gelatin sheets were added. This was my first use of gelatin sheets. They don't smell like powdered gelatin. I'm so moving over to these sheets (purchased at Surfas)! We split the batter and added sweetened fresh raspberry puree to one, and melted 60% chocolate to the other. After it cooled, lots and lots of whipped cream is folded in.

Well, do you feel you were at the party?! We took a lot of photos for this step-by-step collage. All the guests had a lot of fun trying their hand making these cute desserts. The chocolate one had a secondary piece of cake (cut out smaller so the edges aren't shown), while the raspberry one had three fresh raspberries inside. Of course, Rosie was the best at leveling them off.

We made ciabatta and focaccia bread with the same dough! Oh, so versatile. We made focaccia with fresh tomatoes, caramelized onions, and green and purple bell peppers.

The making of the bread is two step: Poolish and Final Dough. Because the poolish or sponge needs 14 hours to ferment, Rosie made that the day before and brought it to the party. Then we scaled the rest of the dough ingredients and popped it all in the Kitchen Aid.

The ciabatta needs to get "folded" five times. I've never done this before but it was totally cool. After resting for 30 minutes in a covered container, our "dough baby" is pulled out and folded over. Five folds are needed. We kept track with blue tape and a sharpie - two must have items in the kitchen. During this process, Rosie answered all our baking questions...nothing like a private baking tutoring session!

Ahh...fresh bread! Since we were baking all day, we had a simple dinner party - chicken, salad, delicious fresh bread and, of course, awesome dessert made by US!

Thank you so much Rosie! Love ya! I know one day you'll be even more famous than your fellow alum Tyler! And thanks to Foodbuzz for sponsoring this awesome party!

Recipes:
Ciabatta bread
Chocolate & Raspberry Mousse Entremets