Unlike the previous practical — or for that matter, most of my other practicals — this one went as smoothly as could be imagined.

We had to make a Tarte Tatin, a Frangipane Tart, and a Pre-Baked Tart Shell (all doughs pre-made) in 3 hrs on Friday.  For the first time, I finished quite early — and could have finished earlier, but I decided to let a tart cool down a bit before I decided I was done. Because these were “unfilled,” they were pretty much done once they were put into the oven and taken out; only the Frangipane Tart required glaze after being baked. So, it was a nice confidence booster to finally have a peaceful practical with a happy ending.
Each of these products required rolling out dough, and we had a choice between doing it by hand or on the sheeter. The sheeter is a large contraption that rolls out your dough by passing it under a rolling mechanism as it moves between two conveyor belts on either side. The only drawback is that dough (especially short dough) can stick and get mangled on the roller, and it’s hard to guide the shape of the finished dough, even if it has an even thickness.

I prefer to roll out dough by hand, and I actually practiced at home because I didn’t feel like class had prepared me until I was confident with my ability (and I felt like trying out some delicious tart recipes, which I’ll post in the future). I looked in a lot of books for the best rolling technique, and found that Flo Braker had the one that worked well for me. She suggests chilling the dough in a disk shape, and rolling the dough out from the middle while rotating it 1/8 turn after every roll of the pin. I’d been turning it about a quarter every time and flipping it over; this made the dough roll out into a square shape and probably overworked the dough because it all had direct contact with the rolling pin. Braker’s way minimizes the threat of overworking all of the dough and produces a circular shape.  You have to make sure that there’s enough flour under the dough, though, so that it won’t stick; also, by not flipping it, both sides won’t get packed with extra flour, because too much extra flour makes it tough.

This Tarte Tatin is one of my favorite things that we made this block, and since I like making things that I like, I especially wanted it to turn out well. It’s rather simple, in a clever way. All you have to do is sprinkle 2 ounces of butter with 5 ounces of sugar over low heat in a small skillet, and then lay eight apple halves on top. It takes about an hour for the sugar and butter to caramelize into a deep brown — and you have to jiggle it all the while so that the apples don’t burn. While it’s baking, you roll out puff pastry dough (we made quick puff pastry earlier in the week), and cut it with an 8″ ring, and when it’s ready, you lay it over the apples, cut a small cross in the middle for steam to escape, and tuck the edges into the side of the pan. Then, it goes into the deck oven to bake until the puff is baked through — you still need to jiggle it to make sure the apples don’t get stuck and burn. The deck oven has controls for top and bottom heat, so we baked it with about 80% top heat and 20% bottom heat so that the heat was concentrated on baking the puff pastry, not cooking the already caramelized apples. Once the pastry is cooked, you let it cool only a few minutes before laying a half sheet pan with a wire rack on top of it and flipping it. Then you see the results of your labor — whether the apples are completely caramelized and not too burnt. Mine had a few dark spots, and I think that near the end of its time on the burner and the beginning of being in the oven, I didn’t jiggle it as much, and it got stuck until I really jiggled it to free it about halfway through baking.

The apples turn out so soft and smoothly candied; with or without creme fraiche, it’s comforting and flavorful.

The Frangipane Tart has an unbaked bottom crust and a latticed top crust, and is filled with a frangipane filling (almond paste, butter, sugar, eggs, cake flour) that turns almost cake-like after being baked. Since I’d rolled out all of the dough and lined all of the pans I needed when I did the puff pastry dough, it was pretty smooth sailing — I just need to be sure to dock the dough before spreading apricot jam on top, and then pouring in the almond paste mixture that acts as the filling, and then cutting a piece of dough with a multi-blade pastry cutter for the lattice.  I wasn’t sure exactly how to get even diamond shapes, but about halfway through laying the second layers of lattice strips, I noticed that it had happened naturally.  The chef thought that the diamonds should be smaller.

I did make two mistakes, though. 1) We had to scale down our original recipe, and I knew that I’d have extra filling, so I measured out the 20 oz required after I thought I had compiled it all… but then I noticed the 1.3 oz of cake flour that I’d forgotten to add. So, I folded it in, and then to compensate for the extra weight, took some out without weight it again. But I must have taken out more like 3-4 oz rather than one, so my filling didn’t bake up evenly with the crust as it should have — it’s just a little sunken.  2) This lattice was made by laying half the strips in one direction and then the other half diagonally, and I should have egg washed the first layer before adding the second.  I forgot.  But since there are two glazes that go on this after it’s baked (apricoture and very thin fondant), it’s barely noticeable if you forget like I did.

The Pre-Baked Tart Shell went off nicely, but I devoted a lot of thought to it beforehand.  The major pitfalls are having an unevenly rolled out dough that will bake unevenly and having the sides slip down the mold while baking.  I’d also read some books that insisted on chilling/freezing the dough after rolling it to reduce the risk of shrinkage.  When I practiced at home, though, chilling didn’t make much of a difference in relation to shrinkage or falling.  I found that the key for it not to slip down is to pinch the dough hard against the mold.  But chilling it was good for docking it; soft dough tended to tear easily when docked.  As for rolling it out evenly, it was a matter of practice and of feeling the dough for thicker and thinner spots and evening it out.

Even though we have convection ovens at school, they bake rather unevenly, so I babied the shell in the oven.  It takes about 20 mins to bake, so I rotated it 180 degrees at 8 mins, and then, at about 16 mins, rotated it 90 degrees, and then 180 at about 18 mins.  In a normal production day, I wouldn’t have time to fiddle around like this, but I had nothing else to do, so it kept me busy and it turned out evenly baked.
In the end, I got a 97, so that was nice.  Even with such a good grade, though, I still see the imperfections and what I want to improve… but I guess that’s better than getting a bad grade and critiquing myself even more harshly. :)  If anything, I was just happy that I wasn’t rushing the whole time as usual.  I had a quick slice of my luscious Tarte Tatin to celebrate before I left for a lovely weekend in LA.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Culinary School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.