Croissants and Levain

No, not a croissandwich from Burger King (or wherever)...these are the real thing...layers of real butter ..but not as easy as it seems. if the butter gets too soft and you are rolling out the dough, well, the butter squirts/oozes/or something out the end of the dough, onto the counter and then you need to take the whole mess and put it back in the fridge to harden it a bit and start again.  Or something like that. I really don't think I'll be making these at home but you never know... we finally did get the dough turned 3 times and Chef Adrienne will do the 4th turn.  Then into the freezer until we bake them off next week.
 
Oh, yeah, then we watched a DVD of Raymond Calvel (before 1930 – 2005) who was a bread expert  and professor of baking in  France.

He was Julia Child and Simone Beck's teacher for the bread chapter of Mastering the Art of French Cooking volume 2.  Unfortunately the DVD was not good quality so we really didn't get to see the whole thing.

It was sort of a dis-jointed class as we switched between lab and lecture a couple of times, but managed to get the croissant dough done and the levain started. The levain (sourdough) starter (Herman for you Midwesterners) will be fed every day and we will use it in 2-3 weeks to make sourdough bread... I was really tired this morning (after 3 weeks of having company off and on and getting ready for the greenhouse party tomorrow) so it was a tough class...came home and took a nap!!

But it was fun anyway and I still love the class and getting my brain working. !!

Pictures from class here