Day 4 Le Cordon Bleu Paris

So far so good. My head is still above the water and I don't think I am sinking. Today seemed like an easy day only because we had a demo and a practical. Our second in the dough serious, we learned short pastry and puff pastry. Once taught the dough preparation, we were shown how to employ the short pastry to make a Quiche Lorraine, and Quiche Aux Champignons. The demo chef was the crazy chef Lesourd pictured here with the finished products. Next the chef demonstrated puff pastry which is a dough folded multiple time with layers of a dry butter (85% fat content and little moisture content) over a period of time to create fluffiness. It's a game of math progressions with the counting of the layers. Folding it over 4 times to begin, then 3 times=84 layers. Then we folded it 3 time again and the layers increase geometrically. Below Le Chef is rolling out the puff pastry.

Next came the practical. Assignment was to:
1. Make a short pastry, filling of ham, guryere, cream and egges , and Create the quiche Lorraine.
2. Prepare a puff pastry dough and fold it several times and store it for a dish taught tomorrow.

The kitchen was mayhem because rather than each student having his/her own oven for the quiche, the chef wanted ALL of us to use a single convection oven. Everyone works at a different pace, so you can imagine the oven door was a revolving door with all of us inserting, extracting, and eyeing our precious quiches like a grizzly bear protecting her young. It all worked out in the end and we all seemed to enjoy this session. Here is a picture of my final product after having a slice....yum.

Let me begin this paragraph by asking you to read this with the utmost innocence in your perspective. The locker room at LCB is tiny and very cramped! Like it was designed for kindergarten kids. As any other school, the lockers are a point of convergence for the entire school as classes begin and end. Therefore, it becomes VERY crowded and you have no choice but to become very chummy with your locker neighbors. Utmost courtesy and decorum are required to maintain civility. However there are benefits to every bad situation. The guy to my left in the locker room is Grant who is in his 50's, speaks with a British accent, and is a professional chef in Vancouver. He is taking the pastry course. It has always been polite "hellos" and "how's it going mate" and today he was nice enough to give me extras from his practical as pictured below! A pound cake and some other goodies. Now where else can 2 straight dudes exchange a pound cake in a locker room?Only at LCB.

My food stockpile is growing in my fridge. I have 2 lbs of chicken and rice, a quiche, and some desserts. I can't make it disappear fast enough!