Intro to Baking Recap: Week 6

The first thing I baked after the Purchasing final project was the Panettone...Mostly because we needed to do something about the bagful of fossilized dried fruits discovered in the nether-regions of the pantry. That, and this recipe was the quickbread version of the authentic one.


Authentic Panettones are fermented over the course of a day or two, sort of like the Brioche. Light and fluffy; enriched with eggs and butter; studded with nuts, raisins, and other dried fruits, it's a traditional Christmas treat in Italy. Well, why not have Christmas in August? Since this recipe, being the quickbread version, required no yeast, I can whip it up in a few hours.


I mixed the batter and poured it into a 32-oz. empty coffee can. These are usually baked in a special cylindrical mold, but the coffe can would suffice.


The end result? ...Hm. Pretty dense and crumbly, more like a heavy poundcake. Alas, this is the limit of the quickbread method; it is not designed to achieve the fluffy, airy texture of its yeast-leavened counterpart.

Other than that, it was actually good, similar to a fruitcake. But since it was kinda dry/crumbly, I brushed the entire thing with rum syrup. It's "curing" in the freezer right now, and I'm hoping it'll make a good bread pudding someday.

Then it's Intro to Baking Week 6: Soft yeast rolls, Creme Brulee, Almond Bread Pudding, Churros

Another girl and I got started on the rolls, while the two guys in my group started the Bread Pudding. One of the guys had gotten into a car accident last week and had mild but noticeable short-term memory loss--I had to tell him twice that the Bread Pudding is baked in a waterbath. He still managed to forget it.

But here is our Almond Bread Pudding, topped with sugar and sliced almonds. It turned out very sweet and tasty, but the bread cubes were kinda dry and the custard a little watery. I don't know if that's due to the lack of waterbath or the recipe itself*(see Note).
Then our rolls....

Beeeeautiful! The egg wash did its job well. The guys in the group couldn't wait for them to cool down for a sampling and tore one open. They stood there mesmerized at the steam rising from the broken roll. After stuffing that in their mouths, they proceeded to wolf down about seven of them. I didn't mind; we only needed one roll to show the Instructor for critiquing.

Our Creme Brulee turned out great also. We got them out of the oven at just the right time--not underdone, nor overdone. The Instructor showed us how to use the propane torch to brulee them....

Creme Brulee, being torched....

...Torched to perfection!

The last thing we made was Churros, since they're best eaten fresh out of the fryer. Every group's Churros turned out a bit doughy. The fryer should've been at a lower temperature, so the inside can get cooked before the outside gets burned.

But this was a good day. Our stuff turned out pretty well, and we got done with the cleanup fairly quickly.

*Note: The recipe instructed us to "Make Creme Anglaise with listed ingredients (i.e. cream, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and almond extracts)", pour that over the toasted bread cubes, then bake it in waterbath. In other words, we're supposed to make a stirred custard by cooking it on stovetop, then cook that even further by baking it?? That can be why the Bread Pudding looked awatery (the custard had curdled from overcooking).