French Chocolate

My lovely wife came home with some chocolate today.  When she told me I figured it would be a peanut slab but no she returned with 3.5lb's of imported Chocolate Batons from France.  I ask you dear reader, what does one do in a situation like this?  (Besides eat one right away!)  I pondered it a while before it dawned on me that the best course of action, actually the only course of action, was to make Pain au Chocolate.  Was this a hint from Chris?  We will never know, either way my Croissant plans for the day were derailed and I embarked on a new adventure ...

Making Pain au Chocolate starts in the same manner as Croissants, first you make a rich dough.  I used a 60% hydration dough (half milk, half water) with 10% (baker's percent) butter and Sugar added.  All the ingredients into the mixing bowl and ran it on low for about four minutes and then up one level for another two minutes.  The dough has low gluten development and is ready to go in the fridge.

Often I will let the dough bulk ferment at room temperature for an hour, I choose not to today as I was afraid I would forget, and that would be very very bad.  Also with the addition of chocolate the subtle nutty flavor the yeast imparts to the dough during the bulk ferment will be more or less lost.  So in the fridge it went!  Yes you are right, the books and blogs say to roll it out before putting it in the fridge.  I use to do that when I made smaller batches, but now that I am up to 1.8kg I just chuck the dough in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge for a few hours.

While the dough was in the fridge I beat the butter block into a sheet about 1/4" thick.  This is done by putting the butter between two pieces of parchment paper and wielding a rolling pin like a baseball bat.

I thought of boring you with pictures of rolling out the dough, putting in the butter - 425 grams of butter mind you - and rolling out the dough again, then folding the dough, then rolling out the dough, the folding the dough, and then rolling out the dough, and then folding the dough.   Fortunately for you I thought of it after I had done the same therefore I did not take any pictures so you are spared.  

The following picture is of the dough rolled out (it looks surprisingly similar to the other pictures I did not take) ready for the chocolate batons to be lovingly laid out. 

Did you notice in the above picture the big box of chocolate baton's my wife purchased?  Just in case here is a close up.  :)

Back to the point of this posting ... here is the dough with the batons laid out in nice neat rows ready for the rolling.

To the left is a long roll of Pain au Chocolate!  Instead of cutting the dough and then putting in the batons I roll up all the dough and then cut it to length.  It is much easier to cut that way and saves me the trouble of cleaning the pizza cutter.  I used my metal bench knife to cut dough and chocolate. 

Following are 11 Pain au Chocolate ready to proof or go into the freezer.  I will bake three of them tomorrow (Saturday) morning so the other eight will be saved for a rainy day - like Sunday!

As I put them into the freezer I did some math.  My target was 100g of layered dough in each Pain.  The weight of the dough was 1801, divide that by 11 and you have 163, almost twice the weight!  Sacre Bleu!!  :-)

Next time I have to cut it into 18 pieces.  I will do that by rolling it out slightly longer and using a smaller spacer. (The plastic bench knife in the above picture was my spacer.)   I still expect that, as overgrown as they may be, they will taste great.  

The rest of this post shall be in the morning when the first three come out of the oven ... I can't wait!  

I took a few of the pain au chocolate out of the freezer before I went to bed and put them in the fridge.  You will note that I cut one in half.  This was at the request of my wife who informed me that was not going to eat a whole one.  Dennis will get the other small one.  ;-)

About 3:00am they were taken out of the fridge and put on a baking sheet with some previously frozen croissants (picture on the left)  I am taking a guess on timing as one was frozen solid and the other is out of the fridge.  

Back to bed with dreams of croissants running through my head! (Sorry I just couldn't resist.)

When I got up at 8:00am in the morning I noticed the croissants had proofed nicely and the oven was on!  (I suspect that Chris turned on the oven.)

Once the oven was up to temp, about another five minutes, I put them in.  Now I bake my croissants at the highest oven temperature possible for 10 minutes under steam.  That means I put an inverted foil pan that has been sprayed with water over the croissants.  After the first 10 minutes I take the pan off and turn the oven down to 200c.  Set a timer for five minutes and go check the croissants, repeat.  Today it took another 12 minutes to produce the following.

Notice the butter leakage.  I am not overly pleased with it however one cannot be too upset given that they are almost 28% butter by weight when they go into the oven.  So coming out 27% butter they still are awesome.

The Pain au Chocolate went first and were enjoyed by all.  Following are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Final Ingredient List:

Bread Flour 750g
Salt 19g
Sugar 75g
Yeast 15g
Butter 75g (soft)
Water 214g
Milk 214g
Butter 425g (sheeted for rolling)
Total weight 1801g

50 chocolate batons (48 for the dough 2 for the baker)

I am submitting this post to yeast spotting.

blogging, baking, job hunting

I looking for work so that means I am making Brioche!  I started today by almost destroying my mixer, the smoke rising filled the room.  But in the end I was able to get the window-pane test to work properly.

It is rising now and I shall bake it in the morning.  Where I will call a friend of mine who works for Datacomm and see if I can get a proper introduction to a decision maker there.  In the mean time I am continuing my exercise.  I rode my bike about 15km yesterday up and down plenty of hills, and today I walked from the CBD home.  That was 1.5 hours of an uphill walk.  Enough to make me sweat.

Junior Rugby

Here's Dennis in his first rugby game.  He's at the end, far left of the photo.  His team is called the Orcas and they're part of the Western Suburbs Roosters Junior Rugby Club.  They played well but lost their first game.

Now it's a week later and they've played their second game.  They lost and didn't play so well.  Their coach will target the areas for improvement at this week's practice.

Since Tom and I are new to rugby we aren't even sure how to cheer.  We learned quickly today.  When the other team has the ball yell at them to "tackle."  When they have the ball yell at them to "support."

Pets

Here are Dennis and Chats snoozing away.  Chats is the cat that lives in the house where we are house sitting.  Obviously these two get along well.  Chats is aptly named because she is a noisy talker.  Dennis enjoys holding her and talking to her like she's a baby.  She takes it in stride.

Occasionally Chats sits on my lap for a while in the evening.  She warms my lap and I warm her while I read a book.  We ran out of cat food so I had to buy some for the first time.  Tom is not a cat fan and tolerates her because she's a good mouser.  She keeps the mice out of his flour.

Autumn is here, some days are chilly and we are firing up the wood burner.  Chats enjoys a prime spot in front of the fire.

I not only get to pet the cat, but also get to watch the tetras swim in the aquarium.  It's been a learning curve figuring out how to get the gravel vacuum started.  I cleaned it a few days ago with a bit of help from Tom.  After the first cleaning, I discovered we have a black algae eater in the tank.  I'd never seen him because he hides in the plants.

So in addition to feeding the family, I feed the cat and the fish.  Fortunately pet menus are very simple.

Makara Beach Picnic

On a warm Saturday in February we packed our picnic backpack and found a picnic spot at Makara beach.  Delightful and beautiful.

Settling In

We had a great holiday in January visiting with family and friends in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Chicago. It was too short and a bit of a whirlwind.

Chicago and Michigan had some snow which all of us enjoyed. Dennis especially enjoyed playing in the snow with our host's dogs. Here he is with Riley.

When we returned to Wellington in late January we moved to the suburb of Karori. It's really convenient for our taekwondo training 5 minutes down the road. It's been a few weeks and we're still settling in. I had to buy a vacuum cleaner and got a great deal on TradeMe. I still have to get a sewing and craft area set up for me and Dennis. We're missing a few things that went into storage for the year, so I'm making do with folding tables.

Tom is bicycling to and from work. Fortunately he has had no wipeouts so far this year! I think his wrist is still recovering from last year's collision with a parked car. (He sprained it.) Tom is also back to bread making. He learned a new no knead technique and bakes bread in a cast iron Dutch oven. He's working on getting a sourdough starter going again. I suppose I can feed his starter at the same time I feed the fish and the cat!

Unwanted Christmas Present

We arrived safely in Atlanta after a long day of travel on the 26th. Two days later my sore throat had not improved and I was eating slowly. Finally I sought medical diagnosis. After $130, checking my vitals and a brief medical history, I found out I have tonsillitis and pharyngitis. Now it's two days later and the antibiotic is starting to help me feel better! That and other medications set me back another $100.

We have had short visits with Chris' parents and Tom's parents. Next we head north to see Tom's sister and family in Michigan.