Dear & I had an idea to set up a small coffee bar when we go back to Singapore. The concept is very simple. Just serve good coffee for take away, and few but tasty croissants, sandwiches, salads. Nothing complicated. Croissant, or Danish pastries have always been my favourites ( though I seem like loving all cakes, sweet desserts...). People has been raved about The Tiong Bahru Bakery in Raffles Shopping Center, so we went for a try during one home trip back to Singapore. umm....I found it was over-rated, nothing special about it. I had better ones in UK, and are even cheaper. For example, Pret A Manger. My passion for baking grows after living here, and I had always learnt all the baking from youtube, magazines. I had never attended any cookery or baking course. Thanks for my most loving dear, he strongly encouraged me to go. He paid for the 1 day course fee of £165, and even took a day off to chauffer me as the course only runs during weekday.
I
attended the “Introduction to Artisan Patisserie” on 27 June'14 (Friday).
The baker was Emmanuel (The baker/author of “How to make bread”) , and joined with me were 10 others baking enthusiasts.
It
was a full day course, running from 10:00am -5pm, with an hour lunch break.
Good selection of pastries were served for breakfast before the course started,
and each of us were given a goodie bag with recipe. Emmanuel showed us the
techniques to make good croissant dough, and we made our own puff pastry dough
to bring home at the end of the day. He had also taught us how to cut the
pastry dough into different patterns and decorated with fruits on top. He was
also a very responsible and helpful instructor who answered my queries after I emailed
him about my first bake at home. Not forgetting to mention David, the helpful
assistant who gave us helping hands while Emmanuel was busy with other
students.
The
facilities were excellent, and each of us had our own big spacious working station
to work on. There was a mini fridge at the bottom of most workstations too.
The
lunch prepared by the school team was delicious. I tried the apple cinnamon bread which was fantastic. Soft texture inside, and tasty. I may consider taking up the Introduction to Artisan Baking with Emmanuel again.
After a long day, at the
end of the day, the joint-effort of all attended the course produced an
impressive varieties of pastries such as croissant, pain au raisin, pain au
chocolate… to take home. The school had kindly provided us a big carton tray to put all the pastries in. I took about 9 (croissants, pain au raisin, pain au chocolate, palmier, apricot pastry) The next morning, I warmed them up
again in the oven ,The pastries were still crusty, and tasted
really well. I was really glad dear enjoyed the pastries very much too, as he was quite particular about the buttery taste of croissant, but he gave a thumb up of our bake.
So far, I have attempted twice at home. It was not difficult. But my biggest challenge was the rolling out of croissant pastry as when the weather is warm, and if the dough is not cold, once you roll out, the butter starts melting very soon, oozing out everywhere, and make it difficult to roll. The rolling and folding into single book turn required 3 times.The last resort is to sprinkle flour, but we were told not a good idea, as it affects the texture.
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| My first attempt at home |
2nd attempt
Learning
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| book turn |
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| one of the lady was practising rolling up pain au raisin |
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| cutting the croissant pattern. Looks like Eiffel tower |
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| Bake to take home. Yummy |
Having learnt the technique to bake croissant and danish pastries, I start to appreciate it so much. Simple ingredients but great deal of time, effort, patience involved to produce a tray of good croissant.
