The Perfect Croissant - it's the butter!

After the success of our morning Macaron class, it was now time to tackle Croissants and Pain au Chocolat at Lenôtre Culinary School.  April hadn't signed up for this course, so it was just me as the lone American in this class. I might also add that this class was entirely "en Français" but thankfully, I was still able to keep up given my very poor French language skills. It did help that I had some French tutoring via Skype using a tutor at Verbal Planet that helped me with my culinary vocabulary. Did you know that there are at least 8 verbs that mean "to whisk?"

Naturally, we started off the class with a delicious espresso. The secret to a great croissant? Time and butter! The techniques that I learned in class had some differences from techniques that I commonly use when making yeast breads. As an example, the process of "proofing" the yeast is somewhat different; flour is sprinkled on top of the yeast and water mixture and put aside to sit for up to an hour until it starts to bubble over the flour mixture.

Croissant pastry is so flaky because of the many layers of butter (and it's a lot of butter!) that are created by a succession of rolling and folding the pastry, followed by a period of rest in the refrigerator. This is where the time factor comes in. It takes at least 8 full hours to create the actual pastry, followed by additional hours to allow the shaped pastry (croissants or pain au chocolat) to rise to its desired fullness. In order to complete the process in just 4 hours, we had available pastry in various stages already completed so we could replicate the steps in a shorter amount of time.

We had 7 students in this class, most of them French, except myself and one woman from Italy (who was living in Paris and fluent in French). Now that April was gone, I was now the top student and teacher's pet in this class. I guess I just know my way around the kitchen better than the other students, but Chef Philippe seemed to give me more tasks to do and used me as the "example" for how to properly roll out and fold the pastry (I had the best technique, although who doesn't know how to use a rolling pin?). Another factor could be that I am "larger" than the other students in class meaning that I had much more weight to put behind my technique, making "quick work" out of the process. You have to be quick so that the butter layered between the pastry dough don't soften up and start to melt into the dough. This was where many of the other students had trouble.

As was the case in our earlier class on Macarons, it was the tips and tricks I learned from Chef Philippe that you don't really read about in a cookbook that I think will help me replicate the beautiful pastries I was able to make in Paris.

We do have some ingredient challenges, as in the types of flour used in France (we used two different types of flour for the pastry) differ slightly from our American equivalents, but I think the proper balance of gluten content can be achieved by combining bread flour (higher gluten content) with either "all-purpose" or even a combination between bread flour and cake flour. I think I will need to do a lot of experimenting! Here's my pain au chocolat (these are my favorite) and croissants just about ready for baking.

And here are my beautiful finished croissants.

I think my entire family is waiting for me to get home just so I can bake them some croissants and pain au chocolat!

À bientôt!

La Tour Eiffel

I know it's a touristy thing to do, but one of the things I've never done while in Paris is to ascend the Eiffel Tower. The conditions for our visit were perfect - warm and sunny, with a slight breeze.

The Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance arch for the 1889 World's Fair and has become a global icon for France. Not only is it the tallest building in Paris, it's the world's most visited paid monument in the World. Luckily for us, even though it was a beautiful day, the lines to purchase tickets and access the elevators wasn't too bad. What was bad, however, were my fellow tourists who chose to make bad hygiene decisions that day. 80 degree weather and mosh-pit conditions do not make for a pleasant aroma.

Standing at almost 81 stories high, the tower was once the tallest man-made structure in the world until the Chrysler building in New York City was built in 1930. Apparently the antenna that was added to the Eiffel Tower in 1957 now makes it taller than the Chrysler building. 

As you can imagine, the views from the top are pretty amazing. The tower has three levels for visitors, so we took photos from both the 2nd and 3rd levels.

Although I know that it's a pretty cheesy thing to do, April and I both elected to partake in the "celebratory" flute of champagne at the top for a small fee of 10 Euros. In our defense, it was pretty darn hot outside and we thought "when in Rome".

Since Paris is a fairly flat city, it's easy to identify most of the monuments from the top. I also like how well you can see the circular layout of the city spiraling from the Arc de Triomphe.

You can view more photos taken from La Tour Eiffel here.

Paris - T Minus 14 Days

In 14 short days, April and I will be on our way to Paris where we hope to bask in the warm Autumn sun from one of our three apartment terraces, including one with a hammock!  This will be our first time renting a vacation apartment from Homelidays. We started looking for a vacation rental in January 2011 and it didn't take us long to find the perfect Paris apartment that met all of our criteria. The favorable reviews from previous renters and our interaction with the owner quickly removed any hesitation we had when pondering the idea of using another "vacation rental by owner" site for our Paris rental. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our choice will not disappoint.

My greatest challenge in the next two weeks will be to efficiently pack everything I need for a month into one checked bag and one medium-sized carry on. I am a habitual "over-packer" and although we will certainly have laundry facilities available, it's difficult to achieve the right balance of wardrobe for early autumn in Paris and late summer in the French Riviera. Where do I fit all my shoes? I'm going to need sandals, flip-flops, walking shoes, "cute" shoes, closed-toe shoes, flats and possibly boots. Combine my shoes with all of my hair products and that's a very large checked bag alone, not to mention the rest of my toiletries. What's a girl to do? It occurred to me that I could just PLAN to shop while in Paris. What's not to love about a new Channel lipstick? Who needs to pack a coat, when I can probably just find an adorable one at Zara? Suddenly I feel a bit liberated from the need to check off every necessity from my list of "must haves" knowing that I'm going to be in the city of Paris . . . with all of their lovely shops . . . for like 30 days . . . sounds like my packing problem has been resolved!