Leiths day 7

So today in the morning we made rich shortcrust pastry, and a tomato, avocado and mozzarella salad! Nothing too challenging there! So with the shortcrust pastry we cut up butter and rubbed it into the salted flour (always plain for pastry). Then we brought it together with egg yolk and water, rolled it out and lined our 6" inch tin with it, then put it in to chill. I washed up and served my custard from the day before, ansobe said it tasted good, although i thought it would look nice with a few drops of vanilla essence in four drops around it, but ansobe said not to do it again, because those bits would not be nice! I then proceeded to blind bake my pastry with baking beans. Then we started on the salad. First we blanched our tomatoes for ten seconds then refreshed them in cold water for 30 seconds, so that we could remove the skin easily ( I put mine in for another 5 seconds because I still couldn't remove it easily) and peeled them! I then chopped up my tomatoes into thin slices and my mozzarella after draining it well! I made a French dressing which is one part white wine vinegar to three parts oil, I then added salt, pepper, sugar and shredded basil to it. I went on to cut up the avocado and arranged three pieces of each in a circle around the plate, topped it with black olives and the dressing! Ansobe said that my dressing was well balanced and the presentation and portion size was good. By this time my pastry was done, and perfect, which was great!
In the afternoon we had a dem on bread making! So the first bread belongs made was Italian bread, where she stressed the importance of each component! She kneaded it for about 8 mins and showed us how to tell if it was done (if you press a bit it should spring back) then she wrapped it in an oiled bag with rosemary and left to rise in a warm place! She then made basic white bread, which you have to leave to rise twice, whereas it is just once with the Italian bread! She taught us the process of making bread which is mix, knead, rise, knockback, prove, bake ( Mary knits red knickers pretty badly). She then showed us what happens if you leave bread to prove too long, it gets a bubbly consistency on top! When it has proven properly when you poke it, it should leave an impression! She then made sour dough, which uses fast bicarbonate of soda instead of fresh yeast and is super quick although not my favourite! Belinda also passed around undated bread and over salted to stress the importance of getting the salt level right! She also made brownies, but nigella lawsons flour less ones are much better! She also made shortbread which was nice, and stressed the importance of keeping it cool like pastry! The last thing was cookies but they were too crispy! I much prefer the softer ones! I would never produce a cookie like that for someone I was cooking for! So that's that for today!