The Baking Course

OK, it is time to reveal the mystery destination.  We went to take a food course called "The Home Patisserie: Laminated Doughs."  What?  Well, it turns out that laminated dough starts out as a dough that is rolled out, and then a pound of butter is rolled out to a thickness of 1/4" and is placed on the dough, and then more dough is folded over it.  Then that is rolled out and folded over and rolled out and folded over again.  If you do the math, what you end up with is hundreds of layers, of dough and butter and dough and butter.

There are variations of the ingredients which make up different laminated doughs, and those doughs are used for different  pastries.  This photo, below is a pastry that is fairly obscure - it is called "Kouign Amann" seen before baking.

This is the Kouign Amann after baking.  It's beautiful, isn't it?  You should taste it, with all that butter in it!

And I forget what the pastry below is.  The dough was rolled out, then folded back and forth around some fillings - chocolate, and an almond croissant filling. Then the long roll is sliced into these pieces that fit into cupcake tins.  After baking, they looked like muffins, and they were awesome!  It was an amazing class, that lasted for four hours, and it was chock full of information.