Nathan Haferman
Google
parisian pastry class - 4/10 mediocre. mise en place set up, instructor assistant helping clean up empty bowls. as a group (4 groups of 4), we 1) began with making kouign-amann (made 9), cronuts (made 6), croissants (made 4). tasks were rolling pre-made dough, forming pastries, egg wash. 2) then learnt lamination. tasks were to whip butter in kitchenaid to create beurrage. learned how pre-made dough was formed, put ingredients in kitchenaid, brief hand kneading, rolled out dough to learn letter folding
unfortunate: 1) instructor burnt our cronuts while she walked around to put powdered sugar on other groups' (she did say right before don't walk away from anything frying) and she definitely pretended to not hear when our group said they were burnt. to her defense, frying is hard but the assistant or any of us could have done the sugar 2) our flour for the dough had a tiny fly in it. the instructor pinched it out but before replacing the flour, said "was there really a fly in there" when we did indeed see her pinch and rub it off on her hand 3) pricey for the very (very!) minimal hands-on time
good: knowledgeable instructor, informative, had a 15 min break in the middle, offered small discounts on store items and future cooking classes. pastries baked during break and we snacked, got to take home 1 croissant each + whatever was left of the cronuts and kouign amann divided amongst the 4 of you. post-class email includes recipe background, terms, graphics, and steps.
feedback: 1) instructor should have their own set up instead of going around to groups demoing a step saying "can i use your group to show everyone". this takes away from the group individuals being able to do that step themselves (since it's a group activity and everything is set up for you, hands on time is already quite minimal). plus, the group could take the instructor leftovers as a control group and compare their own 2) if chef meribeth could have acknowledged the burnt food instead of trying to cover it up with powdered sugar and serving it to us. such a waste.
i was very much looking forward to this but i was let down.