Knights of the Round Danish

This weekend Matt and I are in Vermont to take a couple baking classes at the King Arthur Four Baking Education Center. One of my professors recommended it to me as a great website to buy gourmet baking goods, but when we saw that they had some classes coming up, we decided to make a weekend out of it.

Today's class was "Laminated Dough." Contrary to popular belief, this does not refer to a glazing process, but rather to the process of layering dough and fat to make flaky pastries like croissants. The class itself was from 9-5, and after all of that laminating I'm a little overwhelmed (and exhausted!) to go into any detail, but I have a lot of photos to share!

Matt modeling the class apron.

Our chef, showing us how to roll the layers and layers of dough we'd be using. Every step was followed by, "But of course, you will be doing this by hand with a rolling pin..."

Our favorite implement...this is only used for marking dough in equal increments, not for super slicing, but it's still great fun.

The classroom. We had 11 people in our class.

Giant Wall o' Mixers. Mine was the green one!

The Baking Education Center.

We were inside all day, but the weather is gorgeous this weekend. We didn't mind being inside once things started coming out of the oven...

I'm not an expert pistachio chopper, but I play one on the internet.

Pastries!
top is hazelnut, chocolate, pastry cream and crumb topping
next down is cheese and apple (I think?)
3rd from top is boursin cheese, pesto, carmelized onion, and some bell pepper with asiago
I don't remember the bottom one

I love kitchen power tools. We didn't get to use this, but it's still mighty fine!