New Skills Every Day

Today was the last day of our first four-day rotation. Every four days, we get a new list of breads to work on. So, in preparation for the new rotation tomorrow, this morning we were introduced to ciabatta and brioche.

We'll be adding other breads to those. Of course we got to sample; the brioche was good, but the texture was more eggy than I like. The ciabatta was soooooo tasty, but there's alot that has to happen to the dough before you can divide it.

My table used to be five of us, but one girl got dropped today after missing three classes, so we're down to four. We've got a good routine going, and we get along well. This is a good thing, since in this class especially we all rely on our group members to pull their weight. I'm pleased to announce that there are no slackers at Table 4!

On that note, we got to play with varying some formulas this week, and yesterday we made these delicious tart cherry scones:

and our first bananna bread and lemon pound cake (front one is from my group, the other is a lemon poppyseed from Table 5):

We finished up with the traditional presentation of baguettes today. Tomorrow we'll start learning to to pretty them up in decorative ways.

My group also finished up with 7 grain bread today. Below are two pics... one of the rounded dough having its "bench rest" prior to proofing, and the other of the finished loaves:

The week seems like it's speeding by. It's already Tuesday afternoon! I went to the library yesterday to do research for my bread project. I actually did find some good information, and some interesting recipes. There's lots of

contradictory sweet bread info out there, though: some people say sweet bread and really mean pao doce, which is a kind of Portuguese cornmeal bread. Some recipes call for potato flour or potato water. And one I read called for saffron. Seriously? Saffron in sweet bread? I don't think so. In our paper, we have to include a formula for 5 lbs of dough. Guess what I'll be trying this weekend? You got it! Sweet bread. Thankfully, Other Half LOVES sweet bread, and I'm sure I can pawn some off on friends... if not, it makes really good French Toast. One girl at my table is doing her paper on a Mexican breakfast bread that sounds similar to sweet bread, so I'm interested to see how they compare.

I'll be back on Thursday with more pictures, and stories of new breads!