Another Baking Course

Yes, another one, you would think that I would know what I'm doing by now but more education in the dark art of bakery can only help. The course is at The School of Artisan Food on Saturday and I have booked a hotel to stay for a couple of nights. The idea is that I drive up on Friday and stay until Sunday morning so that there's no rush and I can take my time, then a few days to practice what I've learnt before flying off to Florence for a week of sunshine and art galleries. I have not been baking as much as I would like lately as work seems to have taken over my life. Hopefully once I'm back from my holiday I can get back into it.

Sourdough

So here it is at last, I have finally managed to post a picture of my latest loaf, a white Sourdough. it only took 72 hours to make. It was worth it though, it has a lovely crust which I could hear cracking after I had taken it out of the oven.

Crumpets!

Well I said in my earlier blog that I was going to give these a try and so I did on Monday night. The first ones were a bit too thick and I could have used them to wedge a door open or stun one of the local pigeons if thrown hard enough. the final batch were not too bad and I couldn't help but pop one in the toaster, smother it in butter and take a big bite. The taste was very different from commercially made crumpets, very bread like not unpleasent just different from what I'm used to. I will have to try these out on a few friends and see what they say.

Update!

Okay, so apologies to anyone with enough time on there hands to read this blog, I haven't posted anything for some time, it's not that I haven't been baking but have not baked anything new. Easter came and went with a rush and before that it was my birthday. My sister-in-law baked me the most amazing cake as you will see from the photo's below.

I made a batch of currant buns for the people at work, they seem to go down a storm as I didn't have one left over, other than that it's been the usual white or wholemeal loaf baked every other day or so. Thinking about it that's not strictly true, I made a couple of loaves with olives in for some friends, I did manage to taste some and I have to say it wasn't bad. I have been feeding the sourdough culture that I have for the last few days and it's bubbling away like mad, I'm going to try and make a few loaves from it. I will post on here when they are done. I've just remembered another challenge and that was to make crumpets, will give that a go this afternoon.

Looking Good

Well so far, so good. the sourdough starter is still bubbling away like mad, I have been feeding it every day with a small amount of flour and water, It seems happy enough. I set some dough going yesterday about 8 o'clock and have now just knocked it back and put it in a basket with a heavily floured linen tea towel holding it all together. I was beginning to wonder if it was doing anything but when I turned it out of the bowl it had plenty of air bubbles inside, it was still a bit too free flowing for my taste but then again it is only my second attempt at making a sourdough loaf, it's looking a lot better than my first one. Once it's baked I will post a picture.

Second Attempt

A little while ago I set a sourdough starter going then abandoned  it as a bad idea as the loaf I had made with it turned into a brick in the oven, I had kept the starter and gave it a good feed last night, I'm told they almost impossible to kill off.. There were bubbles on the surface this morning,  a good sign that it's still alive and I gave it another feed this morning. I'm hoping that by the time I get home tonight it will all be frothy and ready to use. I want to give it another go as the loaf that I was given when I did my baking course last week was delicious.Well I can but try and see what happens. I will let the world know what happens one way or the other.

Baking Course Day

Wednesday arrived and I had booked the day off, so a lay in started the day off nice and easy followed by tidying up the house. The baking course didn't start until 4.30 so I had plenty of time to potter round doing all sorts of odd jobs that I normally skip don't get the chance to do. So at 4.15 I promptly presented myself at Cinnamon Square, they were very nice and offered any refreshment I wanted. The course was run by an extremely knowledgeable chap called Paul who put us all at ease. Once the other attendees had arrived and sorted themselves out we got straight down to business. Paul took us through mixing the dough by hand using fresh yeast, something I hadn't used before. Having put the ingredients (flour, yeast, salt and some trex) into the plastic bowl provided, then adding the water, weighing it as it gives a more accurate measurement, we then started mixing by hand. Once the ingredients had all formed into a rough dough, we tipped them out onto the table and began to knead them. we kept this up for about fifteen minutes, stretching or slapping it onto the table as desired. The resulting dough was the best I had ever made, we formed it into a small ball and placed it in the plastic bowl, covered it in clingfilm and left it to rise. We then started on a second loaf using wholemeal four, following the same procedure as before, again some of the best dough I had ever made. We then broke for something to eat and a glass or two of wine.While we were eating we had to dash back to the table and knock back the first dough we had made earlier, putting it into tins to rise, the tins were placed into a plastic box and throughout the remainder of the the course we could see the dough rising, there was no need to place them in a warm room or cover them with teatowels just keep them in the box, I presume it stops drafts cooling the dough down in the tins. Paul had made some more dough for us while we had been stuffing our faces in the big mixer. We used this to create a bloomer and several platted loaves, I had no problem with the bloomer or the three strand platted loaf but the four strand got me all confused, fortunatley one of my fellow students had grasped the idea better than me and gave a helping hand. We had also shaped the wholemeal dough and placed it in tins as well. Then came the really fun part, placing our creations into the big oven, really quite straight forward apart from the bloomer, that had to be placed on a peel and slid into the depths of the hot oven, a mixture of ground rice and poppy seeds was used to stop the dough sticking to the peel. Twenty minutes later we were taking hot bread out of the oven, each one of us gasping with delight that what we had been making for the last five hours had turned out so well. we left them to cool down a bit before bagging them up and running off into the night with them, Paul had also given us a Sourdough bread to take home, that tasted even better than the loaves we had just made. So a big thank you to all at Cinnamon Square and especially to Paul for teaching us how to make such good bread. So here are the results!