Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Crushing on Bread, Glorious Bread

Me with My Baby - I mean my Baguette

I can't believe its been a whole month since I blogged - well, a little more than so its time to play catch up. April totally got away from me but in a good way, with lots of cakes & small parties and then a week long getaway to San Francisco to the San Francisco Baking Institute to take a baking class about Baguettes. Baguettes you may say - what's the mystery about baguettes. Well, let me tell you. I thought I might be bored (!) because I've done some home bread baking and thought I knew what was going on but it turns out, I knew NOTHING. Well, almost nothing. The baguette is bread in its simplest, artisan form: flour, water, yeast & salt (and sometimes a little malt) so it makes a great canvas to illustrate the way bread works and how you can effect the result. More importantly, how you can adjust your recipe/mixing in order to get the result you would like consistently. Before you fall asleep let me just add that the end of every class, we got to eat the baguettes we made - and they were GOOD. Okay, and let me now admit that I am such a brown noser that the couple of times the teacher complimented me on my baguette, I blushed with pride. The class gave me insight into how different ingredients in baking work and as someone who does a pinch of this, a handful of that,
I now realize what a science baking truly is (DUH!!)


Our finished baguettes, waiting to be critiqued

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Look at those air holes - now that's a Baguette, oh and did I mention its MINE?!!!!