Yeast Breads

Last Friday we were in the kitchen for our first day making yeast breads. I had never worked with yeast before and was, for the first time, feeling out of place or unprepared for what I was about to do. I was thinking "Eh, bread is bread. I'd rather make a pretty cake." Well, let's just say I have changed my mind!

I thoroughly enjoyed making bread! We made challa and foccaccia, although we did not get to finish the foccaccia. Challa can be made into many different shapes, but we did ours into six strand braids. I thought it just looked so pretty when it was done!

We started by making a sponge, or pre-ferment. This is just a mixture of some flour, water and some or all of the yeast. You just want to get the yeast growing before you start on the actual bread. The longer it ferments, the more flavor develops. Due to our time restriction in class, ours only fermented an hour or two (the formula calls for eight hours). No big deal though; class is for learning the process. Now I can't wait to make yeast bread at home...and neither can my mom!

After the pre-ferment stage, we made the rest of the dough and let it proof. It needs to about double in bulk. Then we punched it down (pushed out all the air) and divided it into six even balls, which then rested for a few minutes. Resting is important because the gluten in the dough is elastic, which means it will go back to its original shape (to a certain extent). You want to give it a chance to do this now rather than after you have shaped it how you want it.

Next, we rolled the balls into long strands. We pinched all the strands together at one end and then began braiding. This wasn't a normal, three strand hair kind of braid. Each strand was numbered and strand number X had to go over strand number Y in a certain order and it was slightly confusing at times. Then we tucked the end of the braid under and put on an egg wash and poppy seeds (that egg wash is what gives it that beautiful color and shine) and baked it.

The highlight of our breadmaking day? My loaf, along with three others, were the best looking in the whole class! Yes, I am proud of that! :) I now know that I really enjoy making yeast bread. And I really enjoy eating yeast bread (I ate at least half the loaf myself...but not at one time!).

I will definitely be making challa again soon!

A Lecture and a Wedding!

Our next class was spent in lecture, covering our next section Yeast Breads. We took a lot of notes and got out of class early (yay!). So exciting, I know.

But then........................................................................

It was time for my sister Megan's wedding! I was in the wedding party, my daughter was in the wedding party, and I was making the wedding cake. I was just a little busy. ;) Enjoy some pics from the happy day!

The cake:

The happy couple:

The flower girl and her best friend:

Not the best pic, but the front of her gorgeous dress (with our dad):

The back of her gorgeous dress:

Our First Practical

Last Friday was our first practical in Baking 1. We did pretty good, we came out with a high B. But if I'm being honest, I really don't like anything less than an A. I made a lot of A's throughout school-not bragging just stating a fact-and I liked making those A's. It's been a long time since I was last in school, so I'm okay with that B for now. But I had better start seeing A's again soon. (Do you hear that, Self?)

We didn't know what we would be making for our practical until Friday, we just knew it would be three formulas we had already done. Our first practical consisted of biscuits, sour cream muffins and chocolate chip cookies. (Yay! No chance of ending up with nut banana bread!)

We started with the biscuits. Everything went smoothly. Until we pulled them out of the oven. They weren't as pretty as the biscuits we made a couple weeks ago. Bummer. When Chef evaluated them, he said their color was off and they were a little dry, but they tasted pretty good otherwise. The cause: overmixing.

Next we made the muffins. This time we made the steusel by hand and that made all the difference! Chef even noticed while walking by and said we had "perfect streusel." Yay! I think I'm making it a rule of thumb from now on to only cut in butter (one of the steps of making streusel and many other things) by hand; a mixer just doesn't do it right. Our muffins turned out better than the biscuits, but they were still overmixed which resulted in some tunneling and a little toughness (not tough, but not as soft as a muffin should be).

Last we made chocolate chip cookies. They looked great, except for a little wrinkling on the outer edges due to...again, overmixing. And they were a little tough...due to overmixing. (I've learned that one little misstep can affect many things in the end!) But they tasted really good!

I've decided that preventing overmixing is one of those things that I will really learn from experience. I will have to make countless batches of biscuits and cookies that have been overmixed before I will know exactly when a dough has been mixed just enough. Practice makes perfect! So, who wants tough cookies?

I'm So Behind!

I'm sorry that I'm so behind already! With classes and homework and my sister's wedding IN ONE WEEK, I've just let myself get behind. But I'm here now, and that's all that really matters, right?

Well, last week in the kitchen we had a pretty great day. We made sour cream muffins with streusel topping, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies with icing. It was a very full day!

Our muffins turned out quite yummy, but the streusel wasn't so great (more on streusel in the next post!)...it tasted good but wasn't the right texture...too doughy.

Our banana bread was laughable! Ha! There wasn't enough bananas for everyone to have the full amount...well for our group to have the full amount. A couple other groups donated some banana to us, but we still had only about a third of the full amount called for. No problem, Chef said, just cut down the rest of the recipe. So we did....everything except the nuts. Right after I had poured the nuts into the batter, I remembered that we did not cut down the amount of nuts. Ugh! So we had some really nutty banana bread! Or as we liked to call it "Nut Banana Bread." Since we had everything else correct and the nuts don't change the structure of the bread anyway, we still came out with good bread. Only, you'd have to be nuts about nuts to eat it.

Our chocolate chip cookies were delicious-the formula called for too many chocolate chips so they were perfect! We had to rush them so we didn't get even chocolate chip distribution, but considering everything that could be wrong with a cookie, we were happy to take that! We didn't get to finish our sugar cookies due to time, but I'm sure they would have been good too.