Week 2, The Goods: Basic Breads

The subtitle of this post should be 'How to give yourself Celiac Disease in 72 hours'. I've eaten more bread than I thought humanely possible this week, so much so that I actually craved a vegetable when I got home at 1230 on Thursday night. But, then I had a glass of wine and quickly got over it.

This week's labs started with Basic Breads-which are essentially yeast breads with stuff in it (stuff here being cheese, seeds, nuts, etc etc). They also use a starter, or a liquidly bubbly tub of flour & water, which help give them a lighter structure. Jaimie and I partnered up to make the following:

Red Pepper and Olive Bread:
My love affair with olives is still pretty fresh, so I jumped at the chance to make this bread. We made some basic rolls, as well as the 'daisy' shape using a pastry ring. Finally, our instructor showed us the 'fougasse' technique-flattening out the dough and cutting in decorative designs. It's pretty, but I don't really get the point for actual consumption. Furthermore, I was brought back to my anxiety-ridden, December days in 2nd grade when I *could not* manage to cut a pretty snowflake. It's ok, I'm almost over it.

Next up is Chestnut Bread:

Petit Carres Dodus

Now, I'm not sure why you'd want to eat a roll with a chestnut in the middle, but when Delphin tells me to 'blanch those nuts' I respond ' Yes, Monsieur'. And I try really hard not to giggle.

We also used kitchen scissors to cut slits in the dough, flipping them inside out to create this shape. Seeing my work next to my instructor's demo was a nice slap in the chestnuts. 

Finally, we made some benoiton-essentially a sweet Italian bread. Since neither of us were fans of anise, we used cinnamon & nutmeg, and found some poached pears in the fridge (yum!). The result was a delicious smelling twist. However, as soon as my partner pointed out that the pastry cream and diced poached pears looked like bacon and eggs, I lost my appetite. Ah well, there's always next time, and perhaps a bit of foresight.





While I didn't make this garlic and parsley bread, it was too delicious not to share. Here you can see the 'folding book' technique used to incorporate the ingredients into the dough:

And the final Product:

Last, but most certainly not least, were the cheese balls. The official instruction given to form these little bundles of joy were to 'shove the cheese up their butts'. There is also melted gruyere on top, which made for a pretty intoxicating smell. As a class, we put down a pan of these suckers in no time.

I've earnestly considered making these and freezing them for the next time I'm drunk--too much?

Stay tuned for enriched breads!