Week 1: The Goods

Week 1, Day 1: Muffins, Scones & Quick Breads

After a 3 hour introductory lesson about the school, Kristina and I attacked muffins first. With such a large amount of batter, we divided into two flavors: raspberry almond and blackberry coconut. In the future, I'd use much more berries than the recipe called for (12 oz). And while we were warned over and over again about the perils of overmixing (resulting in a tough muffin), our flat tops indicated the need for some more turns:

Next up was the Chocolate Pistachio Bread. We made the fatal error of over-filling our pans, resulting in a crunch mess at the bottom of the school's convection oven. Still it was tasty (we skipped the called for apricot glaze, cause, well that sounded odd to me!) I could use some help on my marbling technique:

Week 1, Day 2: Lean Breads
Without any butter or other fats, these breads have a very short shelf-life. Hence, you make a daily stop at the  local bakery (boulangerie? damnit, why didn't anyone tell me I needed to know French?!). I was SO excited to learn baguettes:

Here is a lesson in scoring:

Here is a perfect demonstration of proper and improper scoring. When done correctly, you end up with a beautiful loaf. If you don't cut deep enough and through those top gluten strands, it just looks like a cat clawed at your loaf of bread (can you guess which is mine?) We just used a plain old razor for this; do you think a lame is worth the purchase?

Um, how cute are these Hard Rolls? I can't wait to make these for Thanksgiving:

The trick to their shape? A few snips with a pair of kitchen scissors!

And who knew that Classic French Bread makes for 'the perfect pizza dough', according to Delphin? After raiding the walk-in kitchen as a class, we produced some delicious pizza at 11pm, for which we were all grateful to get us through the second part of lecture:

Prosciutto Pizza, with one Vegetarian version for the official 'Pain in the Ass' of the class 

And finally, the class' production for the day, thoughtfully arranged by Jaimie, a Bread Baker at Boston's new Towne*:

With all the bread I brought home, I can't imagine baking more to practice this at home. But with all my mistakes, I don't see how not to! I might need to bake one of my old standbys  just to build myself up to give it another go. Off to buy a razor...