I think I've died and gone to heaven!

Ever have those days when you just have to pinch yourself? Well, I've had a week of them in viennoiserie class. For those who have been asking me what viennoiserie means, I can now confirm the exact translation to be pure bliss! So much so in fact that this week's pictures come with a health alert: What you are about to see is high in sugar, obscenely high in butter and may cause involuntary heart flutters upon viewing. If you're wearing a pacemaker, best switch your computer monitor off now.

Monday's menu - brioches a tete and mini brioche batards, coated in pearl sugar. Any nostalgic thoughts of bread making were gone within seconds of making these babies. Check out my take home box at the end of the day.



On Tuesday we progressed to sticky buns, cinnamon buns (shown plain and iced), pain au lait, more brioche (this time with a prefermented dough for added flavour) and gibassiers, flavoured with orange blossom water and anise seeds.









Wednesday was kugelhopf, bostock, hot cross buns and stollen. For those unfamiliar with bostock, it is my absolute new favourite dessert. It's made with a brioche loaf, that is sliced, toasted and covered in frangiapane cream, almonds and powdered sugar. I couldn't even begin to describe the taste sensation.

Evidently they don't have hot cross buns in Brazil because Thiago, when given the piping bag, created these little gems!

Thursday was my favourite day of the week with a brioche fruit tart, tropeziennes, hazelnut coffee tart, mini pumpkin brioches with a cream cheese and streusel filling and strawberry bounty.









On Friday, we finished off the holiday breads (chocolate glazed panettone, hazelnut glazed columba and pan d'oro) we had started on Thursday and baked our first laminated doughs with a batch of croissants. I've shown you the panettone pre baking - note the skewers. You hang them upside down overnight after baking to dry out.













So, that was my amazing week. Apologies if the photos make you extraordinarily hungry. If it's any consolation, taste testing it all each day is a challenge......but a challenge everyone in the class seems prepared to take!

Monday kick-off for week 2 is 61 hours away, but who's counting?!

Flatbreads and fond farewells

Unbelievably, I have been here seven weeks and the bread component of the class is now over. We celebrated (truth be told, some of us mourned) the occasion with a Friday Flatbread Fiesta - pita, lavash, naan, ma'aneesh and pizza, all baked off in the woodfired oven - here are the goods.....

Authentically puffy pita breads - these baked in about 30 seconds given the temperature of the oven floor was ~700F:

Mac, demonstrating some jazzy pizza shaping and Justyn practising with a towel!:


Some pizzas, before, during and after the bake - again, done in circa 60 seconds:





And, while not in the flatbread theme, I couldn't finish bread blogging without showing you a couple of pictures of some amazing other loaves whipped up this week.....

Check out the scoring on this miche, done by one very talented class member:

And lastly, a true San Franciscan sourdough:

So, it's bye-bye bread. Best get pedalling on those exercise bikes as viennoiserie starts Monday. Croissants, danishes....maybe I won't miss bread too badly!

Rye rocks (pardon the pun!)

There was a cultural clash in the SFBI bread lab this week as we tackled German breads.  While our European colleagues thought they rocked, several of the Americans in the class found the dense rye breads less appealing.  The only common denominator seemed to be the pretzel, which NATO should definitely consider as a peacekeeping strategy, particularly when filled with cheese and/or sausage!

If you thought rye was rye, consider that we made 25 different rye formulae in class this week, and probably only scratched the surface.  Different percentages of rye flour, different hydrations, different rye grinds.... you name it and Frank had us make it.  We even made a traditional pumpernickel, baked in a water bath for about 18 hours.

So here are some of the German breads (ryes, rolls and sweet doughs), shaped in a variety of different fashions.  I had to smile at the pullmans loaves we did (4th picture down) - these were German breads with an American supersize, at 2.5kg each.  I was just waiting for a mugger to attack me on the way home as I planned to drop a couple of loaves on his toes! They were real bricks.

And here are the pretzels.  Not a personal favourite but they definitely kept the rest of the class happy.  For those of you who are pretzel fans though, you may think twice about them in future when you understand that they are all dipped in lye (aka caustic soda or oven cleaner) before baking.  It's lye that gives them that shiny brown colour.  You can see the safety precautions we had to take for the lye process, with my classmates dressed in gloves and safety glasses.

Lastly, while not German breads, we also boiled and baked bagels this week.  Again, cultural differences surfaced.  The Europeans topped their bagels with flax, sesame, sunflower and poppy seeds, while the Americans just went straight for the onion, salt and cheese.  Whatever keeps you happy......

Old world charm.....or ugly breads!

Having received the sad news last Saturday morning that Dad had passed away, I knew it was not going to be an easy week. It seemed fitting that the theme for the week was Ancient Grains, as I always told him he was the oldest Dad on planet Earth. OK, so maybe he wasn't 4,000 years old like some of the grains we studied but there was definitely an old world aura this week which encouraged a mood of remembrance. Plus, Dad was such a bread and cake fan, that I'm convinced he is now tuning in daily to the SFBI bread lab for a dose of reality baking. I bet he's miffed he can't participate in the afternoon tasting sessions.

With one or two exceptions, this week was more about substance than form. Roughly translated, most of the breads were long on nutrition but short on looks. Wheat was vetoed, as we said hello to spelt, kamut, millet, sorghum, barley, teff, rye, quinoa and corn. And yes, in old world style, we ground our own corn and sprouted our spelt. In short, you won't be picking up the ingredients for these breads at your local supermarket.

The pretty bread first - a few shots of barley fougasse, shaped in a variety of styles.

And now for the heavy duty, ugly stuff....

Woodfired sorghum olive bread. Woodfired baking was the other theme for the week and was a ton of fun. You can also see below our instructor Frank demonstrating loading the bread with one of the massive peels. He moves at such speed, which is my excuse for the blurry photo!  Frank is actually off to compete in the World Cup of baking in France later this year.

Rye and teff loaves. Apparently this "cracked rose" shape is in vogue in Germany at the moment!  I think mine might have been more the Target version.

Einkorn batards. Einkorn is so expensive that you'd have to charge roughly $15 a loaf to make any money on this stuff. It has a cult following with some preliminary research indicating that it may be tolerated by coeliacs (if you're interested and have cash to burn, check out http://www.einkorn.com/).

Kamut and pecan loaves - again with some charring from the woodfired oven.

Don't ask names for these last two pictured. We baked with so many different grains this week that it became information overload by the end. But the shaping was interesting and Frank went to the trouble of digging out baskets for the photo shoot, so I'm showcasing them!

Finally, for those who don't believe I'm in SF, I did fit in a bit of sightseeing, so have included some photos below to prove it. Admittedly, my sighsteeing is largely bakery focused (Tartine and Miette have been highlights), but I call that homework!