Finally!  Today we were able to get stuck in & do some baking!

First though, we were given our brand new safety shoes & white trousers!  The polo shirts & hats haven't arrived yet, but they should be here next week =)

Here's me in my uniform so far!  (Don't laugh!)

Today's session was due to be taken by Wayne, but due to illness he was unable to be at the School, so instead the class was led by Steve, who's been a Baker since he was 15, so he has a wealth of experience & knowledge to pass on.

Today's task was quite simple; to produce two tin loaves, one white, one wholegrain.

We started out by reading through the recipes, which were very basic & probably the simplest bread recipe you can get, just flour, salt, yeast & water, & then talked through percentages.  The majority of professional Bakers won't work to a recipe as we know it (eg: 500g flour, 10g salt etc), instead they work with percentages.  Flour is always 100%, water could be 60%, salt 2% etc.  This makes it much easier to scale up the recipe without getting bogged down with weights & volumes.

We started out on the white loaf recipe, & what I found really interesting was how good the dough felt compared to dough I've made at home.  A lot of that comes down to the quality of the flour being used, & I guess some of it may have had to do with working with fresh yeast.  I'm used to working with dried yeast & your standard shop bought flours & the difference in the quality, smoothness & flexibility of the dough was really noticeable.

Once we'd worked the dough, kneading 3 - 4 times & leaving to prove, we learnt how to shape the dough in order for it to fit in the tins.  They were then left to prove for a final time, under plastic bowls to prevent them drying out.

 

We then took a break for lunch; today was a gorgeous Thai butternut squash soup with lovely breads, cheeses & pate =D

After lunch, we came back to see how much our doughs had risen, & some were huge!  My white rose more than the wholegrain, but that was to be expected.  Once we were all happy with the rise, we popped the tins into the deck oven, & left them to do there thing =)

While we were waiting, we experimented with a mix of 100% flour, 60% water.  Once we had a nice tight dough, we dipped them in water & squeezed them repeatedly to get all the flour out, in order to extract the gluten.

What we were left with was a cloudy water, & the little squidgy, rubbery mound of gluten.  It was really quite strange to see the dough reduced to just that little rubbery ball of goop =)

Eventually, it was time to get out our loaves!  I'm really rather pleased with how mine came out; I've never made bread in a loaf tin before, so I was quite excited to see the results.  And here they are!

There are a few things I'll change next time I make this recipe; I won't score the top of the wholegrain loaf again, but I will sift more flour on top.  It gives a really lovely colour to the crust.  With the white loaf, the only thing I'd really do differently is to be a bit braver when scoring the top, to get a deeper cut & a better bloom =)

It's been a really good day, & it was interesting to see the different results across the class, & I think we were all really proud of our efforts.  It's made me quite keen to  really get stuck in & experiment with different flours, & in particular I'm looking forward to sourdoughs =D

Tomorrow is another early start; we're off to an organic farm in Yorkshire!  I must remember to pack my wellies, & my camera of course!