The week started off calmly enough; we conducted the last of our bread experiments, this time looking at the effects of levels of sugar, with both a standard yeast & an osmotolerant yeast, & vinegar in dough =)
Suffice to say, vinegar makes dough very sticky & almost impossible to handle! Excess sugar tends to leave you with extremely caramelised crusts & vinegar just leaves the loaf looking rather sad...
We also set down some sourdoughs using packet cultures; not quite in keeping with artisan ideals, but still... =)
Tuesday the sourdoughs were ready to use, and we were each able to make up any sort of bread we fancied, so long as it used the sourdoughs somewhere. I chose to make up some cottage loaves; I hadn't had chance to do a cottage loaf yet, but the shaping looked like fun & everyone raved about previous cottage loaves that had been made.
I made a standard cottage loaf using a sourdough culture, & two smaller loaves with fig & walnut =)
They came out looking pretty good, & were really rather tasty too!
Tuesday night was, quite frankly, horrendous.
The accommodation at Creswell is great, on the surface... But the longer we've been here, more & more problems have arisen... Epic bathroom leaks, boilers which are temperamental to say the least, to smoke alarms which go off for no apparent reason. And the smoke alarms were the problem Tuesday...
They were supposed ti have been fixed during the day, but they went off again at 8pm, then 9pm, then 12pm, then every 20 minutes after, all night long, meaning neither Loren or I got any sleep, at all! So Wednesday at School was interesting to say the least!
Feeling rather emotional, I managed to solider on through, & tried my hand at baguettes again =) We worked up two batches, one with a traditional poolish & not so traditional sourdough base, the second with a pure sourdough base. The first batch moved as expected & we ended up with some, well, not appalling baguettes!
They look like such a simple bread, but the moulding & cutting is quite tricky to get the hang of... o.0
We also looked at beer barm breads, made using a yeast culture from the Welbeck Brewery, just across the yard from the School =)
(I don;t have any pictures unfortunately; in my sleep deprived state I completely forgot to pick up my camera!)
Thankfully by the time we got home, the dodgy smoke alarms had been removed & new ones installed, so I actually got some sleep!! =D
Thursday arrived & I was feeling really rather chipper =D
We had flour confectionery today, & the class was taught by Emmanuel, who usually runs all the short courses at the School. On the menu today were double cream scones, fruited scone wedges, raspberry buns, soda breads, then a whole load of hot plate goods; crumpets, pikelets & scotch pancakes =D
The soda breads came out looking & tasting fab...
The scones however, were another matter...
They look good don't they? They tasted pretty good too, the first couple of bites at least, then you were hit by this awful chemically aftertaste! It was such a shame, so many lovely looking scones, & none of them were edible!
We couldn't quite figure it out at first; we decided it was definitely a problem with the baking powder, but was it the quantity, or had it gone off somehow?
We persevered, & made up the raspberry buns, which also came out looking awesome =D
Admittedly the picture above is of them prior to baking, but you get the idea =)
Sadly though, they suffered from the same unusual & unpleasant taste... So Emmanuel suggested making them up again, but with a much reduced percentage of baking powder, The second time round, they tasted delicious! Success!
After that we moved onto the hot plate goods. Crumpets & pikelets are made from the same mix; if they're made free form, like a pancake, then they're a pikelet, if they're made in a ring, they're a crumpet =)
The crumpets were really fun to make, & actually quite tasty =) (I'm not generally a fan of crumpets, but these were way better then anything you could buy in a supermarket!)
Friday was a free study day, but a few of us did make it into School for research & a tasty lunch. There we found Emmanuel, conducting experiments of the scones to determine if it was the quantity of baking powder, or the powder itself causing the problem.
My fellow students & I conducted the taste test, all in the name of science of course, & turns out the quantity is just fine. The problem was with that particular batch of baking powder! Very odd really, considering it was in date & we'd used it before with no issues, but apparently these things happen sometimes...
Friday night I had my second shift in the Welbeck Bakehouse. We started at 6pm, & I was set to work laying out the croissants, tea cakes, chelsea buns & pain au raisins ready for baking. Then I scaled & mixed up a batch of mince pie mix, before scaling & mixing up a batch of sweet pastry, making up some marzipan, helping to shape various loaves, & brushing the freshly baked foccacias with olive oil!
I had a really fun night, lots of hard work again, & it was great to do different things. I think a part of me would have liked to do more scaling & shaping of dough, but most of that went to Tory, my companion for the evening. It was Tory's first shift in the Bakehouse, so it makes sense that she'd get more time on scaling etc =)
We finished up at 2.15am, with a warm almond croissant & olive bread each to take home, so despite some shaky beginnings, it's been a pretty good week =)
We're off to France on Monday, & I'll be taking my laptop, but I'm not sure yet how often I'll get to update. I do promise to do my best though =D There may even be a picture of me in a beret!
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