As you know, we had lots of lovely snow on Monday, & it's hung around for the rest of the week, but it hasn't stopped the baking! A couple of students weren't able to get in to School, so it was quieter than usual.
Tuesday saw us mixing four doughs; a wholemeal bread made with a sponge, a multi-grain soaker sourdough, a rye sourdough and a brown sourdough. The only bread we'd be baking off that day was the wholemeal; everything else was to be retarded overnight, ready for baking off Wednesday morning =)
Our wholemeal dough didn't come out quite as hoped; it was slightly over-mixed, so the bread didn't hold its mould particularly well, & the baked loaves looked quite sad in the end... The other Team however, had a great wholemeal dough, & their loaves came out looking rather swish =)
We had another early finish; once the other three doughs were mixed & shaped, we only had to prepare the soakers & levains for Wednesdays bake, then we headed home.
Wednesday was a very busy day, not only did we have the three doughs from Tuesday to bake, we also had to mix & bake another five doughs. This time a New York Deli Rye, a Pumpernickel, a Black Rye, a Volkornbrot & a Black & White bread, made with some of the Black Rye & a white dough.
I took charge of the Pumpernickel; this was a fairly wet dough, more so than we expected, so Wayne suggested we alter the recipe formula slightly. We added another 500g of flour to the mix, which firmed it up nicely =) The other Team mixed their Pumpernickel after I did, so we let them know to leave out the additional water in the final dough recipe; there was sufficient water in the soakers & levain to hydrate the dough fully, & leaving it out meant they didn't need to add any more flour.
The day ran quite smoothly, despite there being so much bread about! I had thought it would be a bit stressful, with people trying to get stuff in and out of the ovens, doughs potentially over proving, that sort of thing, but we had none of it =)
And, all our breads looked pretty good too!
I think a lot of us have found that our oven skills have improved since our placements; everyone certainly seemed more confident loading & unloading the breads =) And, we've got these fancy new banatons, which give a great shape to the doughs, as you can see above!
We had so much bread! It all looked so wonderful too; there were some beautiful cuts, & some great moulding on show. I was particularly pleased with my scoring on these three brown sourdough loaves =)
I do feel more confident scoring the loaves, & even Wayne noted that my technique has improved =)
I really love the how coating the loaves in seeds, sesame & poppy seeds particularly, makes the cuts stand out so much. You can get the same result from dusting the dough with flour before scoring & baking, which also gives a great result =)
The Black & White bread looked amazing! As you can see from the picture above, it's such a striking visual effect, & the combination of rye & wheat dough means you'll get the flavour of the rye, but without the heaviness =)
Today was our first patisserie day of the new Term, & it was all about cake! =D
We made some sponge drops & lady fingers first. The recipe didn't use any butter, so the cakes were really light, & almost macaroon like in texture; a nice crisp shell, & a slightly chewy crumb.
We filled ours with a lemon cream & some raspberry jam, then sandwiched them together; very tasty indeed!
We also made large round sponges, using the same cake mix. I was quite pleased with my piping, so I took a picture!
We then made a swiss roll, which again didn't use any fats, but did have rather a lot of eggs! It came out quite nicely, & looked really lovely all rolled up & filled with cream & jam =D
After that, we made a Madeira cake. I've made Madeira cake before, but using a different method, & the recipe I've used in the past called for butter, where as this one wanted cake shortening. Not very many of us are that keen on cake shortening, so while reluctant to use it, we did in the end, resolving to reserve judgement until the taste testing...
Sadly, the taste testing wasn't a great success, & it wasn't because of the shortening either! You may recall, a little before Christmas, the trouble we had with baking powder. Well, we had the same problems again; something in the baking powder was off, & it left a slight metallic aftertaste. Even looking at the interior of the cakes, you could see the effect; the sponge was a lovely light golden colour, but got gradually darker & browner towards the base of the cake... Sadly, we had to throw the Madeira cakes away, but Clive says we'll try the recipe again with new baking powder =)
The last cake we made was a lightly fruited cake, which again came out really nicely. Clare & I made one large cake between us, & three small cakes.
So all in all, we had ourselves quite a selection of tasty treats!
It started to snow again around lunch (which today was an epically tasty mutton tagine, so good!) & we've a lot more forecast for tomorrow & the weekend, so all this cake might come in very handy indeed!
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