Seaside Adventures!

So I’ve now completed my first week at Two Magpies, & had my day off, & I’m just about ready to head to bed before starting week two!

This week I’ll be working with Rebecca on the cake side of the operation.  I must admit, I’m more nervous about that then I was about working with Jim on the bread!  I’m not really sure why, I think it’s just that I feel like I understand bread more than I do cake.  I suppose I just don’t have the experience of professional cake making, so there feels like there’s more pressure, especially to get it looking beautiful & sale worthy!

Maybe that’s the difference; bread is beautiful in all its rustic, unique, individual glory.  When you’re making cakes at home, for yourself or family or friends, it can be a little rustic & not-quite-perfect.  But making cakes to sell? They all need to be perfect, & I guess I’m not sure I quite have that touch… But we’ll see.  All I can do is my best & I’m certainly going to do that!

Southwold itself is really very pretty, especially along the sea front; they’ve got all these little beach huts, all brightly coloured, & it’s very sweet  =)

I went for a wander along the pier the other day, & all along the railings are these little brass plaques.  Some of them commemorate births & weddings, others are memorials to individuals & events, others still are quotes.  I saw a couple of Oscar Wilde quotes, & this one from Tolkien, which made me smile  =)

I still need to go for a wander round the brewery; I know they do tours so will have to investigate & see if I can do that before we leave, continue my real ale education!  But I did get to be a tourist, just a little!

For now though, I’m off to bed, need me some sleep before tonight’s shift  =)

Seasides & Sourdoughs

Morning all!

I’m in Southwold, having just finished my third shift at Two Magpies Bakery, so I’m tired & I ache a little!

But I’m also happy  =)

I had an epiphany of sorts at around 12.40am.  I love baking.  I bloody love it.  There really is nothing else I’d rather do for the rest of my life.

Yes it’s hard work, the hours are long & unsociable, but it’s so worth it.  It might seem a little sad, but I find it incredible fascinating; mixing the dough, learning how to tell by look & feel when it’s fully developed.  The anticipation of the bulk fermentation, waiting to see how much its grown, never really knowing how active & crazy it’s likely to be.  Then scaling & shaping the dough, letting it prove, turning it out, scoring, & finally baking.  The sense of achievement & satisfaction at the end of a shift, seeing all the loaves, each one unique & beautiful, knowing you had a hand in their creation.

Honestly, it’s all really very emotional.

Two Magpies have a glass fronted oven as well, which is wonderful because you can see the loaves as they bake.  Far better than the oven at School, where the loaves bake behind a solid door, so you don’t know if they’ve risen at all until the damper is taken out & you can open the door.

I love it here at Two Magpies, everyone is lovely & friendly, they bake a great range of breads & some beautiful pastries & cakes.  I’m having one of those ‘wish I’d asked for the full four weeks here not just two’ moments!

Jim, who owns Two Magpies, is a former student from School, so it’s been good to be able to compare notes, see what’s changed & what hasn’t!  He’s been quite happy to let me get on with mixing on my own, & I’ve done plenty of scaling, scoring & loading of the ovens, so it’s been really great.  It’s been an opportunity to really see how much I’ve learnt, & I’ve been pleasantly surprised  =)

I haven’t had much time to wander round Southwold itself yet, but the weathers looking pretty nice outside, so I think I might go see what I can find in a bit!  See if I can’t find me some fish & chips!  =D

Catch you later!

Free Stylin' Baking Adventures

So the last three days we've been able to bake pretty much whatever we wanted.  We've all taken advantage of this opportunity to practise for the final assessment; refining our recipes & practising techniques.

Monday was very much a 'get things ready for Tuesday' sort of day; I took a short wander over to the Welbeck Abbey Brewery & got myself a pot of their finest barm (this one was from one of the pale ales I think), ready for making my beer barm starter.  I also made up a batch of brioche, which then rested in the fridge overnight, while my fruit mix soaked in a lovely blackcurrant & vanilla tea.  I also made up the levain for my pain du campagne!  =)

I did actually get to do some baking on the day; a batch of dinner rolls!  They're not the most exciting bread to eat, but it's tricky to get the shaping right so it's worth practising them... I did however, forget to take a picture... Oh well!

Tuesday was a busy, & not altogether successful day...

The major disappointment was my brioche.  In previous batches I'd put mixed spice through the fruits before incorporating them into the dough, but yesterday I decided to try cinnamon instead; I prefer the flavour of cinnamon alone to that of mixed spice, & thought it would work well against the vanilla in the tea the fruits soaked in.

The problem is that cinnamon in too high a quantity can denature the structure of the dough, turning it into a mush.  Tasty mush, but still mush.  I only had cinnamon in at 3%, but that was enough to wreck havoc with my poor brioche!

I baked it off anyway, & while it was tasty, it wasn't right.  So I made another batch of brioche!  Again this rested in the fridge overnight  =)

The pain du campagne dough was really nice, strong but with plenty of extensibility too.

Came out looking rather nice too!  I think next time it could do with a longer bake, to get a really lovely dark colour to the crust.  My scoring could do with some work too, but then I haven;t had much practise recently...

Really pleased with the texture too.  And the flavour is lovely, just the right amount of acidity =)

My beer barm bread was a resounding success too!

I played around with the formula for this one, as the last time I made it I felt it lacked any real depth of flavour.  So, this time I used 25% of the total flour weight to create the starter, rather than the 13% called for in the recipe.  For the remaining flour in the dough I used 50% Italian flour (for strength), 50% malthouse flour, which contains all the lovely malty flakes (for flavour).  Finally, I dropped the water content from 80% to 70%, for a more British texture.  I was going to drop it to 60%, but decided to stick to 70%; the flakes in the malthouse flour would have absorbed some of the water anyway.

Here it is, fresh from the oven!

And here's the inside; lovely texture, & masses more flavour this time round.  Wayne said I'd pretty much cracked it flavour/texture wise, just need to work on the visual aspects of the bread.

I'd used the stencil I originally created for Wayne, seeing as he said I could keep it, but it could certainly be improved.

Once all that was out of the way, I put down a poolish for some baguettes, & then a biga for some ciabatta, ready for todays baking!

Today was a pretty good day too  =)

The brioche was much better today; I dropped the cinnamon down to 1% & the fruits were incorporated into the dough much easier, which made the dough an awful lot easier to shape!

Which meant I could do this sort of thing!  (The one on the right only had six balls of dough in instead of seven, like the other two, not quite enough dough for seven in each!)

They baked quite nicely too.

They could do with a lighter colour on top though, & to have more definition between each ball, but that's something I can work on.  The flavour is spot on!  The cinnamon is subtle, the fruits are juicy, the dough is light, fluffy & rich - divine!

The only problem is, I really like this shape... That's a problem because it means I have to shape the brioche into balls before they go into the tin.  Which isn't a bad thing on a normal day, but for assessment, I'm worried it might be a bit much to take on.  I'll have over 8kg of brioche dough to work on, & at 100g per ball, that's 80+ balls!  Something to ponder anyway...

I was really pleased with the ciabatta as well, especially as it was mixed by hand!

They baked quite nicely, although I think they could do with a darker bake.  The texture is great though  =)

But again, that could be improved, & a slightly lighter moulding is all it needs!


The baguettes were a sort of success...  The dough was great, nice & strong & it pre-shaped nicely.  Final shaping was less easy... I think it had a little too long resting; we had a sudden & dire shortage of couches, so I had to go hunting & rescue the couches Wayne had wandered off with...

Again these need a darker bake, & more steam, but they were baked in the Welbeck bakehouse ovens downstairs, which don't come with steam, instead, you have to squirt water into the back of the ovens!  The shaping is the most obvious fault on these; Wayne said the scoring was great, & the texture was pretty nice too  =)

So the next time I'm back in class after placement, guess what I'll be practising!  That's right!  Baguettes!

So all in all it's been a pretty good few days  =)

Just one more day at School, then we're off on our last placements!  Scary really... o.0

But for now, I have an essay to finish, & a brioche loaf to demolish!  Hopefully I'll have chance to blog while I'm on placement & let you know how it's all going.  First I'm off down South, to spend two weeks at Two Magpies Bakery, then I'm heading back up North to The Bakery Dunbar for my final two weeks.  Should be fun!

Catch you soon!

Epic Catch Up Time!

So, I've been a very bad blogger & I must apologise for that, the last couple of weeks have been kinda crazy =/

Not only have we had our business plans to complete & hand in, we've also had our Flour Confectionery assessments to tackle!

Well, the business plan's done, handed in, not exactly happy with it, but it'll do for now... And at least it's over now!  =)

The Flour confectionery assessments done with too.  That happened on Thursday, & it was such a long day! 8 hours, pretty much non stop.  Lunch was provided at the usual time, but I was in the second group, which started at 11am, so I didn't really want to stop an hour in to eat...

Mostly it went alright; I was pleased with how the lemon meringue pie came out, although I do wish I'd put more meringue on top... Last time we made them in class, the meringue expanded all over the place & it looked rather crazy, so I was more sparing with it this time round, & of course it didn't expand... =/

The muffins came out looking fine & dandy, & I was really pleased with my madeleines & the ginger/chocolate tartlets  =)

However, I *HATE* choux pastry!  I've made this recipe half a dozen times, & aside from a few timing issues, it had always come out nice.  It rose, coloured well, it was lovely.  Except on Thursday, when it point blank refused to rise... So I had nicely coloured, rather flat eclairs... Which was a shame, but once they'd been pumped full of creme patissiere & coated in chocolate ganache, they looked alright  =)

This was my display  =)  Looked alright in the end!

So that's all done with now, one less thing to stress about  =)

The week before the assessment, we looked at viennoiserie with Mickael Jahan.  Viennoiserie is the name for all lovely tasty laminated dough goods, like croissants, pain au chocolates, that sort of thing.

We made plenty of brioche too, so not a good week for those trying to watch their weight!

These were baguette viennoise!  A soft sweet brioche type bread, shaped like a baguette but scored a much greater number of times.

These were brioche with roasted hazelnuts in the dough, & a bundle of caramelised apples hidden in the centre!  So delicious!  =D

Oh, & these were amazing!  Little bits of orange brioche, deep fried & tossed in caster sugar  =D  Light, fluffy, so full of flavour, like little donuts of heaven!

And here's a selection of our laminated doughs  =) 

So it's been fairly full on, & it's all coming to an end rather rapidly.  We've only got one more week at School, then four weeks on our last placements, then back to School for the last two weeks, including our final bakery assessments!

This last week is a freestyle week, so I think I'm going to use it to practise recipes for the final assessment; perfect my brioche recipe & decide how I want to scale & shape it.  In the past I've scaled it at 80g & made it into buns, but I have to use a flour weight of 3kg for the final assessment, & the total dough weight I'd end up with would mean I have over 100 buns!!  Probably not the best plan for the assessment  =)

So that's that.  I should be able to blog more regularly from here on in; we've got one more essay to hand in at the end of the week, but that shouldn't take too long to get sorted  =)