This has been quite an odd week really. My prep hour was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, with the big full days practical assessment on Thursday, so I didn't have to be in School at all until then, but I went in anyway (those lunches are hard to turn down!).
So while I started out on Monday morning feeling quite calm about the whole final assessment thing, I found that by Monday afternoon, I was getting more & more nervous! Those folks who had their prep hours on Monday were obviously nervous, & I guess it rubbed off =)
Wednesday afternoon rolled around & me & Clare went into our prep hour feeling nervous, but organised. We had schedules, an order of what to mix & when... So in theory, we had nothing to worry about, right?
Well, that was the plan. In reality, as long as an hour is, when you have to mix two doughs, one of which is a brioche, it really isn't quite long enough! I ended up mixing my brioche dough in 19 minutes, which is certainly the fastest I've ever seen brioche be mixed. It was a crazy stressful hour, not helped by Wayne counting down the minutes & the knowledge that if we didn't get all our pre-ferments & doughs mixed in that hour, we didn't mix them at all... But eventually we got it done, well, almost. I had planned to soak the fruits for my brioche overnight in raspberry tea, but I ran out of time...
So we left the School Wednesday afternoon feeling a little bit drained & stressed... Not the best way to start the evening...
I didn't sleep very well Wednesday at all; thoughts of the assessment, everything I had to do, all the brioche I had to scale & shape, all kept me up. So I woke up Thursday already feeling tired, & worried, & nervous, & slightly unwell...
Clare & I had taken in all our presentation materials the day before, so all I had to do was grab my energy drinks, snacks & bottles of beer (I'll explain later) then off we went.
I felt a little better once we were actually at School, so I wasn't too bad by the time 8.00am rolled around, & the assessment began...
The first couple of hours were fairly relaxed really; again Clare & I were fairly organised, knowing what doughs we needed to mix first & all that, & we worked together really well, sharing out the single multi-speed mixer as needed. Wayne kept up a fairly constant stream of questions, asking what we were doing, what effect we thought it would have on the dough, that sort of thing, which was a little distracting at times, but we got used to it pretty quickly.
All my doughs behaved quite well, helped I think by the fact that it's been a lot cooler this last week. This meant that they moved a little slower than I had planned for, but they were all manageable, even the dreaded brioche...
Every other time I've made this brioche, it's been a bit of a nightmare to handle, needing to be chilled down for at least 30 minutes between each stage, so I'd scale the 100g pieces of dough, then have to chill them before they could be shaped. But not yesterday. Now, I was disappointed I didn't manage to soak my fruits overnight, but really I think that was the best thing that could have happened. The dough was much firmer, but still with that soft silkiness of brioche, & it didn't need to be chilled at all. It even sat out on the work surface (covered of course) for a good 40 minutes while I sorted out my baguettes, & it was fine!
And as for my baguettes... Well, remember the other day I joked about waking up Thursday morning with the sudden & unexplained ability to shape baguettes? Well, I kinda did...
The pre-shaping was great, the final shaping was even better - I was astounded! The dough was really well behaved though, & it had bulk fermented for the right amount of time, so it was pretty much perfect when I came to shape it.
It all got a bit hectic towards the end of the day, with a number of breads needing to be baked off at roughly the same time (not what I'd planned but there you go), & I actually ran over the allotted time by 17 minutes. That wasn't too bad though, & I only lost 1.5% off my total mark because of it, so I think it was worth it =)
So here it is, my final display =)
I was really quite pleased with how it all looked. I'd played around with the wicker baskets & blankets a few times, so I knew roughly how it would look, but I never imagined it would look so good!
My lovely ciabatta - I actually scored full marks for these, which I'm really pleased about!
And the notorious brioche - 88 individual buns at 100g each, all combined to produce 11 lovely loaves =) These were the best they'd ever been, so it was definitely worth it!
My white tin loaves - Quite pleased with how these came out, although they were a little above the weight tolerances, but hey, they look good!
Pain de Campagne! Really pleased with these too, the cuts came out very nicely & the flavour was great =)
And my baguettes! I'm so pleased with how these came out, they're the best baguettes I've ever done! I certainly picked the right time to figure it out!
My lovely beer barm bread, which was a little underproved, hence the crazy bursts... Which is a little disappointing, but I'm very pleased with how the stencilling came out =) Oh, & just note the glasses with hops flowers & freshly poured beer (anything for an extra mark!) ;)
And last but not least...
Me! Enjoying a well earned glass of beer while surveying the results of a hard day's bake =)
So that's it. It's been quite an emotional day really. We had an indoor picnic at School today (silly British weather), & most everyone came, so it was nice to catch up. We're going out for curry tonight, then a final farewell BBQ tomorrow...
I'll post a proper review of my time here in the next few days, for now, I'll just say that it's been an amazing journey. I've loved every minute & am so glad I decided to take this chance.
It's been bread-tastic! =D
Beautiful display!
ReplyDeleteThank you! =D
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