04/22-3/10 - Class - Bread Week 2

Bit of a gap in posting, since I had a week off of classes due to my instructor's personal stuff, but picking up where I left off...

This week in our bread class we were able to do a lot more. The chef had the preferments ready for us on Thursday so we were able to bake those and do the preferments for Friday, so we could bake both days.

Thursday went very well. Our first bread was white pan bread, similar to what you'd find in the store. I think it came out really beautifully, soft, and really reminiscent of stuff you'd get in the store, without all those chemicals and other ingredients that have no place in bread (or any food).
Next was egg bread, an enriched bread. It was a really soft bread and came out pretty nicely. It could have proofed a little longer though, it didn't get as much rise as it probably should have.
The final bread on Thursday was country bread. It is a pretty simple rustic bread, and I guess something that we're going to be baking several times this quarter, each time shaping it differently. This time was in an Auvergnat shape.

Friday didn't go quite as well. However it was no fault of my own or my group's but simply a matter of time. We only get about four hours in a class and that seriously rushes some bread. We have to cut down on fermenting, resting, and proofing times just to be able to have a finished product and that can really hurt the product. Case in point: this week we made San Francisco sourdough that was a failure, it wasn't even really edible because there was no rise to it. It called for a three hour ferment and a 12-16 hour refrigerated proof and those had to be cut down to about 1-2 hours each, which pretty much ruined the recipe. We were to also made a 100% whole grain bread but that also didn't have enough time. At least for that we froze it after the shaping, prior to proofing. So we're going to see if next week we can proof and bake it and achieve good results, so that remains to be seen.

We did get two products out today, however. One was Pain de Beaucaire, which despite the name is a pretty basic sourdough based on the recipe. Perhaps it's supposed to be unique due to an odd shaping, but again that didn't really work out too well. Since we had to cut down on fermenting and proofing, it didn't rise a whole lot, but at least this one was serviceable enough to be eaten.
The second bread that we were able to get out was called Mountain Bread, pretty much just a rye bread shaped into a ring or crown. The dough was too wet due to insufficient fermenting and proofing time so we could only do a ring shape, and the rise was only average at best, but it came out at least.

I guess next week the chef is going to try to rearrange the class a little bit so that the bread can get sufficient rest time, perhaps giving most the breads an overnight ferment so that they only need to proof and bake the next day instead of trying to do full recipes in one day, each day.