baguette

today was day 2 of bread week.  we got to spend the entire night in the kitchen and it was really, really fun.  we started by forming and scoring our baguettes, which is a lot harder than it looks.  you have to make sure that the gluten is properly developed and your yeast has fermented properly, without adding extra air bubbles so that you end up with a properly textured crumb in your final loaf.  the scoring part is pretty cool because you can use different types of cuts to alter the final shape of your loaf and to add to the final appearance of your product.  there is a technique where you cut the loaf and twist the cuts to make it look like a vine and it is truly beautiful.  

we also made preferments for the doughs that we are going to bake tomorrow including potato rosemary bread and dinner rolls.  the potato rosemary bread looks like it is going to be fantastic.  it has roasted garlic, fresh rosemary, and mashed potato in it, so i think it will taste really wonderful and it gets baked in a round loaf, so it should turn out beautifully.  

the dinner rolls are pretty basic in composition, but i am a serious sucker for a good yeast roll, so i am really excited about those.  i've never baked rolls that weren't done in a muffin tin so i am excited to learn an efficient way to portion and shape rolls.  

we're going to have pizza for lunch tomorrow so that we could practice making pizza dough.  we made an herbed white sauce for ours and are going to top it with mushrooms, sundreid tomatoes, and spinach.  i am really looking forward to sensory analysis tomorrow.  bread tasting is going to be awesome!!!!!  

we also got to practice some fine line chocolate piping tonight.  i am really looking forward to practicing that over the next couple of weeks.  there are so many different patterns and things that can be done.  i love school and i love bread!