Bun Voyage

Today was the end of another awesome class. This last week our class really pulled together and banged out some amazing products and the team work really improved all around.

Yesterday was a standard day on the rye station. Nothing terribly exciting to report other than my first oven burn. I decided on making a peanut butter and chocolate rye sourdough so I spent a lot time in front of the deck ovens attempting to put parchment paper on top of the loaves to prevent the chocolate from burning. Deck ovens are deep but have little vertical clearance so it is very easy to touch the top or bottom when trying to pull out or put in loaves. I'm surprised it took this long!

Makeshift cold bandage

One neat thing was the Chef asked A and I to try and incorporate quinoa into the baguette dough. It seems that the colorful little grains intrigued him. We made two batches - one batch had raw quinoa soaked in water overnight and another batch with cooked quinoa. Chef, A and I were all quite sure the baguettes with precooked quinoa would turn out better but we were surprised that the raw quinoa was better! The raw quinoa still kept some of its structure and lent a popping texture to the bread where as the cooked quinoa had a similar texture to the rest of the bread so it was hard to tell there was any quinoa at all.

Cooked quinoa

Shaping the baguettes

Tasting time!

Today, our last day, A and I made no bread at all! A and I have been hired to work for our Chef for two Saturdays. Those Saturdays our Chef is teaching an artisan bread class to the public. Myself, A, and one more girl will be his assistants in measuring out ingredients and helping to guide the students. A and I sped through the measuring and quickly filled up an entire rack full of dry ingredients. The wet will be measured day of.

And what's a last day without pizza? The white bread group made four giant pizzas. One even had a cheese stuffed crust! Total yum! Then they took the leftover quinoa and made a salad with arugula. So good!

Cheese stuffed!

I have no idea where it came from, but there was also a tray of baklava. Woot!

Some more fun breads from our Chef and classmates:

Braaaaaains

Hercules beetle

Today and tomorrow is SAIT's open house. I will be helping out my Chef tomorrow making muffins, cookies, and answering questions. Stop on by and grab some free goodies if you're around! :)