Teaching a beginner to bake a bread (in one day)

For your friend's sake, start simple.  Work with a yeasted bread instead of with sourdough.  It fits your time window better and will be less mystifying to your friend.

If you look at the recipes section here on TFL, you might consider the Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Bread, or the Flaxseed Wheat Bread, or the Honey Whole Wheat Bread, or the Rustic Bread.  Actually, let your friend pick which one sounds best to her and charge ahead.

You might also want to point her to The Fresh Loaf Pocket Book of Bread Baking by the celebrated author, Floyd Mann.

Paul

After teaching an hour long bread class this past summer, following the old KISS- keep it simple, stupid, principle was the best advice given to me before attempting to teach a little about bread. One thing that worked in my class was to hand out samples of a basic white bread done by the book and samples of a loaf with the same ingredients but using some commonly accepted methods such as a preferment and a retarded proofing. That was what got across the ideas of why people should scale ingredients for consistency and the flavor boosting derived from preferments and a retarded proofing. Their taste buds made the connection.

Containing my enthusiasm for baking bread was hard to contain and yet it did sell the idea that bread baking is a worth while craft. I know that when I get the opportunity to teach another class that I will do a lot of things differently. Accept that you will probably remember something that you missed after you have the fun of helping your friend learn. That's OK because it will give you reason to call or text or email your friend again. Then you can plan your next bench time together.

1.)  Students arrive to find a batch of dough already risen the first time.  After a brief review of the steps of double rising bread making (make dough, let it rise, form the loaves, let them rise, bake, cool, eat), they watch me start the deflation then they finish it.  They then watch loaf formation then do their own.  The formed loaves are then set to rise.

2.)  While the first loaves are rising, we study the recipe and proceed to make dough which is then set to rise.

3.)  While awaiting the rising of the first formed loaves, we discuss details like the kinds of breads (Northern European, Southern European), the kinds of leavening (dry yeast, cake yeast, sourdough), gluten, temperature issues in baking, and more.  We also turn on the oven for the baking of the loaves.

4.)  While the loaves are baking, I answer questions and serve a light snack and/or teach the making of biscotti.

5.)  If there's time (my class lasts only 4 hours) you can repeat the loaf formation and baking of the dough the students made.  If there's not time, send the students home with enough dough to make their own loaves at home with a promise to be available by phone for consultation.

I have a basic recipe for the bread I'm teaching which I give out at the beginning of the lesson.  At the end I hand out a recipe which contains all the details which I'd taught them along the way in order to point out all that recipe books generally leave out.  The first recipe is less than a page.  The detailed one is 7 pages long.