Teaching how to make bread
My daughter's friend wants me to show her how to make bread. She has already made bread before, but really likes the loaves I've made. I've told her that it is the Tartine Bread recipe for baguettes and she can get it from the library, but she doesn't think she can learn it from a book.
(I disagree. My belief is that you can learn anything from a well-written book—except talent—and with InterLibrary Loan, the best books in the world are available. Still, I know that a hands-on workshop is more fun than learning solely from a book.)
Problem is, the Tartine recipe takes about 16 hours start to finish, and I haven't figured out a lesson that doesn't keep her waiting around for hours. I can't tell her to go home for the nearly four hours of bulk fermentation, because the dough needs to be stretched and folded every 40 minutes.
My daughter suggested that I make several batches, each starting at a different time, to compress the lesson. It would start with Shannon mixing the preferment, then I'd say "Let it rise at room temperature overnight, after which it will look like this," at which point I would display an 8-hour-old leaven and say "ta-da!"
Is this how baking schools run a breadmaking class? With all the ta-da steps, it would mean a lot of dough and tight scheduling. Or do the teachers follow the actual schedule and fill the time with "pull out your textbooks, we're going to learn about such-and-such while we wait for the dough to rise"?
Janet