June 30, 2010 - 2:44pm
An evening of baking - for fun? (wfo based)
I have a wfo and am now considering having a bread/other stuff based baking session!
I've done a few pizza sessions, and have accomplished some loaves too and some dried tomatoes and baked potatoes.
But now, what about inviting some interested persons for an evening of baking some bread? Is this insane? It would mean giving over my entire ground floor house to friends to form, shape and otherwise make some loaves and other stuff for cooking in a farily moderate heat woof fired oven.
CB
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Obviously I meant 'wood' and not 'woof'!
I was gonna say, they must be smart pups to be able to fire your oven!
Anyhoo, I've thought of this myself. Kind of a combined class on baking bread and WFO use. But that would mean an all-day affair, with long, potentially boring, periods of watching dough rise.
How I think I'd do it is like the chef leading a pastry class I once took did it. He had us do each step, so we could get the touch & feel, but for the actual baking we used pastry dough that was prepared in advance and pre-chilled. We took our own doughs home with us for later baking. So you would have to preset enough loaves for one for each guest, but let them mix up and knead some dough that they'd take home for later use, then form some dough you've prepared earlier into loaves (they could take that home as well), and then bake loaves you prepared earlier that were rising during the beginning of the "class". After that, I'd pop a crumble, some cookies, brownies, or maybe a clafouti into the oven to demonstrate some tastey non-bread uses for all that leftover heat.
Lotta dough, but I think it would be fun, and the attendees would get a lot of info in a relatively short time.
ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA
Crumbly-
Go for it! It is a blast. Everyone has a great time and then gets to enjoy the fruits of the evening's labors. We get a bunch together to do cookies for the holidays. That is a ton of work and scheduling oven use. The bread, pizza, foccacia night is easier and I find the guys get into the bread thing much better. You might suggest everyone bring their own apron or stash of kitchen towels.... and hot pads.....
Take photos and share.... Have fun.
Whosinthekitchen>Lisa
I do baking classes in my home kitchen for tourists and interested locals about once a month. My suggestion is to have your friends come one evening (2 hours) and then again the next morning (3 - 4 hours). Let them work either with stretch and fold or with pre-doughs, to be retarded overnight (Take it out to de-chill before they come in again, of course).
In my experience people are perfectly happy to entertain each other with talking and funny stories while their breads are proofing. And they are very happy and proud to have achieved a bread from the first step to the last (and you don't have to waste tons of material).
Baking in a small group of bread lovers is really fun, not only for the guests, but for the host/teacher as well!
Karin
Hi folks
I've just joined the board so I could comment on this thread.
ClimbHi said "But that would mean an all-day affair, with long, potentially boring, periods of watching dough rise."
But it wouldn't take that long at all. Couple of weeks ago I taught a group of 4 friends to make 8 different breads in a morning.
Each of them took away a sweet and a savoury bread. The trick is to use a fair amount of yeast!
A dough made with one mug of flour to 1 third of a mug of water with a teaspoon of yeast and either some salt or sugar will rise in about half an hour - 15 minutes in the oven, and Bob's your uncle!
It's early in the morning here, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm happy to come back and expand on the 8 breads in a couple of hours theme.
ATB, Paul