January 17, 2011 - 7:49am
Class Project AKA Homework!
Hello, Im from TN and currently enrolled at the Art Institute in Nashville taking Culinary Arts with a concentration in Baking and Pastries. One of my classes this quarter is Artisan Breads and our Chef(instructor) has required us to keep a blog. This is the first time I've ever worked with a blog site. I hope by the end of my quarter I will be a great bread baker and hopefully be able to help other people with my new skills.
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Welcome to TFL!
I agree with the instructor - in fact I'm surprised every instructor doesn't require it. I've found that keeping a very detailed "bread diary" of everything I did and exactly how it turned out to be invaluable. I refer back to those old diaries frequently (for example: when I add dried milk powder, does it work better for me to also add liquid? what happened each way?).
What was the temperature in the kitchen? What temperature was the flour? Did the dried milk form a crust? How long did you knead? What container held your builk rise? etc? etc? Write it all down.
You may decide to have your blog be your bread diary, containing everything. Or, you may decide to keep your bread diary in a personal notebook and copy only "the best parts" or "summaries" to your blog here on TFL.
In any case, I suggest you include lots of pictures. In particular, include a crumb shot for every loaf. Before uploading, resize the pictures fairly small (ex: 3x4 inches). That way they won't take forever to load, won't use such a ridiculous amount of storage space, won't make you scroll down until your fingers are sore, won't overwhelm the text, and might even fit side by side.