Wild Yeast

By my count, I’ve made around 100 baguettes in class over the past two weeks. Tomorrow I have practical exam in which I have to mix two doughs and make roughly 15 baguettes from each one. The next day is more practical exam, and that means more baguettes. I am tired at the end of each day, and if I’m being honest, I’m a little tired of baguettes too.

So what did this tired on tired translate into last night? When I got home, did I take a hot bath? Watch a little TV? Catch up on my reading? How about on my sleep? Well, no. I made a few more baguettes. I can’t explain this entirely. It had something to do with wanting to know if I could make a baguette in my own kitchen that looks as good as the ones we’ve been turning out in class.

The answer is no, I couldn’t. Or at least I didn’t (see below photo). However, because I am presumptuous by nature, I will presume to tell you what I know, or I think I know, about scoring the damn things.

(Read more…)

Yes, it’s still all about baguettes, through this week anyway.

Here’s a very quick tip: if your tips lift up, making your baguettes look like canoes, your oven might be too hot.

See this week’s yeast spottings…

In class last Friday, we mixed three doughs. These gave us plenty of opportunity for the all-important hands-on baguette practice, of course. They also illustrated the relationship between mixing time (and corresponding level of gluten development) and fermentation time, and the effects that these parameters have on the bread.

(These are my very own baguettes. You can see that my shaping and scoring needs work. And as the middle one clearly indicates, I cannot count to six.)

Let’s compare these babies, shall we? (Read more…)

I knew I could count on you for a few laughs. Thanks to everyone who sent jokes and good wishes in hopes of winning Advanced Bread and Pastry. I wish I had 107 copies of the book to give away.

Congratulations to Adam Holte of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, winner of the random drawing. Adam, when the book reaches you, I’m afraid you’re going to have to buckle down to catch up on your reading. The assignment for the first two weeks of class is Chapters 1–5. Have fun!

One week down, 23 to go. During my first five days at SFBI, my routine went something like this:

• 5:00 am: Out of bed.
• 5:10 am: Coffee. This step must not be omitted.
• 6:00 am: Hit the road. Unfortunately, my route to SFBI coincides with that to the airport. I have learned that every man, woman, and child in the Bay Area catches an early-morning flight each and every day.
• 6:45 am: Arrive at SFBI. Try to resist breakfast pastries. Fail miserably.
• 7:00 am – 1:30 pm: Get patient instruction and constructive feedback from Frank, our  talented and knowledgeable bread instructor. In the classroom and in the bakery-lab, learn about flour, water, yeast, salt, scaling, mixing, fermentation, proofing, scoring, baking, cooling, staling. Learn shaping of boules and batards (which I thought I knew, but didn’t). And practice baguettes, baguettes, dozens of baguettes! These babies are, hands-down, the hardest bread there is to shape and score properly. Say “uh-oh” (in reference to my own clumsy but thankfully improving efforts) several times an hour. “Oops” can be used interchangeably with “uh-oh.” And then, every once in a while, sometimes when I least expect it, there’s a “well, that didn’t turn out too badly after all, now, did it?”
• 1:30 pm: Lunch, prepared by SFBI staff. Always includes fresh bread and more irresistible pastries.

(Read more…)

See this week’s yeast spottings…

Today I started the professional baking program at the San Francisco Baking Institute. For the next six months, I will spend six hours a day allowing the good and talented people there to mix, ferment, shape, proof, and bake me into the best baker I can be. I will be drilled on dough, tutored on tarts, coached on chocolate, lectured on lamination, guided on gateaux. (Yes, that’s right. I am paying good money to be forced to bake a cake. And they are breaking out the ice skates in Hades.)

Now if you’re anything like me, you may be thinking, how nice for you, Susan, but what is in this for me?

What’s in it for you is a chance to win my textbook. Because I already own a copy of the excellent Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas (SFBI’s founder and president, by the way), my first-day-of-school-issue copy is up for grabs.

Interested? Of course you are. If you live in the US (sorry, my international friends, but this thing is damn heavy and I’m springing for the shipping), leave a joke here in the comments by 11:59 PM on Friday, September 18. I’m asking for a joke because I will need something to laugh about after springing for the shipping on this book.

I would like to thank this month’s Daring Cooks host, Debyi (The Healthy Vegan Kitchen), for not only offering such a tasty challenge in Indian Dosas, but also for reassuring me that if I can’t make it as a Daring Cook (and my utter inability to produce a round dosa definitely points in that direction), I may have a very bright future in psychoanalysis.

In my hands, these thin Indian pancakes are better than inkblots, don’t you think? Feel free to interpret them any way you wish and to leave your interpretations in the comments. Also feel free to draw whatever conclusions you like about me from my own perceptions of my edible little Rorschach tests, but please keep these to yourself.

And if my career as an analyst doesn’t take off, there’s always recipe translation work. I have a natural talent for this. For example, it was quite effortless for me to translate “ladle 2 tablespoons of batter into your pan until it is a thin, round pancake,” into “plop 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of your pan and swirl the pan around until the pancake looks like something the cat dragged in.”

If Jaws and Ms. Pacman had a child

(Read more…)

Once again, I am awed and inspired by the creativity, baking prowess, and generosity of everyone who contributes to YeastSpotting. You rock!

See this week’s yeast spottings…