It's all about Baking now! Day 2

Hello all! I am back! I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Well, I started my intro to baking and pastry class and boy is this different than the intro to culinary class. First off it is about BAKING.... not really my forte! I can burn anything you put in front of me and really I prefer cookie dough to waiting for the finished product... That should tell you where I stand here.

All kidding aside though, I think this may be pretty darn fun! We made bread today and let me just tell you if I keep making bread the gym isn't going to be open enough hours in the day to take care of my fat ass!

We made French Baquettes, Whole Wheat Rolls with a Honey Wash and a bread known as EPI which literally translates to a stalk of wheat. When creating the EPI you simply take a roll of baguette dough and you cut it and form it into the shape of a wheat stalk. You bake it and it comes out as a bread that you can pull apart to eat. The presentation seems like it would be very fun for a Thanksgiving feast. You can put it on the table warm and let it be passed around while it looks pretty too!

I have attached a photo of all the breads so be sure to take a look.

Our class has increased in size and that is a little rough because we are not at all used to the amount of bodies running around trying to weigh out ingredients and use proofing machines and ovens and cooling racks and cleaning up. Tensions ran a little higher than usual! There are now 33 of us in the class. As you may remember, Intro to Culinary only had 12 people in it so it was much more hands on. This class they have combined HRM Students and Culinary Students so it is one body after the next. We shall make it through this though.

The Chef is really cool! He is pretty hardcore but he has been there and done that more than once. In fact, he has cooked for two US Presidents (while in office) and he has cooked for royalty and he was even at one point an executive chef for Ritz Carlton - and that is a pretty big deal. This guy ROCKS!

Well folks... I will write more tomorrow and keep you up to date!

Have a great night. Cheers and Bon Appetit!

Tony