Artisan Breads Week 1

School started up again! I only have two quarters left to go. If everything goes well, I'll be done around March of next year. This quarter, I have Artisan Bread and European Cakes & Tortes.

On Day 1 of Week 1, we made breads using the Sponge method. The sponge is a very wet, sticky yeast dough that is fermented before being incorporated into the actual bread dough.

Sponge starter for the Turkish Pide Bread. It's a mixture of water, yeast, and flour, fermented for about an hour or so. The sponge doesn't assist in leavening--it's used just for flavor.

Our finished product: the top ones are Soft Yeast Dinner Rolls and the bottom ones are the Turkish Pide Bread. I love this dinner roll recipe; so soft, sweet, delicious and not that hard to make either.
For Day 2, we made breads using the Straight Dough method (i.e. Mix everything together, let rise, punch down, shape, proof, and bake). We sort of concentrated on different shapes of breads this day. We made French Bread, and each group got to shape them differently.

Baguette and the famous epi rope. Sharp scissors are used to cut the piece to resemble an ear of wheat.

Tavatiere, the 'tobacco pouch'. Interesting shape for a bread...

Fougasse, meaning (I think) 'ring', from the rings formed here. Most of the pictures of fougasse that I've seen are flat breads shaped like a leaf or a tree.

The tricorner. I think the reason why there are so many different shapes for this particular bread is due to its lack of flavor. Made of only 4 ingredients (flour, water, yeast, and salt), the bread relies solely on its crust (formed during baking) for flavor. Hence, to add interesting to an otherwise flavorless and plain bread, maybe it was shaped in cool, pretty shapes...at least that's my theory.

My group shaped ours into a giant grape. It turned out so pretty that we didn't want to break it

apart. The hard, chewy crust on these breads were created by injecting steam into the oven the first few minutes of baking.

Focaccia, the Italian flatbread. We drenched the bread with olive oil (before and after baking)and sprinkled chopped rosemary and parmesan cheese. Very flavorful, but it turned out a little dense.

Potato herb rolls. The rosemary paired well with the potato flavor. These turned out nice and tender, although could've been a little saltier.

Each class, we make some sort of a dish using the breads we've made. We had the Pide bread (we ate all the dinner rolls...they were so good...), so we used that to make a basil-black garlic butter toast with sauteed eggplants and onions. It was flavorful, but needed more veggies...

So that was Week 1. We'll be making sourdough, old dough, and biga breads next week!