The day is here, tomorrow is my last day of bread. The last day of my first block. As of next week I’ll be in a different lab with a different Chef Instructor doing something completely different.

It’s exciting

And also a little scary! 6 weeks are over already, 1/6 of my class work is done, 2 units completed. We’re watching one block of students finish their final projects (a sugar sculpture) and finish for good before they head to their externships, and seeing the new intake of students come in for their orientation.. was that really me only 6 weeks ago! It’s gone quickly, but at the same time feels so long ago.. does that make sense?

So tomorrow I have to present a country white sourdough which we started today as it needs to proof overnight, and my created loaf.. It’s a little different now to the pictures I posted the other day, I altered the recipe slightly (and had a look of sheer bliss cross my instructor’s face when she tried it!) and braided it, with one filling inside each of the strands.. definitely a winner!

We also have another theory, with maths and yeast dough production methods and conversions and stuff on it.. I actually did better on mine last week than I thought I did.. I’ll be revising hard tomorrow, especially on the ingredient functions.. there’s always one I’m not sure on!

This week we’ve been making sourdoughs mostly, with the starter we created at the start of the bread unit, now named ‘Bready Kruger’ I got to bring some of the leftover home so I can continue to play with sourdoughs at home! It’s been fun, we have stacked ovens with stone on the bottom that usually have racks on them but we’ve been taking the racks out and using a peel to get the loaves in and out the ovens and cooking them straight on the stone.

Using the peel is definitely an aquired technique! I’m getting it now, but on Monday I was either too slow and the loaf stuck, or too vigourous and the loaf hit the back of the oven and squished up!

We’ve also made English muffins (i finally got to try them! And having done my report on them can say they are actually English!), cheesey bread sticks (oh so addictive), bagels and we made dead dough and made a plaque out of it, Chef was trying to point us in an autumnal/halloween theme, so I went with Nightmare Before Christmas.. It was fun, and a nice change of pace. Even if I couldn’t get it quite how I wanted it!

Wish me luck for the exams.

Next week we’ll be on to Petit Fours!