Week One

Here I am, in Minneapolis in January. Brr is a fair statement, and it snows almost everyday. So what am I doing? Going to Baking and Pastry school. That'll keep me warm right? I'm there 5 hours a day 3 days a week,  and working at an audiology clinic another good chunk of time each day, making the first half of the week quite hectic indeed. Which leaves the rest of the week for hibernating, I'm quite good at that part. I thought this would be a fun way for people to see what I'm up to as I'm quite bad at phoning and emailing at the moment (perhaps always).

Introduction to Baking:
Week One: Quick Breads
Day 1
Biscuits-
We were lectured for a good 4 hours or so followed by "ok go! make biscuits" hmm....where are things? What? we cook in groups? What's going on?? I hated it.

Day 2
Blueberry Muffins, Sour Cream Muffins (sooooo good, and not a thing good for you about them), Cream Scones (we added slivered almonds and dried cherries), Sour Cream Coffee Cake, Cornbread muffins

Sorry, these first pictures were taken with my phone (which is the kind that makes phone calls and texts only) so they aren't great.

Definitely a better day, we work in groups of 4 and divide up the work so that 1 person is in charge of measuring..."weighing" is the more appropriate term considering we have to use a balance scale to do it. Food on the left, weights on the right...off you go! This is the first time in my life I might have actually memorized the conversions as well...whoa...  Person 2 is in charge of mixing (quite an important part it turns out) Person 3 "make-up" and panning. Person 4 the actual baking process (Did you know that there are 9 steps to baking? A whole lot of science going on)

Most of the people in my class are Culinary students, only 3 of us (out of 20ish) that actually want to go into baking. I'm amused because all the culinary people hate this class. There's a huge culinary vs baking war that's going on all over the place. While in this class they have to actually follow the recipe, and they hate it. Too much parsley, you'll live...too much baking soda.....GROSS. I'm liking class more.

Fun fact of the day shortening (and fat, butter etc. in general) is called shortening because it physically shortens the strands of gluten in mixes and you put the amount of fat you want in to help control the amount of gluten. Bread you want a lot of gluten so you put little or no fat in it. Cookies, you don't want that same texture so you put a good deal of fat in it to shorten the strands and get the texture you want. Turns out science is interesting!

Day 3
Lemon Poppy seed bread, Morning Glory Muffins, Banana Bread, Caramel Bran Muffins, Popovers

 Our popovers in the oven, they got pretty big!

and delicious! We ate with some jam, and my group saved some of our caramel from the bran muffins and put it on them...yummm

my camera somehow turned itself to video mode, I didn't realize it happened but here's the rest of the goodies. It's during the end of class when we push our tables together and all the groups compare our products and discuss what happened or went wrong, or well or whatever.

We also had a first test/quiz today (turns out this class is going to be challenging in lots of ways) I've never baked for 4 hours, cleaned up and then all of a sudden had to sit an take a test. My brain was all over the place, so made some dumb mistakes, ah well.

Extra credit, the instructor put 2 spices on the table. Your task, what are they? Fun, though I'm not good at it. Spice 1 red peppercorns (could have guessed it, but second thoughts changed my mind) Spice 2 cardamom, had no clue by sight and flavor. It also turns out that the green part of this is cilantro. I had no idea. 

Quick breads are not my favorite, but I actually had fun in class today.

Currently listening to Patti Griffin on Pandora (thinking of Tamea Mae)

Currently watching Brothers and Sisters (quite silly, but quite enjoyable)

Currently reading One Day, brain fluff, but entertaining. I'm getting to the end and don't know how I feel...