Bready Or Not

Home from my first day of baking school! So exciting and overwhelming! We are a group of 15, coming from as close as San Francisco and as far as Australia. Several of us from out-of-state have connections to the bay area (like me), but for some, it is their first time here. People are staying with in-laws, or in in-law units, or in rooms in a house, or in apartments. As far as I can tell (though I’m not positive about this), I think I’m the only one who isn’t from the area but is renting an apartment semi-permanently — that is, with a lease that extends beyond the duration of the program. Anyway, on to BREAD PHOTOS!

Or Bread Photo, at least. This is all I’ve got to offer you for now. These are my first baguettes. From what I can tell, we’ll be doing baguettes all week, so you should be able to see me improve (let’s hope!). Actually, I’m reasonably proud of how these turned out, but I know I’ll be getting plenty of practice over the next couple of days to perfect my technique. Today, our instructor mixed the dough and we watched, and then got to each shape our own loaves. Tomorrow, I believe, we’ll be working in small groups to try out the mixing part on our own. That part I’m excited about. I’m a bit apprehensive about the part where we load breads into the GIGANTIC HONKIN OVENS…and those of you who’ve seen my last workplace know that I’m no newbie to big ovens, but for some reason (maybe just unfamiliarity?) these huge deck ovens are much more intimidating to me than our walk-in oven was at the co-op. Now that I think about it, though, I think I was scared to use that one for the first week, too, but quickly got over that.

Right, didn’t I say “on to Bread Photo” a while ago? Ok, ok, here we go!

Yum. They say we’ll get sick of eating baguettes. WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT!