Our Daily Bread

And daily it was!! This week we started breads and breakfast pastries and I brought stuff home practically everyday!! Oh, and it was soooooo yummy. So so so yummy. So you better get that drool towel, or bib, or whatever it is that you use, because it’s gonna be amazing.

We started off with fresh, homemade blueberry muffins. I remember in one of my cooking classes at BYU we learned something called “the muffin method” – which, as you might imagine, was the proper way to make muffin batter. Nothing wrong with that, but we definitely didn’t do “the muffin method” here. And they were delicious. It’s also a really good base muffin recipe, so you could change it up a little. I’m thinking raspberry muffins. With a streusel topping. Yum.

We made something called Toast Bread. Which is basically white bread…but we don’t call it that. We call it Toast Bread. Obviously ;) But the day I brought it home we were having soup and this freshly made bread with our delicious tortellini sausage soup (recipe from Our Best Bites!!) was heavenly. Oh my deliciousness. And some of these photos are unfortunately, not taken “on site” because with the way class runs with breads is that by the end of class, we’re baking the breads, taking them out, packaging them up, and going home. So…just so you know ;)

We learned how to make whole wheat bread and brioche (bree-YOSH), which is an enriched dough…and quite honestly, it basically means there’s a lot of butter in it. LOVE me some butter!
Here’s our wheat bread, ready to go in the oven…
And here they are baked, packaged, and ready to go home! (Though that bottom one that’s horizontal, that’s brioche…I’m getting there)

We learned several different ways to form or shape brioche. We have that lumpy monkey bread looking shape above, we have dinosaurs ;)
Don’t they look like little stegasauruses? ;)

And we made rounds with an almond honey mixture called bee sting. This one was way yummy

Dusted with a little powdered sugar…mmmmm

Next up was my favoritest part. Croissants. I could seriously eat these croissants every. single. day. And I’ve been so excited to make them since I started the cake program last August. So I’ve been waiting to make these…a long time ;) And they didn’t disappoint. Oh yum.

I had two before I even got home. ;)

We made beer bread (which I gave away because even though all the alcohol cooks out, you better believe the flavor is still there…ick) Here it is, proofing…
Once there are cracks in the rye flour on top, you are ready to bake
I think it looks pretty cool, don’t you?

We made waffles! Now, I’m a bisquik girl, and always will be (15 years of having bisquik waffles every Sunday will do that to you), but it was cool to learn how to make waffles from scratch.

I think one of John’s favorite things that I brought home were the beignets (ben-YAYZ). A glorified donut. And oh, it was glorious.

Of course, the whole time we were making these in class I was totally thinking of the movie The Princess and the Frog. Remember this girl?

Seriously so funny. Well, at one point, she tells Tiana that she needs Tiana to make her famous “man-catchin’ beignets” to win the prince over in the movie. I guarantee that these beignets we made were MAN-CATCHIN’ good ;)

Finally, we made danishes. Not danish people. Danishes. I don’t know why they are called that. I’m sure there’s a story behind it or something. We made our with almond cream and apricots

And I forgot to tell my partner that I didn’t want to put the rum in it. Oh well. They look pretty, don’t they? ;)

And that is breads and breakfast pastries, week one! It’s totally nuts, and I love it. It’s so different from anything else we’ve learned so far, but it’s been really interesting. It’s so cool to mix up the doughs and shape it and then watch it grow in size, not to mention the amazing aromas that occur when baking…ahhhh….I hope your towel survived this post ;)