The Ultimate Carb-Loading Experience

 

If you’re on a diet, beware. You might want to rebel after this.

We made sooooo many yummy things this week, so grab your drool-catcher towel, and let’s go!

We started of with Farmer’s Bread, which had rye flour and walnuts in it. I wasn’t too crazy about the walnuts in there, but it was much better than I anticipated, since I wasn’t sure if I’d like rye flour.

We also made kugelhopf (KOO-gul-HOPF). In Alsace, France, if it’s not baked in this mold, in this shape, you cannot call it a kugelhopf. They are very protective of their kugelhopf, and if you own a shop there and try to make kugelhopf in a different mold, people will come find you and ask you to stop. There are molds made for both baking and decoration. We were told that Chef Jacquy (one of the School’s owners) has quite the collection. Anyway… It’s another enriched dough, and we put raisins in it and topped it with almonds. By the way, did I mention that we have Chef Jonathan for this class? I don’t think I did. Aw…and I don’t think I have a picture of him either…I guess you’ll just have to click on his name and see his bio… ;)

anyways, the kugelhopf. (whoa, the butter in the mold in this picture looks like it’s under a black light or something…)
Ta da! Pretty, huh?

We also learned how to make chocolate croissants, which, I had never noticed, but they are a different shape. We don’t cut them into triangles and roll them like the normal ones. They are square. And they have chocolate in them. ;)

This is all I had time to take a picture of that day… sorry. I had John take them to work and they were devoured!

We also made baguettes!! Oh my deliciousness. Along with croissants, I’ve been waiting all term to make baguettes. I took them home and made one loaf into bruschetta and it was AMAZING.

John and I went through that whole loaf of bruschetta that night! It was pretty much all we had for dinner. It was soooooo tasty.

The next day we entered a whole new level of deliciousness. We made brioche. But it was soooo much more than just brioche. We filled it with cream, chunks of butter and then covered them in granulated sugar. Oh. My. Deliciousness. It’s pretty much a heart attack in your hand, but oh, at least I would die happy.

I could eat those everyday…until I died of said heart attack. ;)

With the rest of the brioche we tried a new shape, a braid

And then we made some loaves that we sliced, covered in almond cream, and topped with sliced almonds

We also learned the French style “cinnamon bun” but we used danish dough and filled it with almond cream and raisins. Chef said we could certainly try it with different flavors like cinnamon. I think this was John’s favorite, he’s been having them for breakfast all week ;)

Then we made more breads. We made sourdough:

We made country bread and learned different kinds of decorative shapes. In France, different regions have their signature shape, so we learned the shapes and where they come from. (And I can’t really remember any of that lecture…so sorry…hey! I was trying to remember all the other stuff we need to know about bread doughs! gimme a break!)
Our crown shape there got a little squished in the oven…oops…

Oh yeah, and we made another batch of croissants so we could learn how to make almond croissants

And finally, we made a multigrain sourdough bread. And this was intensely multigrain. We had sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, black sesame seeds and I’m probably forgetting another 1 or 2. Oh yeah, oats were in there too.

So I had a lot of bread to take home on Friday. We did manage to give some away, like to the train conductor, a homeless guy, random people, you know.

But today, I did something amazing with one of my sourdough rounds for lunch. I found this awesome recipe on Our Best Bites. It was posted yesterday and I knew it was meant to be, because, I just brought home four loaves of sourdough. I used butter and this homemade garlic bread seasoning (Also from Our Best Bites! ;) and then covered it in mozzerella cheese.

And it was amazing. Try to watch the drooling.

And now I’m totally stuffed and ready to slip into a food coma. ;)

One month to graduation! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!?!?