kirkwood:: bread basics

Four loaves of bread baked in three house at Kirkwood's "Discovering Bread" series.

Because I am employed full time, have a very busy life and a lot of responsibilities and commitments, I can't just drop everything and go to culinary school like I would like.

So I am grateful for local community colleges, especially Kirkwood, who have great programs and wonderful instructors who take time to teach classes outside of their regular schedule through the continuing education department.

I may have a special affinity towards continuing education departments as my mom has worked with these programs for years and is always talking about the wonderful instructors, courses, certificates and much more. But the continuing education department is a great place to turn for people like me, who have a passion for one thing, but just can't make it their focus in life.

For the past few months, I have been taking a variety of different culinary classes through Kirkwood. The first class I signed up for, actually, Nic signed the both of us up for it as a date night surprise, was "Theories of Vegan Cuisine" taught by a local vegan chef. The course was great, informational and I couldn't wait to sign up for more.

We (because we are a super cute couple who take cooking classes together) signed up for a series of classes next, "Whole Foods Vegan Cuisine" with that same chef and instructor. A series of four classes focused on beans & grains, soups & sauces, soy foods, and vegetables, gave us even more tips, tricks, and ideas to keep in our cooking arsenal.

For the girl who thought she know just about everything about cooking, these classes are a nice reminder that even the most experienced chef has a lot to learn.

For the boy that is never allowed in the kitchen (because the aforementioned girl lays claim to that territory), a new confidence starts to develop and he is allowed to cook more and excited to branch out and experiment with flavors, techniques, and methods.


From the top, country hearth, sun-dried tomato filled bianco, french, onion soup loaf 

After that series of classes concluded, I knew I needed more and registered for a three course series, "Discovering Breads." This series consists of bread basics, advanced breads, and breakfast breads.

Baking bread has always been one of my true passions and I have so much to learn. Actually, one night in college, after studying at the local Barnes and Noble (with a huge frappuccino by my side no doubt), I headed by to my house with the gorgeous Bread Baker's Apprentice in hand. I stayed up for hours that night pouring over the pages, studying the techniques of baking bread when I should have been head first in my macro economics book. My best friend walked into my room to chat, and sniggered when she saw me reading a cookbook. What can I say? I find calm, joy, and so much more in cooking.

I attended the bread basics class on Monday night, without Nic by my side (his loss!), and was excited to jump in, and show off my bread baking skillz. Yep, skillz, with a z - that means I am mad genius in the bread baking department.

I paired up with a retired biology teacher and our instructor gave few directions before we jumped in. Ask Nic, but me giving up any control while cooking is hard, so having to work with a complete stranger was a bit of a challenge, but was so fun. Turns out that The Professor (that is how he will be referred to) was just learning how to cook. Just learning how to cook period. He was not afraid to jump in, but I found him to be a little scattered and did my best to make sure we were on track with all of our bread doughs.


My haul of the bread made with The Professor, who tried to take two country hearth loaves. I told him that that wouldn't work as we weren't going home together. Heh.

We did all of the kneading by hand, which was a nice to take a step back from the KitchenAid. The Professor had an interesting kneading technique, more of a flatten flatten punch punch punch, than a fold, knead, turn, repeat process. We started preparing the french loaf starter, which was set aside to proof, and then turned out focus to the country hearth bread, ordering wine (huzzah for drinking wine out of plastic cups while making bread), onion and the bianco doughs.

I really loved The Professor's enthusiasm (the wine probably helped to calm my inner control freak) especially while making the bianco. The recipe called for an egg. I suggested that he crack the egg into a smaller bowl before adding to the rest of the ingredients. I set the small bowl right next to the big bowl while advising this step. Instead, The Professor cracked the egg onto the shelf right above the big bowl, splattering egg white all over the cooking area. Fine. No shells made it into the dough which was the ultimate goal. There was a large bucket of disinfectant that I pointed to suggesting he wipe down the mess, instead he throws the egg shell into the bucket of disinfectant. Huge sip of wine. No, the egg shell goes into the garbage. The Professor grabs it out and continues to mix our dough. I clean up the splattered and dripping egg. Let's move on, mmmmk?

We transferred out bowls of dough to the big, beautiful, proofing ovens (can I have one for Christmas, Nic? Pretty pretty please?!), prepared the sundried tomato filling, cleaned our workspaces, and then retrieved the dough to shape.

The country hearth bread was shaped into a boule, the onion soup bread went into a mini loaf pan, we filled, rolled, shaped and sliced the bianco, and chose from a few techniques to shape the baguette.


The damage done on my hour drive home from class, not too bad.

Another round in the proofing ovens and before I could order a second glass of wine (I only had one, next time might require two) we had the entire class' loaves of bread (64 loaves total) in the even-more-beautiful-than-the-proofing-oven, steaming oven (can I have one for Christmas, Nic? Pretty pretty please?!). We stood around, asking out instructor questions about bread, gawking over all of the different ovens (at least I was), discussing ways to bring our bread home (note, one take out container did not cut it), comparing and admiring our projects rise and turn a beautiful golden hue.

We pulled the bread from the oven about three hours after we began class. I rolled up my four loaves in my apron and hit the road back to Washington. It only took 5 minutes into my hour trip to unwrap my apron and begin tearing off corners of each loaf. Delicious, delicious, delicious, and deliciously non-vegan, but still delicious.

I learned a lot in this bread basics class, most notably, that I still have a lot to learn. None of my loaves were called out as being a perfect example, and one of them was pointed out as being kneaded too much. I have plans to refine my basic techniques this weekend (and a lifetime to master them) before moving on to the next class in the series, Advanced Breads.