Baking One-Day Course

We went to a one day baking course in Le Cordon Bleu, in Paris.

It was great. We started by learning how to make the simple white bread dough to make baguette. As I mentioned in a previous post, bread-making is half science, half art. These courses are great to get a bit of the science and a good training in the art-part. Which is great, because the science one can always read it from a book. But the art, one has to watch an expert and try it.

For instance, we learnt how to knead the dough for 15 minutes by slapping it hard on the counter. The idea is to work on the elasticity of the dough. Once it feels elastic, we added salt and saw a clear change in the behavior of the dough. It becomes softer, with a bit more plasticity.

These are the already baked baguettes we made. We made them from scratch. We started from flour, yeast and water and went through all the steps until the final result. Interestingly, we all undersalted the bread. It just seemed like so much salt when you hold it in your hand. Advice: use more salt!

We also made pain de campagne and lots of other types of bread (e.g. rye, focaccia, etc.). These breads take different flour combinatios and sometimes --like in the case of the focaccia-- olive oil. Apart from the baguette dough, most of the doughs we used during the course were made by the chef and kneaded in a machine. He would show us the process and then distribute the dough among the participants. The idea is that once you know how to work one dough, you only need to know the proportions and the times to make any other dough. It also saves time.

We tried some buttery doughs, like this kouglof, filled with raisins soaked in Grand Marnier.

We spent some time making pastries. This is the chef showing us how to make croissants. You cut the dough into triangles and then rolled them up into croissant forms. He also showed us how to make all kinds of pastries like pain au chocolat, palmiers, etc. 

These are Astrid's croissants. They take a bit of eggwash. Tip: apply eggwash, let them rise a bit, and then apply again. While they rise, the first cot of eggwash dries and the second cot adds extra shine.

And voila. I am not going to show my own croissants because they look horrible.

I loved the overall experience. I just enjoy being in a professional kitchen. It is like borrowing an alternative life for a day.