Baking Class 4,5,6... - Bread Making

For the month of January, I devoted every Saturday to learning bread making and 2 wednesdays to learning danish pastries and croissants. Each session lasted for about 6 hours, and I learnt to make many different types of bread, getting a lot more confident towards the last 2 lessons. Previous attempts to blog consistently failed, so have attempts to take pictures of all my bread. So these are a few that have made it to the camera lens and I shall attempt to wrap up this crazy month of bread making.

French Walnut Bread:

Bread Bowl:

This was interesting because I witnessed the use of a steam oven. In order to get that crusty texture, steam was released from the oven just before the bread was taken out. If you don't have such a cool oven, just spray some water on the bread 5 minutes before removing it from the oven.

Multigrain loaf bread:

Calzones:

A type of Italian bread with stuffing. It's basically an inverted pizza.

Rye bread:

Foccacia:

To learn bread making is easy, but to master bread making requires years of devotion and practice. I'm glad I had the chance to be exposed to this field of baking, to venture out of my comfort zone of cakes and cookies and to enter pastry. Somewhere along the way I tried to do croissants but to my horror and disappointment, croissants are really really difficult and impossible without an air-conditioned kitchen.

I did sweet buns as well, the type of bread that Asians live on. Hotdog buns, Chicken floss buns etc. There are really so many definitions of bread it's impossible to pinpoint what is a good bread. Europeans like it hard and chewy, with the flavour of the wheat preserved. Asians like theirs soft and fluffy, with the taste of bread masked by all types of fillings. But the one thing that everyone can agree upon - a good bread is a bread made with passion and love.

Trust me, there is a difference between food made with passion and one without. It's not imagination. For example, handmade bread always tastes better because of the inconsistency of the kneading and the warmth of the hand. And nothing can replace the satisfaction of watching others enjoy your food. Eventually I'll attempt to make bread again, in my own kitchen, but for now all I need is a month of rest!