Time to make the donuts
September 11 1998		This bread is just like... ...Mom used to make in old Rome
The task of the day: Basic Breads		Today was sourdough day. But, we did quite a bit more than that. It was also flat bread day, oddly shaped lean dough day, and rye bread day. Chocolate and Sour Cherry Sourdough - formed into ball shaped loaves (20 loaves) Cibbala - flat Italian bread with olives (12 loaves) Basic Wheat Sourdough - formed a billion ways (40 loaves) Lean Dough - formed into Epice (stalks of wheat) (12 loaves) Focaccia - flat Italian bread with toppings (4 loaves) Lavash - flat middle eastern crackers (12 full sheet pans) Fogasse - flat French bread with holes cut in the middle to resemble leaves (3 loaves) Rye Sour - formed into long loaves (12 loaves) That's alot of bread there, sir. We started class at 6 am. I was in the kitchen at 5:45, and Chef was already there. We started mixing up some stuff that his afternoon class would be needing. The entire class worked very well today. By 8, all of the dough at been mixed and was sitting proofing on the bench. By 10:30, everything had been formed into loaves and was in the proofbox, waiting to fire in the oven. But after that, it was about 3 hours of oven baking to finish everything off. It's interesting that after even just a few days of experience, the entire process of bread production goes much smoother and with less thought. We knocked off probably three times as much bread today as we did on the first day. And yet, we finished with more time left over, whereas on Monday it was tight to finish on time at all. Once our team finished all of the day's production, Chef said to us "oh heck, make some lean dough, too." We knocked it off in five minutes and then prepped toppings for the focaccia that we made out of some of it. I took gobs of pictures today of all aspects of the bakery. Hopefully they turn out well, and I'll be able to show off all of the weird and cool equipment. * * * I feel much better now than yesterday. I got gobs of sleep last night in an effort to not wake up with a major headache again, and it seemed to work. I also need to call it an early night tonight. Tomorrow I'm going in at 5 AM to the production bakeshop. They're short handed filling orders from the restaurants and a convention, and asked Chef if anyone from our group could help out. Might be fun, or just lots of work. We'll see.
past home future index		Copyright 1998 Tom Dowdy Comments? dowdy@poubelle.com