13 24 23, Hike!    

September 15 1998
Safe combination?
or snapcount?

The task of the day:

Advanced Bread Baking

This week is Advanced Bread Baking. Chef Coopage is an excellent teacher. We're going over breads in more detail than the previous week, and also spending time focusing on the forming of the breads. We've learned 4 and 6 braids for Challah dough, using a clever numbering scheme that's pretty easy to remember and use. We've also been focusing on baguette production in terms of quality and shaping.

Also ongoing is our own sourdough starter, and decorative breads. We'll be presenting a bread display on Friday, and this is what we're working up to. Chef is very into sourdough, and has given us gobs of information on how it works and why it works. The workload so far has been pretty light, as we are spending this first part of the week learning. I think things are about to pick up in the next day or so, however. Friday should be a real fun race.

* * *

Chef Coopage is all set to buy an iMac, and has been quizzing me about it. He's also been talking about some interesting ideas relating to special programs for helping bakers to calculate yields and percentages and such. Might be an interesting project to work on. I'll probably speak to him more about it during the week.

* * *

Last night Marla made a classic Meatloaf. It was excellent, and Shawn was very impressed with it. Of course, Shawn's never had a meatloaf before this (!).


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Copyright 1998 Tom Dowdy
Comments? dowdy@poubelle.com