Oh, la baguette…

And of course others.

But it’s hard to beat the traditional baguette, fresh from the oven….

And pretty simple, really.

Then of course we made multiple different variants of baguette – contrasting the use of liquid levain, vs soft dough, finishing off with multigrain (pictured below), and different inclusions including a spread of grain mustard 1:1 with sour cream, caramelized onions and cheese (yumm).

On the bread side we made Kamut bread (ancient Persian grain), Peruvian corn bread covered with corn spread (below), Red Wine Bread with salami, raisins and pistachios (will be giving that one a miss, currently in the fridge fermenting for baking tomorrow), started Pizza dough with Poolish, and learned the whys and wheretofores of Foccacia from Northern vs. Southern Italy. We made a basic northern foccaccia for baking tomorrow.

Next was Farmer’s Bread – Pain Paysan – with cranberries and walnuts – I have my eye on this recipe for ginger and macademia nuts when I get home.

The afternoon was largely a croissant lesson, rolling the dough (sheet roller, as suspected – so easy compared to hand rolling but this dough is a bit easier to handle than that in the recipe I currently have so fingers crossed it will translate). And of course not content with plain croissants we made bicolour ones with chocolate sheeting, Pain au chocolat (the trick of the two baton chocolate insertion revealed), cheese, marzipan, and hazelnut chocolate inclusions (these were very crumbly and they were set to throw all the remaining bits out – sacrilege! I collected them in a container and absconded with them….sooo good….)

Danish dough was next, inevitably to be turned into multiple variants tomorrow including Kouign-Amann, one of my favourites. I am sure we will be introducing inclusions, and decorating them to the nines.

The day concluded with croissant dough spread with pastry cream, macerated raisin and chocolate coins, then rolled up and cut into slices like cinnamon buns. All the croissants are fermenting overnight in the fridge – we will bake them tomorrow and have the plain ones for breakfast. Yummm.

The buffet on Friday, where we assemble a sample of each bread we’ve made, promises to be spectacular!

And happily, I found a good coffee roaster literally across the street from the school. Their coffee options look decent as well, good to note as the coffeeshop underneath us isn’t impressive.

Coffee, chocolate, and pastries – what more does one need?