I’ve had an interest in baking for a long time, and have tried for a while to master the art and craft of baking bread. I think of bread as the backbone of the western diet. What is amazing about it, is that it’s frequently made from just a few ingredients, yet has infinitely variable outcomes depending on how those few ingredients are processed. Making a loaf of french bread allows the baker to interact with the ingredients in a much more developed way than, for example, grilling some chicken. In short, baking is all about the process.
My wife and I are celebrating our first anniversary this weekend, and we decided to head up to Vermont to take a half-day baguette class at King Arthur Flour. These classes sell out quickly, so this is something we’ve been planning for a long time. The class was almost exactly what I expected, rows of butcher-block workstations with an instructor in the front. We were the youngest people by about twenty years, with the exception of a mother and son baking team; I guess taking baking classes is not something the hip kids are doing these days, but rather, something that hippie grand parents do. Regardless, there is no substitute of learning the process and technique of bread making than actual live instruction. I would never have figured out the the wet dough kneading technique without seeing it and then trying it with critique. Our baguettes turned out perfectly.