nothing in particular

It's the first time Creative Culinaire is organising an Artisan Bread Course class, our first time at Artisan Breads and coincidentally its the instructor's first hands-on lesson too =D

Here's Hafizh explaining/ demonstrating on the usage of this huge production size mixer.
In this lesson, it was less hands on than we expected as the ingredients were mixed in large quantities like, for the whole class. Back in bread course 1/2, every pair in the class have to mix their own dough. But the main reason for mixing/dividing the dough together, is to ensure that everyone's dough can get into oven together. However, we still get the chance to shape the dough.

Lesson 1:
- Raisin Challah (made on our own)
- Challah (made on class scale)
- Baguette
- Pain de Campagne
- Boules


Soaking the raisins in warm water before use. This is for the Raisin Challah.


Making the cold butter plyable by using the rolling pin to beat it.


After adding the butter, mix till window pane appears.


Mixing the raisins in by hand.


Now let the dough rest for 30mins.


After 30mins, the dough is folded to give the dough more strength, distribute the yeast food and distribute the heat. The ideas taught to us in this lesson is kind of new and there were many ??? on everyones' mind.

After another 30mins, its time to divide the dough into the portions we want to work with. Hafizh showed us how we can make life easier for ourselves by putting the weighing scale, main dough, extra dough on different sides of the working space.



After dividing all the dough into equal portions, pre-shape the dough and let them rest seam up.


One of the patterns taught in class, this is made by the instructor =D


K's 6 plait challah, he got kind of confused along the way(which to plait next) LOL~



Meanwhile, the boules were being shaped and left to proof on the linen cloth called couche.


The finished product with sugar rocks (sprinkled before baking) for the raisin challah(above).
That's the 6 plait challah, nicely browned.


The crumb of the challah. The sugar rocks make this bread even more tasty :p


Whole load of baguettes. See the leaf like pattern made using the scissors.


The boules are baked till "black". Actually to us, this standard is chao ta but for artisan breads, it actually brings more flavour for the crust.


The inside of the baguette.


The class ended at about 8pm(after cleaning up and cooling the breads) and many students left at 7pm lol~ so each person had quite alot of bread to bring back >_<'

Back from Japan for 5 days, I am not digesting Singapore food for weird reasons?!
Tokyo is a pretty interesting city, however I would say that Taiwan is more FUN than Tokyo. Probably due to the fact that I prefer the sea, nature, wild flowers..going to a park to admire flowers is not my cup of tea.

Have been busy with post editing for the Japan trip pics, hopefully I can get them done by end of the week. Guess I will be looking out for more options before deciding where to host my travel review as blogspot upload function is really really troublesome.

It's pretty bad that I haven got mood to work. Not really due to holiday mood I would say, but its the dread of doing these stuff. I hope I will be doing something else within the next 1 year *GOSH*

Right now, I should look forward to my artisan bread course starting this Sunday.

K and I are going to Japan on NWA from 1st Aug 09 to 15th Aug 09.
He says he isn't really excited cos he doesn't know what to expect.
Silly boy -.-'

We will leave my place at 3am which is 2.5hours from now..I am sleepy zzz~
My wish to that we can visit 90% if not all of the places we planned in the itinerary.

Visiting:
- Tokyo(mainly)
- Kawagoe
- Hakone
- Shonan
- Enoshima
- Kamakura(maybe)
- And of course 2 outlet stores are planned for =D

Festivals during the trip:
- Bon Dance (4th Aug to 7th Aug) at Asakusa
- Enoshima Fireworks (4th Aug) at Enoshima

*Pray for fair weather*