Week 28 - learning how to make bread

My three favourite food smells are rosemary, coffee and baking bread.  In fact I think baking bread might be one of the best smells in the whole world.  Annoyingly, eating it is probably one of the worst things you can do, well, I can do - it is evil on my belly of rolls (ha ha, my belly of bread rolls)!

Anyway, it was always going to be a sure thing that I do a bread-making course for my blog, regardless of the fact that I knew I would have to eat every last crumb I made.  But, there are always times you have to say screw it and bollocks to my "no eating bread" rule.

I had a look around for some bread courses and there are several very well known ones in the capital, including ones at Borough Market and also at E5 Bakehouse.  They are pretty expensive and also booked up months in advance.  However, a few months ago I found out that the newest addition to the Bourne and Hollingsworth brand, the B&H Buildings in Clerkenwell were going to be running a new cookery school from March.  I jumped at the chance and as Sod's law decreed, I found myself in a hot box of a kitchen on one of the hottest days of the year.  Actually, I didn't much care, the kitchen that six of us were in on a sweaty Saturday morning was airy, light, pretty, organised and really rather lovely.

The boss of the cookery school and our teacher for the day was Adam Gray,  the executive chef of the B&H group and a former michelin-starred chef.  He began by telling us that we would be making three types of bread throughout the day, a raisin loaf, a standard white bread and a brown bread.  He had already prepared a few raisin loaves for us and we helped ourselves to the lovely, warm pieces while we finished our coffees and chatted.  Funnily enough there was another Geordie in the group, a guy who was there who gets given money every year from his job to learn something new.  Learn one new thing a year? Pah!!!  

Adam went through the basics with us - bread is actually very easy to make, any basic bread only requires flour, water, salt and yeast. But of course, it takes a little bit of time to make because of having to prove the dough in order for the yeast to ferment and the bread to then rise. We talked about the types of flour you can get.  The most common kinds of white and wholemeal flour we use are T45 and T55.  All this refers to is how much ash content is in the flour.  T45 is soft and T55 is strong, but to be honest it really doesn't matter.

So with everything all laid out and ready to go we were to begin with making our own raisin bread.  As it was the first bread we were to make, Adam did a sterling Blue Peter impression and did a demonstration first, taking us though the whole process.  As well as the basic bread ingredients, raisin bread also requires barley extract, bran flour and of course, the raisins.  

It was then our turn and after a production line of ingredient-weighing with an almost military precision, we got stuck in. It was all super simple, essentially all the ingredients just get thrown together and then you have to squelch, schmush and squidge the mixture with one hand in the hope that it turns into a dough.  With the raisin bread its a case of double-schmushing because after you form the basic ingredient dough, you then have to mix in the very sticky barley extract, which looks and smells a bit like maple syrup.  Then the raisins go in last.

After that we split our dough into about six 200g pieces to make our raisin loaves.  You have to flour the table before working with the dough again, but you can't just shake it on - you have to do it in a terribly camp and arty way with a flick of the wrist, oh so cheffy. I couldn't help but chuckle every time Adam did it. We then rolled out our mini loaves and put them in Adam's furnace of an office to get the proving under way.

In the meantime we moved straight on to making our white bread dough.  This was much more simple - just white flour, yeast, salt and warm water.  Consequently, this was a much easier mixture to work with and the dough came out without any stickiness at all.  Once its out the bowl, you have to really work and knead it so it turns into a nice springy dough with a good sheen on it.  

After that we had our lunch break and went down into the restaurant where we were plied with masses of cheese, meats, smoked salmon and fresh bread.  Obviously I had a cheeky glass of vino to accompany my fromage.  The Geordie in the group joined me, obvs.  Rude not to really.  It was all very delicious and B&H definitely don't scrimp on all those added bits that are included.  Thats always a good sign for me.

As I made my way back upstairs the smell was intoxicating.  Adam had put our raisin bread into the oven while we were having lunch and was almost ready.  Fist we tended to our white dough and all made a variety of shapes and sizes.  I decided to do a few mini baguettes and a large round loaf.  They then went to prove and by that time our raisin loaves were ready to come out of the oven. Yum.

Finally we moved onto making the brown bread dough, like the white but with the addition of some wholemeal flour.  By this point, we were all pros and working through the process at lightning speed, so had a good amount of time just to chat.  Adam was really open to questions about himself and he too, asked us a lot about ourselves.  It was a really nice atmosphere, super relaxed and not a stressful class at all.  It was just fun all the way through. 

After a little bit of tidying up, some more wine, beers and a couple of cheeky G&T's, our simple but delicious creations were ready.  Its ironic that bread was always the food of peasants because really, there is no greater pleasure than freshly baked, straight out of the oven, warm and delicious bread with nothing but a bit of butter.  I say, the food of Kings.  And the smell, oh the smell.