At each of our monthly "Taste-and-Tell" events, we introduce a topic related to baking bread with yeast. We encourage our bakers to take up the challenge of the focus topic and use it to inspire their baking. (As always, baking to the focus topic is not a requirement for the event; the only requirement is that each participant brings his or her own, freshly baked, yeasted bread to share.)
In the past year, we've covered the following topics:
- January 2012: Soakers for Multigrain Breads
- December 2011: A Bread You've Never Baked Before
- November: Holiday Breads
- September: Using as Little Yeast as Necessary
- July: Breads That Don't Need Slicing
- June: Something Sweet + Yeast Swap
- May: Cold Fermentation
- April: Basic Shaping
- March: Basic Scoring
At last evening's "Taste-and-Tell," we brainstormed focus topics with which we'd like to challenge ourselves in the coming months. Here's what we came up with:
- Baguette (or Bagels, or Ciabatta, or Challah, or flatbread), i.e., focus on one classic bread
- Bake without a recipe/formula, i.e., use only your senses
- Braiding
- Crust
- Every baker bakes the same recipe/formula
- Filled breads
- Gluten-free breads
- Laminated dough
- Pate morte (also known as "dead dough")
- Sourdough
- Yeasted pastry
Have you other suggestions? Please add them as a comment to this post.
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Rye Bread
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mark!
ReplyDeleteI would also like to add: Proofing in a banneton or cloth-lined basket.
Tonight, at the February 2012 "Taste-and-Tell," baker G.D. suggested another focus topic: "wet dough," inspired by the book "Tartine Bread," http://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/0811870413
ReplyDeleteFlatbreads and crackers . . . a good topic for summertime, as they are good for picnics.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see us focus on all the many techniques for developing the gluten network in dough: autolysis, kneading, mixing, stretching and folding, long fermentation.
ReplyDelete