Lesson 7 : White Bread

This week was another interesting week…We made tons of breads (even less than other classes before…still so many). I am a bread person…I love eating every kinds of breads (of course…good one ^ ^). When I was studying at WAI, Melbourne, got a chance to make bread by hand 2 times….and u know….sooooo tired…. Almost die in the class, especially when you had to knead a big amount of dough…Anyway, this time in LCB was not that hard…maybe because the recipe put some of chemical-dry gruten and bread improver- make us easier to knead? I dunno…And I don’t make breads at home so I probably learnt more about bread this time. (now I am thinking about making bread at home already)

We learn some theory about bread. As you may know, bread dough needs to be fermented. Fermentation is a process by which yeast, a living micro-organism, feeds on simple sugars in order to multiply. In the process of multiplying, yeast can produce two by-products - Carbon Dioxide and Alcohol. CO2 is responsible for aerating the dough while the alcohol makes an important contribution to the flavour developement of the baked product.

Yeast being living organism, has specific requirements to stay alive and active. They are Oxygen, Moisture (water or milk), food (simple sugar), warmth (no more than 40 C), Time and a neutral pH environment.

Our first bread lesson was White bread dough. There are many different names of breads, which are made from same dough according to their shapes.

Fougasse : this bread became a diverse range of breads that include "focaccia" in Italian cuisine. Mine is the top left one...looked so ugly (short and fat)...cause my dough was too elastic when i shaped it.

Ficelle : A very thin version of the baguette. Ficelle means string in French. Mine is the right one...very long...next to Su jin's Ficelle.

The big round one is called Boule : from the French for "ball".

Boule is bigger than my head...hahaha....

I think this bread recipe is too salty...should reduce some salt !