Baking at Brasserie Bread

Mum, Dad and I did a bread making class at the Brasserie Bread Artisan Baking School located in Mascot, Sydney. They also have a blog here.

It was a great place to learn and I highly reccomend it!

Before we started we went on a tour of the bakery wearing these little shower caps.

We saw an antique miller

Amazingly large dough mixer

Fresh croissants - made with 60% Belgian Butter!

Various seeds (toppings) were available for us to use: sesame, mixed quinoa, poppyseeds, soaked linseed, soaked sunflower seed.

Above is a dough mixture that I used to make a soy bean and linseed multigrain loaf. The theme of this class was 'Grains' and was a special session put on for the Sydney Food and Wine Festival.

Here we are making baguettes

The trick is to fold the length of dough over onto itself, like rolling a poster up off your wall - but fold it. This allows air to be pressed into the baguette.

They are then rolled out with the hands - starting in the middle of the cylinder and working your way outwards to lengthen the baguette.

They are then dipped in water, rolled in seeds and plaited to make a decorative loaf.

Volia!

Some baguettes were used to make these cute dinner rolls - we cut the baguette on one side of the cylinder (see below where mum is doing it) and then every second slice is folded over the other side. See?

We then baked them till they were almost ready so we could take them home and the ones we didnt eat straight away were frozen and cooked a second time when we wanted to eat them - that way they were fresh and crusty out of the oven.

Then we did some wine and cheese tasting with a selection of all their breads - Sourdough and Caramel garlic bread were my favourite. They caramelize whole garlic cloves and swirl them into a batter then braid it up in quite a messy way - it comes out deliciously ugly - yum!

Berry Lemon Almondy Cupcakes

Sagey Chicken and Proscuitto Parcels

Sagey Chicken and Proscuitto Parcels

Ingredients :
2 chicken breasts
1 ripe tomato
Parmegano reggiano
Sage (easy to grow in your garden or kitchen window potplant)
4 slices of prosciutto
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:
1. Slice breast thinly in half lengthways, reserving the tenderloins for the soup to accompany this dish (see next recipe).
2. Place sage leaves, salt and pepper, parmesan and 1 slice of tomato on wide end and roll up with prosciutto.

3. Place some olive oil in a roasting pan (with a dash of white wine if available!) and place chicken parcels on top.
4. Roast in 180-200C oven for 25-35 minutes until the chicken is tender and the prosciutto is crispy.

_____________________________________________

Chicken, Leek and Proscuitto soup with Cabbage

Ingredients:
6 cups savoy cabbage
3 slices prosciutto
2 leeks
2 tomatoes
½ cup long grain rice or brown rice
rosemary
2 chicken tenderloins
Parsely
Parmesan

Method:
1. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in pan with ½ cup water and cook leeks, prosciutto and rosemary over low heat for 10 minutes until leeks soften.
2. Add tomatoes and salt and pepper, cook further 10 mintues.
3. Add cabbage and 4 cups of water, cook further 15 minutes.
4. Bring to boil, add rice, stir and cook further 18 minutes or until rice is tender.