I Have Made Bread!...

Artisan Bread Class Results

Saturday was a day of learning, and it was so much fun! I drove to Fond du Lac to take a class at the technical college. Our instructor was Tom Endejan who, I confirmed that day, is an older brother of a great guy I dated for a little while in high school. Small world. There were eight other ladies who were there, like me, to learn how to make artisan breads. We certainly weren't disappointed.

Teaching Us About Artisan Bread Consistency

Tom taught us about ingredients, measuring, bread types and consistency, and we immediately got our hands-on experience. The students mixed up doughs for multi-grain, sweet, oatmeal and French (my class partner and I did that one) breads. We learned about proofing the bread, and how to treat it after it went through each phase of the rising process. I learned you don't have to beat up the dough (or yourself) to turn out a delicious, crusty bread. Tom also had two foccacia doughs in progress that would become our lunch before we left for the day.

Artisan Bread Classmates and Instructor, Tom Endejan

Here are the students with Tom (I'm behind the lens), and they're all holding a piece of the fabulous, crusty foccacia that had just cooled from the oven - and was our lunch.

We all brought home a selections of the doughs that we'd created in class, so we could bake those at home. We also brought home loaves of multi-grain bread that had been baked while we were learning, along with samples of the baked sweet doughs that had been turned into rolls and coffee cakes.

When I walked in the back door of the farmhouse, Handsome was there to take my bags from me. He was surprised at how much came home from the class, and after tasting everything, he declared the class a huge success. No more grocery store Italian bread (in ten different shapes) in our house. From now on, there will be freshly baked goodness from recipes we received in class.

I'm already scheduled for a second class in late October (Rustic Breads and Soups), but Tom is teaching a second class that takes what I learned over the weekend, further steps in the process. I'm going to the school this morning to see about enrolling in that one, too. (Handsome is encouraging me to go!)

I hope you had a great weekend. Our football and baseball teams (Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Brewers) both won their Sunday games, which is always fun for us. Can you even believe it's already October? Where is the time going? What's the hurry? I'm still wondering what happened to September!

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Well, Happy October! I guess I'll just have to "roll" with it. (I really didn't mean to make that pun. lol) Gotta run. I'll see you Wednesday, after Tag checks in with you tomorrow.