Artisan Bread School

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of taking an Artisan bread making class from Carl Shavitz at the Miele Center in Midtown (the PR firm sent me to the class for free). The all day class is an introductory course to bread making (there are also 3-day and 5-day courses all over the world – you can find more information on their website, Artisan-bread-school.com). Carl is an artisan bread maker in the UK and taught us how to make focaccia, a white bread with an overnight sponge, and whole wheat bread with sesame seeds and molasses. The focaccia was definitely my favorite bread of the day (especially with the special ciabatta flour Carl brought for the class!) It was a really informative, fun, and hands on class and Carl is an absolutely amazing teacher. Below are some pictures I snapped from our day with Carl.

Some of my materials from the class:

We used a LOT of olive oil to make the bread and my hands were covered in olive oil for the majority of the day. On the plus side, my hands were really soft by the end of the day!

Here’s my focaccia dough after combining the flour with a starter Carl prepared for the class and some water (and lots of olive oil):

All of our doughs resting (the focaccia is in the clear plastic containers and the white bread is in the silver bowls covered with towels):

My focaccia after resting and kneading:

Carl instructing me on stretching the focaccia dough:

Attempting to fold the dough:

Getting ready to fold the dough again:

After lots of folding and kneading, my focaccia dough was ready for baking! I placed sprigs of rosemary all over:

And Carl placed all of our breads into the oven:

Look at the fruit of our labor – the focaccia was so incredibly delicious (I froze the rest of mine because I would’ve eaten it all in one sitting otherwise)!:

Carl was very impressed with my bread:

We also made a white bread with an overnight sponge. The bread can be made with fruits and nuts (ours were plain, but I definitely plan on making this again). Making this bread wasn’t as intense as making the focaccia:

And here’s my bread with my signature – the second from the left:

The last bread we baked only took about 45 minutes – all we had to do was mix whole wheat flour with water and a LOT of yeast:

The finished product:

The class was a lot of fun and I took home three breads that I made all by myself! A huge thank you to Carl for teaching the class and to the Artisan Bread School for giving me the opportunity to attend.