Cinnamon Girl

Today was sweet enriched dough day at class. Enriched doughs have more butter, sugar, and eggs in them and are a softer dough than most bread doughs. We started with a basic Sweet Bread recipe. It was enough for two types of bread or rolls. The instructor today was Kristen.

She demonstrated making the dough and kneading it. It was the same process as yesterday but the dough was quite sticky because of the added ingredients. The kneading method they use is called smile, taco, turn. You fold the dough in half toward you to make a smile. Then turn it up so it looks like a taco and finally turn it vertically and start over. This stretches the dough and the glutens.

This is the smile part

This is the taco already turned

Then we went and made our own dough and kneaded it. Since we were doing 3 different items today they had mixed a big batch of dough in the mixer so that we could get started on one of them while our dough was proofing.

We found out how the dough made in the mixer was a much dryer and tougher dough than the ones we did by hand. It was a lot more difficult to roll out as the gluten had been worked more and caused it to spring back.

Next she and Leah showed us how to braid the loafs. Leah had a story to help with the braiding of an alien with two arms and two sets of legs. I didn’t get pictures of that but it was helpful. I still had a problem doing it. Probably because I never had a daughter with hair to braid. Roger got his done quickly and he and Kristen coached me through it.

My sweet dough braid

Next the demonstration was two different types of faux braids, one with raspberry jam and one with poppy seed filling.

The first batch of dough was rolled out into a rectangle then the raspberry jam was spread down the middle. The corners were cut out then the dough was cut into strips along each side. These were then ‘braided’ over the jam.

The faux braid with raspberry

The next dough was also rolled into a rectangle and the poppy seed filling was spread all over leaving an inch of room around the entire piece. This was then rolled up jellyroll style and cut down the middle. The two pieces were then turned so the filling was facing up and crossed over each other.

The poppy seed twist

Since we could only make one of these, Roger and I decided to each make one and split them. He did the raspberry and I did the poppy seed.

Next were sticky buns. Having made these types of rolls before there wasn’t much new to learn. As most of you know, cinnamon and I are not friends. I had planned on just not using the cinnamon in mine but they had prepared it for us. So I had to smell cinnamon all around me and on my hands. I forgot to take pictures of that, probably due to the cinnamon overload.

I took pictures of the big ovens and proofing cabinet. Then took a video of the braids being cooked.

The oven on the right with the multiple shelves is what we used to cook the pitas in and will use it again on Thursday

The cabinet on the left is the proofing chamber and the one on the right is the baking oven.

This was really cool to see. We were busy yesterday and never noticed the oven going.

It was another really fun day. The group of people are all really nice and pretty friendly. I am already looking at taking the artisan bread class.

Here are the finished products. The sticky buns will be shown tomorrow. Notice how the first braid is so shiny and pretty. It is because we put an egg wash on it. The other two were done, not sure why. It would have made them look so much nicer.