Another Cooking Class! Sourdough Bread

Missy Tippens

I got to take another great cooking class at Cook's Warehouse last week! This time, I learned to make sourdough bread with chef Sarah Dodge. It was not a hands-on class this time. It was more of a demo so she could show us some of the major steps and also to share her recipe. She took time to walk through all the steps with us and explain little details that she has learned through her baking experience.

Then she shared some sourdough starter with each of us! This bread isn't made from yeast that you buy at the store. The ingredients are only flour, water and salt. The fermentation comes from wild yeast and bacteria that are in our environment and on our skin. Pretty amazing!

When I got home from the class, I fed the starter with 150 grams of water and 150 grams of flour. She recommended several local mills for the flour. However for beginners, King Arthur flour is very consistent in its protein content.

I fed my starter once and hoped to start making bread that night. But it failed the "float test," where you put a spoon full into a cup of water. If it floats, it's ready to use. Mine wasn't ready, so I fed it a second time late that night. Because the next day was Sunday and I knew I'd be gone most of the day, I put the starter in the fridge after I fed it.

The next afternoon, I took the starter out and let it warm for a bit. I've discovered that my microwave (which is built-in above the oven) is a perfect, warm place! This time, it passed the float test!

Let the baking begin!

For a recipe, go here: The Kitchn by Emma Christensen. It's almost exactly the same as what our teacher shared in class. (I don't feel free to share her recipe here since it was part of a paid class.) I will say that our teacher uses a mixture of bread flour and all purpose flour in the baking (not the feeding). About 60% AP flour. I hope to try incorporating whole wheat flour next time I make it. I'm a wheat bread lover!

During this stage, you let the gluten build and the flour hydrate. It's called autolysing. I realized later that I didn't let my dough sit long enough before adding the salt (which slows the process). So I'll do that for longer next time.

Several of the steps involve folding the dough and letting it rest. I just did it in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap so it wouldn't dry out. It does not double in size like when you make regular bread, so don't worry when that doesn't happen! The dough was still very wet at this point and didn't expand much at all. I feared it was dead but kept going! LOL

After all the folding, you dump it out on the counter to rest. You'll actually see the edges start to relax. Then you do a last folding from all directions that makes a seam in the bread. When you put the bread in a proofing basket, that seam stays up (which will make it be on the bottom once you put your loaf into the pan to bake).

This was my dough resting.

Here's my dough in the proofing basket. These also come with linen liners which can help absorb some of the extra moisture. I had hand washed mine (it was new and smelled like chemicals), so I couldn't use it. I ended up doing a little research online and read a recommendation to flour the basket with rice flour. I did that first. Then, like my teacher Sarah, I also coated it with cornmeal.

Here is my loaf proofing. This was like 1 am, so I put it in the refrigerator to start up again the next day.

Then next day, I took the basket out to warm up. I put it in the warm microwave for about an hour. It seemed to poof up just a little. (I still feared it was DEAD!)

Then I pre-heated the oven with my Dutch oven inside. Then I sprinkled the pan with cornmeal. Then I dumped the loaf into the hot pan. It came right out! It didn't stick to the basket, which was a huge relief.

I scored the loaf in a single deep cut lengthwise and two shallower side cuts (for a round loaf, she does a pound-sign). Then I baked with the lid on for 20 minutes. Then took the lid off and baked 20 more minutes. However, from the recipe I shared with you, it sounds like you might want to bake it longer. Mine was rather "blond" compared to photos I saw online and was a bit difficult to cut. So maybe baking longer would help with that.

Here's the finished product!

See those nice air bubbles?! My yeasties and bacteria WEREN'T DEAD!!

Everything I read said to let it cool well before cutting. Who in their right mind can resist warm bread, I ask you??!!

We had it still warm and slathered in butter. Oh, y'all, this was sooo good. It was a lot of work, but I decided it was worth it. I'll keep feeding my starter (once or twice weekly if kept in the fridge). And I hope to maybe bake monthly. If you try it, be sure to let me know how it turns out!


www.missytippens.com

French Macaron Class!

Missy Tippens

Y'all, I learned how to make French macarons! I took another class at The Cook's Warehouse and had a blast. One of the associate pastors at our church, C. Kay Fuino, had heard me raving about the pasta making class I took last year. So she signed up for this one and invited me to take the class with her. It was so fun to do it together!

Chef Lizzie Jones was amazing. So helpful and patient as we worked in our groups to make different spring flavors.

I'm not going to share her recipe. I don't feel like I can do that since it came from a paid class. However, I will share a link to a site that she says she has learned a lot from.

Indulge with Mimi 

That link is to a macaron recipe at Mimi's site. She includes a video tutorial.

The steps aren't difficult, but they're a lot of work. And macarons can be finicky depending on the humidity. It's a bit taxing physically as well. I feel like I developed some muscles from all the stirring during the macaronage! :) But it was so worth it!

The class participants were broken into 4 groups. All made a basic macaron shell. Here are the variation of flavors/colors that were made:

Lemon raspberry with lemon raspberry curd filling--shells were dusted with crushed dried raspberries.

Lavender with honey buttercream filling--dried ground lavender was mixed with the dry ingredients and the batter was tinted purple. Then dried lavender buds were sprinkled on top before baking.

Matcha with chocolate ganache filling--matcha powder added to dry ingredients

And our group made Sparkling Mimosa macarons!

We tinted our shells orangy-pink and dusted with gold edible glitter. The filling was Orange (flavor, not color) Champagne Swiss Meringue Buttercream. The buttercream was AMAZING. My favorite of all the fillings we tasted that day. It was flavored with reduced Champagne and orange juice and zest. I felt lucky to learn how to make it! Again, a lot of work but worth it. Here are some photos. We used different piping tips and made smooth and fluted. We had a ton of buttercream so filled them generously. :)

We got to sample all of them--the fruits of our labor (a three-hour-plus class!) And here's a bag I got to bring home. However, they were hard to place in the bag! Still tasted amazing, though.

If you ever get a chance to take a class (or just to try making them by watching a video), I hope you will. They were delicious! And we really felt a sense of accomplishment. :)

I hope you all have a blessed Easter weekend.


www.missytippens.com

Homemade Pasta and A Cooking Class!

Missy Tippens

I had a special treat this week. I took a cooking class! I signed up at The Cook's Warehouse and took their Imagine the "Pasta-Abilities" hands-on class with Chef Gloria Smiley.

This is our handout with all the recipes.

It was so fun! And I actually made pasta from scratch, with the assistance of the chef helping me through each step.

We made a basic pasta recipe of 3 eggs and 1.5 cups of all purpose, unbleached flour (we used the red bag King Arthur for the class). We started with flour formed into a well and then broke the eggs into the well. Then we gradually mixed the flour into the eggs with a fork.

After my eggs and flour were mixed

This post would be a mile long if I shared all the steps I went through. But I found this blog post (click the link but come back!) that shows making a recipe that is very similar to what I did.

Still, I want to share a few photos...

We covered the dough any time we left it or were letting it rest to keep it from drying out.

I made sheets of laminated pasta that would become cannelloni. I had never heard the term laminated before! One definition I found mentioned it being a layered pasta from the kneading, resting, rolling (and folding). And yes, I did a LOT of folding! My dough was rather wet so it took many times of folding it, dusting it with more flour, and putting it through the roller to get it to the right texture. What's wonderful about a hands-on class is that I now know how the dough should feel.

This is one time through the rolling machine. We used the hand crank kind at each station. This is starting out at setting #1 (very thick). But when I got to my last rolling, I went to the motorized KitchenAid attachment. So much easier! I think I know what I'll ask for for Christmas (and January birthday combined!).

Chef Gloria helping a student.

While some of us were making pasta, others were making the sauces.

When I got to a smooth, good textured dough, I didn't do any more folding and flouring. Once I put it through the #4 setting, I added bits of parsley leaf (no stems!) to make it pretty (I actually did fold it over and back for that step). Then I ran it through #4 again. Then moved up to #6 for one last rolling. I took that sheet and laid it out to cut into pieces the size of cannelloni. (Although once cooked, they "grew" so I hadn't really cut them small enough.) See how pretty with the parsley! These are the raw noodles.

Then I dropped the pieces into boiling water. It only takes a minute or two to cook fresh pasta. Then I dropped the pieces into a cold/iced water bath. The chef said you can keep it in the water for a few days if you want to (just make sure it's completely submerged so it won't dry out). It's nice that you can make the noodles ahead of time if you're wanting to entertain because I have a feeling I'll destroy my kitchen when I make these. :)

So exciting to see these noodles I made!  What a sense of accomplishment!

The next step was to dry the noddles on tea towels, and then stuff the noodles with the wonderful artichoke and spinach filling other students had made. We also topped with a lemon béchamel sauce.

First we spread a bit of the béchamel into a buttered casserole dish.

Then we filled each cooked pasta sheet with the filling and rolled it up.

Once they were placed into the dish, we topped with the remaining filling (another student and I weren't sure if we were supposed to, but we decided we didn't want to waste it) and spread with the last of the béchamel. Then we covered the dish and baked for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Other students put together a lemon fettuccini (lemon zest put right into the pasta dough) with lemon vodka and roasted rock shrimp. It was AMAZING.

We also had Ricotta and Herb Gnocchi (not made with the usual potatoes). They were so delicate and delicious!

And we got to enjoy meatballs the chef had made ahead of time (filled with a ball of cheese) along with the student-made pappardelle pasta.

Here are the fettuccini noodles drying on drying racks.

And here are the noddles that will be cut for the pappardelle.

And best of all... we got to eat it!! Here are three of the dishes.

The cannelloni had to bake a little longer, so here is that dish...

I made that!

It was a great night. I definitely want to take more classes. I can't wait! You should check near you to find out if any classes are offered.

I'm so grateful to Chef Gloria Smiley for her patience with this newbie. :) Here's her bio from the Cook's Warehouse website.

Chef Bio:
Chef Gloria Smiley is no stranger to Cook's Warehouse. She has been sous chef for Diane Wilkinson for more years than both of them care to count or can remember. She began her culinary career as a student of Diane's, and has taken classes at Cordon Bleu and LaVarenne in Paris; and with Lydie Marshall in Nyons, France. She is an independent food stylist for print and film and some of her most memorable clients include Julia Child, Jean George Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, and yes, Richard Simmons. She is also a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier, IACP and AIWF.

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Missy Tippens, a pastor’s wife and mom of three from near Atlanta, Georgia, made her first sale to Harlequin Love Inspired in 2007. Her books have since been nominated for the Booksellers Best, Holt Medallion, ACFW Carol Award, Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, Maggie Award, Beacon Contest and a 2013 RT Reviewer’s Choice Award. A House Full of Hope was a Romance Writers of America 2013 RITA^® Nominee. Visit Missy at www.missytippens.com, https://twitter.com/MissyTippens and http://www.facebook.com/missy.tippens.readers.