Saturday, October 22, 2005

Baking 1b

I've spent the past two weeks in the bakery at the National Life office building in Montpelier. In this class we prepared breakfast pastries and muffins in the morning and lunch items such as breads (rolls, French bread, ciabatta, etc.) , and cookies for the cafeteria. We also filled orders for in-house catering (i.e. cookies for a meeting) and NECI catering for external events. We were able to reinforce what we learned in Baking 1a as well as add to that knowledge.

A fun time was had by all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mary, I have a baking question. Why do you have to punch down a dough?

mz said...

There are four reasons to punch down a dough.

1) Relax carbon dioxide & alcohol gas (both are byproducts of yeast fermentation).
2) Even temperature, after sitting the dough will be warmer at the center than the outter edges.
3) Relax gluten
4) Re-distribute yeast for further fermentation.