Baking With Datin Ingrid

I joined my mom and one of her colleague today for a baking class at Datin Ingrid's place, who so happens to be  my mom's  employer's wife. 

We started at around 1030 with a rye levain dough which she had already prepared for us in advance. Those we moulded, scored and chucked in the oven. Since rye is naturally low in gluten, it has to be added to normal wheat flour. Liquid levain, on the other hand, being extremely difficult to make, was substituted for solid levain which could be purchased...in Switzerland. Hehe. What's levain, you say? Levain's...fermented dough which is used in place of yeast, kind of like the seed to make the dough rise.

We then moved on to learning how to prepare a wholemeal dough. While letting that sit for an hour or so, Datin Ingrid proceeded on to demonstrate how to make one of her favourite breads: Zopft. This braided bread is really soft and sweet, making a really good snack with marmalade or jam. We also tried our hands at white bread which we topped with rock salt, cumin, poppy seeds, or sesame. These little baguettes make really good aperitifs at parties since they can be made real small.

Once the Zopft were ready, we uncovered the wholemeal dough and halved it. After shaping it into loaves, we scored it and left it to sit for a while longer before baking it in the oven. While waiting for the wholemeal loaves to be done, Datin treated us to her homemade mango sorbet in her backyard. Once the loaves were ready, she brushed them with water to give the crust a nice silvery sheen.

Here are some pictures of what we made today. Not bad, huh?