OK - some breads are supposed to be flat.... like pizza, focaccia, lefse, tortillas, naan, fry bread..... they might have yeast in them but they are still flat...unleavened sometimes...lavash, crackers, etc.
Today we made pizza and focaccia...fun end to the semester. (Oh yeah, more fun next week when we take our final exam and bake our final product).
Basically we were making thin crust pizza baked on a pizza stone - creates a good contact with the crust and bakes more quickly and ensures a crisp crust. No Chicago-style deep dish pizza - just thin crust with a little tomato sauce, cheese and mushrooms - or olives or peppers or sun-dried tomatoes. My favorite pizza ever was the pizza margherita in Palma de Mallorca made fresh with with tomato, sliced mozzarella, basil and extra-virgin olive oil, which I had nearly every day for lunch while the conference I was managing was going on. They ate lunch and I worked and when meetings started after lunch, I'd go out onto the terrace of the hotel and the waiters would bring me fresh pizza margherita and ice tea... looking out over the Mediterranean Sea from up on a cliff at a 5-star hotel helped too.......but I digress.
Our labs and lecture are over for this fun class. All that is left is the final at 8:30 a.m. next Tuesday....both written and practicum. When she told us about the practicum I decided to just forget taking the final....aackkkk..... but of course, I will take it and do the practicum...we won't know what we are to make until we get to class..could be baguettes, bagels, pretzels, or popovers. My choice would be popovers but I don't get a choice. Guess I better study for all 4!!
So what am I going to do now that class is over? Well, bake at home, of course. Made plain white bread again last Saturday...this is a Sunset magazine recipe tweaked a bit and as I probably said before, a great recipe for peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. Gene loves it and it's a quick bread to make considering it's yeast. I do miss my kitchen in Seattle so much when I bake but I'm learning to use the oven here and manage to get steam into it to keep crusts moist.
So the class is basically over...no more pictures... here are the ones from today.
"Breadbaking is one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells...there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread." (M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating)
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