Baking and Pastry - Moonside Bakery Field Trip

I dreamt of the sourdough starter all night long, billowing out of it's container, and filling up my house like "The Blob." I finally got up at 4:30 to find it behaving itself in it's bin. I took the croissant dough out of the freezer to thaw and made up my focaccia dough. I rolled it out, leaving it to rise in a sheet pan then loaded everything up in the car. I don't know about this baking thing. It all happens pretty early.
I picked up some classmates at Pete's and we all headed over the hill for our Field Trip to the Moonside Bakery. I was reminded of the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, with Jack Nicholson. After all, this was our first outing since January, and some of my classmates are a little suspect. I made a mental note to try not to play the part of Nurse Ratchet too much, tempting as it was.

Chef Thomas was waiting for us with fresh pastries and coffee. He immediately put the sourdough starter in the big mixer with the flour and water and started the dough. It's a bit difficult to get a perspective here, but to give you a comparison, this mixer was bigger than my kitchen table and held about fifty pounds of bread dough.
There is a rhythm to a bakery and if you miss a beat you disturb the song. While the bread was mixing we scaled out the challah dough, rolled and braided it. While that was proofing we formed and benched our baguettes and rounds. We egg washed and baked our challa bread then went back to do the final panning of the sour dough breads. While those were proofing, we rolled out the croissants. It was a steady and comfortable rhythm that was very grounding and satisfying. It brought to my mind the biblical examples of bread being the substance of life and the comparisons of the Kingdom of God being like a yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough. (Luke 13:21)
OK. I went from Nurse Ratchet to Evangelist. Any way, bread making moves me.
Sometimes pictures speak louder than words.























































What a great day. Thank you Chef Thomas.