I love looking at this photo because it demonstrates that I’m getting closer to becoming a professional baker. On Friday there were eight different types of dough to be mixed and taken through production for our practical exam on the breads of Germany and Central Europe. It was a tight schedule, made even more difficult by my team’s additional duty of baking the morning baguettes for lunch in the restaurant, but we pushed hard all day long and got the job done. These are the fruits of our day’s work; examples that we selected for critique by our chef instructor.






Artisan bread baking is all about timing. Yeast is a living thing, and in bread, it devours sugars, producing carbon dioxide, which creates pockets inside the bread, which gives us the crumb. The dough must be folded, divided, proofed, shaped, and baked at just the right time.

Just minutes make a big difference, and when you are dealing with eight different breads, each on it’s own schedule, it takes focus to ensure that the dough develops properly.





This is especially true of many German breads, which often contain a large percentage of rye, because rye does not contain gluten to help give it structure. If rye is allowed to ferment past it’s prime, it becomes flat, extremely sticky, and will not yield a properly formed loaf. You have to be vigilant. And with so many doughs on the schedule, you have to work fast.





We’ve never had such a busy day. We scaled ingredients with precision and our mixer barely stopped spinning. Our team divided like lightning, at times spreading two or even three massive tubs of dough across the bench, scaling each piece carefully on the balance. We shaped with focus. You could hear a pin drop in the bread kitchen.





And at the end, when all the breads had been pulled from the ovens and were stacked high and deep on the cooling racks, we stepped back and admired what we’d done. As we packed up our tools and wrapped up bread for the weekend, a clam settled over the bread kitchen. No one had to say a word, our faces, full of satisfaction, said it all. We are six weeks into our bread education, and we are loving every minute.