Bread Workshop

There was a bread workshop on this Friday. Because our assignment was about bread, so our lecturer carried out a workshop for us in order to let us know more about bread. This workshop was conducted by Chef Eddie, and it was carried out at School of Hospitality.

Before we started to making bread, Chef Eddied teach us how to calculate the ingredients that we needed. For this workshop, we were making basic lean dough. There was no any egg will be added, as this kind of bread was fat free. As I know, flour, water, yeast, and salt were used in this workshop, but there was something different as usual. We were using ice water this time. The chef explained to us that our country was hot, so ice water could help to maintain the temperature while making bread.

After explained the ingredients and the reason of using cold water, we started mixng the flour and dry yeast with mixing machine. At the same time, Chef Eddie prepare the ice water and he also told us why we couldn't put the dry yeast in the cold water, but we mixed it with the flour. As we all know, the yeast couldn't live in a high or low temperature, so if we put the dry yeast in cold water, they will die before we mixed them with flour.

Then, we added salt in the bowl. The reason why salt was added in it was to add some flavours. Beside of that, salt could help the ingredient/protein stick together. For example, when we would like to make a burger, we had to put some salt in the meat, so that the meat could stick together when it was fried.

Next, we needed to wait for the dough ferment. We used a cling wrap to cover the dough when we put it on the table, so the skin of the dough could stay away from getting dry. After about 30 mins, I guess. Then, we separated the dough in to 400gm each. We were asked to shaped each of the dough in to a bun shape before we got into the next step.

Then, we tried to shape the dough into few shapes. Each of us could tried different way of making a dough shape after the chef taught us. Then we tried to score the bread by using a small "knife". And finally, our bread could go into the oven!!! The oven had to be preheated to around 200celcius, and the bread is required to bake for around 18 minutes.

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There was a question sparked in my mind while making bread.

When should we put oil/butter❓

Before I went to this workshop, I watched some tutorial of making bread on YouTube before. Some of them will ask us to put some butters or oil while making bread. Because we were making a fat free bread this time, so there was not butter and oil were used.

If oil/butter was one of the ingredient of making bread, what was the different between without adding oil/butter?

Form what I found on internet, like OIL or NO OIL in bread, I found that, putting oil can help the bread become less sticky. No only that, some of them said that oil could help the bread become soften and the skin of the bread will not easy get dry/hardening while it was going fermentation process.

This workshop gave me a really good experience in making bread. I hope it could help me to get some interesting ideas for my assignment.