School of Bread

Today, as David and I were doing some casual shopping in Harvard Square, I started to complain. "Can we go soon? I have too much dough in my purse."

Before I even had time to catch my own pun, David gleefully pointed out the irony (no one loves puns the way this man loves puns), and made me promise I would blog about this when I got home. And so I am.

The poignancy of this particular wordplay comes from the fact that I did not have money in my purse, but actual bread dough. Of course, why wouldn't I have a purse full of bread dough? Dough that had been painstakingly kneaded and, subsequently was in the process of proofing, which required me to periodically remove the plastic bag-0-dough, punch it down, and return it to the safety of my purse. It seems like the most logical and, frankly, one of the smarter things to be stocking if some catastrophe should strike -- at least we'll be fed.

In actuality, I had spent the morning one of the best ways I could imagine: learning how to make bread at a local culinary school (thanks mom!!!). They let each of us in the class make-and-bake a loaf during class time and also knead up another batch of dough to take-and-bake at home. I had some things to do before making it that far, hence the mobile dough situation.

Pretty soon I'll be working out some of these recipes on the blog, but until then, I'll let you drool over the sampler of breads I brought home from class, all freshly baked by a kitchen full of eager novices. Between cinnamon swirl, beer-molasses, sun-dried tomato, herb-batter, braided challah, and freshly puffed pitas, I don't think I'll ever buy a loaf again...