A few weeks ago I was feeling Minced. . . this week at the Plate Household we feel a bit Baked…
Poor Little Plate started to get a cold at the beginning of this week. She mostly just had some congestion but then Tuesday in the night she started to get a pretty high-grade fever in addition to the congestion and the poor little thing was miserable. We all stayed up much of the night trying to help her to be able to breathe more clearly and get more comfortable. I had a pretty big inner battle about whether or not to just drag my exhausted self to school Wednesday or to stay home and sleep a bit extra and continue to attend to Little Plate and the mommy in me trumped the budding chef on this occasion. I was glad to spend more time with her even if it was just holding her a lot and nursing her a lot. I was glad she had that nutrition and hydration because she doesn’t eat or drink very well when she’s feeling so bad. The silver lining is now she has been exposed to and has developed some immunity against one more bug. Sometimes that’s how you have to think about when little ones get sick.
Fingers crossed I won’t get sick. . .Mr. Plate has a bad case of the cold now, but he seems to be prone to congestion and sinus bugs.
On to this week in the kitchen
HIGHLIGHTS
This week in the kitchen I especially loved how great some of our Gluten Free Items turned out. I have been on the GF baking team (We have had one GF team and one Vegan team) and I was honestly surprised just how good some of the things we made were. You know what I’m talking about right? It’s easy to have the idea that GF items just aren’t going to compare to traditionally made items. And sometimes they don’t, but we sure made some really yummy things. I have a good friend with some kiddos with Celiacs and GF sensitivities and I can’t wait to have them over for some awesome homemade Gluten Free items in the future. Such great knowledge to have as it’s always nice to have some GF options for those that are trying to stay away from it.
Some of the aforementioned yummy things included sourdough breads using a 400 year old starter that one of our Chef Instructors brought over from South Africa! How cool is that? Mr. Plate has been the bread baker at home but we might tag team it now. We also baked cookies and bars this week and that was really fun. Everything turned out wonderfully. It was a great way to end the week.
CHALLENGES
One challenge specific to this baking modality is oven sharing. Of course we are going to want to share ovens as we often have 6 recipes going at once and 3 ovens to work with. Also, we want to turn on as few of them as possible to save ourselves some sweat as the room heats up, but it can be challenging with everyone checking on their own recipe and opening the oven a lot. I would say it’s been working out okay though. Most our items haven’t been too affected. And in a commercial kitchen or bakery we will probably have the same juggling act.
One of the big challenges that I’ve reflected on recently is just absorbing the information that is presented to us day after day. It is thrown at us in bulk and at a rapid place. Sometimes I worry that I’m not going to retain a very significant fraction of it and I’ll be at about the same level going out as I was coming in. . . which is ridiculous really. Even if I work on one knew concept or recipe a day which has been the pattern the last couple of weeks, there will be progress! And if you know me you know that I am always jumping in to new learning experiences. . . a perpetual student, so keep the information coming I guess 😉
On to the pictures. There were a few days that we weren’t able to actually get our items out of the pan by the end of class because they needed to cool completely beforehand.
I hope you all had a wonderful week! Stay tuned for one more week of baking and then we start a new section! Only 3 weeks and we are half way through with the coursework of my program! It is going by so fast!
Loves,
Ashley
Food for Thought
This week we talked a lot about why certain flours could be exchanged for others. Like what is their protein content and how light or heavy are they in baked goods. . .I couldn’t teach that to you without looking over my notes first, but it’s very interesting and I’m sure will stick in my brain with more practice. Check out this blog to see what they have to say about it:
And also a HUGE SHOUT OUT to Mr. Plate who launched is first side business this week- 4wardco. Currently offering permaculture inspired t-shirts. All organic. More designs to come every week. Spread the word to your permaculture friends.
Good work babe! Check it out here:
Live Consciously Inspire Greatness