Baking is NOT the same as cooking :-)

On Jan 12th this year, I started on something completely, totally, 100% different from what I have been doing for the last 26 years. Yep, I am doing a full-time course in CORDON BLEU PATISSERIE and BREAD MAKING :-). When I told my sister about it last year, she was totally flabbergasted! Her first statement "But you don't like to cook!".... and my response... "Baking is NOT cooking."... and, having now had my hands in dough up to my wrists for the last 1.5 weeks, I STILL say that baking is NOT cooking!

I have 6 classmates, and I am the old lady in the group :-). My next youngest classmate is 26 years old, and the youngest in our group is 17 years of age, with 2 of them at 21 years, one at 23 years, and one at 24 years. Only one guy in the group (one of the 21 year olds). Nice bunch of kids :-D.

I am amazed at how much I am enjoying this! Don't get me wrong - it is a full-on, flat-out day EVERY DAY. We don't sit at all, except when we take a break for lunch. Otherwise we are on our feet - listening to, and watching, the Chef who is teaching us; taking notes (well, at least I take notes!); then trying it out for ourselves - getting the ingredients right, understanding the order in which the ingredients get mixed, kneading bread dough by hand, cleaning up while the dough rises, portioning out the dough, shaping it in various ways : rolls, knots, braids, loaves, small submarine shape! Learning how to do patterns in the dough! Learning how to make croissants and puff pastry - again mixing the dough by hand! Brioche, Milk Loaf, Baguettes, Pizza, Fougasse, Grissini Bread Sticks, Lavash Crisps, Muffins, Banana Bread, Soft Rolls, Hard Rolls, Multi-grain Bread Loaf, Croissants (Plain, Rye, Wholewheat), Danish Pastry, Focaccia, Panettone, Fammel Loaf, Dark Rye Bread, Doughnuts (including Berliners), Bagels, Naan, Puff Pastry (which we then made Apple Galettes and Apple Turnover with)! And that's just 7 working days (from 12th to 21st Jan!). Imagine how much more I am going to learn in the next few months! The mind boggles!

Our trainers are French-trained, very experienced, FRENCH chefs... and their very nice French accents can sometimes be just a wee bit difficult to understand, but they are really nice people, and very very patient with us newbies :-).

Have a look at the pictures. And this is not EVERYTHING that we made :-).

Puff pastry base: Apple galettes and Apple turnovers. So yum!


Croissants! I'm thrilled that I now know how to make these myself!


Pizza's: At the back is the Pissaladiere, which has a cooked onion topping, and at the front is the normal tomato based pizza topping


Soft rolls: With choc rice, sausage rolls, and just plain soft rolls.


A variety of stuff we made that day: Doughnuts, Danish pastries, baguettes, Sausage rolls, croissants, grissini sticks, etc, etc, etc


So, there you have it... me, baking!! and another 8.5 months to go. Fingers crossed that I will not only survive but THRIVE.

Till next time, have a good day, every day!