Thoughtful baking at the Thoughtful Bread Company

I entered a competition at Easter, run by Kenwood, to make hot cross buns.  The prize was for two people to attend a course at The Thoughtful Bread Company  I  entered a photo of my jumbo family sized hot cross bun and was really excited to win the prize as I always wanted to go on a course at The Thoughtful Bread Company, especially after having met Duncan, the owner of the bakery at The World Bread Awards.

People who have watched the BBC Victorian Bakers programme will know that Duncan was one of the bakers who went back in time to experience what it was like to bake in Victorian times.

There was a choice of two courses at The Thoughtful Bread Company: a beginners one and a sourdough one.  I chose the beginners one as I liked the range of bakes planned for the day. I was really pleased to go on this course this month.

I had a great day learning about lots of tips and techniques to improve my bread baking.  I really liked learning about the science of baking.  I was interested to learn about the action of yeast and how important it is to allow enough, and not too much time for proving to allow the yeast to continue to work in your loaf in the oven. I also gained confidence in the window pane test which tells you about the extent of gluten development

Duncan is very keen to use local produce, and support local traders when baking.  He has a bartering scheme where local residents can bring in their surplus of produce in exchange for bread.  We used local produce in two of our bakes.

Duncan also told us about the Real Bread Campaign, and how important it is to use natural ingredients in bread, and how using good ingredients, with slower fermentation times removes the need for using chemical bread improvers. I am a member of the Real Bread Campaign and I was featured in a recent edition of its magazine "True Loaf"

The cookery school is well equipped with NEFF ovens which were originally from the set of the Great British Bake Off.  It was great to think that we were baking in ovens used by GBBO stars.
 
The bakery is under the shop and we were lucky to get a behind the scenes tour to see where each bake is made, and we found out again how the ingredients used in all the bakes are carefully and thoughtfully chosen: organic, local, sustainable ingredients are important.



The shop was amazing and sold unique products.  We had delicious foods throughout the day including an almond croissant along with lovely coffee to start the day with, an amazing spread of local meats, cheeses, pickles and bread for lunch and tasty cakes for afternoon tea.  If you come on a course do not book dinner as you will be full by the end of the day.

During the day we made a range of bakes including a white loaf, which we shaped and proved in a bowl; savoury bread whirls packed with local cheese and vegetables, savoury soda muffins and panettone.  We made the bread by hand. We used the Kenwood stand mixers for the panettone which was an enriched dough and a much stickier mixture.

 I was able to put my shaping technique to practice that I had learnt at Swifts Bakery, this is so important to shape the bread properly to allow it to take a good shape.

We left with lots of baking to share with our family, a goodie bag including Duncan's book packed with brilliant recipes, a couche cloth, dough scraper, blades, various discount vouchers,and a massive bag of  Shipton Mill flour each.

My family enjoyed the baking I took home and they especially loved the pannetone which I will be baking for Christmas.

The day was a really enjoyable day, and I was really pleased to learn lots of things to help to improve my baking.  Thank you to Duncan, the staff at the Thoughtful Bread Company and to Kenwood for a great opportunity.