Today we started with bread! We have a new instructor who has taught us a class before, but we've never had as a lab instructor. He is apparently the absolute best bread maker. A previous instructor has gone on and on about how amazing he is at baking bread and how he is likely one of the bests in the country. So I was really looking forward to starting. I have made some bread before, but seeing as I've done it on my own without much instruction, I wasn't convinced that I was doing it correctly. I was really excited to finally learn the proper ways of doing things. We made two different doughs. One was a regular french bread recipe that we formed into two baguettes and two round loaves (one called a Vienna- a football shape, and a boule- just a round ball). We also made a soft roll recipe that we were able to make 20 rolls out of in different shapes. It was pretty exciting! What was different about today was that we each made our own dough in our own stand mixers. From now on, we will be making the dough for our entire row in the industrial sized mixers. He said that making it in the little stand mixers isn't as good as making the dough in the industrial size... I'm not entirely sure why. We also proofed our dough (letting it rise and almost double in size) in crappy proofers. Apparently they don't do such a great job, but that's fine. Lastly, we didn't use the new ($60 000!) bread oven because he wanted us to see how much of a difference a steam injected oven vs a regular oven has on the final product.  My bread turned out fine, and they looked pretty good to me! According to the instructor, the bread that we all made today were not very good, but that was on purpose. He knew that they wouldn't be good because of the equipment we used. So tomorrow we will start with the good equipment and I will have even MORE bread!