Baking Brioche at Le Pain Quotidien
Love the baked goods at Le Pain Quotidien? Great news as the have just started offering baking classes. I went along to try out one of these classes.
I do like to bake but I don’t do it that often. I can do a lot of the basic techniques like rubbing in but have not mastered any of the more complicated techniques. As I like to tweak recipes instead of following t hem to the letter, this obviously is not a good idea when it comes to baking as you are highly likely to end up with a disaster.
The class I signed up to do was a Brioche and Spelt Scone class. Didier was our very patient instructor for the evening.
In front of us was a bowl and some ingredients to make our first item, the brioche. Brioche usually takes a long time to make as it involves a long rising time but this was a quick recipe, which intriqued me. We followed Didier’s instructions in his French accented voice and tried to follow his example.
After making a real mess with flour and dough all over the place, we prepared our dough to be left to rise while we stopped to have a drink and some tartines.
Onwards to the next recipe, a Spelt and Quinoa scone, a clever way to use an on trend ingredient. Surprisingly, the quinoa was used dry and mixed into the wet dough. This was much easier as it was like making rock cakes and shaped by hand. No rolling out and cutting required. After a quick egg wash, our batches were whisked away to the baked.
Meanwhile the brioche dough was ready for some shaping. We tried to follow Didier’s example but our fingers were not as deft as his. My pathetic attempt at making a little brioche loaf left was quite pitiful. After baking, the definition we tried to create were lost as we didn’t leave it quite enough time to rise, due to the colder weather.
We got to taste the hot scones and brioche as it came out the oven. They didn’t look that good but it tasted great regardless.
The class was fun and fast moving. There was a lot of achieve in the 2 hours that we were there but I took away a couple of recipes that I would definitely use again.
You can find out when the next classes are on their website.
Le Pain Quotidien Borough
15 Winchester Walk
London SE1 9AG
EatCookExplore was a guest of Le Pain Quotidien
