Baking School Diaries #4
Stunning schwarzbrot, adding rye to the mix, and upping our breads' hydration.
The Baking School Diaries is a series about my three months as a student in the Intensive Professional Program in Bread Baking & Viennoiseries at Ferrandi Paris. Bienvenue!
Our chef tells us there’s a saying among bakers in France: “Hard dough, security dough.”
The subtext is that working with lower-hydration bread doughs (that is, ones with a lower ratio of liquid to dry ingredients) is easier for the baker. The downside? The result is often less satisfying for the person eating the bread.
In the first weeks of our program, we started by making “security” breads in order to learn basic dough-handling skills. But no more! This week marked a turning point into the world of higher-hydration bread doughs, and we were all ready for it.
Below, you’ll find:
🥐 Mouthwatering details about everything I baked this week,
🇫🇷 The highs, lows, and takeaways from this week’s classes, and
🎬 Daily video updates for the full play-by-play.
On Sunday, paid subscribers will get a bonus letter called Weekend in Paris about my off-duty adventures abroad. Because our weekend started early—with a school trip on Friday—Sunday’s letter will dish about:
🍾 Our class’s champagne-fueled road trip,
🎼 My opulent Saturday morning at the opera, and
🤤 A little slice of babka heaven.
On to today’s letter!
Croissants. Yes, I’ve been in France for a month, but this was our first time slicing croissant dough into triangles to roll them up into the most classic of breakfast pastries. Next, we learned how to give them a second life by whipping up a batch of béchamel, then layering the sliced-open pastry with sauce, ham, and cheese.
Pain brioché. Even softer and richer than last week’s pain au lait! We took half of this beautiful enriched dough and shaped it into mini-boules, teeny baguettes, and a braid, which all got egg-washed and topped with rock sugar. The other half got rolled out, placed in tins, and topped with:
Almond cream, sliced pears, and almonds,
Candied pink apricot kernels and cream, and
Coconut-lime-rum cream, rum-soaked raisins (this was rolled up and sliced into a monkey bread format) and topped with a lychee syrup after baking.
Baguettes and dinner rolls…with a twist. We used a sponge pre-ferment and an autolyse to reduce our kneading time, and upped the dough’s hydration. The higher-hydration dough was harder to work with, but the results were impressive! I’ll take that tradeoff any day of the week.
Rye bread three ways. Because rye is low in gluten, we gave this recipe a boost with pre-fermented dough that used French “tradition” flour.
We left one part of the dough plain, then shaped it into perfectly scored mini-baguettes. The second part was doctored with lemon zest and juice, then baked as tiny boules. Finally, we stuffed pistachios and cranberries into the last part and sliced it up into rectangles.
Schwarzbrot. We made our version of this German black bread with a mix of rye and whole grain flours, sourdough starter, and a bevy of dried fruits and nuts: apricots, raisins, cranberries, pistachios, hazelnuts, and almonds. We coated Pullman loaf pans with rolled oats, and topped the loaves with oats after their final proof.
If this week’s bakes sound appealing, check out the videos below! They offer a look into each step of the process—including the finished product. Plus, they offer extra context, like how we structured our mixing, rolling, shaping, and baking schedules each day for maximum efficiency.
The great stuff
The pastry class delivered at snacktime. Our neighbors sent us gateau basque, madeleines, a marbled chocolate cake, and a lemon loaf cake this week. (Yes, we paid them back in bread.)
My real uniform arrived. Because my uniforms had been ordered two sizes too big, I wound up wearing a chef’s coat emblazoned with the name “Andrew Barnes” during the first month of class. Now I (finally) get to be Madeleine Burton! It’s the little things, folks.
Learning that the best egg-wash brush is made in Korea. It’s feather-soft and absolutely perfect for working with fragile proofed croissants. We’re all enlisting our Korean classmates to put in a bulk order!
The hard stuff
Setting aside my perfectionism…strategically. After I was the last one to finish shaping my monkey bread, I resolved to move faster and stop overthinking. There are times when it pays to be deliberate and cement a new skill, but I also need to practice what real life will feel like on a bakery production line.
Seeing how the smallest imperfection on a croissant becomes exaggerated during proofing, then again during baking. I’ll take “tiny mistakes that get magnified” for $500, Alex.
Baguette problems. We made our new baguette recipe twice, and both times I made mistakes in pre-shaping (too tight), shaping (not enough flour on the bench), scoring (too angled and not overlapping enough), and transferring into the oven (just…ugh). But each time I made different mistakes, and that’s what matters!
Lessons learned
Dough-rolling tricks. To turn a ball of dough into a flat rectangle, use a rolling pin to flatten the center of the sphere only—leaving the top and bottom third completely round—then flip it 90 degrees, and roll out normally. Voilà!
One base, countless iterations. With a couple of easy substitutions, we made almond cream and coconut-lime-rum cream from the same base recipe. It’s tricks like this that enable endless variety at the bakery counter.
Pre-ferments are magical! We learned about sponges, poolish, and pre-fermented dough in our theory class—what they are, how and why you might use them—and then got to put that learning into action the very next day.
Every school day, I’ve been posting a video recap as a Note on the Substack app.
Here’s a roundup of this week’s baking school vlogs from Monday through Thursday (or, more accurately, du lundi au jeudi!).
And with that, it’s on to le weekend!
Warmly,
Maddie
Breakfast Club is a newsletter about pastries with a side of personal growth, from an ex-financial planner turned baker. If you savored this edition, click the ❤️ (or share with a friend!) to help new readers discover it—and subscribe to get each letter fresh from the oven.
What’s the egg wash brush called!?! Don’t leave us hanging!
egg wash from Korea?! do tell! and that fruit and nut bread looks so mouth-watering, I am dying!