Did you see my recent post featuring my Italian Breadmaking lesson at Bread Ahead Bakery? If you did, then you'll know how much I enjoyed myself and how won over I was by the bakery. It truly is the most wonderful institution nestled in the heart of Borough Market. Rob bought me a couple of lessons at Bread Ahead for Christmas. It was such a brilliant, thoughtful idea for a present, as he knows how much I love baking and I always think it's much nicer to be given an experience for a gift rather than something materialistic - life's about making memories, after all! So last Friday I went for my second lesson, a lesson in Quintessentially English Baking. I had assumed this would mean baking scones, a Victoria Sponge... maybe some tea cakes? I guessed totally wrong though and was pleasantly surprised to find that we would be baking a few things I had never attempted before: a traditional cottage bread loaf, some Devonshire splits, some good old "lardy cakes" and some traditional Bath buns...
Aidan was our baking teacher for the evening. He works Thursday - Sunday at Bread Ahead and at River Cottage for the rest of the week, could there possibly be a lifestyle more ideal than spending your days baking 'til your heart's content?! I'm so envious. There were ten of us in the group, plus Aidan's wife and two children who had come along to join in for the evening. Imagine having your Dad teach you to bake professionally?! What a great gift. One thing that I really love is that each of the baking classes at Bread Ahead is small and intimate, which creates a friendly atmosphere and enables each individual to be given adequate support throughout.
Classes last three hours, so they're rather lengthy but you definitely get your money's worth. First, we got baking our cottage loaves. My hands were sticky and covered in dough within minutes, but there's something wonderfully simplistic about using your body as a tool to bake bread by hand. My Italian Bread-making class had given me great insight into the technique required when kneading dough; after several minutes your dough starts to feel different in texture and you can feel the gluten strengthening - so it gets harder to knead. Boy, do your arms ache after a while! Aidan bought out the biggest, most impressive loaf of bread to show us. Bread on an industrial scale!
Whilst our loaves were proving we got baking our "lardy cakes". Maybe it's because I'm still youthful {haha!} but I had never heard of a lardy cake. They're essentially a cross between a fruit loaf and a pain au raisin in texture. They require a rather specific folding technique when making which took a little while to get my head around. You add the lemon zest & fruit mixture to the dough whilst folding, then roll it all out and fold again, so that when you cut into the finished cake, you have a swiss-roll effect with layers of fruity bread. They're really tasty!
Aidan sneaked us into the back room of the bakery where he showed us the huge industrial sized ovens, where hundreds upon hundreds of loaves are baked each week. It's no wonder Bread Ahead has made such a name for themselves.
I think my favourite bake of the evening was the Devonshire Splits, which are a cross between a scone and a roll. We all tried so hard to copy Aidan's technique in rolling the dough out as perfectly and round-like as he demonstrated, to create eight identical-looking spheres. Unfortunately most of us failed hilariously and I ended up with a batch of wonky looking rolls with nipples on...! Never the less, the delicious smell of freshly cooked bread filled the room, making everything better. The smell of bread just does that, doesn't it?! Soon the table was covered in trays full of Devonshire splits fresh out the oven...
Believe it or not, it's tradition to eat these warm with clotted cream and jam, like a scone. So that's what we did and oh my goodness they were delicious...
Using exactly the same recipe as the Devonshire Splits, Aidan made a batch of Bath Buns for us to try, which are quite like hot-cross-buns as they contain mixed fruit. Whilst baking these, you mould the dough into a bowl-like shape or a 'bath' so that there is a well in the centre. Into this well, you pour a mixture of eggs, mixed fruit and 'sugar nibs'. Then you smash it all together, make 6-8 balls of the mixture and bake in the oven until they look a bit like this...
Too good.
And then it was time to take my cottage loaf out of the oven! Et voila - doesn't it look all professional with the criss-cross splits I created using a scalpel?!
As the class drew to an end we were all given paper bags to pack away our bakes to take home. I couldn't help but feel a tiny bit proud of how well my bread had turned out, who'd have thought that baking bread could be so rewarding?!
Thank you to Bread Ahead for yet another enjoyable evening and to Aidan for your infectious passion for baking. I've said it once and I'll say it a thousand times, I'd thoroughly recommend a class at Bread Ahead to anyone, whether you're an expert at baking or totally new to it.
More info on the bakery and their classes here.
Lydia xxx
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