(I know, I know – this took me AGES to post – I really have to figure out a better system….. but… better late than never, I guess….)
Hello from Norwich, Vermont! I’ve been here in VT now for three days and am having a lovely time. I drove over from Woodstock on Sunday morning – just as the first snowfall of the season was descending. As my route from Woodstock to Norwich took me over the Green Mountains and through the ski resort of Killington, I have to confess that the drive got a little bit dicey and slippy in parts as none of the roads were ploughed or salted. I just took it slow and steady and fortunately managed to arrive in Norwich without incident, so BIL’s car remains intact!! (BIL, however, seems to share the same laissez-faire attitude towards car dashboard warning lights as ManpanionTM – is it just me that gets freaked out by the “low tire pressure” warning light and feels like it should be attended to? MPTMs attitude is more “is the car engine on fire? No? Well, we’re good then- don’t worry about it”). Grrrr…..
I’m staying at another historic hotel – this time, the Norwich Inn https://www.norwichinn.com. I’m sitting here typing away in the library, in front of the fireplace, surrounded by festive cheer and enjoying a delicious cup of coffee to chase down my McWhit breakfast sandwich that came from the famous Dan and Whit’s retail store next door. D&W’s is a local legend and one of those old-fashioned places that is a real rabbit warren and somehow stocks absolutely everything! (their slogan is “if we don’t have it, you don’t need it!).
So the reason I’m here is to finally go to a baking course at the King Arthur school of baking. I’ve been wanting to come for ages and these dates finally worked for me – and there was space available (they tend to sell out waaaay in advance). I’ve just finished Day 1 of my 4 day Artisan Baking course – and have already made some delicious focaccia and lavash bread. We started the dough for croissants and baguettes (which we’ll continue today) and then I think we do some sourdough work on Weds and finish up with wholegrains on the Thursday. Apparently there is a big winter storm heading our way on Friday and Saturday, so I’m hoping my 6am flight out on Friday back to Chicago will be early enough to miss it. Otherwise, BIL will get to enjoy my wonderful company for a few more days!
There are 15 of us in the class – pretty much my age and above and with slightly more men than women. There are wide range of baking experiences and expertise – but I would say no-one is an absolute beginner (and no-one is also a commercial baker) so the level feels very accessible and not at all intimidating. Our instructors for the last 2 days were Jonathan and Luc – and they were both excellent. Their teaching styles were very clear and simple and because the course is over 4 days, there is plenty of time to ask questions so it doesn’t feel rushed or too intense. At the front of the room there is a whiteboard that has our tasks for the day listed up on it – it gives you a really nice sense of achievement to work your way down the list and check off all your bready-to-do’s by the end of class! Everyone in class is pretty friendly – my bench partner is a nice chap called Scott and though most of the time we are working on our own dough, a couple of times we’ve needed to collaborate on doing a task and its been very easy (even though he’s a bit distracted by calls about his dog, who apparently has developed a cough at the kennels). Anyway, yesterday was croissant and baguette day. We had two batches of baguette dough to work with – one that Luc had mixed up and that we were to use to practice our shaping and scoring on, and then one that we mixed up, and then shaped, scored and baked. I have had a TON of problems with scoring baguettes (and loaves in general) in the past – but with some expert guidance, it didn’t seem quite so bad – the main trick is to attempt to score straight down the baguette, vs making slanted cuts. As it bakes and expands, the cuts will naturally “bend” into that diagonal slash pattern we are all familiar with. Of course, the baguette with Luc’s dough looked better than the one with my dough
The most interesting task so far has been making the croissants. I’ve never tried to make them before because they seemed impossibly complicated and just a right pain in the arse – and why bother when you can just go to the store and buy some, riiiiiiight? Well, I will say its time-consuming (but most of that is wait-time) as its now Day 3 and we will finally get to shape and bake our croissants today. But so far, other than it taking a while with the folding and chilling, its really not that difficult. The hardest bit was working with the dough initially as its very wet – so there is a special technique for basically kneading glue called the slap and fold technique. I’ve never tried it before (although I’ve seen it done on baking shows) and it took a bit of practice to get the hang of it, but it was fine and I reckon I could do it again, on my own at home, without an expert looking over my shoulder to check I’m doing it right! And that, I think, is one of the main benefits of doing a course like this – yes, its the technical skills and tips/tricks that you learn – but its more about the confidence to give it a try yourself. Sometimes it might work out perfectly, sometimes it might be a complete disaster – but its OK – that’s what happens and its all a learning process.
As well as finishing up our croissants today, we get to work with sourdough. I was VERY happy to find that they sell live sourdough starter in the King Arthur’s store (which was having a 20% storewide sale yesterday – YEY!) so I’m hoping this will re-ignite my sourdough career and that I will FINALLY make good use of the fancy spiral mixer and steam oven that Santa brought me a couple of years ago!
Happy to report that the croissants and pain au chocolate turned out really well – they were absolutely DELICIOUS!! And though the whole process took a while from start to finish, the amount of hands-on time was fairly minimal and really not that technically challenging, so the whole Making Croissants Thing has definitely be demystified!! I will absolutely make them again – but maybe wait until I have a full house of hungry mouths over Christmas so that I don’t have to eat them all myself (oops). One additional trick we learned was to make Bostock croissants to use up any slightly stale, day-old croissants. Basically its a paste made with almond flour and orange (and maybe even a splash of Grand Marnier if you’re feeling fancy) that you spread over the inside of a split open croissant which you then re-bake. OMG. So tasty!!! The perfect mid-morning snack with a cup of coffee.
Wednesday night, I met up with Kirsten and Herb again for dinner – this time at this amazing restaurant that also houses a glassblowing studio and retail outlet. https://www.simonpearce.com/ During daytime hours, you can go downstairs to watch all the action – but unfortunately, that part of the building was closed by the time of our dinner ressie. Even more fortunately, the shop was also closed too – you could browse and marvel at the beautiful vases and glassware – but the cash registers were closed, so you couldn’t buy anything. It was quite spendy so it was probably for the best! The building all of these delights are housed in is a gorgeous water mill – here’s how its described on their website. Both the food and company were excellent, so it really was a lovely way to finish off my little Vermont adventure.
Voted one of “America’s Most Romantic Restaurants” by Travel and Leisure and recipient of the Wine Spectator “Best Award of Excellence” – the dining room at the Mill is a wonderful way to experience our brand. Using fresh local ingredients, thoughtfully prepared creative American cuisine is served with the backdrop of the Ottauquechee River waterfall and covered bridge. With attentive, welcoming staff, the restaurant has become a beloved go-to for special occasions and casual lunch get-togethers alike.
OK – so clearly the “write a little bit each day” schedule didn’t work for me as I’m now back home (managing to avoid the winter storm that’s barreling through the US right now) and finishing up my blog from last week. Perhaps I should include a New Year’s resolution to make it a habit to blog on certain days of the week? I dunno – any and all suggestions welcome! Anyway, the last couple of days of baking school focused on using pre-ferments such as poolish and levain to make delicious sourdough boules, pizza dough and whole wheat loaves. I have successfully managed to keep my sourdough starter alive for 3 days now (yey!) although I do have a back-up starter in Mumsie’s fridge that she is looking after for me – as well as another back-up starter in my fridge. So hopefully I shall never be without again!! Since I got home, I’ve made a batch of baguettes which turned out OK – the flavor was good – but the crumb was a little dense, so maybe it needed more folding or proofing time – or that my scoring was a bit sucky and the weak point of the dough was on the underneath so the CO2 escaped from there, vs the slashes on the top of the dough. Such is the way of the baguette. An eternal – albeit delicious – mystery. I’ve currently got a sourdough boule on the go – AND now I have some starter, its almost time to resurrect the incredible Pain de BACON from Ken Forkish’s book “Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast”. Quite possibly one of the most delicious things to have ever gone into my mouth (steady) – especially used for a grilled cheese sandwich. It is a deeply corrupting sensory pleasure that should probably be illegal.
<<<<<<one cross country Vermont drive and Burlington-to-Chicago flight later>>>>>>
In other news, the countdown to Christmas is ON! Amazingly, this year I’m actually pretty much done already and am just waiting for a few items to run the USPS gauntlet and (hopefully) arrive in time. I have some stocking pressies to wrap and the Christmas day menu to plan and shop for but – other than that – its all under control! A distinct difference to last year when everything was going to shit and Christmas was decidedly not the highest on the priority list. Looking back, its been quite the year!
And now its mid-January and I’ve FINALLY got around to finishing this blog post!! Better late than never, but I definitely need to Sort This Shit Out. I’ve actually been focusing very heavily over the last few weeks on building better lifestyle habits for myself. I read this fantastic book called Atomic Habits over the holidays and its been a gamechanger. I also decided to finally permanently retire from a long and storied career of drinking, so that’s also doing wonders for my overall sense of well-being, particularly my sleep (which still isn’t always perfect but its better than it was). That’s not to say I may never have another glass of champagne ever again – but, for now, the negative effects on my health are just not worth it. What’s prompted this seismic change? Well, I’ve known for a while that wine (grapes) don’t agree with me as I would wake up every morning after having wine the night before totally congested. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to worry a bit more as to what that really means and all the chronic inflammation that might be going on in my body. So I decided to educate myself more and listened to an episode of this terrific podcast called The Huberman Lab, the host of which is a scientist from Stanford who reviews all the latest scientific literature on a whole host of health-related topics. Now. I knew alcohol wasn’t all that good for you – but holy cow. After listening to that podcast, its really kinda killed the joy of drinking for me. I knew about the negative effects on sleep – but elevated cancer risk? Thinning cerebral cortex? Disruption of gut microbiome and leaky gut? No thanks to ANY of that. And the crazy thing is that those effects kick-in after only 1-2 drinks – so you don’t have to be a raging alcoholic passing out every night to be suffering those consequences. So I stopped drinking just after Thanksgiving (yes, I had a sober Christmas and New Year!) and honestly I’m feeling so. much, better. Along with dropping the booze, I’ve also been working on incorporating other healthy habits into my daily routine. I’m about 3 weeks in, so still early days – but I’ll give you an update in a few more weeks, once they’ve fully embedded in.
OK – so that’s what’s been going on. I feel sooo much better having FINALLY finished this blog post. I am a terrific procrastinator (it was one of my dirty little secrets throughout my entire career!) – so I need to figure out the habit that will get me out of that loop and back onto here more regularly. With that, I’m signing off now – I have my first ever Annual Physical later on today – its not til 1.45pm and I have to be fasted so I’m starting to get a bit hungry!!! Ah well, all in a good cause I guess!
Bye for now!
ps I’ve been baking baguettes once a week since I got back from KAF – I think yesterday’s batch were the best ones yet. So good, I had to take this little video to capture the moment, so enjoy….. (and you’ll want the sound on for this….)
