What really got me into baking was a single workshop sourdough bread by Edwin Bakt Brood. He doesn’t give those workshops anymore, but he transmitted his enthusiasm to me. Since then, I have been baking all the bread for the community I live in (some 500KG/year). I would never have guessed that the workshop would have such a consequence!
In the years since the workshop, I haven’t lost any of my enthusiasm, and in fact it only has increased. And I love to transfer this enthusiasm. Which is why I give workshops to other bakers-to-be.
In my workshops you’ll be working predominately with organic Dutch flour, instead of the more popular American and French flour. Why? Because when you leave the workshop, it will be quite easy for you to find this type of flour (American and French flour are much harder to find, especially in quantities suitable for the home baker). Also, using organic Dutch flour contributes to a local and sustainable economy – which I like. And finally, organic Dutch flour has a rather low gluten content. Is that a good thing? Yes and no. The high gluten content in American and French flour makes bread baking easy, but when you learn baking with a low gluten flour, it’s much easier to switch to other (low gluten) types of flour, such as spelt and emmer. You will learn to rely on your feeling and technique instead of the forgiving character of high gluten flour.
Workshops are a combination of theoretical knowledge transfer as well as hands-on work. We’ll cover the following topic:
- The ins and outs of sourdough baking, including what a sourdough culture actually is and starting and maintaining a sourdough culture.
- All the steps involved in bread baking such as planning and calculating amounts, mixing, bulk fermentation and folding, shaping, final fermentation, scoring and baking.
- The importance of water, salt and gluten
- Discuss different types of flour and grains and their properties. Such as white wheat flour (“bloem”), whole grain wheat flour (“volkorenmeel”), rye, spelt, emmer and einkorn.
- You’ll be making multiple types of bread, all from scratch. Starting early morning by mixing and followed in the late afternoon by baking.
- During the workshop, you’ll do everything manually, the mixing, kneading, shaping etc. This way you’ll develop a better feeling for the dough and you also become less dependent on equipment – which means it’ll be more easy for you to start baking at home.
High quality and tasty bread needs time. A lot of time. Which is why the workshops take a full day. We’ll start somewhere between 8 and 9AM and finish between 5 and 6PM.
Workshops can be given to one or two people at a time. You’ll leave the workshop with lots of information and experience, a big bag of self-made sourdough breads, a sourdough culture and some basic tools to get you started at home. Plus, afterwards you can always contact me about bread baking questions (or for a new sourdough culture in case you forgot to feed yours).
I find it important that the workshop is available to anyone who likes to attend. Therefore, my workshops are on donation basis. No idea how much to give? Well, how much do you earn when you work 8 – 10 hours? That might serve as a good guidance for the donation.
Interested? Send me email and we’ll find a suitable date. Workshops are in Amsterdam, available in Dutch and English:
My email address is:
gro.lekcitsremle@liame
(Due to anti-spam measures copy/paste of my email address won’t work)
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