Bread Class Updates! I feel so Validated!

 You know that despite how many classes I teach, it never will cease to amaze me when someone comes back and says "Thank YOU" .  I'd teach bread classes until the end of time if I thought it would help even one person save money, eat well, and live better on whole grain. That being said...when I do stand in front of a room full of people it is always humbling to see that someone takes it home and uses it!

Today at Honeyville Farms in Chandler at the Class I taught there on Tortillas I was a few minutes before starting. To my joy, a brother and sister duo came in with the bread they had made for the VERY first time! {Ever} after attending my bread class on Saturday! I almost started to cry I was so excited!

 The blessed part...they are not stopping. She said she'd never buy bread again...and her brother made his own too! So...what better gift can you give your instructor than actually applying what you learned?!

 Here's their bread close up. The flavor was right on the mark. Texture pretty good and the moisture level was awesome! Not dry at all! 

 Saturday a few hours after the class, I got a lovely picture with my name tagged on it on my Facebook! Kim Carpenter-Lahn, a great cook that I had met on Valley Dish during one of my segments, had at the time, confessed her frustration with bread. I was overjoyed to see her at my class...and even more joyful to see this photo!

 Even more amazing was her great review of the class! Bread Glorious Bread! Thank you comes in many forms, but I believe the highest form of flattery...is imitation! Go forward my friends! So excited to hear how things are going! Oh...and yes this is my challenge to you this week!

Share bread with someone this week. Maybe sit down with your kids or spend a few hours with a friend...but let's make sure we don't let our talents go to waste. Let's make bread together!
Your Friend,
Chef Tess

Artisan Bread Class and Decorative Bread Class

Saturday I had the unique privilege to teach a bread making marathon, so to speak, with a sweet group of ladies at Orson H. Gygi's Culinary Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. The facility was amazing! We had ten ovens.

There where beginning bakers who had never made a loaf of bread before. We had bakers who had been baking since the sixties. One sweet gal flew all the way from Texas to join us.

I loved our Mother and daughter team, learning side by side. I loved them all. I hope they know it.

Even more fun was to pull the loaves of bread from the ovens with them. Sometimes the creative minds of my students blow me away.

Lace's bread. Yes...you did it honey!

Elizabeth's artful design that we called the Frank Loyd Wright.

Jamie's star loaf. That's a new one for me!

Perhaps one of the highlights of my day was pulling a loaf of bread out of the oven that Jean had made. It was her first attempt at bread making...ever! Look at it. I'm just saying... we cheered and clapped and hugged each other. It was awesome!

Decorative bread class followed the Artisan bread session...and the class once again produced some great pieces of bread. Randi's classics...

Neive's wedding loaf...

Jamie's dream catcher.

Lorraine's braided loaf.

Elizabeth's leaves and floral.

I wish I had space to put a picture of every loaf up. They where all so amazing to see. Thank you ladies for a truly wonderful class. I will look forward to hearing of your continued baking joys!

There you go.

Student Results (a very sweet rambling review)

I got a great review I wanted to share here, for those who have not joined my group site, this is from a gal who took one of my bread coaching sessions about two years ago...and she's still growing strong! Yes...I did say "growing" strong. I have cooking classes with her often. Thanks Gena!

Gena wrote:

"So I've been wanting to learn to make my own bread, but it rather intimidates me! Lucky me, I have this fabulously talented and gifted, not to mention willing and patient, professional chef friend who so kindly gave me a private bread baking class today at my house! Okay, the whole process was still intimidating even though Steph walked me through every step, but she is such a motivator! (And totally fun to hang out with!) Okay so my bread didn't turn out as beautifully formed and impressively raised as the one Steph helped me with, but I'm gonna give this bread making thing a shot!

My first bread loaves!

I'm so proud!

Still proud!

And the loaves made with Stephanie!

Someday my bread will look like this!

Now for my shameless plug... Some of you may know Stephanie already, but just in case you don't (go find her on my friend list) or don't know how talented she is, Stephanie does private and group cooking/baking classes, as well as cakes and catering, so if you're looking for great food or want to learn how to do something too - especially if you want to know about how to feed your family affordable, organic, natural, healthy foods- you should contact her! She does just about everything. I had a cake decorating party at my house where Stephanie taught us how to prepare a cake for decorating, make delicious butter-cream frosting and spread it perfectly smooth, make leaves and flowers out of frosting, AND other cool tricks for making flowers out of edible items! It was so fun!! You should have a party too - but you have to invite me!

I'm telling you, she is your go-to girl! Okay, I'm done now. :)"

Thanks for the great review Gena!

A Chef Tess P.S.:

A true mentor in baking is open for questions and discussions. It is my continuing goal to be available to answer what I can or (as I often do) direct you to further learning. Sometimes the greatest teachers are the ones who had the initiative to teach themselves. My goal is to teach you how to love the journey! I want you to search the writing of those far more learned and experienced then I am! I will scratch the surface…spark the passion ( I hope) and do all I can to fan the flame. Then, when your fire is hot enough, you will share your experiences with others. When you are better, I hope you will in turn go out and serve.


Powerful lessons occur when abstract concepts intersect with practical application. You will benefit most when you are deeply and personally involved in applying the things you have learned. When you are home and try to recreate what we did in class, I am so excited to answer phone calls and help you further. Please do not feel limited to a one time class, but consider this the start of a new partnership and friendship in our journey together. I learn so much from each new class and student. I hope you will consider me your mentor in learning the craft of bread making. It is a skill that will change your heart if you let it. I will help you. I will be honest with you on your performance. I will offer a system of standards here of what I expect of your work, then lead you lovingly towards competence and indeed excellence, in time. Let’s begin our journey, shall we? Join me for one of our Upcoming Classes In Salt Lake City Next Week!

Frozen Bread Dough Success with Ceri

I receive a lot of great email and I try to answer everyone. Sometimes life as a wife and mother gets crazy. It's taken me a couple of weeks since this letter to finally post our grand adventure. This was a letter from a gal named Ceri. As I had been working on freezer rolls and bread, this letter came in perfect timing. I had to join forces with Ceri on her quest for freezer to oven bread dough that wouldn't require a rise before she baked it. I'd been working on a recipe that I had found success with, and shared it with her. I think her letter was pretty cool. It read, "Dear Chef Tess,I love your blog (and consequently your Facebook page), and hope you can help me with my current quest:
it is my turn to provide snack for my daughter's 4th grade class this week and I thought it would be fun to bring fresh baked bread. It's not fun enough to get up at 4am, though, so I am wondering about the best way to make the dough the night before and refrigerate it.
Some background: I've tried no-knead bread and even thought that would be a solution I am not crazy about the consistency of that bread and the dough is finicky to handle. I do not have a heave duty mixer. I have a new, heave duty 14c Cuisinart food processor and make my bread in that. I've tweaked a recipe that came with it to now include whole wheat and rye flour.
So: do I make the dough, let it rise, then just put int the fridge until morning, shape and transfer to rising baskets then? Rise and punch down, then put in the fridge? Rise, shape, put in the rising baskets then put int the fridge? I'm stumped and don't have the time to do a bunch of tests.
Hope you can help me and thanks in advance,
Ceri "To Ceri, I wrote:
Ceri,
Well, perhaps we can help each other. I need a home testing outside of myself to see if my results are accurate. I have some dough I'm working on today that is transferable straight from the freezer to the oven to bake. No defrosting or raising required. I have had a good amount of success just taking it after it is formed into loaves and raised, and letting it go about 20 minutes less of a final proof. Instead of baking, place in the freezer. Then when ready to bake, transfer into baking pans and bake 375 degrees 45-50 minutes. Not defrosting, just baking. The recipe is very similar to the one I use for the freezer to oven dinner rolls, but using whole wheat, so it's very healthy. You can do the kneading by hand and increase the kneading time as you would for bread, 600 strokes by hand or 3-4 minutes in your food processor, as that is less time than a mixer.
Here's my recipe. Let me know what you think:

2 1/2-3 cups water (no hotter than 110 degrees)
4tsp yeast (2 packet) rapid rise
1/4 cup sugar (2T honey)
8 1/2 cups whole wheat bread flour
1T salt
1T baking powder
1/2 cup oil
3 egg

Combine the honey and 1 cup water with the yeast, to be sure the yeast is alive. Then, combine everything in one large bowl or mixer. I like that. Knead 600 strokes by hand or 3 minutes in a food processor. You may need more or less liquid depending on the moisture content of the flour. Form into a ball and place in a bowl covered with plastic or a lid for 1 1/2 hour (dough at 90 degrees), or until doubled in size. Form into 3 loaves and place in parchment lined loaf pans ( 8 inch by 4 inch silicone loaf pans have a great use here...though I don't like baking in them. Freezing in them is cool, because they peel right off when the dough is frozen.) Allow to raise 40-45 minutes until just rising above the top of the loaf pan. Freeze immediately (about 2 hours until solid). Dough will be good up to one month. When ready to bake, transfer frozen dough from freezer to oven ready pans that have been lightly oiled. Bake without defrosting 375 degrees 45-50 minutes.


This is what I got back from Ceri. Some great pictures and some great response!

"Stephanie,
success all the way around! I am so excited! Can't wait to hear how the kids liked it.
So: your recipe I mixed, 1st rise, punched down, short rest, shaped, 2nd rise (but only about 20 min since it was going well over the edge of the pan), in freezer. Once frozen I took it out of the pan, took off parchment paper, wrapped in plastic and back in freezer. This morning I prepped pan by buttering and coating with semolina flour, put frozen dough in and baked for 45 min. You can see in the picture called "sliced" how nice the texture was. "

This is the bread before the rise in the pan.

This is the frozen dough, ready to bake.
Here it is after baking.

Ceri is an artisan baker and shared a great recipe for artisan bread with me. Our next quest was to see if she could bake her artisan bread using the similar technique of letting it raise in the artisan baskets, freezing and then baking. Ceri said, "For my dough I got scared that the ice block of dough would crack my stone so I put it from the freezer in the fridge last night to thaw (still in baskets, but it came out of the basket easy, even when frozen), then took it out of the baskets this morning onto parchment paper to come to room temp while yours were baking. Then upped the heat and baked mine on the stone. "

Here's how they looked baked. Not bad at all, don't you think?

Her final email gave me great joy, "No problem at all. And between 19 kids and two teachers there was not a crumb left. The kids told me (unprompted) how much they liked it as soon as I walked in, and Cloe told me how much they loved it. One teacher asked me for the recipes, too (-:
Thanks again for making this possible,

Ceri (-:"

Ceri, Thank YOU! I had so much fun on our little project via email, and once again, find so much joy in helping others find success. Best wishes always. To everyone else...

There you go.

Angela's Pie and Grain Mills

One of my favorite fellow blogger is named Angela ( Adventures in Self Reliance and a a dealer for Country Living Grain Mills.). We met online. I don't sell grain mills, but if Angela does why not get one from a gal who is committed to helping people be prepared for an emergency? Plus she's a hard working SAH mom. Sorry for the shameless plug. I think she deserves to have a lot of success.

At any rate she sent me a great email and picture that I really wanted to share with everyone for several reasons. First, she made the hot cocoa cream pie... for all the right reasons. Anytime you can use food as a motivator to follow the Lord and share the Gospel, go for it. Secondly, it turned out nicely. Third, because she really used the vinegar in the Pie crust! And finally, because her daughter is just like me...love pie, but give me the crust any day! Thanks for the great feedback Angela!
She writes:

" Hi Tess—had some fun with your hot cocoa cream pie yesterday—thought I’d share. I’ve been wanting to get my kids to go bear their testimonies on Fast Sunday for quite a few months but they wouldn’t do it. So this past Saturday, we had a little talk about how sweet it is to bear your testimony and if we did it, we could make a sweet chocolate pie. And what do you know? The whole family, even dad, ended up at the pulpit during testimony meeting on Sunday! SWEET!

So I made the pie and used your crust and it is fabulous! I’ve never used vinegar, so my son came and snitched a piece of unbaked crust and made a horrible face and said, “Is this okay to eat???” Hee hee. And my littlest one didn’t care much for the filling, she just wanted to eat everybody’s crust. That’s how good the crust is. We have some that like coconut and some that don’t, so we shredded chocolate chips on the other half. Not as pretty as yours, but still tasted great. Thanks! It was a hit. "

There you go. Now go see Angela's blog on how to dehydrate onions. It's really quite interesting!

Erin's Sprouted Wheat Bread...a success story!

I have to cheer on the valiant efforts of a hard working mom. She made this bread...from these wheat grains...without a flour mill!

Every now and then it really clicks and someone gets really motivated about learning to make the sprouted wheat bread. I had a friend, Erin, read the Sprouted Wheat bread tutorial blog entries...including all the sprouted wheat bread troubleshooting entries...in depth. In a short time, these pictures came across the computer. I love it when a plan comes together (quick, name that 80's sitcom).

The wheat berries you see are sprouted by Erin in just over 36 hours. Her wheat was really fresh. I am pleased to announce that she not only got the wheat right, but also cranked out some pretty righteous looking bread.

Here's her dough...

I am actually really fond of the Sprouted Wheat bread in a food processor . It makes fast work of the grinding and kneading process and yields a much finer ground wheat berry when it comes to dough. Look at this bread. Nobody pass out...but this is Erin's very first loaf of sprouted wheat bread.

I'm getting all misty eyed. Overclempt. Superbly pleased...heck I'm proud! Outstanding work! Keep it up Erin! I love your kindred creative soul.

There you go!

Erin's Bread

A little over a year ago I met a very positive and fun gal named Erin. She was attending one of my cake decorating classes and we came to find out that we where related in a round about way. Her husband is the brother of my sister in law. After the class we got talking about bread and loaf forming. She was having a hard time getting them to have a nice shape. They would bulge out one side or the other. We did some trouble shooting on the recipe and oven. Today I got these pictures from her and am so excited to post them! Look how great the bread looks now!
It came down to the fact that she needed a new element in her oven because it just wasn't cutting it. That with some proper loaf forming techniques (loaf molding )and she was excited to say "I'm just glad to have pretty bread that tastes so yummy". I seriously doubt it ever tasted bad. Wonderful work Erin! I loved being part of the journey!