Bread of Heaven

Feed me 'til I want no more, the song continues.

I think I've had enough now.

The first two days this week were on "specialist breads". This was however not bread as you know it, Jim, but croissant, bagels, danish pastry, pate feuillettée (puff pastry to you), brioche. Basically, things the French eat every day which contain a minimum of 90% butter. Why the French don't all look as if they are made from those party balloons magicians bring out out children's parties beats me. It must be balanced out by the red wine, or something.

Photo above: croissant
Photo left: brioche

I really enjoyed our specialist bread making. The one thing I'd always wanted, but failed to, cook at home was bread, and to now be able to do it consistently is very very satisfying. OK, so croissant doesn't really count as bread, but you know what I mean. Some of these delicacies, you may be interested to know, take an awful long time to produce. In the case of pate feuillettée, it took 2 days, because of the folding, chilling and refolding process. Basically, Jus Rol have the market in a bag.

I have to confess I made a slight error on the croissant front: we were working in pairs, and Boston Kate had done all the measuring out of ingredients. I was making up the mix for croissants and Danish, which was the same up until a certain point, then the mix was split in two and the individual recipes followed. At this point I incorporated the whole quantity of butter into half the mix I was using for croissants. Somehow I got it to blend in, and somehow, it cooked ok! The croissants, I have to say were delicious, but I could probably be held to book for the creation of a weapon of mass destruction in terms of an instant heart attack.

Photo right: bagels

Today we recommenced our business course at Edinburgh Napier. Having concentrated on the creativity and innovation side last time, we focussed in on the more practical aspects of starting a business today, and for the next two days. It really is an excellent course, and if the ongoing available facilities and support are as promised, it will be a superb source of advice and encouragement to all of us wanting to branch out and do our own thing. The range of ideas presented by people today was truly excellent, from a flavoured white spirit bar to a mobile pudding van to a [ready-cooked ha ha] seafood restaurant in a Northern Cumbrian port. Having signed a confidentiality agreement (yes I'm serious) I can't reveal any more details about these potential ventures. My own, however, will be called "Wild in the Pantry" as you may have guessed. I revealed the concept of the business, without mentioning the name, and it got a reasonably good reception. Over the next few weeks we will have a chance to produce a business plan, workshop it and present it to the group, and more importantly, the tutors. I got the impression nobody else has got as far as registering their domain name - yes, you can click on www.wildinthepantry.co.uk if you wish! At the moment it is a "parked domain", which means the adverts that appear are automatically generated as being related to the profile of the site - I don't really have an opinion on restaurants in Chichester (but I might get 10p if you click on the link).