Cheddar Cheese Rolls and Whole Wheat Bread

In my afternoon bakeshop class, we first made cheddar cheese rolls.



Here's how we made them. We mixed our dough like we normally would, but left the shredded cheddar cheese out of the mixing bowl until last. After the cheese was incorporated, the dough was left to ferment in the proof box. We later spread the dough out in a large pan to use in a machine called a Dutchess. Basically, the Dutchess is a press that cuts one large piece of dough into similarly sized pieces, so we cut our dough into 36 pieces of equal size. We dusted the flour off each piece and laid them out on sheet pans. We didn't manipulate the dough, but left the pieces in their cut shape, kind of like little pillows. We again did two egg washes on this dough and then added a few more pieces of shredded cheese right before baking.

So here's a neat feature about the fact that we've made three different types of doughs for rolls in different shapes over the last few days: in a real restaurant, I could now prepare an assortment of types of rolls in different shapes to be served with a salad course. I enjoy seeing how the recipes can connect and thinking about these real world applications. I appreciate that Chef addresses this each class.

We also made whole wheat loaves in a few different forms. We rounded 8 ounce pieces of dough and places them in either aluminum tins or basket bannetons for different shapes. Here's a picture of the baked bread that was fermented in the banneton:



I think they kinda look like boobs, but I guess it depends on one's interpretation.

With the left over dough, Chef let us try out different patterns for a loaf. My partner Angela and I decided to layer small rounds of dough into one loaf, while our friends Mandy and Anna (who work at the bench station next to us) did some braided dough. Here's a picture of our final products, which I think look really great:



All in all, another fun afternoon in Bakeshop. On a side note, I feel like I am on an all-carb diet due to all of this bread baking. I love the bread baking, don't get me wrong, but my dietary intake is way off balance and my "learning" is impacting my desire to eat a better, well-rounded diet. So, I'm going to try my hardest not to eat any bread over the next few days. Bring on the protein!