HollyKing's Journal

Last night I attended the Rustic Breadbaking class at Cook's World. The class was taught by George de Pasquale one of the founders of The Essential Baking Company. It was an excellent class with a lot, and I mean a lot, of good information. I came home with dough covered hands and many pages of notes.

I recommend the class if you want to learn more about baking rustic and artesian style bread. Though I wouldn't recommend it for someone who doesn't bake bread now. For those people I would recommend the Baking 101 class first.

Yesterday was the third of four sessions for the Baking 101 class I’m taking at Cook’s World. We covered yeast breads and in class we made Parker House Rolls, Rosemary Focaccia, Bagels and Cinnamon Rolls with a Lemon Glaze. The rolls and focaccia were very tasty. The bagels were ok but nothing spectacular. The cinnamon rolls were very good! I have never had them with a lemon glaze and it was very interesting and tasty. Next week is the final session and we’re going to cover pies and tarts.

During a break in class I signed up for two more classes. Rustic Breadbaking and Home Cheesemaking. There are several classes at Cook’s World I want to take but money being what it is I’ll have to save for them.

Oh, and yesterday there was a little game you might have heard about. Now that I’ve seen the whole thing I can stop hiding from the internet. I didn’t think the New Orleans Saints would win but I was rooting for them and I’m glad they won. The commercials were mostly lame this year. “Play Nice” and “The Griswalds” were my favorites.

I’ve just registered for the Baking Basics 101 course offered through the ASUW Experimental College. I know a fair bit about baking already but nothing beats hands-on training for me. I learn best by doing and this class is four weeks of doing. The class will cover:

1. Quick Breads, Cupcakes, Muffins
2. Biscuits, Scones, Fruit Cobblers
3. Yeast: bagels, cinnamon buns, focaccia, dinner rolls
4. Pies, Tarts

I hope you folks like baked goods. I enjoy baking too much and shouldn’t eat all the results.

My “Clock Repair & Restoration” class starts this Wednesday. In preparation I went and bought a couple of new notebooks. One has the standard college ruled paper. The other one has graph paper. Because there is very little information posted on the school’s website I don’t know what I might need in class. This is a strange feeling for me because I usually have some idea of what I’m taking. This is going to be an adventure. The other strange part is I don’t know anyone else who works on clocks. So you’re all going to have to listen to my geeking out about clocks, gears, cogs, springs and movements. :)

While shopping I couldn’t resist one of my other addictions. I like pens and pencils. In particular I’m real fond of Pilot G2 gel pens and Varsity fountain pens. The store didn’t have any Varsity pens I didn’t have, but they did have a new pack of G2s that had some colors I don’t have. Well didn’t have them… I have them now.

I also found some new, to me, pens from TUL. They had gel pens, ball rollers and highlighters. I was good and only bought a single highlighter to see if I like them. They do have an uphill battle to overcome my love of the G2 and Varsity pens. According to my searches the TUL gel pens compare favorably with the G2 and are a bit cheaper. I need to find out if the TUL pen uses acid free archival ink like the G2 does.

Shhh… It’s an addiction… It doesn’t have to make sense…

I just received a call from the Center for Wooden Boats. It seems I'm the only person who registered for the basic knots seminar this Saturday. So they cancelled it and asked me if I wanted a refund or if I would rather move my registration to the next class on the 18th of August.

Dang.