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Pain au Levain– The Classic French Sourdough with Michael Kalanty
July 28, 2023 @ 12:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Sourdough–No two bakers approach sourdough breads the same way. Nor should you! Join me for a hands-in-dough class at the professionally appointed Artisan Baking Center.
If you’ve got an ongoing quest to bake your perfect sourdough, you’ll advance your skills with this system I learned during my French apprenticeship. Pain au Levain is the traditional approach to making the delicately sour, open-crumbed, crisp-crusted rustic loaves found in every region of France. Let me take you through this centuries-old process step-by-step and de-mystify the what’s and why’s for each phase of the process.
Using formulas from my book, How To Bake MORE Breads: Modern Breads/Wild Yeast, you’ll learn techniques to use different flours, incorporate solid garnishes into your breads, and making an overnight soaker from seeds. Each of these modifications can be built upon the Pain au Levain’s foundation. By the end of the class, you’ll have the skills to work with a variety of ingredients and the confidence to create your own signature bread.
What You’ll Practice
• Everyone will make Pain au Levain, the classic French sourdough bread.
• Take home your dough to practice your new skills in your home kitchen the next day.
• In teams we’ll shape, proof, and bake:
– Rosemary Raisin Bread
– Apple & Walnut Whole Wheat Bread
– Seedy Bâtards
Plus General Principles to make all your baking better:
• Hand-mixing techniques for tender crusts
• Focus on bench skills for dough handling and shaping
• Oven techniques to get the crust you want
Instructor Bio
Michael Kalanty is a professional bread baking instructor. He’s written baking curriculums for culinary schools across the country, in Italy and in Brasil. His textbooks have won awards like “Best Bread Book in the World”® at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in Paris and have been translated into Portuguese. When he was the Director of Boulangerie for the Le Cordon Bleu schools in North America, he was awarded “Best Instructor of the Year”.
His breads won TWO first place awards at the Tiptree World Bread Awards at the International Bakery Expo in Las Vegas recently. You can find him teaching online at The Great Courses.com and Craftsy.com.
Categories: Baking Class, Beginner, Bread, Cooking Class, Demonstration, No Experience Necessary