A fabulous 4-day course that includes on day one, Richard’s signature bread-making class. This is the day where you will learn and fine tune Richard’s method of working the dough and show the dough who’s boss so you can confidently bake bread at home. There will be plenty of hands on dough time and an introduction to moulding and shaping, something that is needed to progress to Richard’s more advanced bread making days. Your skills will be honed while you focus on working with both a white and an olive oil enriched dough. From these you will make a variety of breads including tin loaves, fougasse, olive and pecorino bread sticks and a focaccia.
On day 2, Richard will teach you how to master delicious pastry, sweet, savoury and choux. You will be making pastry by hand and in a mixer, with tins and without, learning how to rest and roll and how you blind bake your pastry. Having mastered the pastry itself, you will also make the fillings, master a crème patissière, make a seasonal quiche and learn how to finely slice fruit to decorate your tarts. You will also be making natas and learn how to use piping bags for your fabulously retro choux swans, a Bertinet classic.
On day 3, you will learn how to make croissant, pain au chocolat and danish pastries in a wonderful extended masterclass. Richard will start by teaching you all about lamination (the process of repeatedly layering dough and butter). Once this has been mastered you will learn how to mould and shape the dough to make light, airy, buttery and flaky pastries including classic croissants, pain au chocolat and abricotines. You will also learn to make a sweet dough for baguette viennoise, technical cinnamon knots and finally some truly deliciously and decadent doughnuts.
On the final day, day 4, you will move onto patisserie, some of the most elegant and impressive creations that you can make at home. Start with a chocolat liegeois, a stunning layered dessert, made with a chocolate genoise sponge, crème Chantilly, a chocolate ganache and a glaze. You will also be making a blackcurrant mousse, made with an Italian meringue and the glaze includes crème de cassis, making sure the aromas and flavours of the blackcurrants really shine through. Finally you will be making some macarons, not the small delicate variety but larger sharing ones that can be piled up in a tower and filled with lemon curd or chocolate ganache or even just simple raspberries, a real centre piece for your dinner party or afternoon tea.
A truly immersive 4 days in all that is good about baking, pastry and patisserie.
Each day starts at 10am and will finish around 3.30 to 4pm. Lunch with wine is included. Please bring a bag and/or a large container with you so that you can take home some of your delicious creations.
Runs from Tuesday 23rd to Friday 26th January 2024 inclusive. All days can be taken as individual days.
