Kitchen Therapy

Scott's birthday present (purchased in October) must have been a sign that I would be craving time in a kitchen. On Saturday, January 10 Scott and I spent 4+ hours in a bread baking class at The Kitchen Window in Uptown.

This is the course description:
Join Jessica Anderson, renowned pastry chef for Nick & Eddie restaurant, to learn the secrets to baking the perfect loaf of bread – as well as other recipes straight from the restaurant. You’ll spend four hours learning bread basics from one of the Twin Cities’ premier bakers. The menu includes classic PARKER HOUSE ROLLS, a great introduction to quick breads. You can use this versatile dough for many variations. Next is a SEMOLINA BREAD, a great all around bread to have in your repertoire. Then we move on to master BIALYS, chewy yeast rolls similar to bagels. However, bialys are baked, not boiled like bagels. Finally, we finish with BRIOCHE, sweet dessert bread with a rich flavor and flaky texture. This bread is delicious on its own – and if you should happen to have any leftovers, it makes fabulous bread pudding. Don’t miss this chance to spend an enjoyable day in the kitchen learning from the best.

Ambitious, right? We made the dough for the brioche first and then we moved on to the bialy dough and then all hell broke loose because we were way off track with time. I could see the volunteer helpers getting frustrated and there was clearly a lack of communication between the pastry chef and the rest of the team. That being said, it was a lot of fun to learn the art of making bread dough by mixing it with your bare hand. You'll see Scott displaying his own take on kneeding dough- man meets machine I'd say.

I will be going back to the Kitchen Window someday but I will avoid classes that seem to take on "more than they can chew" (that's for you dad!).


We are working on the brioche dough. Apparently we were not supposed to add the full 4 cups of flour- which Jessica the pastry chef shared with us AFTER most of the class used the entire 4 cups of flour. Thankfully our dough came out OK in the end.



Brioche has lots of butter in it. It also involved fresh cream and fistfuls of sugar. I am thinking those calories didn't count cause it was therapy.



We didn't actually get to the Parker Roll recipe (above) but I learned how to make those cute little butt shapes.
We also listened to Jessica talk about Semolina bread and the only thing I took away was the fact that the "fancy" flour in the recipe can only be found at the Eden Prairie Cub Foods. Odd.

I do want to try out Jessica's restaurant Nick & Eddie. So, I definitely recommend taking classes at the Kitchen Window and soon they will take place in their remodeled space!