Bread Making Class at Le Pain Quotidien

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I posted on Instagram last week about my bread making endeavors and had a lot of people interested so I figured I would share via the blog. A year or two about Pat bought me a pasta making class for Valentines Day and we loved learning how to cook something together. (He is not the best chef but is always eager to learn and help me, plus I suck at anything that involves dough!) This year Pat bought us a bread making class as an anniversary gift (well we don’t usually exchange gifts we just take a trip so I think it was more of an excuse to buy a cool cooking class). If you’re local to Philly and want to try it out you can find more information here. Note:  I’m not in any sort of partnership with Le Pain Quotidien I just like their products and loved this class.

It was set up for couples/friends/groups of 2. You each make a pizza to enjoy there fresh out of the oven, a baguette to take home, and share a bottle of wine. Plus Le Pain Quotidien puts out some toast appetizers to share- avocado, hummus, etc. Once you get there you pick red or white wine and put on your apron and hat, ready for action!

A booklet is supplied with the recipes shared during class but we did all the learning by watching a demo and then doing it ourselves. #handsonlearner For life! After learning about mixing the dough, they do provide their premade dough since it takes hours to rise.

First we made our pizza dough… and while it is rising again you start the baguette. Next we built our pizzas with toppings of our choice- homemade red sauce, gruyere, mozzarella, red peppers, roasted broccoli, olive tapenade, harissa, arugula, basil pesto, olive oil, salt pepper, etc. After they were completed they were cooked in the huge industrial oven while we did the second shape for our baguettes. Last part of the baguette shaping is the scoring and then we baked those while eating our pizzas and finishing our wine.

Overall my takeaway from the class is the bread making is actually a pretty simple and straight forward process- the only time consuming part of it is letting the bread rise. I definitely feel like it’s something we could attempt on our own… it would be cool to make an Italian meal completely from scratch using our pasta and bread making skills- hopefully someday soon! And it was most definitely a great date night experience- something interactive, fun, and different from a lot of the usual things we do!

Have you ever taken a cooking class?? Did you feel like you learned from it or it was just a fun date?