Vincent Van Gogh, Sheaves of Wheat, July 1890, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection
Bread and butter is my go-to snack. So this summer, when I saw a Bread & Rolls class at El Centro’s Food & Hospitality Institute, I decided to take my museum educator hat off for a couple hours each week and jump into the world of bread-baking.
The course outline reminded me of walking through the DMA’s encyclopedic collection—we traveled the wide world of bread, from Indian Aloo Paratha to proper English crumpets, from French Gibassier to Chinese custard buns.
Classes began with measuring different combinations of flour, water, salt, and yeast. We watched ingredients form dough in the mixers (very satisfying), added flavorful mix-ins (when the recipe calls for garlic, always add a little more), and shaped dough into rolls and loaves of all sizes. We ooh-ed and ahh-ed over great-looking dough, hung out in front of ovens to watch the magic of oven spring, and along the way we (or at least I!) learned some life lessons, like: when your right arm is in a cast because you decided to have a clumsy life moment, you can still roll out dough like a boss. You just have to bug friends in your class to get your bread out of the oven for you later. ☺ (THANKS GUYS!)
Below are some of our delicious summer creations:
Glutenly,
Amy Copeland
Manager of Go van Gogh and Community Teaching Programs