Tag Archives: bread

Holiday Classes: Cocktails and Bread-Making

Birmingham, Booze, Cooking, Events, , , , ,

Come learn with me! I’m teaching two classes this weekend, and I want you to sign up!

On Saturday, December 15, I’m running a holiday mixology workshop at Painted Shovel Mercantile in Avondale. For $25, you’ll learn three seasonal classics: Mulled Wine, Eggnog, and the French 75—plus a Painted Shovel Holiday Margarita I’ve created just for the class. (And yes, you get to try all the drinks!) To enroll, please call 205-593-2083 or email paintedshovel@gmail.com.

And on Sunday, December 16, my bread and rolls class returns to Freshfully. This lesson sold out last time, so make sure to grab your spot now. It’s just $15, and you’ll learn my foolproof bread-from-scratch recipe, sample some delicious bread and rolls, and go home with a batch of dough all ready to bake immediately (or to freeze and bake later). Enroll online here.

See you this weekend in Avondale!

Jason holding bread

Make Bread with Me!

Birmingham, Cooking, Events, Food, , , , ,

Jason holding bread

I love bread. I love eating bread, I love baking bread, I love kneading bread dough.

And I want you to, too.

So I’m working with awesome local-food-only grocery store Freshfully to put together a bread-making class on Sunday, October 21.

Look: People are afraid of baking their own bread. For some reason, they think it takes some kind of alchemy (plus a French accent) to bake a decent loaf. They are wrong. All it takes is four ingredients and a couple hours, and you can have as much fresh-from-the-oven bread as you want.

In the class, I’ll go over my pretty-much-foolproof method for making all kinds of bread and explain some of the science behind how bread-making works while you mix and knead your own batch of dough. Then, while the dough rises, we’ll sample a bunch of my own breads (including white-chocolate, olive-and-herb, and more), paired with some local cheeses.

At the end of the class, you’ll go home with a batch of bread dough ready for baking (sorry, Freshfully doesn’t have an oven) or freezing for later (yes, I’ll tell you how to do that as well).

Registration is $30, but for reading through this post, I’ll save you five bucks! Just use coupon code DOUGH at checkout.

See you Sunday!

Really Fresh Bread

Cooking, Food, Ingredients, Recipes, , ,

Bread made with fresh-milled flour

Everybody knows that fresh bread is delicious, but what about the flour it’s made from? I recently came into a bag of freshly milled flour, and I can now tell you it makes a big difference.

A little background: In addition to roasting some of Birmingham’s best coffee, Woody Wiginton of FinerGrind Coffee Roasters also grinds his own flour. (He also lives on a farm in Warrior and has traveled all over the world. The man is kind of my hero.)

At the last FoodBlogSouth meetup, Woody gave me small bags of rye and whole wheat flour he had milled a few days before. The rye was grain he grew himself—talk about local—and the wheat he ordered from Canada (it’s way too hot to effectively grow wheat in Alabama).

Continue reading Really Fresh Bread →