Little Bird House: May 2007

i am a lucky ducky! the National Bread Baking Competition was held in south san francisco this year and i was able to squeak in to witness the magic.

i watched the west coast, east coast and midwest finalists compete in baking... well, a TON of bread! baguettes, pullman breads (pain de mie), regional breads, specialty breads, and sandwiches. they were evaluated by the seven judges based on their weight, volume, taste, consistency, appearance, and creativity. in laymen's terms, it was all very hard core.

Christian Vabret head of Coupe du Monde (right)
with french translater Didier Rosada (left)

oh, the pursuit for excellence, education and achievement! here are the judges and senior bakers explaining (from 8am until 3pm) the intricacies of bread making. my eyes never glazed over, but i admit i did tune out from the oration from time to time.

at the end of the day my awesome pal Solveig Tofte (midwest finalist) was declared the winner! she will now join Team USA to compete in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in spring of 2008. this is much like the international competitions shown on the FoodTV network. twelve teams from various countries will compete in baguettes and breads, viennoiserie (pastry like brioche etc.), and artistic design (giant sculptures made out of... yeah.).

here are photos of Sol making 50 baguettes, which were later evaluated on all that i mentioned previously, and also on their length and weight (each after baking had to be EXACTLY 25o grams). 25 had to be the traditional baguette you see in every romantic comedy, and 25 had to be a range of diverse decorative shapes.

preparing the dough

squaring it, then cutting into loaves of equal weight
(the little green thing is the scale)

folding side 1 and turning the dough

folding side 2

pressing the dough, smoother now

using a nifty wrist pressing technique

maybe to get the air pockets out?

start of the roll

end of the roll

placing the baguette onto linen (wood board underneath)

dusting the baguettes

scoring the baguettes

traditional baguettes (above) decorative baguettes (below)

east coast and west coast lads placing and removing breads from the oven

baguettes resting

sandwiches were made last
(that's a judge just hanging out in front of Solveig,
in the last half hour of the competition. talk about pressure.)

for the sake of keeping this blog entry a readable length, i've left out a lot of steps and photos concerning the other breads and the other competitors (who were also amazing to watch). to bring it all to a close though, here are pictures of each person's table at the end of the baking trial.