Baking with Pinterest UK at Loaf, Birmingham

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of opening up my email and seeing I had received one from Pinterest UK! It was an invitation to join them in a bread making event with Loaf in Birmingham. I was so excited to receive this invitation that I replied saying ‘Of course!’. The aim was to learn how to make sourdough bread, a course that Loaf offers as a weekend course but was condensed to a few hours for us. This meant that some of the work was done by Loaf or the morning Pinterest event for us in the afternoon, in order to get it all done on time. We started with the rye sourdough, which we made and then topped with seeds and let them rise in their tins for a few hours. Here was my end result.

 

While we waited for the rye sourdough to rise, we were shown some techniques by Tom and Andy, bakers at Loaf. We were shown 2 ways to knead bread and got to practice them by making a wheat sourdough. Tom then showed us how to shape that dough into different bread shapes, from a simple dinner roll to a baguette. We then got to make a pita bread (very simple and cooks in only a few minutes!) and got to eat our pita with hummus and fresh salad. We also got to make delicious pizzas using the dough too. We had quite the feast!

 

 

Lastly, we had a friendly competition to make a fougasse. We were allowed to pick from a number of herbs and spices to make our own combination. I went with poppy seeds, sesame seeds and cumin. You cut the bread into pretty patterns, add the flavourings and bake. I came second in the competition, I was very proud at how well mine looked! I even managed, somehow, to keep it in tact until I got home so I could show my boyfriend. You have no idea how hard that was as it looked so so good!

At the end of the day, we got to go home with our rye sourdough and some sourdough starter too. I haven’t had the chance to use them yet (as I have barely been at home these past few weeks!) but I think I might bust them out this weekend and make something nice!

Not sure if I’ll be able to get them as nice as these loaves though!

Thank you to Pinterest UK for inviting me and for all at Loaf for their expertise and patience. I had a wonderful time.