Sweet dough Masterclass from Warings Bakery
There’s nothing like working sweet dough.
It slides across the work board almost plopping off the end, it sticks to your hands and in between your fingers and you are not sure this can ever end up in a smooth ball that isn’t like Superglue.
But with the right technique it can and it does.
Alan and Janet Waring at Warings’ Sweet Dough Masterclass in their Sydney Armour studio in Tilehurst are the people who make it easy for you,
Techniques are shown so well they are simple to pick up and though our doughs may not end up as smooth and orb-like as Alan’s they are pretty professional when we’re finished kneading and put our doughs aside to rise.
Because sweet dough (the class today), of course, has yeast in it which is why the way you handle it is similar to bread making. You have to stretch the gluten so you get a good rise.
We start off with a brioche – flour, sugar, eggs and yeast and this is the least messiest so we can get the hang of stretching.
You really need elbow grease and the class of five of us goes quiet as we all concentrate on gathering the dough with our cutters, kneading and stretching until it finally feels right.
This, as Deborah from Spencers Wood comments, is what you can’t learn from a recipe, and it’s true – which is why anyone keen on baking (and how many are there of us are there now since the popularity of Bake Off?) should book a Warings class.
We pop our bowls into plastic bags to leave to rise before starting on fruit buns – same ingredients but in different quantities, making the dough stickier.
We huff and we puff but by golly we get it into a manageable, smooth dough which again we leave to rise.
We work our way through the different recipes – cinnamon rolls, lardy cake (a first for me, both making and tasting), Bath buns studded with cherries and dried fruit and Rum Babas which are more cake-like and mixed in a bowl with a wooden soon.
Some doughs we go back to later, adding ingredients like dried fruit soaked in liquids that smell like Easter and Christmas combined, chocolate chips or apricot pieces for the brioche (I leave mine plain, well every calorie counts!) or to work and split the dough to turn into different buns or cakes.
As we perfect our lardy cake by folding the lard (it’s actually vegetable shortening) mixed with sugar into the dough then folding again we spy the tart tins Janet is preparing with a slick of golden syrup in the bottom which will soak through the dough and make it simply the richest most gorgeous cake.
We then split out brioche dough into four and pop into pretty fluted tins to shape them.
The Bath buns have an unusual technique. We chop at the dough until it is in bits then pull together and it’s this that gives them their choppy texture.
The large proving drawers under the oven take trays and trays of our wares before when ready Alan puts the giant receptacles with our efforts inside the oven.
What comes out is amazing – golden fruit buns ready for a sticky glaze, syrup soaked and toasty lardy cake, perfectly-shaped pretty fluted brioches, swirly cinnamon rolls ready for a full fat mascarpone and sugar icing, Bath buns still with their white-as-snow crunchy sugar nibs on top.
Everything without exception is a brilliant success. When the Post’s photographer comes to take our picture with our goods, we stand proud as punch having had a fantastic afternoon tea with sandwiches, home made scones and clotted cream all included in the course price.
We’re full to bursting but we pack our wares in cake boxes and bags ready to take home.
I expect to not eat again that day and freeze much of my produce (all can be frozen) but late afternoon finds me doing my ironing and listening to one of the Bath buns calling my name. Later that evening I find myself tearing off a large bit of cinnamon roll, proving the sweet dough products really are addictive – just like Warings masterclasses.
A few of that day’s students had told me they are repeat customers having done a bread class in the past and they fully intend to do more.
And you can’t get a better recommendation than that.
All Warings’ Masterclasses cost £99 per person and include a Masterclass of your choice, Master Bakers to share their knowledge, Warings Bakery Signature Apron to wear and keep, recipe cards and ingredients to get you started at home, afternoon tea.
First published getreading February 2014
