Week 1

For my senior project, I decided to bake. I've always loved to bake in my free time and often found myself this year whipping something up for the family after dinner. I figured since we get so much liberty with our senior projects this year, I would spend extra time working on something that I already know I love to do. I tend to be inspired by my family, who is always coming to me with ideas for new baking ideas for them to taste test, or the internet, where I see videos that make me think "I need to try that". I decided to work by myself and pulled together this project by working with my advisor as well as flipping through cook books and looking in bakeries to come up with an idea of what I want to make.

The goals I have for this project are to:

- Learn more
about the ways that different ingredients impact the way a baked good looks when it comes out of the oven

-Work up to completing more complicated recipes

- Try recipes I've never tried or heard of before (and broaden my horizons)

This week, since I'm working my way up the "complication" ladder, I started out with somewhat simple recipes. My two favorite recipes that I baked this week were a galette des rois, which I have baked in French class but never on my own, and whole wheat focaccia bread which I have never made before.

The galette des rois turned out really well and had relatively no issues. When baking this, I learned more about how puff pastry rises. When making the galette, I was suspicious about how thin it seemed going in the oven, but was pleasantly surprised when it came out looking airy and tall.

I've been wanting to make focaccia bread for a while, so I was excited to have an excuse to finally do it. This recipe took a really long time considering the dough needed to prove on two different occasions throughout the process. That provided a challenge of patience, while the fact that I wanted to try whole wheat flour provided a physical challenge. As I mixed the dough, I found that it was no where near as sticky as the recipe told me it should be, and instead was thick and sticking to the mixer. I added some extra olive oil and water to try to balance things out even though the recipe told me not to, and I simple hoped for the best. Luckily, the focaccia turned out great! The oil made it crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Overall, both myself and my family were happy with my baking endeavors this week.