To further their studies of micro-organisms the Year 5/6 students hosted baker and owner of Jane Dough, Will Jane. Will described his career path from work experience in Melbourne to learning from and working with bakers in France, England, Italy, India, Byron Bay and other parts of Australia before setting up his own wholesale bakery in Warrnambool. Will’s bakery produces breads, pastries and doughnuts. He described the importance of the sourdough starter in the baking of his sourdough loaves and students could see what a live starter looked like as opposed to a commercially used dry starter. Students learnt that while the dry yeast was quicker to use, the starter had more flavour as it contains a fermented mixture of flour and water, and a colony of micro-organisms including yeast and lactobacillus bacteria which is a bacteria also found in yoghurt. Will’s bread takes 3 days to make. On the first day Will feeds the starter and on the second day, he mixes it, adds salt, proves it for 4 to 5 hours, shapes it then leaves it in the fridge overnight before baking it on the third day. We were surprised to learn that Will had kept this starter going for 6½ years. Each day Will must feed the starter 4 litres of water and 4 kgs of flour which results in approximately 100 kg of bread dough. That is 120 loaves a day! As they examined and tasted the sour dough, doughnuts and pastries, students could see the holes in the bread that were the result of the yeast feeding off the sugar that was produced by the yeast microbes. They even took part in a role play to illustrate the process of bread making. Jane Dough products are available from the bakery in the Coles carpark in Warrnambool (soon to move to a new premises on Raglan Parade), regional markets and local retailers. Will was an enthusiastic presenter and the students asked many questions which Will was only too happy to oblige. What a delicious way to learn about micro-organisms, thanks Will for making micro-organisms in the bread making process come alive! Comments are closed.
|
Archives
April 2024
|