Artisan Baking Center,
Petaluma, CA

Up your sourdough game and add the Classic French technique to your repertoire.  When making the Pain au Levain, you’ll practice each step of this age-old tradition, learning the how-to’s and why’s of kneading, shaping, proofing, and baking.

Using the Pain au Levain process as our foundation, we’ll  bake more sourdoughs with a variety of flavors, different flours, and a variety of add-ins like dried fruits, walnuts, and olives. At the end of class, you’ll get some of Chef Michael’s 30-year old sourdough starter along with easy steps to maintain your starter in peak condition for great loaves at home.

Menu

Pain au Levain: The classic French Sourdough with its characteristic mild tang and tender chew.

Apple Walnut Sourdough: Dried fruit and toasted nuts make this bread a great accompaniment for cheese boards and charcuterie platters.

Rosemary Raisin Sourdough : Added semolina makes this sweet/savory bread perfect for sandwich rolls.

Olive Fougasse   The Provençal flatbread is leaf-shaped and studded with Castelvetrano olives.

Plus General Principles to make all your baking better:

• Hand-mixing techniques for tender crusts

• Working with couches (proofing cloths)

• Using Banneton proofing molds

• Focus on bench skills for dough handling and shaping

• Oven techniques to get the crust you want

Instructor Bio

Michael Kalanty is a professional bread baking instructor. He’s written baking curriculums for culinary schools across the country, in Italy and in Brasil. His textbooks have won awards like “Best Bread Book in the World”® at the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in Paris and have been translated into Portuguese. When he was the Director of Boulangerie for the Le Cordon Bleu schools in North America, he was awarded “Best Instructor of the Year”.

His breads won TWO first place awards at the Tiptree World Bread Awards at the International Bakery Expo in Las Vegas recently.  You can find him teaching online at The Great Courses.com and Craftsy.com.