I took Junior to the Loretta Paganini School of Cooking today for a pizza making class. Sarah was originally going to take him, but she wasn’t feeling well today. Junior and I both really enjoyed it. The instructor, Annie ‘B,’ was really good with both the kids and the adults. We made pizza, braided bread and salad. Junior did a good percentage of the mixing and kneading of the dough as well as the assembling of the pizza, salad and bread. The salad was so good–complete with balsamic dressing, homemade croutons and cheese–that Junior even had some of it. The pizza was excellent as well. Annie recommended preheating the oven with an upside-down cookie sheet and then placing the pizza on another sheet on top of the preheated one. This allows a lot of the stored heat under the cookie sheet to conduct to the pizza, which makes it rise more (apparently most of the rising takes place during the first ten minutes of cooking).
Annie even taught the kids terms such as Mise en Place, allowing gluten to “relax,” and the necessity of letting dough “rest.” All three of these, oddly enough, were also mentioned by Michael Ruhlman when I saw him later in the day (see next post).
I would definitely recommend the class to anyone with kids who like cooking (or who even just like food).
Comments are closed.