Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attend a full day’s bread making course at the local Kent Cookery School. My course place was a Christmas gift from my mum after my moaning about several failed attempts at keeping my sourdough starter alive last summer.

On the day the course had space for 12 students and was fully booked, all of us with varying amounts of baking experience, some completely new to it. We were all asked why we were there, had we made much bread before? To answer this, we shared our successes but more readily we shared our disasters. Nothing like a little self-deprecation to help break the ice.

After being welcomed into the kitchen by the day’s chef and also James, the owner of the cookery school, we drank coffee and tea while everyone arrived and settled in.

Aprons on and then it was time to start.

The kitchen

The workstations are arranged around a long central island in the room with oven, hobs and worktop space, then sinks within easy reach behind. At the top of the island, the chef’s workstation is positioned so we could all see it. Behind that, a table spacious enough for us all to sit together at lunch.

The course was timed to perfection in a way to get the most from the six hours and allow the times between switched tasks for dough to prove, to learn a bit, ask questions, knead a bit more or wash up.

The bread

During the six-hour course, we made:

• Focaccia
• A white tin loaf
• A wholemeal sourdough loaf
• Four doughnuts
• Eight cinnamon rolls

The focaccia dough was already prepared for us, we just needed to shape it, dimple it, dredge it with olive oil, stud it with fresh rosemary and then bake it. Focaccia is a fairly wet dough, and can be a bit daunting as it handles differently to a standard bread dough. We all watched on eagerly as the tutor moved around this slime-like mass with deftly expertise. The main benefit of having the dough ready, was that we could get going straight away and have the focaccia baked and ready in time for lunch.

Everything was pre-weighed for all the bakes, which saved time and faffing about and allowed us to concentrate on the dough and understanding the processes. Throughout the day we had plenty of time to ask questions as we went along with each step explained clearly by demonstration – something you don’t get from a cook book or You Tube.

I’d tried several different sourdough methods previously. The one demonstrated on this day was a simple, fairly quick version using a starter dough that the chef had brought with him. We shaped them in banneton baskets and scored them with a lame. I felt like a proper baker! The white tin loaf turned out brilliantly, but it was the enriched dough that I was most looking forward to as it was something I hadn’t attempted before. As with everything else on the course, the doughnuts and cinnamon buns were broken down to simple, easy-to-follow steps. They are in fact the same dough, so we portioned off some for the doughnuts and left them to prove while we rolled out the dough for the cinnamon rolls, buttering and dusting with sugar and cinnamon before rolling and shaping them. I’ve made the cinnamon buns at least four times since then and the doughnuts twice.

By the end of the day I don’t mind admitting that I was feeling a little fatigued, in a good way, from the hours kneading (achy shoulders) and feeling ridiculously pleased with myself. It’s only bread, but I had a basket full to the brim to bring home and a booklet of notes. We had each been given some printed sheets of recipes fastened together with a miniature wooden peg so that we could refer to them, annotate them, or scribble down tips as we went along.

The lunch

Lunch was included in the day as is tea and coffee, beer and wine can be purchased if you wish. For lunch, we sat together round the large table with our freshly-baked focaccias and shared food from a selection of tapas and anti-pasti style dishes of cured meats, beetroot, artichokes, peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.

The school

The Kent Cookery School is in Mersham-Le-Hatch on the Hythe Road near Ashford, Kent. The school is housed in a barn-style room in a courtyard setting, surrounded by beautiful Kent countryside. They run a range of courses – vegetarian cooking, couples cooking, pasta, barbecue, curry club, to name a few.