I have just returned from a very enjoyable week in Provence at Domaine L’ Ancienne Ecole with a great group of people. I have learnt so much about bread making from Paul this week and finally understand what my husband is talking about with reference to sourdough breads in particular.
Paul is very flexible and gave us the opportunity to choose breads that we would like to make such as brioche, pain aux raisin and pain de Campagne, for example. During the week, we baked most of our bread in a wood-fired oven. The week included a visit to a fabulous local market and an afternoon in a local town. The course is based at an organic winery with lovely gites in a beautiful part of Provence owned by Anna and Wilson Thorburn who could not be more welcoming. Highly recommended!!
Hi Paul
Many thanks for an excellent hands-on course today. We both really enjoyed it and learnt a lot.We have been tasting some of the bread at home for our supper and it is all fantastic and really tasty.I hope that we now continue to make bread like this at home ourselves.Thanks again for a great day.
Paul is the ultimate professional. We had loads of hands-on practise and also got the opportunity to explore the beautiful local area with fantastic scenery. Wilson and Anna our hosts, could not have been more welcoming, and we enjoyed touring their wine making facility at Domaine l’Ancienne Ecole, bringing home several bottles of wine, as well as some of the loaves we baked on the course to share with family and friends. If you are interested in bread making and want to combine it with a “holiday”, then this course is for you.
I enjoyed this last weekend’s course hugely and I learned such a lot. It was a real pleasure and privilege to be tutored by you.
I’ve been making sure I remember all the tips and techniques that you worked through with me and that none slips through the cracks in my memory. I thought I was a moderately experienced domestic baker but spending the time with you has given me a complete step change in my approach.
You are a great teacher. You bring the theoretical and the practical together beautifully and make what is actually quite hard learning so enjoyable that the time passes in a flash.
Looking back over the two days, I am amazed at how much you managed to pack in to so short a time. Certainly, I felt a happy exhaustion at the end of each of the two days!
I just wanted to say a very, very big thank you for the course this past weekend. I learnt a huge amount, picked up so many tips and just ways of making little improvements in so many aspects of breadmaking. Tomorrow I will start my sourdough ready for a Friday bake, and I’m very much looking forward to putting new techniques (autolyse) into practice. Over the thirty or so years I’ve been making bread I have always loved trying something a bit differently, and the autolyse approach is completely new to me; I really want to work with this.
Thank you for your inspiration, common sense, and excellent teaching – and I do wish you every success in France! (Thank you too for including David and James in Saturday’s drinks at the end of the day!)
