When we were trying to figure out all that we wanted to do while in Paris this time, I brought up the idea of looking for a cooking class we could take.  Ben loves to cook and well, I like to pretend that I’m Sabrina in the movie “Sabrina” where in the older version, she moves to Paris and takes cooking classes (in the 90s version, she moves to Paris to work with a photographer!).  So, we both were able to enjoy it and make some tasty baguettes while we were at it.

Our friend Joel actually flew in from Hong Kong where he’s been for the last two years and met us for this cooking class first thing in the morning.  I’m not sure how much information I actually retained, but it was a lot of fun and the chef was great!  La Cuisine Paris does all of their classes in English and they have several different types of classes they offer, so we will definitely try another class when we come back!

The thing I love about classes like these in Europe is that you get people from all over… between us, Joel and everyone else, we were from South Carolina, New York City, Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, Australia and the chef was actually from Paris :-)

There was lots of slamming and stretching of dough for the baguettes.  Seriously, about 20 minutes worth!  But Joel was doing great and gave me the perfect shot to show what we were doing.

We also made what’s called Fougasse, which is similar to Italian focaccia bread.  We added rosemary to the dough and then added all sorts of toppings.

While those were proofing and the baguette bread had risen and was ready, we learned how to fold the dough and get the baguette shape.

Ben’s baguettes looked much better than mine did.

The fougasse is usually taken to dinner at a friend’s house so the key is to make it “sharable” with pieces to tear off (hence the cutting that’s going on).

Don’t they look delicious??

While those were cooling, we added the slash marks and cuts to the baguettes… I never knew scissors were involved at all!

Those two little guys?  We had extra dough so we made some rolls.  Mine had chocolate chips in them :-)

I was TERRIBLE at the slash marks!!

My scissored baguette looked much better.  Although I guess they tasted about the same!

The best part was taking our freshly cooked bread up to Montmartre to eat with some fruit and cheese!  Sadly I was too busy eating to get any photos :-)