Freshly Baked Bread

L-R: Blueberry bread and Olive, Rock Salt and Oregano Bread

Bread is one of those evil but delicious things that you shouldn't really eat too much of, but every time you're presented with a slice of beautiful artisan made loaf, you really can't resist. My favourite is a freshly baked olive bread with a bit of real butter. Yummo!

Today I was lucky enough to visit the Masterchef Live show as I had been given complimentary tickets. I didn't really know what to expect, but as Masterchef fans, I decided to bring my Mum along with me to check it out.

Held at the Horden Pavilion, the exhibition was enormous and covered two huge halls. There were demonstrations, cooking classes, exhibitors with stalls and pop-up cafes. Mum and I have never turned our hands at bread baking before, so we couldn't go past the Brasserie Bread bread-making course. I've made about a million cupcakes, slices and cakes, but bread has always been something I'm a bit scared of making - it seems fiddly and volatile. Under the amazing guidance of our baker Matt Brock, we spent an hour developing our bakery skills. The queues at the exhibition were ridiculous and we had to wait for an hour and a bit in order to get into this hands-on cooking demo, but it was definitely worth it!

The result of our bread-making course is the above photo, which took us an hour of kneading and 'throwing' the bread onto the table. It actually doesn't need any complicated ingredients, it just takes a while to work the bread and then let it rest. You're supposed to work the bread for two minutes, then let it rest for two minutes and continue that process for a total of 24 minutes. It's a really good way to let some aggression out, as the more ever the air you put into the bread, the more light and fluffy the bread will be. 

Apart from the cooking course we also watched a show; a cook-off between George Colombaris' sous-chef, called Josh, and Season Three Masterchef contestant Hayden Quinn. Hosted by George himself, the two competitors went head-to-head in a 'Mystery Box Challenge', with their key ingredients being a tomato, an avocado, a piece of sashimi-grade Tuna, some quail eggs and some asparagus. Both chefs managed to produce a really delicious looking starter in under seven minutes. That's pretty impressive - it usually takes me about seven minutes just to decide what I want to cook. Hayden put together a carpaccio with a spicy mayonnaise and an asian-style vinaigrette. Josh created an avocado puree with cubes of tuna and poached quail eggs. The son of Giovanni Pilu - owner of Pilu in Freshwater - was the judge and he chose Hayden as the clear winner. The show was actually being recorded to then be aired on TV, so there were production and camera crews everywhere. The Masterchef Katy Perry theme song played and it was just as if you were watching the show at home... although I guess that's probably why they decided to name the event Masterchef Live.


It was a great event - although there were possibly too many people - and to see some of my cooking idols, such as Kylie Kwong, Gary Mehigan and Giovanni Pilu in the flesh was very cool.