Building Blocks Series:  

• July 2 - 4-5PM EDT - Steps in Bread Baking 
• July 16 - 4-5PM EDT - Ingredients & their Functions
• July 30 - 4-5PM EDT - Baker's Math
• August 13 - 4-5PM EDT - Mixing Styles
• August 27 - 4-5PM EDT - Yeasted Preferments

All bread baking builds upon foundational knowledge. We work from a standard set of building blocks to make consistent, reproducible breads; those blocks are critical tools in our baking practice. Bakers speak a common language and understand the world of formulas using a simplified mathematical approach. Ingredients play fundamental roles. Predictable scientific transformations happen in controlled environments. Deepen your knowledge of these baking facts while providing consistency in your baking outcomes. Create predictability in your schedule, clarity in communication with other bakers, and accelerate your education. 

Building Blocks también se ofrecerá en español a partir de septiembre. Estén atentos para más información.  (Building Blocks will also be offered in Spanish beginning in September. Stay tuned for more information.)

Steps in Bread Baking - July 2 (4 - 5 PM)

Bread baking follows a specific routine. Understanding what is happening in these fundamental steps and how to adjust and refine the timeline allows the baker to control the process rather than the product controlling the baker. Recognizing the measurable scientific transformations in the baking timeline also allows the baker to employ best practices for production and problem-solve common flaws. 

Ingredients & their Functions - July 16 (4 - 5 PM)

Just a few ingredients can yield innumerable outcomes if you understand how to manage each ingredient and how it behaves during mixing and baking. Join us to understand the properties of everyday items such as flour, fat, salt, yeast, and eggs and how to manipulate them to achieve your desired product characteristics. 

Baker's Math - July 30 (4 - 5 PM)

Skilled and experienced bakers view their formulas mathematically, using a set of ratios to determine a formulation. Understanding these simple ratios and manipulations allows bakers to anticipate outcomes before they ever scale an ingredient and to formulate it accurately. The bonus is that this technique directly translates into accurate, scalable growth, saving the baker time and money. Once you’ve cracked the code of baker’s math, you’ll wonder how you ever baked without this understanding. 

Mixing Styles - August 13 (4 - 5 PM)

In the era of automated mixers, it’s easy to fall into a mindset of automation. How and how much you mix your dough directly impacts the final product's texture, flavor, shelf life, and overall quality. Not all doughs should use the same approach to mixing.  Join us to learn best practices in controlling fermentation, crumb quality, and volume through understanding the three common mixing styles: short, improved, and intensive. 

Yeasted Preferments - August 27 (4 - 5 PM)

Not all preferments are created equal! Minor changes in your preferment and dough make-up can yield dramatic differences in outcomes. Understand the role of hydration, salt, and yeast percentages in your final product's timeline, flavor, and texture. We will explore using pate fermentee, poolish, biga, and sponges. 

Melina Kelson, Education and Events Manager

Melina Kelson has always been happiest making, discussing, and enjoying thoughtfully prepared foods. Melina is a Certified Master Baker, Certified Executive Pastry Chef, a Certified Bread Baker, Certified Viennoiserie Baker, Certified Sous Chef, and Certified Hospitality Educator. She spent 18 years teaching baking and pastry arts in a highly regarded professional program. There, she took the lead on writing artisan bread and laminated dough classes and helped drive the curriculum along the path of continuous improvement.

She served four terms on the Board of Directors of The Bread Bakers Guild of America and was the three-time Director of WheatStalk (Camp Bread) and the chair of the Certification Committee, which has written defining and well-regarded levels for bakers. She has been the Education and Events Manager for the Bread Bakers Guild of America since 2022.

Her deep commitment to sustainability informs her approach to baking and living. An edible landscape surrounds her wood-fired oven, where she operated a micro-bakery, Bootleg Batard, just outside of Chicago. She also partners with local small grain associations for grain research and development in a changing environment.

Building Blocks Series:  

• July 2 - 4-5PM EDT - Steps in Bread Baking 
• July 16 - 4-5PM EDT - Ingredients & Their Functions
• July 30 - 4-5PM EDT - Baker's Math
• August 13 - 4-5PM EDT - Mixing Styles
• August 27 - 4-5PM EDT - Yeasted Preferments

All bread baking builds upon foundational knowledge. We work from a standard set of building blocks to make consistent, reproducible breads; those blocks are critical tools in our baking practice. Bakers speak a common language and understand the world of formulas using a simplified mathematical approach. Ingredients play fundamental roles. Predictable scientific transformations happen in controlled environments. Deepen your knowledge of these baking facts while providing consistency in your baking outcomes. Create predictability in your schedule, clarity in communication with other bakers, and accelerate your education. 

This robust series is available only to members of the Guild.  Join today so that you can learn with us.  Memberships are available for individuals and for companies.  Company-level memberships allow you to include team members and colleagues in the benefits of membership, including enrolling additional students for this series.  You can join and register for Building Blocks at the same time here.

Building Blocks también se ofrecerá en español a partir de septiembre. Únase a nuestra lista de correo para obtener más información.  (Building Blocks will also be offered in Spanish starting in September. Join our mailing list to learn more.)

Steps in Bread Baking - July 2 (4 - 5 PM)

Bread baking follows a specific routine. Understanding what is happening in these fundamental steps and how to adjust and refine the timeline allows the baker to control the process rather than the product controlling the baker. Recognizing the measurable scientific transformations in the baking timeline also allows the baker to employ best practices for production and problem-solve common flaws. 

Ingredients & Their Functions - July 16 (4 - 5 PM)

Just a few ingredients can yield innumerable outcomes if you understand how to manage each ingredient and how it behaves during mixing and baking. Join us to understand the properties of everyday items such as flour, fat, salt, yeast, and eggs and how to manipulate them to achieve your desired product characteristics. 

Baker's Math - July 30 (4 - 5 PM)

Skilled and experienced bakers view their formulas mathematically, using a set of ratios to determine a formulation. Understanding these simple ratios and manipulations allows bakers to anticipate outcomes before they ever scale an ingredient and to formulate it accurately. The bonus is that this technique directly translates into accurate, scalable growth, saving the baker time and money. Once you’ve cracked the code of baker’s math, you’ll wonder how you ever baked without this understanding. 

Mixing Styles - August 13 (4 - 5 PM)

In the era of automated mixers, it’s easy to fall into a mindset of automation. How and how much you mix your dough directly impacts the final product's texture, flavor, shelf life, and overall quality. Not all doughs can use the same approach to mixing.  Join us to learn best practices in controlling fermentation, crumb quality, and volume through understanding the three common mixing styles: short, improved, and intensive. 

Yeasted Preferments - August 27 (4 - 5 PM)

Not all preferments are created equal! Minor changes in your preferment and dough make-up can yield dramatic differences in outcomes. Understand the role of hydration, salt, and yeast percentages in your final product's timeline, flavor, and texture. We will explore using pate fermentee, poolish, biga, and sponges. 

Melina Kelson, Education and Events Manager

Melina Kelson has always been happiest making, discussing, and enjoying thoughtfully prepared foods. Melina is a Certified Master Baker, Certified Executive Pastry Chef, a Certified Bread Baker, Certified Viennoiserie Baker, Certified Sous Chef, and Certified Hospitality Educator. She spent 18 years teaching baking and pastry arts in a highly regarded professional program. There, she took the lead on writing artisan bread and laminated dough classes and helped drive the curriculum along the path of continuous improvement.

She served four terms on the Board of Directors of The Bread Bakers Guild of America, and was the three-time Director of WheatStalk (Camp Bread) and the chair of the Certification Committee, which has written defining and well-regarded levels for bakers. She has been the Education and Events Manager for the Bread Bakers Guild of America since 2022.

Her deep commitment to sustainability informs her approach to baking and living. An edible landscape surrounds her wood-fired oven, where she operated a micro-bakery, Bootleg Batard, just outside Chicago. She also partners with local small grain associations for grain research and development in a changing environment.

El 5 de Augusto 2024 4:00 pm EST

August 5 2024 4:00 pm EST

Aumenta Las Ventas de tu Pequeño Negocio Usando Las Redes Sociales y Una Lista de Correos Electrónicos 

Un curso de dos horas donde veremos conceptos básicos del mercadeo y ventas: 

• Cómo definir a tu cliente ideal 

• Cómo hablarlea ese cliente en tu voz 

• Cómo utilizar Instagram para potenciar tus ventas y acercarte a tus clientes 

• El valor de tener una lista de correos electrónicos y por qué esto es algo que NO PUEDE FALTAR en tu negocio, por más pequeño que sea. 

Dictadapor Edna Cochez, chef y panadera panameña con experiencia en usar las redes sociales y un "newsletter" para lograr ventas arriba de 100K en el 2023.  Edna compartirá su experiencia de aprendizaje acerca del tema y cómo conocer estas herramientas puede representar una manera mucho más económica de mercadearse para un negocio pequeño, que invertir en los medios de comunicación tradicionales.  Habrá una sesión de preguntas y respuestas al final de la sesión. 

Growing your Small Business Sales Using Social Media and Digital Mailing Lists.  

In this talk, we cover the importance of developing effective social media strategies according to your business and target audience, and how, if used effectively as a true marketing tool, it can help you increase sales and understand your customers´ needs, at a much lower cost than traditional advertising methods.  We will discuss how to create compelling content without spending hours doing so, how to choose the correct platform, and why more followers does not necessarily mean more sales.  Attendees gain practical insights, actionable tips and tools that Edna herself uses in her business, and real-world examples to leverage the power of social media for business growth and success.  

The second part of the workshop will touch upon why email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach your customers, using real business examples and statistics, and why it works in tandem with a social media strategy to amplify your sales and your brand message.  We will discuss fundamental concepts of how to start a newsletter, which platforms to choose from, and how to go about getting subscribers, all while doing it in a sustainable, consistent way, for small to medium-sized business owners. 

By the end of this two-hour course you will learn basic sales and marking concepts such as: 

• How to identify your ideal audience 

• How to communicate with your client using your voice 

• How to use Instagram for potential sales and to connect with your customers 

• The value of having an email list and why this is something that CANNOT BE MISSING in your business, no matter how small it may be. 

Taught by Edna Cochez, Panamanian chef and baker with proven social media success;in 2023, Edna usedsocial networks and a newsletter to achieve sales of over 100K in 2023. Edna will share her learning experience on the topic and how knowing these tools can represent a much more economical way to market for a small business than investing in traditional media. There will be a question-and-answer session at the end of the session. 

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

October 29, 2024 / 7PM - 8:30PM ET

Members Only

Extensive research shows that 11 out of 10 people love chocolate. A critical ingredient in any bakery, chocolate can be a little mysterious. Join chocolatiers Donald Wressell and Josh Johnson for a guided tour of the world of chocolate. They will take you through a comprehensive tasting and cover best practices in working with this divine ingredient.

The Guittard Chocolate Company will ship a chocolate tasting kit to sample during the virtual session.  You must register by October 14, 2024 to receive that kit, but may participate even without it.

Many thanks to our partners at Guittard for making this class available to our members!

Donald Wressell, Executive Chef

Growing up in Issaquah, Washington, Donald Wressell credits much of his cooking career to his grandmother.  When he was seven, the duo would watch The Galloping Gourmet and entranced by the flipping, stirring, and sautéing, Wressell decided to become a chef.

As a young adult, he enrolled in the Washington State Chef Association Culinary program and continued to garner pastry expertise through positions at the Westin Hotel in Seattle, Watergate Pastry in Washington D.C. where he worked with Jean-Louis Palladin and the Breakers Hotel Sky Room in Long Beach, California.

He worked at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia in 1986 and remembers this as a formative time working with Executive Chef Jean-Marie Lacroix “who was brilliant with food and people.”  In 1987, Wressell was named Executive Pastry Chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.  It was here that he wooed the hotel’s celebrity clientele with the sweet creations of his hands and humor.  While at the Four Seasons, Wressell made the City of Beverly Hills’ 75th Anniversary cake, a gâteau enjoyed by 10,000 people.  He continued to mix, frost and pipe at the hotel for 19 years. In 2015, he was invited to make the cake for Beverly Hills’ 100^th birthday, this time for 15,000 people.  The celebration took place April 27, 2014. 

In 2006, Wressell joined San Francisco Bay Area based Guittard Chocolate Company as the Corporate Pastry Chef. “I have used Guittard chocolate both professionally and personally and I was thrilled at the opportunity to be the pastry chef for the oldest family run chocolate company in the U.S.  I have always loved working with chocolate; it’s an amazing food with magical qualities.  What other food can be made into decorative shapes and visual amusements that not only tastes good but has incredible food value?”

Wressell’s accolades are many.  In 1998 and 1999, he was named one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs by Chocolatier Pastry Art & Design magazine and in 2003 he was named Southern California’s Restaurant Writers Pastry Chef of the Year. He is the recipient of both Silver and Gold medals in the Grand Salon Culinaire and the winner and in 1995 won the opportunity to go to the Les Masters du Chocolate competition.  His pastry pedigree also includes “Pastry Chef of the Year” by the Organizing Committee of the 2005 National Pastry Team Championships as well as recognition from the White House for his work with the US Pastry Team. 

Wressell’s experience in domestic and international pastry competitions is unparalleled. As team captain during the 2011 National Pastry Team Championship, his team was awarded a Gold medal and First Place in Degustation. In 2012 as team captain at the World Pastry Championship, his team was awarded the Silver medal and First Place in Degustation. In addition, Wressell has represented Team USA seven times at the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie, as a competitor, team captain, coach, manager and/or on the jury. He competed for the first time in 1993; in 1995 he was Team Captain leading the USA to a Bronze (the first medal won by Team USA at that time). In 1999, he was Coach/Manager with USA winning the Bronze. In 2001, he was Coach/Manager when the team won its first (and only) Gold medal to date. In 2003, he was Chairman/Coach/Manager/Judge with Team USA placing 4th. In 2005, he was Team Captain winning the Bronze. Most recently, in 2015, he was Coach/Manager winning the Bronze.

He has also made many television appearances: The Challenge Series; Coupe Du Monde; and Pastry Team Championship documentaries on the Food Network, ET, Roseanne Barr Show, Access Hollywood, Good Morning America and Chuck Henry’s Travel Cafe.

Today, Wressell continues to develop recipes using Guittard Chocolate and does speaking engagements, conducts demonstrations, participates in international competitions and leads his signature “Guest Chef Series” classes at the Guittard Chocolate Studio in Los Angeles. When he’s not in the pastry or demo kitchen or masterminding the design and production of a larger-than-life birthday cake, he derives great pleasure in his own kitchen and woodworking workshop.

Josh Johnson, Products Application Director

Josh Johnson is the Pastry Chef of Guittard Chocolate Company, the revered San Francisco Bay Area family-owned chocolate maker, where he brings his celebrated craft, artistry and palate in developing new recipes and ideas with Executive Pastry Chef Donald Wressell.

Josh has competed in and won the National Pastry Team Championship with team captain Donald Wressell and teammates Scott Green and Della Gossett.  The team went on to win Best Dégustation and Silver Medal overall at the 2012 World Pastry Championship in Las Vegas. Josh also competed in the 2015 Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie with teammates Scott Green and John Kraus, coached by Ewald Notter and Donald Wressell, where they brought home the Bronze medal.

Josh started working in pastry as a teenager in his uncle’s pastry shop in Illinois and honed his skills training under the tutelage of mentor Sébastien Canonne, M.O.F., and pastry chefs En-Ming Hsu, World Pastry Champion, and François Payard. He was Executive Pastry Chef at Everest in Chicago, co-owner of Cocoa Bean Fine Desserts in Geneva, Illinois, an instructor at The French Pastry School and, most recently, Head Pastry Chef at Destination Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin.

He is inspired by chocolate’s infinite variety of flavor profiles and its versatility as an ingredient that can also be sculpted and shaped to delicious and delightful effect.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community  

December 3, 2024 4:00 - 6:00 pm ET

Rosca de Reyes, que significa corona de rey, es un pan tradicional enriquecido que tiene un profundo simbolismo en la tradición latina. Se sirve para la Epifanía, el 6 de enero, pero se disfruta durante toda la temporada navideña. 

Se elabora con una masa dulce decorada con pasta de azúcar y una variedad de frutas confitadas para simbolizar las joyas. Una figura de bebé está escondida dentro de la masa solo para ser descubierta por la persona que tiene el honor de organizar una tamaleada (fiesta de tamales), el 2 de febrero (Día del Candelero). 

La masa mantecosa de Rosca de Reyes, parecida a un brioche, contiene ricos componentes lácteos, realzados con agua de azahar. 

Al final de esta clase, los estudiantes: 

• Comprender el método de mezcla adecuado de masas enriquecidas estilo brioche. 

• Aprende a modernizar sabores e inclusiones de una masa tradicional. 

• Aplique las mejores prácticas para fermentar, darle forma, hornear y decorar este icónico pan navideño. 

Rosca de Reyes, meaning king’s crown or king’s wreath, is a traditional enriched bread that has deep symbolisms in Latin tradition. It is served for Epiphany, January 6th, but enjoyed throughout the holiday season. 

It’s made using a sweet dough decorated with sugar paste and a variety of candied fruits to symbolize jewels. A baby figurine is hidden within the dough only to be discovered by the person who has the honor to host a tamaleada (tamale party), on February 2nd (Candleman’s Day). 

The buttery Brioche-like, Rosca de Reyes dough contains rich dairy components, enhanced by orange blossom water.  

By the end of this class, students will: 

• Understand proper mixing method of brioche-style, enriched doughs. 

• Learn how to modernize flavors and inclusions of a traditional dough. 

• Apply best practices to fermenting, shaping, baking, and garnishing this iconic holiday bread. 

Alex Peña was born and raised in the Los Angeles area where his family owned and operated LaMorenita Tortilleria & Bakery for twenty years. He is a French culinary trained chef with a background in Pan Mexicano who has always been inspired by pan dulce and the evolution behind the iconic breads. 

Currently, Alex is the Director of Research & Development and Technical Services for Bellarisein Pasadena, California. As a global leader in bakery ingredients, my perspective on the bakery industry has come full circle. Additionally, he operates a beautiful cooking school designed for home bakers who would like to expand their skills.  

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community