Dough You Can't Eat?! What The Heck?

Odd day at school today. Odd and labor intensive. We made a dough that is going to slow rise in the fridge overnight and will be turned into grissini or very thin, slightly crisp breadsticks tomorrow. Then we made a dough that we did nothing but knead and shape, knead and shape, knead and knead and knead and shape. This dough, called pain morte or dead dough, can be used to create bread showpieces (who knew?!) or sculptures made out of dough but we used the dough to learn and practice braiding bread. Since the dough doesn't have yeast in it, it doesn't rise and though I suppose that you could eat it, I really wouldn't suggest it. We made the pain morte to practice how to braid dough because tomorrow we are making challah-like bread which is a very egg-y and rich dough perfect for french toast and grilled cheese and I'm verra excited about that. When reading cookbooks, challah is something that I frequently see as an ingredient and I'm really excited to learn to bake it and I guess if I'm going to bake it then I need to know how to braid and shape it too but oy vey was today a lot of work. Pain Morte is basically rye flour with a sugar syrup mixed and then kneaded into it and because rye flour is really likes to absorb liquid, it needs to have liquid (the sugar syrup) in almost constantly. Basically, we would learn how to braid the dough, we would braid the dough and then it would need to be re-kneaded, have liquid added and then be kneaded again. Also, my partner's dough was really, really dry and so I tried to help her out after I had done my own dough. It might not seem like anything strenuous but you have to remember that the liquid that we were adding to the dough was sugar and so the sticky-ness of the sugar was making the little bits of rye in the flour stick to my hands and the table. I really didn't like the lesson today even though I liked learning how to braid the dough -- it just seemed like a lot of hassles and I know I'm whining now, but it was nothin' compared to the amount of whining that was going on in the classroom...my fellow students are even bigger princesses than I. The good thing about ALL the kneading of today is that I am feeling like I can knead a lot longer without feeling tired. In other words, ladies and gents, the bread be makin' be buff.

Anyway, my newly-buff princess self is rather excited for tomorrow. Hopefully there will be wonderful pictures of braided bread for y'all to see. Today's picture is of the pain morte that has been braided into a five-strand braid. Sorry for the ugliness of the color, we used cinnamon because all the other fun colorings (like turmeric and paprika) had been taken.