Accidental ciabatta and scaling a mountain

Friday marked our first official day in the teaching kitchen. We had worked in there before, but only as part of our orientation activities, so this was the first time we worked in teams to execute recipes start to finish.
My teammates are Emily and Pablo (poor kid, he's the only male in our baking and pastry section), and they're both really great to work with. We were responsible for making 5 loaves of bread plus two lemon pound cakes each. The pound cakes turned out really well - golden in color, dense and crumbly. Here's a photo of our finished product:

The bread, on the other hand, was not so great. Or rather, it was delicious, but not what we had set out to make. We were attempting to make a lean dough French bread, but after scaling out our ingredients Chef decided that the dough was looking a little dry and poured excessive amounts of water in each of our mixtures. So instead of a structured, moldable dough, we ended up with a drippy doughy mess. We did our best to roll them into boules and batard shapes, but as soon as we put them all on the canvas to go into the oven they flattened out like pancakes. As the entire class was bemoaning our failure, Chef informed us that we had actually, accidentally, made the perfect ciabatta loaves. Because of its loose cell structure and flattened shape, ciabatta needs a high water to flour ratio. So even though we didn't end up with the product we had planned to bake, we came out of class with some delicious bread to take home and enjoy.

It was really fun to spend a whole day working in the kitchen for the first time, but it was definitely a little chaotic. Nobody in my class has figured out where the ingredients/equipment are located, and we haven't quite gotten the baking routine down yet. Everyone was running around like crazy all day. Hopefully we'll start figuring it out soon and it'll become easier and more organized.

On Saturday I went on a hike with a group of my friends from my dorm. We went to Mount St. Helena and climbed to the top of the southern peak, which was about 8 miles round trip. Parts of it were difficult and it was definitely tiring but it was totally worth it, especially when we got to picnic on the top of the mountain. This photo was taken on the way up:

My friends, from left to right, are Andrew, Shandell, Natalie, Katie, and Michael.

Everyone showered and rested when we got home from the hike, and when we came back downstairs to the dorm common room, we found Michael in the kitchen cooking us dinner. He's from Nigeria and he cooked us the most amazing Nigerian fried rice with shrimp. It was probably the best meal I've had since I got here, which is crazy because Michael is in my class and just got into the teaching kitchen two weeks ago.

I had the most amazing weekend hanging out with friends, eating delicious food, and (occassionally) working on my homework. I'm a little nervous because I have my first CIA quiz tomorrow in my Baking Ingredients and Equipment Technology class, but I think I'll have enough time to study tonight so hopefully it'll be okay. And I know this week will go by really quickly because break is coming up on Friday. I love it up here, but I'm excited to come back home in four days. See you all soon!