Culinary Exclusive: Make Your Own Bread
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port
Cherbourg (Normandy), France
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activityLevel
Moderate Activity
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excursionType
All
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wheelchairAccessible
No
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startingAtPrice
$300
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minimumAge
Information Not Currently Available
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duration
Approximately 6½ Hours
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mealsIncluded
Meals included
Dating from the 18th century, the Coudrairie watermill operated until 1935. After being abandoned for 64 years, it recently re-opened, having been renamed Marie Ravenel after a miller poetess who lived in the watermill for 31 years. Today, you'll discover this ancient watermill and learn how to make you own bread here.
This bread-making workshop will be truly hands-on, from combining the ingredients to kneading and shaping the dough into a ball, a flower, or a brioche. As you work, your tutor-baker will reveal the secrets of the fermentation of the dough and the heating of a wood-burning oven.
Because making the flour is such an important part of bread-making, you'll spend some time visiting the mill itself. The mill is quite exceptional -- it consists of a large wheel with a diameter of about seven feet in African wood; the reach has a capacity of 132,000 gallons of water; and the building sports a beautiful thatched roof. Inside, you will see the whole gear system as well as the two pairs of grinding wheels, one of which is still used to make flour. The permanent exhibition called Intérieur Normand will immerse you in the everyday life of yesteryear.
Your workshop includes a lunch of freshly-prepared pizza cooked in the mill's wood-fired oven.
At the end of the workshop, once your bread is baked, each new apprentice baker proudly leaves with his/her very own loaf of bread. Enjoy the drive back to Cherbourg.