< dough was flying Monday when the LDC kitchen was open to students during Bon Appétit’s “Cooking 101.”
The event invited students to enter the kitchen and learn about the process of making pizza. It was a collaboration between Bon Appétit and Firebellies, a student-run cooking club on campus.
“We’re excited for this,” Gibson Price, a sous chef in the LDC who led the event, said before it began. “It’s going to be fun.”
Other participants expressed similar feelings.
“I love pizza,” said Hannah Jones ’15, “so I’m definitely enjoying myself.”
With much enthusiasm, Tien Tran ’15 pitched in, saying, “I’m very excited to be here. It’s making pizza from scratch!”
The class detailed the whole process of pizza-making, including how to make the pizza dough, the chemical reactions yeast creates in the dough, how to stretch the dough, how to toss the dough properly (practicing with a towel beforehand is recommended) and how to make sauce from scratch.
The process that Bon Appétit uses to make the pizzas for the dining halls – a recipe borrowed from the family of the president of Bon Appétit – was also explained.
“It’s all from scratch,” Price said. “What you put into it is what comes out of it.”
Which lead to some great pizza.
“It’s delicious,” Jones said upon trying the pizza she helped create.
“Bon Appétit has been trying to figure out how to do something like this for a while,” said Price. “We met with Firebellies last week, and they suggested midterm break since students have the day off.”
Firebellies, which has now received CSA funding, was started in the fall with the mission of “promoting an understanding of different cultures and backgrounds through the universal language of food.”
The club has hosted a number of smaller events at Dacie Moses and Culinary House.
“Bon Appétit is underappreciated here on campus and they’re a pretty cool company, so we wanted to collaborate with them,” said Emily Pence ’15, one of the founders of Firebellies.
“We hope to do a similar event every midterm break, and students have already suggested other event topics like stir-fry or how to prepare a whole chicken,” Price said.