If you've even done/taught a sourdough class...

[bathroomadviceneeded]

I've been baking sourdough at home for many years now, and I've got pretty good at it. I have no professional baking training or experience, I'm an amateur who works in an unrelated profession.

After baking for several church events, I've been approached by our women's minister to run a sourdough class as part of a women's ministry event. I'm thrilled to do this, but I feel a bit out of my depth.

For those who have either taught a sourdough class, or participated in one, I have a few questions.

• How many people in the class? I'm thinking 8-12 maximum.
• What did the participants bring? I suppose an apron, mixing bowl, a bag to take dough home in... anything else?
• How long did it go for? I'm thinking 3 hours for mine to allow for stretch and folds etc.
• What did you learn to make? I think a classic artisan boule would be the best thing to start with.
• What did the participants leave with? Since it takes at least 12 hours to rise, what do they go home with? A dough to be risen and baked at home?
• What else did you provide? I imagine a jar of starter each (to take home), plus flour.
• Did the teacher have a dough ready for the oven that was baked in the class (that they had prepared earlier?)?
• Did you actually cut into a cooked loaf, or eat any bread in the class?

The women's minister has asked me how much it would cost (I don't want to be paid) so I was thinking 5 per person to cover the cost of the flour and electricity costs. There are two ovens at church, that could probably hold 4 loaves in total.

Thanks for your advice!

Are there hygienic facilities for 8-12 people to be kneading bread? I would be inclined to have one that you made earlier, and just do a demonstration and give them the recipe. A jar of starter to take home would be nice. If you’ve never demonstrated or taught a class I would recommend running through the whole session in your own kitchen to make sure you get everything in the right order and give them the correct list of equipment and ingredients.

The one I attended was in the teachers home and she used her kitchen. We all measured our ingredients and handled the dough ourselves but she had one that was ready to bake so we watched how she did that. I can’t actually remember what happened to the dough we practised on. You have to do the process yourself rather than watch in my opinion. She gave us all a jar of starter to take away. The first loaf I basked was the best I e ever done, from then on it’s just got worse. Bread does have holes, is heavy and tasteless. I think I’ve forgotten some key info.

There were four of us

Thank you, very helpful. There is a small room next to the church kitchen that would comfortable fit a long table for about 8 people.

@Meltedcandlewax thats how I was imagining it. It’s a lot of preparation to have 8 individual boule doughs ready, plus 8 jars of fed starter for them to use and take home, so I might need to reduce the number of participants.