Last week, Carlsbad had the honor of hosting the nationally traveling Grainbakers class, taught by Caitlin Jewell, the founder and key instructor who has been teaching for more than six years.
Grainbakers is a class centered around the baking and preparation of pretzels. The class travels America, stopping in cities like Austin, San Francisco and Boston. The classes take place in breweries around the country, as students can bake bread from the grains used in the brewing process.
“I used to own a brewery,” said Jewell, who had owned both a brewery and two restaurants in Boston before the pandemic. Like all non-essential businesses, Caitlin’s were heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. “They closed every bit of it because of the pandemic. So we had 90 employees at the beginning of that, so it was pretty devastating.”
It was in her ownership of her brewery that she learned how to bake pretzels.
Owning a brewery and seeing the community it cultivated opened her eyes to the power of breweries.
Since the shutdown of her brewery, Jewell started traveling America, going to breweries in major cities and teaching her pretzel class. Burgeon Brewing in Carlsbad is one of many breweries she visits.
The class itself features many aspects of the pretzel making process.
“Tonight, they’re gonna roll pretzels. They’re gonna boil pretzels, they’re gonna bake pretzels, and then they’re going to butter them and put flavorings on them,” said Jewell in relation to the content of the class.
The class promises to teach students a wide plethora of skills regarding the procurement of delicious pretzels.
The class itself pulls the attention of many people; avid baker and SCHS senior Cosima Lawler expressed an interest in joining the class, “Yes, I’d be so down to going to that,” she said.
Lawler has experience and mainly enjoys baking brownies and cookies, but always has enjoyed pretzels.
But its not just bakers that attend, Grainbakers receives attendees of various ages and backgrounds. Jewell said, “Tonight, we have a six year old in class, and Monday night we had people in their 80s, all over the place.”
It’s obvious that Grainbakers is interesting to a large range of people, especially families. “I’m seeing a lot of young people with their parents, so it’s like a nice family date, typically with teenagers or college kids,” said Caitlin.
“I’m a Montessori kid,” said Jewell, in relation to the Montessori style of teaching which emphasizes individual learning and self-directed activities. She uses this style of teaching in her classes in order to encourage natural development so her students can continue to bake pretzels at home.
Grainbakers is a great way to explore baking as a hobby, get to know the community and hang out with friends and family. Make sure to check it out when it returns to Carlsbad.
