Cooking classes: Jamie Oliver’s truck, culinary scholarships and bread from scratch

Looking to teach your kids (or anyone else) how to break the fast-food habit? Television chef Jamie Oliver’s Big Rig Teaching Kitchen will be visiting South Los Angeles in April. There will be a series of free cooking classes beginning April 8 and running through April 25. Sign up online.

The one-hour cooking classes will cover things like pancakes, fajitas, making fast food at home, spaghetti and meatballs and DIY pasta sauces. They will be held at the MLK Outpatient Center at 1670 East 120th St., near the corner of 120th and Compton Avenue. The event is sponsored by the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation (USA) and the California Endowment. For more information, visit the website.

Want to do some good while eating great? Check out the C-CAP Dinner Party Series. Organized by the Careers Through Culinary Arts Programs, a group that awards scholarships to high school students who want to cook professionally, the next one is coming April 7 at DOMA restaurant and will be cooked by DOMA chef Dustin Trani, a C-CAP alum and one of Gayot’s “Top 5 Rising Chefs in the U.S.” Tickets are $150 per person, including tax and tip, and all proceeds will go directly to local Los Angeles C-CAP students. For reservations, visit Brown Paper Tickets.

DOMA, 362 N. Camden Dr., Beverly Hills, (310) 277-7346.

If you’re interested in learning to bake bread from scratch — really scratch — check out the all-day cooking classes being offered at Pasadena micro-miller Grist & Toll. The next one is April 13. Topics will include a demonstration of milling flour from grain, comparing natural leavening and commercial yeast, how to maintain a starter, working with baker’s percentages, understanding fresh grains, the importance of proper folding techniques and much more.

Classes are $125 and will be taught by Nan Kohler of Grist and Toll and Michael O’Malley. A light lunch will be provided and each student will leave with freshly baked bread and a whole-grain home beginner’s kit containing active starter, flour, a banneton and other essential bread baking tools.

Grist & Toll, 990 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, (626) 441-7400.

[For the record 3:54 p.m. PDT March 26: An earlier version of this post reported that the classes at Jamie Oliver’s Big Rig Teaching Kitchen would end April 12. The classes end April 25.]

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