More fun with croissant dough - berry flan buns and bourbon glazed pecan spirals

I typically have croissant dough in my freezer just waiting to be formed into something delicious. As it turns out, I had a couple of batches that needed to be used for fear that they would soon be over-the-hill soooooo . . . . .

I baked one batch as standard croissants destined for the ever popular twice baked croissant aux amandes.

Freshly baked all butter croissant

Twice baked croissant aux amandes

I divided the other batch in half with two goals in mind - flan buns and pecan spirals. First up - Kouign-amann style berry flan buns. Many of you know about this caramel-y, layered Breton specialty that continues to be very popular in the US. There are specific recipes for K-a dough that differ somewhat from croissant dough, buuuuuuut - you can use croissant dough too! As a matter of fact, it was Chef Xavier Cotte at Le Cordon Bleu Paris who demo’ed Kouign-amann to our class using croissant dough all those years ago. What a treat that was.

Did you realize that Kouign-amann was the subject of the very first post I wrote for this blog back in the fall of 2014! Wow, how time flies.

While I use muffin tins, individual cake pans and ring molds to bake the various twists, spirals and twirls that I make with croissant dough, I love making these in buttered and sugared ring molds. I find they brown much better in the open rings. These are 80 mm (3 inches) in diameter and 2.54 cm (1 inch) high, taller than the usual open tart rings I use for tart making. They’re perfect for this use as well as for other pastries like the aforementioned spirals, twists or twirls.

For a half batch of dough I go for a yield of 9 pastries, rolling the dough out (on a sugared rather than floured surface) to a 12” x 12” square, then cutting nine 4” x 4” pieces. Do your best to keep the corners square, although a little curve never hurt a thing. As you roll, flip the dough from front to back, sprinkling more sugar on as you go. Don’t be shy.

Now simply fold the corners of each piece up, kind of pleating the sides, and set the dough into the buttered/sugared rings. Easy-peasy!

Cover lightly with plastic wrap and give them a 45-60 minute rise - you should see more definition of layers and a general pouffy-ness. Meanwhile heat the oven to 375ºF.

You can bake these au naturel, but here I piped a blob of pastry cream into the center (hence the “flan” label), added some blueberries/raspberries and topped with another blob of cream and a sprinkle of raw sugar. I usually have berries in the freezer and add them frozen to avoid the mushiness and wateriness that happens if they’re thawed first (don’t do it!). It’s also helpful that frozen raspberries are easy to break up into smaller pieces for placement in a smallish space.

Sheesh! I forgot to grab a pic after assembly so shot a quick one after going into the oven. Kind of a cool perspective.

Bake about 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden and the cream set. Once out of the oven I leave them on the sheet pan but gently lift off the rings - they come off much more easily when still warm, before the caramel-y sugar cools.

They’re deelish still slightly warm, but you can also finish cooling them on a wire rack and enjoy the same day.

You can freeze them too. If you do, plan for a treat with morning coffee by heating your oven to 325ºF, take them right out of the freezer, place on a parchment lined sheet pan and thaw/warm for about 15 minutes. If they’re still a bit cool inside, give them another 5 minutes or so. You be the judge.

Next up - crackly glazed pecan spirals.

I’ve previously posted a version similar to this using laminated brioche dough, but here I’m using a slightly different filling and opted for a bourbon butter glaze like the one I used on pound cake a while back. I won’t spend a lot of time on this but just want to share it with you.

For a half batch of croissant dough I’m going for 8 or 9 pastries - just depends on how things roll out.

For the filling blend 28 g/ 2 tablespoons soft unsalted butter with 70 g brown sugar (light or dark, either way). Add a generous teaspoon of spices if you wish - cinnamon or a mixture of your favorites like coriander, cardamom, cinnamon and ginger.

Roll the dough to about a 10”x10” square, spread the filling over it, top it with finely chopped pecans (eyeball it) or your own favorite nut, then roll it up into a log. Cut ~3 cm slices and place them in the center of buttered and sugared rings. You might notice below that I have wrapped two shallower rings together with foil. Since my flan buns were occupying my higher rings, I created my own!

Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let rise about an hour. I hope you can appreciate in the image below the increase in fullness of the dough compared to above.

Bake at 375ºF for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown, which gives you time to make your glaze.

Here you go: heat 2 tablespoons bourbon with 28 g / 2 tablespoons unsalted butter to melt, then stir in 50 g / 1/4 cup granulated sugar, stirring to dissolve. Once the sugar is dissolved bring to a boil for one minute. Remove from the heat and blend the mixture with 50 g / 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar and 2 tablespoons of crème fraiche.

Once out of the oven, remove the rings (sooner than later is always best).

Brush the glaze generously over the spirals. Now pop the tray back in the oven for about 2-3 minutes. The heat makes the glaze crackle and bubble up, although you can certainly omit this step if you prefer a smooth glazed look.

Smooth or crackled, they’re tasty either way.

Have fun creating your own treats using croissant dough. You can do it!

FOOD52 - Genius Desserts

The last thing I want to do is flood inboxes, BUT I just had to make an apology and correction to my cocoa powder post that just published. As I reviewed the post in my own inbox I realized my error right away. I’ve righted my wrong in the post’s content, but for those of you who receive the posts in your email inbox, please take note!

I referred to the above book as “Dessert Genius” rather than its accurate title “Genius Desserts”. What tricks our minds can play on us sometimes, eh?.

This book is fantastic, not only for all of the great recipes, but it’s such fun to read and contemplate the many pearls of baking wisdom within. I highly recommend it.

So kudos to Kristen Miglore, FOOD 52, Ten Speed Press and all the baking geniuses out there. Hurrah!

Happy Baking!

Flourless cocoa walnut cookies from “Genius Desserts”

Baking with Dutch process cocoa powder

Ganache dipped, Swiss meringue swirled cocoa cakes

Dutch process cocoa powder is one of my standby ingredients, always on hand and at the ready. I’ve been using it for years, not only for my standard brownies that are perennially available for the Steve-meister for his regular evening treat, but for MOST recipes calling for unsweetened cocoa powder. Such wonderful flavor.

NOTE: I say “most” because there are some guidelines for using natural vs Dutch processed that have to do with acid/alkali and using chemical leaveners (baking soda, baking powder). Here’s a great summary for you from Serious Eats (a great resource by the way!).

Dutch process you ask? It’s all thanks to Dutch chemist and chocolatier Conrad van Houten (1801-1887) who figured out how to alkalize the acids in cocoa powder to create a more mellow taste experience. I’ve been using Bensdorf high fat Dutch process cocoa powder for some years now (I am of Dutch heritage after all!) and find the end results so tasty. It’s available through a variety of sources which you can easily find online.

Many say that the decision to use natural cocoa powder vs Dutch process is purely personal and indeed a matter of taste. While the natural version may offer a more enhanced and complex chocolate flavor, the “dutched” version is smoother and, in my estimation, more delicious.

French Tarte “O”s

As I review the things I generally bake with cocoa powder (brownies, financier, shortbread, meringues, fudge cookies, flourless sponge and more), I realize that, at least in my current armamentarium, the only one that contains a chemical leavener is Bouchon’s version of that popular chocolate sandwich cookie lining grocery store shelves. I did a bit of research to try and figure out why one would add baking soda to a shortbread cookie since they don’t typically rise like, let’s say, a classic chocolate chip cookie. From the scientific standpoint, the alkaline baking soda seems to contribute to a more even bake, tenderness and even enhances color and flavor.

OK - enough science. Let’s look at some more ways to use Dutch process cocoa powder. along with a couple of straight forward recipes for you.

Cocoa cakes

This tasty babies are from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh’s book “Sweet”. Not unlike financier, the batter is made with similar ingredients but doesn’t involve browning the butter which one would normally do for financier. They are a dream to put together and bake so nicely in individual silicone molds from very mini to larger “muffin” sizes, depending on your mood.

This Silikomart mold (SF022) is one of my favorite ones for simple small cakes - just the right size to enjoy a few bites without feeling you’ve overdone it. Remember - everything in moderations folks!

The wells each hold about 48 g/1.7 ounces (if full) - I get about 15 cakes out of the recipe below. You can easily double the recipe for more!

Heat the oven to 375ºF. If not using silicone molds, buttered mini or regular muffin tins work well. Yield will vary depending on the mold/pan you use.

Melt 140 g/5 ounces unsalted butter (I use a pyrex glass cup on medium power in the micro) and have it at the ready.

In a separate bowl, sift together 40 g all purpose flour, 40 g almond flour and 50 g Dutch process cocoa powder.

Place 120 g (4 large) egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment along with 160 g granulated cane sugar and beat on medium-high for a couple of minutes until thickened and glossy.

Continue on the same speed and drizzle the melted butter down the side of the bowl, beating until combined. Scrape down the sides.

On low speed blend in the dry ingredients. I usually take the bowl off the mixer and finish the blending by hand - you want to make sure none of the dry stuff is sitting on the bottom.

Fill molds about 3/4 full (you can scoop but I prefer piping for more equal portions and less muss) and bake about 15 minutes or until center looks set and springs back when touched. Baking time varies depending on mold size.

Let cool in molds about 10 minutes then turn out onto wire rack to finish cooling.

Once cooled I dipped the tops in ganache (seen above), popped them in the fridge to set the ganache, then gave them a nice swirl of dark chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. Yum. Steve loves these!

Next up - flourless walnut fudge cookies, a François Payard recipe from FOOD52’s “Genius Desserts”. This is an eye opener folks. Plus you can change up the nut choice as you wish - pistachio, pecan, macadamia and more. Nuts and chocolate are a marriage made in heaven if you ask me.

Heat your oven to 350ºF. Line two 1/2 sheet pans with parchment or silicone mats. Place 4 large egg whites in a bowl and allow to come to room temperature (place the bowl in a slightly larger bowl of warm water to speed it up).

Toast 275 g / ~2.75 cups walnuts or nuts of choice on a parchment lined sheet pan for about 10 minutes. You’ll smell the aroma and you’ll know. Let them cool, then chop ‘em up.

Mix together 350 g confectioners sugar, 70 g Dutch process cocoa powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the chopped nuts in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle. Give a quick low speed mix to combine then add the egg whites and a tablespoon vanilla extract with the mixer running. Mix on medium about 3 minutes to thicken.

I prefer smaller cookies so I used my tablespoon scoop to portion the dough out. Place pans into the oven then reduce the temp to 325ºF and bake about 15 minutes until tops lightly crack. Rotate your pans half way through the bake.

Slide cookies with the parchment onto cooling racks. Remove from parchment once cooled (tip - if sticking, lift parchment up and gently peel it off cookies from the bottom OR brush a little water on the undersurface of the parchment and the moisture makes for easier release.)

Mmmmmm - what a delightful chew, wonderful nutty flavor and all around tasty experience. Thanks to François Payard and FOOD52!

To wrap it up, I want to share one more way I’ve used Dutch process cocoa in recent weeks. I often speak of twice baked croissant aux amandes, one of Steve’s and my favorite treats (and a lot of other people too, let me tell you).

I made a chocolate hazelnut version by replacing the almond flour in my basic crème d’amandes with hazelnut flour, left the all purpose flour out and added a hefty tablespoon of Dutch process you-know-what.

It goes like this: take croissants a day or two old; slice them as though you’re going to make a sandwich; dip the whole thing in vanilla simple syrup to moisten and give it a squeeze (don’t worry, it’s great fun!) to get rid of excess.

Now open the croissant, pipe a line of hazelnut-cocoa cream, throw a few chunks of chopped chocolate (something in the 60-ish % ballpark) on the cream, then close the sandwich and pipe another line of cream on top. You can add a sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts too.

I usually assemble my twice baked croissants and hold them in the freezer until baking. Heat the oven to 325ºF (I use convection) and put them in right outta the freezer. Bake about 20-25 minutes - you want the cream nicely golden and set. Cool and enjoy. A nice dusting of confectioners sugar gives them that certain je ne sais quoi.

Our taste test was so enjoyable! The inside had just the right amount of chocolate to accompany the hazelnut cream. Of course we tried one while still slightly warm which only enhanced the experience. Yum. Yum. Yum. And just as good the next day. Yes!

Have fun creating your own chocolate goodies. Until next time - stay safe, stay healthy and get vaccinated when you can!

A New Year's Day planche

Happy New Year everyone!

Steve and I celebrated our quiet, at-home New Year’s Day with an early afternoon repast of a classic planche (literally translated as plank) - basically a wooden board on which one places cheeses, meats, olives, nuts or whatever you decide you’d like to have. What’s wrong with that, eh?

Of course we couldn’t help but reminisce about the first of our two trips to Lille, France in recent years to visit niece Christina, husband Glen and children Kiera and Liam. They inspired us with une planche at their home back then, and this year we shipped a few goodies to their current home in upstate NY to give their own planche a kickstart for the Christmas holiday.

Why not do one of our own to start the New Year on just the right note!

Our three cheese choices came from our favorite cheese vendor here in Grand Rapids MI - The Cheese Lady. Such a wonderful array of cheeses with a great selection from many countries. We opted for “Ewephoria”, a firm, aged sheep’s milk Dutch gouda; taleggio, one of our favorite Italian soft cheeses; Stilton, the classic blue from England.

We added some thin sliced ham and mustard seed salami as our meat options, along with sweet and savory toasted pecans (recipe coming below), an olive assortment (for Steve), coarse ground mustard, delicious olive oil crackers from Italy (also a Cheese Lady purchase) and my homemade baguette. Prosecco joined the ranks for our toast to 2021.

Cornichons are a classic addition to a planche but neither one of us cares for them so sayonara to that. One could also add different spreads or dips along with fresh veggies; chutneys, jams or quince paste; even a little pot of honey to give a drizzle of sweetness to any cheese.

What an enjoyable way to spend a portion of our day. We lifted our glasses to 2021 and plunged in.

Steve went with his own combos, and for my first treat I paired baguette with coarse mustard, taleggio and ham . . . . . .

and then moved to a simple chunk of Ewephoria with the mustard seed salami on baguette, a schmear of Stilton on olive oil cracker and some of the deelish pecans.

From there I mixed and matched my way to feeling very satisfied. Good stuff.

Here’s a bit more on the nuts with a recipe for you below.

These are mmmm good . . . . just the right touches of savory and sweet in my book. Try ‘em - I think you’ll like ‘em, especially if you’re a nut fanatic like I am. You can use a mixture of almonds, walnuts and pecans or just go with one nut - you choose.

A full recipe calls for 4 cups of nuts but, unless we’re having a group over (like essentially never during this pandemic), I usually cut it back to 2 cups. That’s plenty for the two of us to enjoy nibbles over the course of a few days.

NOTE: always start with raw/unsalted nuts. Once you’ve mixed them with the other ingredients you’ll be toasting them in the oven. Even when I’m chopping nuts for cookies or cakes or streusel or whatever, I give them a 10-15 minute 300ºF toasting to bring out the flavor and aroma, then cool and chop.

Heat your oven to 325ºF. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

For 2 cups of raw, unsalted nuts: have your nuts measured and set aside; in a heat proof container or saucepan melt one tablespoon unsalted butter (I do it in a 4 cup Pyrex cup in the microwave); blend in one tablespoon olive oil, one tablespoon brown sugar, one tablespoon dried rosemary (I crush it a bit before adding), 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (once you make them and feel you’d like a bit more, increase to 1 teaspoon the next time), 1/2 teaspoon paprika (I use sweet but if you like smoked, you know what to do), 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander, 1/4 teaspoon cumin and a pinch of cayenne (or more to taste). Stir in the 2 cups of nuts to coat evenly.

Spread out on parchment and bake for 15-20 minutes, stirring a couple of times, until fragrant and browned (if you toast nuts frequently, you just know). Transfer to paper towel to cool. Store covered at room temperature for several days.

Remember that pecans tend to brown more quickly than almonds or walnuts so, if I’m using solely pecans, I pay closer attention and even drop the oven temp a bit. You don’t want those babies to burn, no sirree!

Of course you can ramp up the spices to your own taste, sub in your own favorite spices or herbs and use maple syrup instead of brown sugar. Lots of wiggle room here.

You don’t have to wait for a holiday to enjoy your own version of une planche - you can do it!

To health and safety in 2021. Cheers and warmest wishes to all of you from Steve and myself.

In the holiday cookie kitchen - pocky and a few more!

This is the time of year when many bakers and pastry chefs turn to cookies. What is it about Christmas cookies anyway? I certainly remember decorating the traditional sugar cookies that many moms made during our childhoods. Since then there have been so many variants thrown at us during this lead up to the December holiday time, including magazines devoted solely to holiday cookie baking. Snowballs, rugelach, pfefferneuse, ricciarelli, gingersnaps, thumbprints just to name a few - cookies from all corners of the planet. Pretty amazing.

Pocky is a new one for me. I came across small boxes of these traditional Japanese stick biscuit cookies in the checkout line at a local craft store. Who knew? Coincidentally I became aware of a recipe for the homemade version of these intriguing cookie sticks through NYT’s holiday cookie recipes. I had to give ‘em a try.

The dough is easy to put together - you can do it by hand or in a food processor or in a mixer - you decide. I used the stand mixer approach.

Combine 160 g/1.25 cups all purpose flour, 45 g/3 tablespoons cane sugar, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt in the bowl of a stand mixer; add 56 g/2 ounces cold diced unsalted butter and mix on low several minutes to coarse crumbs (or sand in by hand); add 45 ml/3 tablespoons whole milk mixed with 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract and mix on low to bring the dough together.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it out to form a 5.5”x8” rectangle about 1/4” thick. Wrap in plastic and chill at least an hour or up to several days.

When ready to proceed, heat the oven to 350ºF.

Cut the chilled dough into 1/4 inch thick strips about 5.5” long.

With the palms of your hands roll each strip out to about 7-8 inches long. For me it took a bit of time to get a feel for how this dough wanted to behave. Bottom line - use decisive, firm pressure to keep the dough compacted while rolling it out, doing your best to keep the pieces straight. Pop your pans into the freezer for 10 minutes or so before baking.

Bake about 15 minutes until golden brown. Cool on wire racks.

Some of mine were a little curvy but in general these baked up into rustic looking sticks with a certain charm. They taste to me like the animal crackers we used to eat as kids or some kind of teething biscuit - the Brits might call them a digestive biscuit. The flavor is good - simple and straight forward.

I’ve never tasted the Japanese massed produced version, but I’ve looked at the ingredients and have to say - nuh uh.

For decorating I went with microwave melted, tempered white chocolate, raspberry dust and chopped lightly toasted pistachios . . . . .

and dark chocolate with chopped pecans.

Let’s just say that making pocky is something good for a day when you have little else to do and don’t feel rushed. Puttering with chocolates, nuts or whatever you decide to use to make your own version is good for the creative spirit. Calm and patience - that’s it.

Next up - white chocolate chai buttons using one of my favorite base shortbread recipes. Blend 75 g cane sugar with 200 g room temperature unsalted butter; blend in 250 g all purpose flour, a tablespoon chai spice mix and 56 g/2 ounces finely chopped white chocolate until the dough comes together. Wrap and chill before rolling/cutting shapes of choice or portioning out with a scoop.

For a more nutty/caramel-y taste change the dough up a bit by subbing in dark brown sugar or coarsely ground raw sugar for the cane and sub 50-60 g of whole wheat pastry flour (one of my FAVE ingredients!) for that amount of all purpose. You’ll like the result.

I made my chai mix with a teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and coriander plus a few grates of fresh nutmeg and some grinds of black pepper. There are different DIY chai mixes out there - some might also contain allspice or star anise or cloves. When making your mix, ramp up the quantities to 3 or 4 times the base so you’ll have plenty on hand for next time. Plus you can add it to other things like cakes, butter creams, ice cream base or your own chai beverage.

Heat the oven to 325ºF. Scoop out tablespoon sized rounds and bake on parchment lined sheet pans for about 20-25 minutes until nicely browned. Some of my cookies spread at the edges just a tad so I cleaned them up with a round cutter while still warm just out of the oven. I like things to be neat - it’s how I operate.

Once cooled give them a drizzle of white chocolate and let set.

Here’s a sampling of some of the other cookie treats I’ve been making this month. I’m pretty sure many of you have your favorite holiday recipes plus there are sooooo many to be found out there in books, magazines and online. Pretty overwhelming actually.

These are always a favorite - almond thumbprints!

For gift boxes for a nearby independent/assisted living facility I made cinnamon sugar kids . . . . .

and cocoa trees with a bit of raw sugar crunch and a sprinkling of granulated sugar for that oh so natural woodsy look.

Lots of cute packages for the residents!

Here’s another boxed assortment I put together for the assisted living residence where my mom lives. I like to drop treats off there every now and then to say thanks to the staff, particularly with all they have to do to keep everyone safe during the pandemic. My hat’s off to all of them.

In addition to thumbprints, chai buttons and pocky I added my classic shortbread flavor assortment (to the left of the pocky) of vanilla bean, sea salt caramel, butter pecan and tart cherry. In the forefront are chocolate dipped Earl Grey shortbread made with ground Earl Grey tea, all purpose and hazelnut flour and added orange zest. Chocolate and orange is such a great combo.

Even though Christmas is arriving soon, I may have a few more cookies up my sleeve for this holiday time. Perhaps more gift boxes to hand out to folks for the New Year. Why not!

I’ll leave you with this floral image. We received this orchid from cousin Jen and extended family nearly two years ago after my Uncle John died. It is now blooming for the FIFTH time since then. This time it’s the most prolific with 10 flowers and continues going strong after four months in it’s current bloom. It gives me peace and joy.

May you feel the same as we look ahead to a new year of stability and health for our world.

Caramel apple (or pear) streusel cakes

Isn’t it great when you come across a recipe to which you add your own touches, make many times over and never seem to tire of? This is one of those.

This recipe is my take on an apple sour cream cake from Genius Kitchen, a recipe I came across a couple of years ago. It’s not unlike a blueberry muffin recipe I used to make in days of yore. I’ve made it as the apple version a number of times and it’s always a pleaser but then I thought - hey, how about pear?? Why sure!

Heat the oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9x13 pan OR line muffin tins with papers OR have ready small silicone molds of choice. As some of you know, I’m a huge fan of smaller portions so the latter two options appeal to me.

For the base recipe, prep 2 cups apples or ripe pears (about 2 large) by peeling, coring and chopping them. I often have Fujis around for general eating so I’ll use those but I also like Jonamacs, Jonagolds, Galas or Golden Delicious for this type of baking. Bosc is my go to pear.

In a separate medium bowl blend 260 g/2 cups all purpose flour (you can replace 20-25% of that with whole wheat pastry flour or spelt) with one teaspoon baking soda, one teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. You can add cinnamon or spices as well, although I usually save my spice for the streusel.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, cream 113 g/4 ounces unsalted, room temperature butter with 175 g sugar (I like a mix of 75 g dark brown sugar and 100 g granulated cane sugar or ground raw sugar) for 2-3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 teaspoons boiled cider (optional) and 2 large eggs. Blend and beat well to lighten the mixture.

Add the dry ingredients in three additions, alternating with one cup sour cream (or crème fraiche or full fat yogurt), beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until combined. Stir in the chopped apples or pears.

You have the option for a streusel topping by mixing 1/2 cup toasted and chopped nuts of choice (pecans, walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts are all good in my book!) with a teaspoon of cinnamon or spice mix of choice, 1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar and 2 teaspoons melted unsalted butter - once blended, sprinkle it over the cakes.

Portion the batter into your chosen pan or mold. I made two different sizes in my flexis.

Bake about 20-25 minutes (for small cakes) or 35-40 minutes if making a 9x13 size.

Give them a 5-10 minute cool before gently removing them from the molds, then set them on a wire grid to cool. I often drizzle some caramel on top once out of the oven.

You can leave off the streusel if you plan to garnish the small cakes with your favorite Swiss meringue buttercream like caramel apple cider or a simple whipped caramel mascarpone cream. Yum. Truth be told, I’ve combined a streusel and buttercream garnish and love the combo of the light creamy SMBC with the bit of crunch in the streusel. Yup.

Happy baking. Stay safe, stay healthy and be at peace.

Giving thanks for daily bread: Semolina rye 2 ways

This one was fun to work on. I adapted a King Arthur Baking Company direct dough recipe, created a poolish version and tried it a couple of different ways - boules and standard sandwich loaves. Don’t you just love dough? And bread? And pastries? And . . . . . . . ! It’s all fantastic!!

I’ve written about poolish most recently in my baguette post. It’s in the category of pre-ferments or dough starters and is made up of equal weights flour and water. Fermented for some hours before being added to the final dough, it kick starts the fermentation process, adding more structure, flavor and a longer shelf life to the end result. All great reasons to do it! It just takes a bit of planning ahead.

I turned to Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book “The Bread Bible” for guidelines to convert a direct dough recipe to a poolish method. Generally you’ll weigh 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of the total water in the recipe (in my case 540 g x 0.33 = 180) and 22-33% the amount of the total flour (826 g x 0.22 = 180 give or take a gram) to create your poolish. Mix 180 g cool water, 180 g bread flour plus a pinch of instant yeast, cover and let sit overnight.

Note: as you can see, RLB gives a range within which you can work to create the poolish . I chose the lower ends of the spectrum.

Here’s the result after an overnight room temperature ferment.

Here’s my full recipe. I love writing recipes out by hand - something I got used to during my stage in Paris in 2007. It’s a great way to place the mixing steps along side of the ingredients which for me makes it more user friendly. Notes can easily be added in the margins as well.

I’m a big fan of King Arthur’s all purpose and bread flours, and I turn to Bob’s Red Mill for other specialty flours, in this case semolina and dark rye.

When ready to mix the final dough, weigh out the remaining dough ingredients. Add the warm water to the poolish and mix to loosen. Place the bread, rye and semolina flours and the instant yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, then add the poolish/water to it. At this point I give it an initial blend with a spatula to get things started. Then let the mixer do the work!

Mix on low speed and add the sugar, olive oil and salt. Once the majority of the flour has been blended in, increase speed to 2-4 and knead for 7-8 minutes to a smooth, slightly sticky dough.

Since the dough is a bit sticky, lightly wet your hands and bowl scraper to help you form a ball. Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise 60 minutes.

After the first rise

My first round with the full recipe was to make boules. Many months ago I had snagged a great deal on a 2 1/4 quart Le Creuset lidded enameled cast iron saucepan at Sur La Table (now sadly closed here in Grand Rapids), and I wanted to make a cast iron pot loaf as well as a couple of on-the-baking-stone boules.

Divide the dough into three ~479 g portions and shape three boules. Place one on a piece of floured parchment cut as seen below to allow for easy lifting and placing into the pot. Cover lightly with oiled plastic wrap and let rise one hour.

Now’s the perfect time to heat the oven to 450ºF with the empty covered pot inside. You want the pot nice and hot! I also keep my baking stone on the bottom rack so that heats up for the next two loaves too.

All risen!

Set the other two on a parchment lined overturned sheet pan, cover and let rise one hour.

Note: Since I planned to bake in two batches, I popped these two into the fridge at the end of the rise so as to avoid over proofing while my pot bread was baking.

Risen!

When ready to bake the first loaf, very carefully remove the heated pot from the oven, lift the boule by the parchment and lower it into the hot pot. Don’t burn yourself!!

I opted to snip the top with scissors rather than score it - my pattern came out somewhat catty-wompus - hmmmmm, what exactly was I going for here? Looks like a strange Halloween pumpkin. I realized after the fact that I forgot to snip across each slash like an X to create little ears that would open up during baking. Oh distraction!! At least it didn’t negatively affect the end result!

Brush it with egg wash or a little milk and bake covered for about 20 minutes . . . . .

then uncovered for an additional 10-15 minutes until nicely browned.

Voilà

Lift it out and let cool on a rack. Don’t you think the scissors snips actually lend it a certain carefree character?

For the other two boules, turn the oven down to 400ºF, egg wash, score and slide them, with the parchment, off the sheet pan onto the baking stone which has been heating up all along. I squirt 3-4 ounces of hot water into the metal pan in the bottom of my oven to give a burst of steam, then close the door and let the baking begin.

Give them 10 minutes at 400ºF then turn down to 375ºF for another 20 minutes or so until nicely browned. Cool on a rack (keep your pot bread company!).

My second session with the full recipe was geared to making standard sandwich loaves. Steve and I love having good bread around for toast or sandwiches and this one fits the bill. The primary difference here is dividing the first risen dough into two portions about 715 g each, shaping loaves and tucking them into oiled medium loaf pans.

Cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise about an hour until the dough is nicely mounding above the rims. Meanwhile heat the oven to 375ºF.

Score . . . .

and bake 30- 40 minutes until nicely browned and a digital thermometer in the center reads 190ºF.

While scoring isn’t strictly necessary here, it allows for a more uniform oven rise to the bread.

Remove from the pans and let cool on a rack.

I am so happy with this bread! Both the boules and the loaves have a nice chew to the crust, a tight crumb and the texture holds up well to a hearty sandwich. And let’s not forget morning toast with a fried egg on top or your favorite nut butter and jam. Yes.

Here’s a big cheer for dough and bread making - Hip hip hooray!

Let’s give thanks for safety and health as we look forward to next year and new beginnings. Meanwhile, think about a bit of holiday spirit, cut some local greens and twigs and tuck them into pots. You’ll be happy you did.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Crème fraiche pound cake à la Melissa Clark

Rum crème fraiche version

After my last post on baguette this one was a piece of cake. Hah! Get it?

Here’s another great contribution to the baking world from NYT food writer Melissa Clark. This one caught my eye partly because of the rum (which I’m starting to appreciate more and more) and crème fraiche (which I’m finally making myself!) in the ingredient list, but also because I’ve made my share of tasty pound cakes over the years and am always up for a new one. If you love pound cake, you MUST try this one.

Pound cake is typically butter, sugar, egg and flour in fairly equal weights, sometimes with cream cheese or sour cream added in. As Melissa notes, pound cake recipes don’t often contain any leavening like baking powder, but it’s the creaming of the butter and sugar to aerate and the eggs to add substance and binding to create the signature texture of these traditional cakes.

I made this recipe twice, the second time swapping the rum for a smooth Kentucky peach bourbon that we recently received from cousin Harve. Just had to try it don’t ya know. I added some orange zest to the batter and used a bourbon butter variant of the crème fraiche glaze, topping it with chopped toasted pecans. Mmmm good.

Bourbon glazed orange pecan version

I’ve become very attached to my mom’s old Mirro brand loaf pan that is a bit longer and narrower than a standard loaf. I love the way the cake comes out in a sleek and less stodgy sort of way. Prep the pan, including the edges, by buttering and sugaring it.

Bake at 350ºF for about an hour until golden and a tester comes out clean.

Mmmmm . . . . doesn’t that look delicious!

The main take home point that Melissa makes is the fact that if you vary the amount of baking powder you add to the batter, you’ll achieve either a lighter (more baking powder) or more dense and creamy texture (less baking powder).

For my first go I used the higher amount of baking powder (1 teaspoon) as well as the rum, crème fraiche (she gives sour cream as an option) and vanilla called for in the recipe. Check out the sliced image - looks like a lovely pound cake to these eyes! And it was deeeeeelicious! Light yet dense if that makes any sense at all. I also loved the slight crunch in the crème fraiche rum glaze - and our neighbors enjoyed it too.

For my second go I used the lower amount of baking powder (1/2 teaspoon) and swapped Kentucky peach bourbon for the rum. I zipped some orange zest into the batter while I was at it. Another lovely crumb experience to be sure.

For the bourbon butter glaze: heat 60 ml/1/4 cup bourbon and 49 g/3.5 tablespoons unsalted butter to melt the butter, then add in 100 g/1/2 cup granulated sugar, stir to dissolve and boil one minute. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes in the top with a toothpick, brush on about 1/4 of the glaze, wait 5 minutes then brush on another 1/4 of the glaze. Reserve the remaining glaze.

Once the cake has cooled, run a small offset spatula around the edges and pop it out of the pan. Blend the reserved bourbon butter glaze with 50 g/1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar and two tablespoons crème fraiche and pour it over the top and sides of the cake. In my case I added the pecans as the pièce de resistance but you can leave them off if you prefer.

Both of these cakes are buttery, luscious and dense as pound cake should be. Could I tell a lot of difference between the two? Not really, but both were superb in flavor and texture. Go either way with the baking powder and you’ll be happy no matter which one you choose. Thanks Melissa!

Remain calm and stay safe. We’re already deep into the first week of November and even though many of the leaves are now off the trees, here’s a mini photo album of what I’ve been enjoying during my walks this past month. I love autumn.

Baguette

NOTE: I did a quick update of this post on 06/14/24 to include a link to the recipe PDF for King Arthur baguettes. You can also find the link on the recipe page under BREADS AND BUNS.

This is a long one folks - sometimes it’s just how I roll!!

Well it’s about time. Do you know I’ve never made baguette at home just for the two of us? The closest I’ve come was ficelle which is essentially a skinny baguette, and that was tasty indeed! Even though I’ve made many versions while attending various bread classes over the years and have also taught my own bread class to folks, I don’t know what took me so long to make this classic French bread for our own larder. Perhaps it’s the fact that I finally bought a baking stone some months back and felt it was time to put it to the baguette test.

What makes a good baguette you might ask? They say it should have a creamy, open crumb with a crust that crackles as it comes out of the oven. Yes indeed!

It’s taken me awhile to get this post together. I started the project back in April early in the pandemic with nothin’ but time on my hands. I chose three different recipes: King Arthur Flour, Le Cordon Bleu Paris and another from Paris boulanger/chef Benjamin Turquier of 134 RDT on rue de Turenne in the 3rd arr.

I had made both the KAF (now King Arthur Baking Company) and LCB versions in classes I attended at those establishments in recent years and since then to classes I’ve taught to others. The RDT recipe came from a France Magazine article that I saved from several years ago and has been sitting on my to-do pile ever since.

During my stage at Pâtisserie Pascal Pinaud in Paris, I can’t help but remember the early attempts at shaping baguette - not a pretty picture. It takes a while to develop a feel for the dough, rolling with just the right amount of pressure to elongate and keep it even with tapered ends.

And the scoring? Oh my - that’s something I’m still learning! Just the right touch and don’t over think it - efficient, purposeful, a light hand, don’t drag and NO hesitation - those are the keys in my book. (Psssst . . . the texture of the dough makes a big difference - softer means more difficult to score, firmer means easier.) You may be able to tell the difference in the next two photos - the first shows a softer, more wrinkly dough and in the second the dough looks more firm and smooth.

KAF dough: hmmmm . . . not so good with too much drag and hesitation on the top loaf

LCB dough: much better - less drag, more purpose!

On to the process!

This isn’t intended to be an in depth bread primer, but I hope it gives you a decent look at how baguettes are created. We’ll look at the steps and I’ll make a few comparisons amongst the three recipes. Spoiler alert - they’re ALL delicious!

When comparing recipes, especially for breads, it helps to sketch out the timelines for proper planning. Don’t get hung up on the nitty gritty details below, but you can see that the process can vary anywhere from 1 to 3 days. That made it much easier for me to accomplish the baking in a staggered fashion. Nice. I like that.

Here’s a quick summary of the typical basic steps of bread making: Weigh ingredients. Mix. Knead. First proof. Pre-shape. Rest. Shape. Second proof. Score (sometimes). Bake. Cool. Enjoy!

Bear with me here - technical stuff coming up.

Now remember, a basic lean bread dough consists of flour, water, yeast and salt. I’m sure a number of you are familiar with baker’s percentages which uses the weight of flour in a recipe as the 100% ingredient. A typical straight bread dough made by the direct method (no preferments or long fermentations) will contain about 60% of the flour weight as water, 3% as fresh yeast (~1.5% dry yeast) and 1.5-2% as salt. Example: 500 g flour/300g water/7-8 g instant yeast/8-10 g salt.

So basically you can take any weight of flour you’d like and figure out the quantities of the other ingredients - pretty cool, eh?

Adjust the hydration factor upward and you’ll experience the different feel and ways of handling a wetter dough. The KAF recipe uses 72% hydration and thus is the wettest and stickiest of all three. It can be a challenge the first time you work with it so it bears repeating a few times to get the feel. With higher hydration dough you’ll often see the “stretch and fold” technique used to develop the dough’s structure. A tip: when working with wet dough, rather than dusting with flour, oil or wet your hands to reduce sticking. I’ve played around with hydrations of 68% and 70% too.

The LCB dough hydration is 64% and the one I found the easiest to handle while the RDT comes in at 70% and is less sticky than KAF.

Both KAF and LCB involve making a poolish which combines equal weights water and flour with a small amount of yeast and allowed to ferment at room temperature (or fridge) for a period of time. The amount of yeast added depends on how long you wish your poolish to ferment - shorter time/more yeast, longer ferment/less yeast.

The RDT recipe doesn’t use the poolish approach but utilizes a step referred to as autolyse - flour and water are mixed then allowed to sit for 30 minutes or so to hydrate the flour. Then add yeast, knead, add salt, knead and rest 20-30 minutes before refrigeration of 10-48 hours. Longer fridge, more flavor development.

As is usual in the culinary and pastry worlds, there are so many sources out there explaining the nuances that it can become overwhelming. If you’re starting to deep dive into bread making, I highly recommend a couple of good bread tomes like Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Bread”, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Bread Bible” and any of Peter Reinhart’s books. The list goes on and on and on . . . . . So much to learn.

Let’s focus more in depth on the recipe from Le Cordon Bleu which is a 3 day process and we’ll look at the basic steps too. Sound good?

When starting with a poolish and planning a long fermentation, as with this LCB recipe, you’ll see the very small percentage of yeast used. The total flour in the full recipe is 1500 g yet the total instant yeast used is only about 5 g total which comes in at a paltry 0.3%. Buuuuuutttt . . . . . it’s the longer time that this dough ferments that makes all the difference. Give the yeast enough time to work and it WILL perform.

For this project I made half of the above LCB recipe since many home mixers are too small for the full quantity (the flour alone is about 11 cups total and the water almost a liter!). Note: my Kitchenaid 6 quart mixer managed the half recipe just fine.

In addition my oven (and home ovens in general) isn’t structured to bake 7 or 8 baguettes at one time on a stone. My baking stone is about 14” x 16” with 20” on the diagonal, and I use a piece of parchment on an overturned half sheet pan (12”x18”) as my peel. That limits the length I can make my baguette - best not to go longer than 16” - as well as the number of loaves I can fit on the peel and stone.

Even though this is a three day deal, the hands-on time is minimal compared to the resting and fermentation that occurs, so it’s easy to carve out a small niche in your schedule to get the process started.

For the half recipe: on day one make the poolish by mixing 250 g bread flour with 250 g cold water and a pinch of instant yeast. Whisk it 1-2 minutes, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Below is a good example of a developed poolish - poofy, bubbly and fragrant.

On day 2 mise out 500 g bread flour, 232 g water, 14 g salt and 2 g (just a tad over 1/2 teaspoon) instant yeast then, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine these ingredients with the poolish. Knead on low speed for 10 minutes. Cover and rest 30 minutes then do a complete fold set (stretch and pull the dough up over itself from top, then bottom, then left, then right) then turn over, ball up, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Day 3 - here’s the dough ready to divide and shape.

I opted for 3 baguettes, each weighing about 408 g, knowing that I could make them an appropriate length for my oven/baking stone. In French boulangeries a baguette may be anywhere from 26 to 39 inches long - whoa - and the diameter is typically about 2.5 inches/6 cm. My baguettes turned out pretty chubby so next time I’ll do four loaves instead of three to achieve a slimmer result.

First shape the divided dough into rough boules and let them rest , covered, for 20 minutes.

Then one by one, flatten into a rectangle and shape a preliminary torpedo (lots of online resources on how to do that!). Give them a 10 minute rest then, starting with the first one you pre-shaped, place your palms in the center and gently but with steady pressure, roll as you move your hands outward to elongate and taper the ends. One down, two to go.

Place the shaped baguettes on a floured tea towel or linen couche with a few inches between each, then pull the fabric up between the loaves to support them and avoid them sticking to each other.

Cover with another tea towel and let them proof 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile, heat your oven/baking stone to 480ºF (250ºC).

Now for a little bit of a tricky part. You have to gently roll your proofed baguettes onto a narrow wooden board (one by one) and then roll them back onto a floured or cornmeal dusted peel (I use a parchment topped overturned half sheet pan as my peel). Then score them and from there you slide them onto the baking stone (parchment and all if using my method). Whew! A bit unnerving at first but, just like scoring, be purposeful and without hesitation in your movements.

I happen to have a handcrafted wooden cheese board made by an acquaintance of ours - it’s about 15 inches long and was just the ticket for helping me perform this maneuver. I’ve also heard of folks cutting a piece of sturdy cardboard and covering it with some cheese cloth in lieu of a board. Sounds like a great idea!

Snug the board up along side a baguette, lift the towel gently from underneath and roll the baguette onto the board. (NOTE: the next two images are actually the KAF version - I use them here simply to show the board steps.)

Once on the board, simply roll it off onto your peel or sheet pan. Be mindful of the space available to you!

Man oh man - maybe one day I’ll get into the whole video aspect of this stuff!!

Ready to roll off the board

Now score . . . . . . . . .

and slide the baguettes with parchment off the sheet pan and onto the stone with a decisive move. Bake with steam about 25 minutes.

NOTE: If you don’t have a baking stone, transferring board or peel, simply heat your oven with an empty half sheet pan on the lower rack to serve as your “stone”. Place your shaped baguette on a separate parchment lined sheet pan (no couche needed) to proof, covered lightly with a flour sack type towel (be sure there’s enough room between the loaves), then score and pop the sheet pan directly onto the heated pan in the oven. Voilà - no transferring necessary.

NOTE #2: I have a tray that slides onto the lower rack of my oven into which I can pour or squirt water as soon as I’ve placed the loaves onto the stone. That gives me my burst of steam which helps to create a crackling crust. You can also put an oven safe metal tray of some sort on the floor of your oven and pour a cup or so of hot water in it just as you place your baguettes in the oven. Close the door immediately to give that burst of steam.

Pull the loaves out onto a cooling grid and listen for the signature crackle - yes, it’s there. Hooray!!

As you can easily see my loaves baked a bit differently with the top one looking like a humpback whale. A sign of the need to be more purposeful with shaping to tighten the dough up.

My scoring was certainly variable, the middle loaf looking the best.

Once cooled, either tear off a piece or slice it up and enjoy with your favorite cheese or jam or whatever floats your boat.

I jotted notes on each recipe. LCB: “great crackle; dough easiest to work with and most springy and elastic of all; nice crust and chew although perhaps a bit more doughy than the other two; wonderful flavor; next time shape more narrow and longer - would do four 312 g loaves rather than three 408 g.

Here’s the KAF final result. Check out the difference in scoring between the top and bottom loaves.

My notes on KAF: highest hydration and stickiest dough thus hardest to work with (this one takes practice folks!); wonderful crackle and crust; deliciously creamy with open spaces.

Here’s RDT’s result. Pretty good scoring, eh? You can see the top one is shorter - another instance of not putting the proper pressure on when elongating. Still tasted great!

My notes on RDT: 70% hydration; less sticky; scored easily; less crust crackle and not as crusty; delicious flavor, good chew and nicely creamy.

My overall favorite is the LCB recipe primarily for its ease of preparation/handling, plenty of fermentation and flavor development time in the fridge and its wonderful crust and flavor. The half recipe makes about 1250 g of dough from which I made three 408 g baguettes. OPT: four 312 g for a slimmer end result.

In second place is KAF’s recipe which mixes a poolish of 150 g all purpose flour, 150 g cool water and a pinch of instant yeast, then is covered and ferments for 15 hours at room temperature. When ready, the poolish is combined with 311 g all purpose flour, 180 g cool water, 5 g instant yeast and 7 g salt and mixed into a shaggy mass. This is the one that takes some practice working with a sticky dough. The base recipe makes about 803 g of dough from which I made two 400 g baguettes. OPT: three 268 g for a slimmer result.

The RDT half recipe makes about 862 g of dough from which I made three 284 g loaves. Since I’ve come to prefer the poolish approach for this kind of bread, I won’t go any further with this one. Now it’s off the to-do pile.

On one final note, I did another batch of the KAF recipe a month or so ago - upped it to 1.5x the recipe (which, BTW, brings it very close to the LCB half recipe aside from the hydration difference), made two 400 g baguettes and eight 50 g crusty rolls. Boy oh boy they were good! I’m still fine tuning the handling of the sticky dough, but next time may drop the hydration down a couple of percentage points just to see how it goes. Why not, eh?

Bottom line on size - going forward I’ll aim for 280-310 g per baguette. That just seems right to me. Why not play around with dough weights for minis or rolls too. Sure thing.

Thanks for reading and slogging through all of this. It barely even begins to scratch the surface of the world of baguette. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to include some important tidbits and please don’t hesitate to raise any questions or make any comments about your own experiences with this classic French bread.

Meanwhile stay safe, bake some bread and enjoy the last colors of autumn.

Adieu Sur La Table Grand Rapids

A chapter has come to an end, not only for me but for many who enjoyed what this place had to offer.

Sur La Table Breton South here in Grand Rapids MI has closed permanently. Once the virus hit, Sur La Table stores across the country were closed for a solid three+ months. Some went under the axe, although Breton South survived the first cut and opened for retail in early July. But Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sale of the company led to more closures including Breton. Classes never resumed and now the space is available for the next business that might want to set up shop. Who knows, eh?

It was a great place to teach pastry classes. The kitchen well appointed, sunny and light with plenty of room to do what needed to be done. I met lots of interesting people (both co-workers and students), learned a lot myself and enjoyed being busy with prepping, setting up and instructing all types of folks with all levels of interest and experience. Good stuff.

Morning buns

Macarons

Rustic Dutch oven bread

New York style bagels

Thanks for the memories.

On to the next chapter, whatever that may be. Meanwhile my new mantra is “I walk, I bake, I blog, I dream”.

Enjoy autumn and may you find your own new adventures.

Black and blue almond butter buckle

Many years ago (14!) when I was in the middle of my year of pastry school, I discovered a recipe in Bon Appétit for an almond-plum buckle, named for the finely ground almonds that are part of the batter as well as the plum slices pressed on top before baking. I made it a couple of times back then, once with plums/blueberries/strawberries and once with cherries/blueberries. They were a big hit for the folks who were the fortunate recipients, including Steve and myself of course.

I’ve since made it periodically over the years but it’s been awhile for sure. Every now and then it comes back into my memory banks, and I must bake it again, particularly when we’re still in the throes of summer fruits season yet moving into autumn as well.

A buckle is basically a single layer cake in which the batter is topped with fruit and often a streusel topping and then baked. The fruit sinks somewhat and the batter rises around it thus referring to the buckling of the cake under the fruit.

There’s a lot written about this group of baked fruit desserts including crisps, slumps (or grunts), buckles, brown bettys and cobblers, but I’m not here today to describe how they compare in their preparation. I simply wish to share my own tweaked recipe based on the 14 year old one from BA. (Yay! I found it online so I could link you to it.)

As always, I did some basic cake recipe comparisons and made my changes based on a couple of other tasty cakes I’ve made over recent months. There’s a lot of similarity from recipe to recipe, often involving 2 sticks butter, 1 cup sugar, 2-4 eggs, vanilla, 2 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, perhaps a spice of choice or some citrus zest, some dairy like sour cream/yogurt/crème fraiche/whole milk/buttermilk, maybe some fruit involved and you’re good to go.

Here’s my recipe outlined below as well as this downloadable PDF.

Ingredients:
70 g/3/4 cup almond flour
195 g/1.5 cup all purpose flour (option to sub in whole wheat pastry flour for about a fourth of the all purpose)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
OPT 1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon or spice mix of choice
100 g/7 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
70 g/1/3 cup almond butter
175 g/1 cup minus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup crème fraiche, room temperature
1.5 cups total of mixed blueberries and blackberries (this is mainly an eyeball it decision - you want fruit sprinkled just so over the cake so that there are spots for the cake to rise up around the fruit).

The steps:
1. Heat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9” springform pan and place a round of parchment in the bottom.
2. In a medium bowl whisk together almond flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices if using.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle cream the butter and almond butter to blend.
4. Add granulated sugar and cream on medium high until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
5. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, blending well after each. Blend in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1/4 teaspoon almond extract.
6. Blend in flour mixture alternating with the crème fraiche just until combined.
7. Spread batter in prepared pan, smoothing the top with an offset spatula. Sprinkle fruit evenly over the top. Sprinkle with raw sugar if desired.
8. Bake about 50 minutes until a tester in center comes out clean. Cool 20 minutes, remove from pan and finish cooling.

Ready for the oven!

The primary differences from the BA recipe are using blanched almond flour instead of finely grinding natural almonds; a reduction of butter from 227 g/8 ounces to a total of 170 g/6 ounces of unsalted butter (100 g) and almond butter (70 g) combined plus the addition of 1/2 cup crème fraiche; reduction of sugar by 2 tablespoons (~30 g). That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

I used frozen berries for this one - if you do that, be sure to allow for 5-10 minutes more baking time to allow the center to be fully baked (nothing worse than a gooey center) and be careful not to overload the cake with fruit. I sprinkled both vanilla sugar and raw sugar on top before baking, but cinnamon sugar is an option too.

If you’d prefer a streusel topping, the easiest approach is equal weights flour, sugar, cold cubed butter sanded together to coarse crumbs to top the fruit. For this size cake 60 g of each is plenty. Remember - you can double, triple or quadruple the amounts and have a good freezer unbaked streusel stash on hand to top your favorite crisp, financier/tea cake or baked fruit tart.

The buckle served as a dessert for a Labor Day cookout at cousin Jen’s, topped with whipped cream and a few fresh berries.

Simple and delicious is always good.

Stay well, remain calm and keep baking. It helps.

The flowering crab I photographed last spring + some wild grapes

Afternoon tea at The Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island

Last week Steve and I were fortunate to be able to take our first real get-outta-town outing since mid-March and the beginning of social restrictions. It felt good to hit the road, making a stop in the small farming community of McBain (just east of Cadillac) for a visit with cousin Harv and his wife Ev. Always a treat.

Heading north to Mackinac City it felt good to clear our minds, admire the early autumn colors popping up, the sparkling lake waters and simply cruise. Our ultimate destination - Mackinac Island, a well known landmark here in the Midwest, sitting in the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Michigan and Huron.

To get there one must take a boat from either Mackinac City or St. Ignace (across the bridge in the Upper Peninsula). We departed Mackinac City on the Starline, the trip providing a great view of the Mackinac Bridge . . . .

as well as the island with the Grand Hotel clearly visible.

Not only is the island home to the well known hotel but also a number of inns/B&Bs, grand homes on the bluffs and its famous fudge shops, horse drawn carriages/taxis, LOTS of bicycles and best of all - NO CARS!

Main Street looking west from our lodging at Harbour View Inn

There is also a stunning natural beauty to the place - along the lake shore and throughout the forested island. Flowers are in abundance fronting many homes/lodgings/walkways, and the clip-clop of horse hooves provides a certain sense of calm. You should go sometime if you can.

Looking through Arch Rock - gorgeous hues, rocky shores and clear water!

Walking through the woods (most of the island is state park)

I knew as we were planning this mini-vacation that going to afternoon tea at The Grand Hotel would be on my to-do list. It’s been over 25 years since Steve and I were last on the island, and I had fond memories of the tea experience back then. Little did I know all these years later that I would have attended pastry school in Italy and France and developed my own interest in afternoon tea to boot!

Tea is served in the large open sitting room just inside the grand porch. The decor is as we remembered - still striking with reds, greens and a clear geranium theme (the Grand’s signature flower). The hotel has been there since 1887 and, even though I don’t know what the original decor was like, I have to wonder how often they have to re-carpet and re-upholster everything. Whew - what a job!

As is true of any establishment we entered while on this little adventure, masks are required. Once seated we removed them to enjoy our food and drink. There were quite a number of folks both inside and out on the porch, all properly distanced from those not in their own party.

We ordered one tiered tea tray (for me) and both of us opted for a glass of sparkling wine. What made this especially lovely was the harpist who played beautifully for the entire hour and a half, providing a true feeling of serenity (something that’s been difficult to grasp for many over the last 6 months).

The offerings were classic, and I appreciated the small portions - finger sandwiches on white bread (ham/cheese, cucumber, prosciutto), mini lemon scones with clotted cream and an assortment of French style pastries (eclair, fruit tart, macaron) plus mini cheesecake, chocolate dipped strawberry and some sort of cake ball??

The flavors were fair to decent, some of the textures lacking (dense scone, soggy tart shell), and we couldn’t help but reminisce about the tea experiences we had a year ago in the UK. Buuuuutttt . . . . . we took the time to sit back, relax, listen to melodious harp music and remove ourselves from the cares of the world for just a short while. Special indeed.

Butter pecan ice cream

Happy Labor Day weekend to all of you!

I recently made a batch of butter pecan ice cream and thought I’d say a quick hello and share it with you. So good!

But before I do I’d like to share this link with you. I recently received an email from Heather Langford of Gold Coast Ice Cream in San Diego USA. She writes about ALL things ice cream. I’m talking ingredients, ice cream makers, utensils, recipes - and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you love making and eating ice cream (and who doesn’t), you should check it out.

Heather has also written a guide to ice cream making that’s straight forward and easy to understand.

For this butter pecan treat I use my standard base recipe with these changes: browning 70 g/5 tablespoons of unsalted butter starts the process; use dark brown sugar (same amount 150 g) instead of granulated; a cup of lightly buttered and toasted pecans are mixed in at the end of ice cream processing.

Here’s a quick review of the steps and the recipe PDF:

Have your egg yolks ready in a medium bowl and place one cup of cream in another bowl over an ice bath with a strainer at the ready.

Start by browning the 70 g butter in a medium saucepan, the same one you’ll cook the custard base in.

Once the butter is browned, blend in the brown sugar and a pinch of salt on medium heat to get the sugar melting.

Add the cup each of cream and whole milk and continue to heat to completely dissolve the sugar.

Temper the warm dairy into the yolks, return all to the heat and cook to the anglaise stage, stirring all the while.

Strain into the cold cream over the ice bath, blend in a teaspoon vanilla extract, let cool then refrigerate for up to three days before processing.

You’ll have plenty of time to prep the buttered pecans. Heat the oven to 350ºF. Blend one cup pecans with one tablespoon melted butter and a pinch of salt, spread out on a parchment lined sheet pan and toast about 10 minutes. Cool. Roughly chop and blend into your churned ice cream base. Hold in your freezer until it’s time to enjoy! Yay!

A delicious treat, as ice cream always is.

Take care of yourselves.

Brioche feuilletée revisited - chocolate hazelnut braid

I would never have imagined that the most viewed post on this blog would be Brioche feuilletée, written back in November, 2016. I launched that project by tweaking the brioche recipe from a Le Notre Paris class I attended in September of that year. Reducing the butter in the base dough, adding a butter block and putting it through three 3-folds yielded a lovely laminated result.

Since then, as is my wont, I’ve reviewed a number of additional brioche recipes and techniques from the likes of Dorie Greenspan and Jeffrey Hamelman (of King Arthur Flour fame) and developed a new version of the base dough in November, 2018. The dough can be used for any brioche option you wish - Nanterre, brioche à tête, coffee cake, cinnamon buns or brioche rolls topped with pastry cream/jam/fruit. Lots of choices.

In this recipe PDF I go into more details about brioche, adjusting the recipe to yield either a leaner or an even richer dough plus some options for laminating the dough. So many possibilities.

It helps me to assess a brioche recipe by looking at the butter to flour ratio. A medium brioche dough typically contains butter that is about 50% the weight of the flour. Brioche can run from lean (where the butter may be as low as 25% of the flour) or rich where the butter can be all the way up to 100% of the flour.

The full batch of the base brioche dough (before adding any butter block/laminations) yields about 1300 g (2.8 lbs) of dough. So you can make the full batch and then separate out the 600 g for this braided two loaf project. Wrap and freeze the remaining dough for later or use it for other projects you might have up your sleeve.

Using Hamelman’s guidelines for these braided delights, I laminated 600 g of the base dough with an additional 120 g/4.25 ounces of butter which, by my calculations gave the final result a butter to flour ratio of 1:1. Now THAT’S a rich brioche! Remember - this makes TWO braids.

Let’s do a quick review on laminating the dough - it never hurts, since the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature.

Roll the dough out to a 6”x12” rectangle. Have a 6” butter block ready - it should be cool and malleable.

Place the butter on half of the dough . . . . . .

then fold the dough over the butter, pinching the edges closed to fully envelope the dough. This is the beurrage.

If your kitchen is pretty warm or your dough and butter seem warm and starting to squish, wrap it up and refrigerate for 30 minutes before proceeding. Now roll the dough out to about 18” long and 6” wide, always with the short side parallel to the work surface and rolling to and from yourself (not sideways) to achieve the length. Do a 4-fold (book fold) by bringing each short end into the middle with edges meeting . . . . . .

then fold it on itself.

Wrap and chill the dough for 30 minutes to allow it to relax then proceed with a 3-fold (business letter fold). Before rolling remember to turn the dough 90 degrees so the “spine” or fold is on your left then roll out to approximately 18”x6” again, rolling to/from yourself. Don’t get hung up on exact measurements - you’re going for about three times length to width.

Visualizing the dough in thirds, fold one end up . . . . . .

and the other down over it. Congrats! Your laminated dough is complete.

Now wrap it snugly and refrigerate for a good 1-2 hours to let it relax and firm up before rolling it out for your intended purpose.

For this braid project I divided the dough in half - look at those buttery layers!

Each half of the laminated version weighs about 360 g (before filling) and is good for a medium loaf pan size braid.

I created a chocolate hazelnut filling by taking 200 g of a hazelnut remonce mixture I had left from this hazelnut/almond couronne project and adding 50 g / ~2 ounces of Nocciola crema and a bit of egg white and simple syrup to loosen it a bit for piping.

Butter two medium (8”x4”) loaf pans and have the filling ready in a piping bag.

On a lightly floured surface roll one half of the dough into a 10”x10” square and divide it in three strips.

Egg wash (I used egg white since I had some on hand) along one long edge of each strip then pipe a line of filling along the opposite edge.

Roll each strip up into a log and press the edge to seal.

With seam sides down do a classic three strand braid.

As you come to the end of the braid, just tuck the ends under then pop it into a buttered loaf pan.

Repeat the steps with the second half of the dough.

Cover the pans with buttered plastic wrap and let rise for a good 1.5 hours. Toward the end of that proofing time heat the oven to 375ºF.

Brush the loaves with egg wash and bake about 35 minutes until nicely golden.

Remove them from the pans and, if you’d like to gussy them up a bit, brush with either some simple syrup or apricot glaze for a bit of shine and even go another step and drizzle on a confectioner’s sugar/milk/vanilla glaze. I left mine au naturel.

Once cooled, I sliced into one of these babies. Oooooh - buttery with just the right swirl of choco-hazelnut and pretty darn delicious to boot. Nothing like a good brioche, eh?

I love the feel of dough, the shaping, the proofing, the baking, the aromas and, of course, the tasting! Dough reigns!!

Maple glazed blueberry drop scones

I originally included this blueberry drop scone review in my recent “Puttering in the kitchen in August” post but, after consideration and Steve’s helpful encouragement, I’ve broken it out into it’s own post. Enjoy my discoveries on these tasty treats!

I’ve now made these scones THREE times since discovering Dorie Greenspan’s NYT article on Joanne Chang’s recipe. Print it out for your own to-do list!

The term drop scones refers to scooping and dropping the balls of dough on the sheet pan as opposed to forming a dough round or rectangle and cutting more uniform triangle shapes for baking as seen below. Both work depending on your vision.

Upon first taste test I found them delightful - just a hint of crispy to the outside and more cake like, tender and moist on the inside than my usual scones. The more I ate them, the more they grew on me.

I’m usually not big on cute-sy combo names like cruffins or cronuts, but for these the word “scuffins” definitely comes to mind - a term someone somewhere coined some years back - a cross between a scone and muffin. Oh well, call them what you’d like - they’re good no matter the label. Try them out yourself and see what you think.

This recipe involves a slightly different mixing method than the one I’ve come to rely on over the years. Here’s what I discovered about the process (having the recipe on hand as you read through this is helpful). You need to plan ahead - the dough is wrapped and refrigerated for at least 1 and up to 24 hours to allow the flour to fully absorb the moisture before scooping and baking. While the recipe calls for 8 large scones, I made mine smaller using a generous 1/4 cup size scoop with a yield of 16-18 scones.

Chilled dough ready to scoop - check out those butter pieces!

First batch: I pretty much followed Joanne’s recipe, using Vermont Creamery’s crème fraiche but since I didn’t have any buttermilk in the house I made the faux version by adding lemon juice to whole milk. I added the first half of the butter into the dry ingredients using the mixer with the paddle to break up the butter pieces (as she suggests), but when it came time to add the second half of the butter, I gave the mixer a rest and used my by-hand method of flaking the butter into the mix by literally flattening the butter pieces with my fingertips and leaving visible pieces in the dough.

The liquid ingredients are all blended together along with fresh blueberries and then added to the flour/butter mixture. Here again I preferred doing this by hand using a spatula and bowl scraper to quickly and gently blend everything, picking up the dry ingredients until a cohesive dough ball forms. I typically don’t add fresh fruit to scones since the fruit can become mushy and macerated during mixing, but the fresh blueberries held up well with a gentle touch.

I refrigerated the dough for four hours and then baked them. Glaze them right out of the oven, cool a bit and enjoy warm or room temperature. Nice!

First batch

I continued the by-hand approach for the next two batches as well. It speaks to me. Remember our two hands are some of the best tools we have!

Second batch: no crème fraiche on hand so this time I used Siggi’s Icelandic “touch of honey” whole milk yogurt and actual buttermilk. Once I had the dough mixed and gave it a few hours of refrigeration, I scooped out the dough balls onto a parchment lined sheet pan and froze them. It was a couple of days before I baked them (directly from freezer to oven) and they didn’t bake as evenly as the first batch. I also found they browned more on the bottom and were less tender and delightful. Perhaps you can appreciate their “rough and tumble” look below.

Full disclosure - I messed up the baking powder amount and attempted a fix so accuracy is in question. Even though they rose OK they weren’t as fluffy as batch one. Yikes - not my usual M.O.

True confession time - a few weeks back I tried some roasted tomato, ricotta, herb scones and realized after I had them in the oven that I FORGOT to add the baking powder. Whoa! How many times have I made that base scone recipe?? Just goes to show you how distraction and lack of focus can sneak right in there these days.

Second batch

Third batch: I made my own crème fraiche - yay! Here’s the deal: heat a cup of heavy cream to about 95ºF (easy in a glass Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave), stir in a teaspoon of buttermilk, cover loosely and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. Mine was thickening nicely by then and into the fridge it went. I used it for the scones on day 4 of it’s maturation - nice and tangy. I again used a squeeze of lemon juice in whole milk as my buttermilk. I reduced the whole wheat flour by 20 g and increased the all purpose by 20 g (I just felt like it).

BTW - For all three batches I used white whole wheat flour for the whole wheat portion. In the future I’ll try whole wheat pastry flour (if I can ever get my hands on some again!) for an even more tender result.

This time I kept the dough refrigerated for a full 24 hours before scooping and baking. The end result was much like the first batch. Mmmmm good.

What I learned: mix by hand, refrigerate the dough 4-24 hours then scoop the chilled dough and bake soon after. Use the right quantity of baking powder. Duh. Thumbs up on the crème fraiche and buttermilk combo. Maybe don’t freeze them unbaked but I’m not necessarily giving up on that approach. That second batch was the outlier due to a questionable baking powder amount and maybe even the oven temp when baking directly from the freezer.

I encourage you to give these a try. You’ll like them.

Autumn is coming . . .

Puttering in the kitchen in August

Raspberry cream cheese Danish

I first published this post a few days ago but I’ve broken out the blueberry scone section into it’s own post and edited this one. So, if you saw it the first go-around, it’s different now.

We’ve had some touch of autumn days (which I LOVE!) but also some heat and humidity coming back in which doesn’t typically inspire one to do much baking. Even so - I still manage to get some quality kitchen time in. Gotta do it.

The raspberry Danish above are a result of tweaking and finalizing my Danish dough recipe mentioned in the recent Swedish cardamom bun post. So delicious!

Following are a few more visuals of some of the things I’ve been doing lately. I stumble across recipes that either get my attention or not, but those that might incorporate a different technique or ingredient are the ones that I put on the to-do pile.

Please enjoy the pics and dream of the things you might create!

First these blueberry scones are from a NYT article by Dorie Greenspan on Joanne Chang’s (of Boston’s “Flour” fame) recipe. Here’s a more fleshed out post on these. You should give them a try!

Maple glazed blueberry drop scones

Next up - dukkah shortbread. I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile now. Dukkah is a middle Eastern and Egyptian concoction made with toasted nuts, herbs, seeds and spices that are coarsely ground and used in marinades or as garnish for soups, salads, meats, veggies or whatever you want really.

There are LOTS of recipes. Just Google it. I used pistachios and hazelnuts, sesame seeds plus cumin, coriander, fennel and sea salt. I blended about 75 g of the mixture into my base shortbread dough made by blending 75 g sugar (consider half or all dark brown sugar here to add some caramel notes to the nuts and spices) with 200 g unsalted room temperature butter; blend in 250 g all purpose flour (or use 60 g whole wheat pastry flour and 190 all purpose) along with the dukkah . Wrap, chill at least an hour, then roll out and cut shapes of choice. This is good. Sweet and savory. I might leave the fennel out next time and add almonds into the mix.

Dukkah shortbread cookies

Individual cobblers are fun. These are made with fresh Michigan peaches and blueberries. Great with vanilla ice cream of course.

Individual peach blueberry cobblers

Financier batter is simply ripe with flavor possibilities.

Coffee walnut streusel financier

Next up - these maple almond butter cakes are from a recipe on the underside of the foil lid on Siggi’s yogurt. I don’t keep flax meal on hand so I used almond flour instead. Other than adding a bit of almond butter to shortbread dough in the past, this is my first foray into baking with a significant amount of almond butter. Let’s just say I could get used to it.

There are many brands out there - Justin’s is a popular one. I used “Barney Butter” and have since purchased a roasted almond butter from my favorite almond paste supplier Mandelin. I’m looking forward to trying it.

I made these twice. It’s an easy mixing process. The first time with some blueberries and/or peaches tucked on top before baking plus a basic crumb top. Two different sizes - 3” Fat Daddio aluminum pans and smaller panettone papers. One of the 3-inchers went to my mom for her birthday.

The second time I used one of my favorite silicone muffin molds, didn’t add fruit but made a delicious almond streusel topping.

I will say these are growing on me. They have very little sugar in them compared to many muffin recipes (1/4 cup maple syrup and just a couple tablespoons of brown sugar) so at first bite they seem to fall flat on the taste buds yet . . . . the texture and overall experience is nice, and they seem right somehow. Even Steve said so.

Drizzling some maple syrup or honey on before eating is an excellent addition. The fruit version definitely beats the non fruit and with that added almond streusel . . Yum. Methinks a nice dollop of jam in the center of each before baking would be great too. Next time.

A look ahead - even though it has taken me a seemingly endless amount of time, in addition to putting the final touches on a new brioche feuilletée post, I’ve started the draft for a baguette project piece as well. I love sharing details of processes and steps but that also means I spend a lot more time reviewing and comparing in order to offer a reasonable summary of whatever it might be. At any rate, after 24 weeks of essentially being home, each day brings a different vibe to our lives.

Happy baking, be reasonable and don’t forget that periodic deep breathing helps too.

Soon we’ll be deep into official “baking season”. Love it.

Summer fruits galette/spelt pâte brisée

This time of year when the farmer’s markets are teeming with fresh fruits and produce, a rustic galette is just the ticket for a delicious summer dessert. Think cherries, peaches, plums, berries (red, blue and black), and currants too! Steve and I love our local Fulton Farmers Market and make at least a weekly visit for our favorite seasonal goods.

Even though our socializing has been curtailed and we’ve been at home for the majority of our time in the last five months, every now and then we get out to Clear Lake to see cousin Jen and her family. What a beautiful spot to enjoy an outdoor meal and of course each other’s company. We provided grilled chicken, fresh green beans and corn while Jen had some deelish nibbles, crusty rolls, followed by vanilla ice cream to accompany the fruit galette. Yum indeed. Thanks Jen, Scott and Claire!

In France a fruit galette (crostata in Italia) is a rustic tart - no tart pan or ring, just a rolled out round of dough topped with a mound of fresh fruit then baked to golden crust perfection. I’ve written about galettes before but it’s always fun to revisit an old friend.

Planning ahead, you can certainly make your dough days or even weeks before, wrap it well and freeze it until you need it. Think about that when, before you know it, the fall and winter holidays will be upon us. What better way to be prepared for the pies or tarts you hope to serve for Thanksgiving dinner or holiday suppers/gatherings than to have your dough already made. Yippee!

For this one I used my favorite pâte brisée recipe but substituted 60 g of spelt flour for 60 g of all purpose flour. What a buttery, flaky, edge-of-nuttiness and melt-in-your mouth dough this is!

I’m a big fan of Bob’s Red Mill specialty flours. While I use King Arthur flour for my all purpose, bread and general whole wheat needs, the wonderful array of BRM’s offerings available on my local grocery store shelves allows me easy access to some of my faves like whole wheat pastry flour (sadly hard to find during this pandemic!), spelt, and semolina, plus non-wheat options like rye, cornmeal, rice and oat flour, potato and tapioca starch just to name a few.

For this galette I used about 300 g of dough for a finished size of about 9 inches. On a lightly floured surface roll the dough into a rough ~ 12-inch round about 1/8 inch thick. Check out the butter marbled throughout and the speckling of spelt in the photo below - I love that.

Remember to work with your dough cool - if it becomes warm and the butter squishy, it’s time to pop it into the fridge or freezer for 10-15 minutes to firm things up. You’ll be happy you did. Once your dough is rolled out to your satisfaction, place it on a parchment lined sheet pan and hold it in the fridge while prepping your fruit.

Heat the oven to 425ºF.

I used a total of 5 cups of fruit including sliced peaches and yellow bubblegum plums, blue/red/blackberries tossed with about 1/3 cup sugar, 2 to 2.5 tablespoons flour, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a pinch of salt. I follow that ASAP with assembly so my fruit mixture doesn’t get too juicy.

To provide a bit of anti-soggy protection to the crust I blend a tablespoon or so each of either all purpose or almond flour and sugar. Sprinkle that over the crust, leaving about a 2-inch border. Have at the ready a couple tablespoons unsalted, diced butter to dot on top of the fruit and some milk or cream and raw sugar for the edges.

Now mound that pile of fruit in the center, again leaving about a 2-inch border. Notice I’m doing my assembly ON the parchment lined sheet pan rather than my work counter so as to avoid having to lift the filled/shaped galette onto the sheet pan. Yup, it’s all in the details folks.

Pleat the dough up over the fruit and, once you’ve made it all the way around, cup your hands around the edges and give everything a firm squeeze to set your dough in place. Dot with butter, brush milk on the dough edges and sprinkle with raw sugar.

Pop the whole pan into the freezer for 10-15 minutes to firm up the butter and set the dough even more.

Bake on the bottom rack for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 400ºF and give it another 10 minutes. Move the sheet pan up to the middle rack, decrease the oven temp to 375ºF and bake another 15 minutes, periodically checking for the degree of browning. You want to see the fruit bubbly and the edges golden brown. If needed, go another 5-10 minutes. All in all I usually plan on a total baking time of 40-45 minutes for this size galette. Remember - in your oven it may be a bit more or less.

Have fun creating your own mixture of fresh fruity goodness for a delicious summer fruits galette - you can do it. Absolutely!

Swedish (cardamom) buns

Time for more Swedish fun! Once again inspired by Brontë Aurell’s “Brontë at Home” as well as Beatrice Ojakangas’ “The Great Scandinavian Baking Book” (a recent acquisition as a result of a birthday gift card!) and a NYT article on cardamom buns, I’ve plunged into the depths of bun recipes and options. Whoa - so much out there!

As I’ve come to learn, the Swedes (and let’s be honest, Scandinavians in general) are HUGE bun lovers - cardamom, cinnamon, blueberry just to name a few. The dough is a pretty basic enriched dough made with milk, usually (but not always) some egg, butter, sugar, salt, yeast, cardamom and flour of course. Once the dough is made and rested/risen, you roll it out and spread it with a filling of butter and sugar (white or brown, either way), fold it in thirds, roll out again, cut it into strips, twist, wind and tuck and voilà, there’s your classic Swedish cardamom bun.

The process as just mentioned is the less buttery bare beginnings of a fully laminated dough, and you can take it in other directions with different shapes and fillings. Think jam, chocolate hazelnut spread, citrus zest, chopped toasted nuts, fresh or dried fruit, almond paste . . . the list goes on.

My first attempt sprang from the NYT article on classic Swedish cardamom buns, and, being intrigued by the shaping technique, I was ready to give them a try. One sees a hint of the shaping in the article images although the shaping instructions in the recipe didn’t give my brain a good image to work with. I played around with it, finally resorting to an online video or two which helped a lot. Just remember - there’s more than one way to shape a bun!

If you’re interested in checking out the NYT article, a quick note on the filling - I found it to be too much butter. There was a LOT of butter leaching out during baking so I’ve reduced the filling amount for this post and for my future bun projects.

As you see below I ended up with a number of different looks to my buns as I twisted, coiled and tucked. Interesting indeed. The one on the bottom left looks like a conch shell, don’t you think?

After reviewing WAY more recipes than I should have, the more I compared them, the more I realized that I can simply take my base croissant détrempe, the dough BEFORE any added butter block/laminations occur, sub in some egg for part of the milk, bump the butter and sugar up a touch, throw in some vanilla extract and add cardamom or cinnamon or a spice mix of choice and you have your basic bun dough. Here’s the recipe I came up with.

In addition to being able to create a variety of buns from that base dough, you can also take that dough even further by adding a butter block and fully laminating it too! It then becomes Danish pastry dough (wienerbrød) like that in the Danish Kringle I wrote about here. Lots more buttery layers to be had.

Let’s take a look at the steps for the Swedish cardamom buns (let’s call it my first trial and error go at it).

I’ve had some green cardamom pods on hand for a while now - time to use these babies. Open the cardamom pods, remove the seeds, toast them over medium heat then crush and grind them with a mortar and pestle. Generally around 6-7 pods will yield seeds to give you about a teaspoon of ground cardamom. You’ll need 1-2 teaspoons for the dough (to your taste), another teaspoon (optional) for the filling and an additional teaspoon to make cardamom sugar for sprinkling. Remember - feel free to sub in other spices!

Make the dough as directed in the recipe. It will be a bit sticky. Lightly ball it up, place in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest/rise about an hour at room temperature. Give it a good stretch and fold then ball it up nicely. Wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or up to overnight. I usually make my dough in the late afternoon/early evening for use the following morning. It’s all about planning ahead.

On baking day prepare the filling by blending 80 g soft unsalted butter with 80 g sugar (white or brown as you wish), one tablespoon flour, a teaspoon vanilla plus a teaspoon ground cardamom if desired.

Note: You can ramp the filling up by grating 80 g good quality almond paste then blending it into the butter/sugar mixture.

Remove the dough from the fridge about 20 minutes before rolling, filling and shaping. On a lightly floured surface roll it out to a ~ 13”x18” rectangle, the short edge parallel to the work surface.

Spread the filling in an even layer then fold the dough in thirds, the top down toward you . . . . .

and the bottom up over that.

Roll the dough out a bit more to ~9”x14” and trim any uneven edges. By the way - don’t get hung up on precise measurements, just go with the flow.

Cut 2 cm strips. I also created a couple of scrap buns by braiding some of the edge pieces and coiling them up. Why not?!

Pick up and gently stretch each strip, wrap it around three fingers a couple of times then bring it across and tuck it under. NOTE: in the future I’ll twist the strip as I wrap it for an even greater twisty look.

This is where I was a bit confused and my first attempts were clunky. but once I figured out the moves it worked out OK. Even so - variety is the spice of life so do whatever makes you happy.

Hmmmm . . . . going from the top down? Probably not.

Hmmmm . . . . not really it, but I do like a basic coil

Still a mish mash but, once I watched a video I finally got the cross-over-the-top thing to happen!

At any rate, once you’ve shaped your little heart out, place the buns on parchment lined pans, cover lightly with plastic wrap and let rise 30-45 minutes.

Meanwhile heat the oven to 350ºF. Once risen, brush the buns lightly with egg wash and sprinkle cardamom sugar (1/2 cup mixed with a teaspoon ground cardamom) on top.

You can also wait on the cardamom sugar until after baking in which case, once out of the oven, brush your buns with simple syrup and sprinkle with the sugar.

Bake around 10-15 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Remember all ovens are different so watch what’s going on in there!

I haven’t fully decided how I feel about the flavor of cardamom on its own. It can be a bit overwhelming but mixed in with other spices like cinnamon, coriander, ginger and nutmeg, I find it’s a very pleasing combo. Steve and I gave the overall bun texture and crumb a thumbs up. Even a couple of our neighbors who weren’t familiar with cardamom thought they were pretty darn good. Yay!

I did one more batch (doubled) along the cinnamon lines, this time with some variants on the twisty coils. Of course I’ll keep playing around with it.

Now get into your kitchen and create your own shapes and fillings - and just have fun!

On a final nature note, here are a few images from my August walks. Summer marches on.

Keep a steady course, stay safe and find comfort in the trees, skies, flowers and plants. It helps.

Hydrangea

Black-eyed Susan

Summer annuals going strong

Mid-July update

Seeing Queen Anne’s lace in bloom is a sure sign of summer’s march into August and beyond. Still plenty of time for outdoor enjoyment, fresh air and sunny skies.

As we come to grips with the fact that (whoa!) it’s already mid-July, would any of us have foreseen all that’s happened in the past four months?! No sir.

Lately we’ve had quite a string of hot days, punctuated over this past weekend with pleasant days, cool nights and clear, low humidity skies. Baking is happening in waves, and now seems as good a time as any to share a few of the things I’ve been making in recent months.

Cinnamon oat crunch scones

A number of projects were done with an eye toward becoming blog posts and are currently in their draft phases. I’m working on them bit by bit, often side tracked by various other at-home activities that seem to take precedence. Time has taken on a much different sense, don’t you think?

Some of these goodies go into the freezer for future enjoyment, some are shared with neighbors and family and some go into the occasional pastry order that pops up every now and then.

Chocolate hazelnut swirl brioche loaf

Gateau renversé aux cerises (cherry upside down cake)

Mixed berry mascarpone trifle

Swedish cardamom buns

Baguette

Croissant

Stay tuned! Baguette! Brioche! Swedish buns! Yippee!!

Meanwhile enjoy summer, be kind and helpful. It works.

Tosca almond torte

This project came about as a result of three forces: Lindsey Shere, Brontë Aurell and Dorie Greenspan. Not a bad way to start eh?

For some months I’ve had the simple almond torte recipe from Lindsey Shere’s iconic book “Chez Panisse Desserts” on my to do pile. I still had some of Mandelin’s fabulous almond paste on hand and thought why not?!

So I made it and LOVED it!

Here’s the torte run down: butter a 9” springform pan or round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment; heat the oven to 325ºF; beat 250 g/1.25 cups sugar with 227 g/8 ounces soft almond paste (it works well to grate it!) to blend well; beat in 227 g / 8 ounces soft unsalted butter and a teaspoon vanilla extract then cream for several minutes until light and fluffy; beat in 6 large room temperature eggs, ONE at a time, until each is thoroughly blended in; fold in 130 g/1 cup all purpose flour, 1.5 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt, blending just until combined. Transfer batter to prepared pan, smoothing the top with a small offset spatula.

Bake for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remember - always check sooner than later! Gently touch the center and it should feel springy. Let it cool in the pan about 20 minutes then un-mold and cool on a wire rack.

Here it is in all its simple glory, bottom side up. No muss, no fuss - just one delicious cake. On it’s own dusted with confectioner’s sugar or with some lightly whipped cream and fresh berries, it’s all good.

Then two other things happened that pushed me to the next step in this process. I happened upon a Dorie Greenspan piece in NYT Cooking with a recipe for “Swedish Almond Cake”.

Hmmm I thought, this one sounds good too. While the cake itself doesn’t contain any almond ingredients, It’s deelish and buttery and includes a cooked almond/butter/sugar/flour topping (known in Sweden as “tosca” topping) that goes onto the cake part way through the bake.

I made D.G.’s version and it’s fantastic. Just go to the recipe and try it yourself - you won’t be disappointed.

Now cue Brontë Aurell’s book “Brontë at Home” to which I’ve referred in both my rye buns and Danish Kringle posts. That’s where I first learned about tosca topping. Her’s is very much like the one Dorie G. uses with just a few slight variations. Hey! Why not make Lindsey Shere’s almond torte and add the tosca topping to it? What a wonderful almond-y treat it could be!

And so I did.

A quick note: I recommend using a springform pan for this since it would be difficult to turn it out of a standard round cake pan due to the topping.

Prepare the almond torte batter and once the cake is in the oven, get the topping ingredients ready to go. I tweaked DG’s topping recipe by reducing the butter and sugar, using brown sugar instead of granulated and subbing heavy cream for milk.

Here’s my mise: 80 g / 5.5 tablespoons unsalted butter; 100 g / ~ a cup sliced almonds; 80 g / scant 1/2 cup dark brown sugar; 2 tablespoons all purpose flour; 3 tablespoons heavy cream.

The baking time for the almond torte is somewhat longer than for Dorie G’s butter cake but either way, bake the cake about half way then make the tosca topping. Mix the topping ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat and stir to melt the butter. Bring to a boil and cook for a minute or so.

Take the partially baked cake out of the oven and gently portion the topping over the cake, spreading with a small offset to cover the top. Pop it back into the oven and finish baking.

The topping should become beautifully golden, the liquid-y appearance should set and caramelize and the aroma . . . . Oh my.

Soon after it comes out of the oven take a paring knife or offset spatula and gently run it around the edges of the cake so they won’t stick to the pan. Then let it cool 10-15 minutes, remove the sides of the springform pan and finish cooling to room temperature.

Enjoy a slice with a fresh cup of coffee or tea or just by itself au naturel. It is SO good.

Here’s to a safe and calm summer with beautiful deep blue skies and nature’s varied hues to give us peace.

We can do this.