Early summer update

Maple glazed pecan Danish

Though it’s not officially summer by the calendar, it certainly feels like it here in West Michigan. Hot and humid! The inspiration to bake is low on the priority list at the moment, but I can certainly dream, plan and write about baking, can’t I!

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted so I wanted to take the time to share a few of the goodies I’ve made in the past couple of months. Relying on favorite base recipes is de rigueur for me, and where appropriate I’ll share links to those recipes and give you any little changes I might have incorporated.

Chocolate dacquoise bites

First up - I refer to these as rustic macarons. Made using my standard dacquoise base (remember my last post on vanilla-chocolate dacquoise?), I added 30 gm Dutch process cocoa powder to the almond flour/confectioners sugar to create a chocolate version, piped/baked simple rounds then sandwiched ‘em with salted caramel buttercream. The result is less sweet than the ever popular French macaron, a characteristic I prefer.

The buttercream is basically a combo of about 1 3/4 cups stove top caramel sauce whipped until cool then blended with 113 g (one stick) cubed/room temperature unsalted butter. Add the butter cubes bit by bit as you whip, just like you would when making Swiss meringue buttercream (you could make a caramel version of that instead if you prefer).

These freeze extremely well and can be eaten pretty much as soon as you take them out to enjoy.

Chocolate caramel dacquoise bites

These treats became part of a small gift box for a volunteer at a nearby assisted living facility, combined with Breton cherry/pistachio tartes topped with tart cherry Swiss meringue buttercream and candied pistachios. Yum.

For the Breton tartes, use this dough recipe and add some chopped tart dried cherries and chopped pistachios to the dough (just eyeball it). I use about 40 g of dough for my 65 mm / 2.5” open tart rings (buttered). There are so many options one can create!

Next - maple glazed Danish buns.

I had a couple of batches of laminated Danish dough in the freezer and decided to create a few things with them: cherry cheese Danish, Danish almond braids and these buns for which I used a half batch of dough for a yield of 9 buns. Roll the dough out to a 12” high x 9” wide rectangle (for a full batch of dough roll to 12” high x 18” wide).

Make a filling (double it for a full batch) by blending 50 g almond flour (or sub in toasted and ground pecans for extra pecan-ness), 43 g dark brown sugar, 30 g egg white (1 large), 15 g maple syrup plus 1.5 T unsalted butter and a tablespoon all purpose flour. Spread it over the rolled out dough then sprinkle toasted, chopped pecans over, pressing them down to help them adhere.

Roll it up cinnamon roll style then slice into nine 1” rolls. I decided to bake these in a buttered and sugared 9x9 pan (again cinnamon roll style) rather than individually placed on a baking sheet. It’s easiest if you line your lightly buttered pan with parchment with an overhang on two opposite sides then butter and sugar the parchment.

After an hour or so rise, they baked up beautifully! Once baked you can simply lift the whole thing out, no muss, no fuss.

Mix 3/4 cup confectioners sugar with 1-3 tablespoons maple syrup to a thin-ish, brush-able consistency and give the buns a good coating.

Let cool completely or feel free to gently pull them apart and try one still warm. You won’t regret it! So good.

Next - roasted garlic/dill/cheddar bread created using a poolish approach. It came out pretty tasty although I’d like to tweak the hydration level and kneading/rising times to create a more chewy, rustic style bread. I hope to post about that adventure later this summer.

Roasted garlic/dill/cheddar boule

I don’t want to keep you much longer in describing my kitchen shenanigans. There’s always something going on in my head or in my oven so stay tuned for Canadian butter tarts and more.

Meanwhile we have a couple of sandhill cranes hanging out nearby, and we’re just waiting for a baby or two to appear.

Stay cool and calm and enjoy summer!

Mom or Dad??

Roasted garlic cheese bread

Ooooh I loved this baking adventure! Not only did I use Fontinella, a delicious bread-worthy cheese from The Cheese Lady, but added in some roasted garlic that the Steve-man has recently been providing in spades.

I’ve been wanting to experiment more with different ways of filling and shaping bread dough and am often inspired by ideas I absorb from King Arthur Flour’s “Sift” magazine and/or their website which is chock full of wonderful tips, tricks and ideas.

In addition, I’m learning more about the ways to tweak one’s bread recipe from a straight or direct dough to a pre-ferment approach to build more flavor into the final result. Not only is it fun but appeals to my scientific bent.

In addition to KAF’s website, my go-to resources for bread baking include Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Bread Bible”, Peter Reinhart’s “artisan breads every day” and Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Bread”. So much to learn.

For this project I married ideas from a provolone bread recipe from CIA’s “Baking and Pastry” that I’ve been making for some years now with a KAF recipe for a cool looking twisty cheese/sundried tomato/herb number. I wanted to do a poolish this time and found some great tips on the “Weekend Bakery” blog, written by a Dutch couple who bake at their home. Lots of good stuff there too.

I’m not here to slog through the calculations but, in a nutshell, a poolish is equal weights of flour and water taken as a percentage of the whole from the base bread recipe you’re using. Based on my understanding of how one goes about this, I created my poolish with 200 g bread flour, 200 g water and 1/8 + 1/16 teaspoon of instant yeast, looking for a 6 hour room temperature fermentation. NOTE: the amount of yeast you add will vary depending on how long you wish your poolish to ferment.

Here’s my poolish after about 5.5 hours - nice and active and bubbly!

To make the final dough I combined the poolish with 510 g bread flour, 7 g instant yeast, 235 ml tepid water/milk mix, 71 g olive oil, 20 g butter and 16 g salt.

Using the dough hook I mixed everything for 4 minutes on low speed and then 2 minutes on medium speed. Then a 30 minute bulk fermentation followed by a fold-over then another 30 minutes before dividing.

After the bulk fermentation

I divided my dough into two 740 g portions with a plan for two different shaping approaches.

The first shape involves rolling the dough into a rectangle and sprinkling it with 227g grated cheese (fontinella in my case). Then I took 6-7 cloves of roasted garlic and smooshed and pieced them up, scattering the pieces over the rectangle. A light sprinkle of Penzey’s salt free pizza seasoning mix, then roll up a snug log.

Starting the log roll

Once the log is complete, pinch the seams, place it seam side down on a parchment lined sheet, slit it down the middle to a depth of about an inch, leaving the ends intact. The log will open up to expose the filling.

Then shape it into an “S” and tuck the ends under. Pretty cool.

My second shape followed the method used for babka in which you roll up the log as already described, then slit the log entirely down the middle yielding two separate pieces filling side up.

Begin at one end and twist the two pieces over and under each other, continuing to keep the filling side up as best you can (I could use some more practice on this one!). In this case I then went for a couronne or crown by forming it into a ring and tucking the ends under.

Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 45-60 minutes, heating the oven to 350ºF during the last half of the rise.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until nicely browned.

The fontinella and roasted garlic went a long way to making this one a truly delectable bread experience.

For a family supper we sliced it, drizzled some melted butter over it, loosely wrapped it in foil and warmed it for about 10 minutes in a 325ºF oven. Oh my.

Yup. I’d make this again.