Category Archives: Pastries

More bread

I was right! I just had to reduce the water a little 🙂
Process below. I’m terrible at taking notes for baking but I think it’s accurate enough.

Delicious.

Poolish (24h in advance)
140g water
122g bread flour
1g of yeast

Actual bread recipe
250g warm water 90 degrees (F)
5g yeast
6g diastatic malt powder
400g all purpose
12g salt
(and all the poolish of course)

7:50am – mixing all ingredients (with minimum mixing)
9:10am – Folding #1
10:30am – Folding #2 and shaping
11:00am dumping in the hot dutch oven, scoring, covered => oven at 500F
11:15am reducing the oven to 430F
finishing baking

 

Saturday bread

Thought I’d jump on that trend of baking bread in a Dutch oven. It was either that or the “Small waist, pretty face, big bank” challenge. I think I chose wisely. You’re welcome.

Anyway, I used a 24h Poolish starter. Did ten good minute of hand mixing, then one hour rest, some folding / stretching, two hour rest, more folding and…not much resting* before dumping the dough in the hot Dutch oven.

*That’s why it’s rather dense. It taste / smell fantastic though. And that cracking sound out of the oven…so awesome.

I think I used these measurements below. Hand mixing only. Fairly high water ratio. I might tune that down a little next time…

Friday morning: Poolish starter
132g water
112g bread flour
1g of yeast

Saturday morning:
280g warm water 90 degrees (F)
5g yeast
400g bread flour
12g salt
+ Poolish starter

Croissants

I knew using the bread machine to make croissants would be a terrible idea! 🙂
As expected, the dough was super elastic and difficult to work with.

Extensibility; yes, Elasticity? No good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s 10am and time for my second breakfast.

Rochers Noix de Coco

I bought a “galette des rois” for epiphany. It was good but nothing amazing. I’ll try a different bakery next time. Anyway,

I made some coconut cakes.
2 eggs
30g coconut flour
180g organic shredded coconut
200g sugar

375 degree baking with double heavy duty baking sheets highly recommended for these. I finished them with some light grilling on top. Yummy.

Super Blood Wolf Full Moon

  • Hike along th South Mesa Trail near Boulder, Colorado
  • Photos of the Full Moon from last night
  • Also, trying out my new bread machine (Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso) with this recipe

Flour                  447g Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread
Water                260ml
Heavy Cream 40ml Horizon Organic
Salt                       10g Morton Sea Salt
Yeast                     9g SAF Red Instant Yeast
Salted Butter  45g European Style Salted Butter
Diastatic Malt Powder 10g King Arthur

 

 

Lemon Cake and Orange Tuiles

One of my favorite pastry chef just turned 30 so I figure it would be a good opportunity for me to bake something for the party. I believe she was pleased.
The stripes on the side are a bit more subtle than I wanted though.

Lemon zest genoise filled with a mix of lemon buttercream and lemon cream.
Top with yellow almond paste and orange tuiles.

I also made some meringue, sugar work and other tuile cookies but ended up not using any of that really.

Orange Tuiles:

Thin 3 inch tall sides made of genoise + tuiles dough (up side down here)

After filling, placing the side around the cake and topping with almond paste:

Final touch with lemon drops and some orange tuiles 

Friendsgiving 2017

Apparently “Friendsgiving” is a thing.
Baking “Date & Pecan” Pie & Lemon Meringue Pie.

I followed this recipe which is pretty good: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/brown-butter-pecan-pie-espresso-dates

As always for the Lemon Pie I used Pierre Hermé’  sweet dough & lemon cream recipe and added Swiss meringue on top.

Chouquettes

Trying out Christophe Adam’s recipe for Choux Pastry.  Cooked at 350F for 30 minutes.

Milk – 320ml
Water – 320ml
Salt – 8g
Sugar – 24g
Butter – 320g
Vanilla – 8g
Flour – 320g
Eggs – 560g (10)

I’ll try a slightly softer dough next time (either more milk or more eggs) – Also need to crack the oven door open after maybe 20 minutes to remove the steam and see how it goes…

Wahoo Crudo with Popcorn Crema and Serrano Vinaigrette

Some cooking from last week…

Upping my game a notch (date night) – The original recipe is from Food & Wine under “Striped Bass Crudo with Popcorn Crema and Shishito Vinaigrette”.

I found some Wahoo fish instead and thought I’d spice things up (literally) by swapping the Shishito pepper with Serrano…

Also made some Lentil Purée with Cilantro (Bon Appétit mag) and Flatbread and a nice Salted Caramel / Chocolate tart for desert.

The wine pairing was Maipe Torrontes from Mendoza, Argentina. Pretty happy about my selection on that note.

Note: The food was the highlight of the evening really 😉

Also, more Cannelés. This time I added some raisins & rum.

Cannelés bordelais

Baking a lot of Cannelés these days. Trying to perfect this specialty from Bordeaux, France.
Bought both copper and aluminum molds and used melted beeswax instead of butter to coat the molds.
So far my recipe looks like this but I’m modifying it at every try.
Next step? Buy more molds 🙂

1L Milk
300g Flour
400g Confectioner Sugar
100g Sugar (mixed with the milk)
100g Butter (browned and filtered gives 80g really)
80g Rum
8g Vanilla Extract
(for about 20 Cannelés)