Making and eating cookies and others. Oct 2011

A sweet pastry day may be fun.

Especially in the begging of the day when I haven't stuffed myself with too much sugar. 

This usually ends up happening during every pastry "session" in school, since we make so many yummy sweets and want to try all of them, so I do.

Here are some that we made today:

Vanilla Ice Cream (creme anglaise)

Yield: 40 floz

• 1 qt half and half
• 1 Vanilla Bean Split
• 8 oz Egg Yolk
• 10 oz Granullar sugar

In a heavy sauce pot heat your half and half, half the amount of your sugar and the vanilla bean, stirring very slowly so that you do not create air in this creme. You want it to be dense and thick.

Meanwhile, whisk your eggs in a bowl with the other half your sugar.

When your cream comes to a scald, remove it from the heat and with about 1/2 of  it temper your egg mix. You will do this by pouring the hot liquid in a thread like paste into your egg mix while whisking it, so that it emulsifies and your egg protein does not curdle.

Now return this emulsified mix back to the stove until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon.

Immediately cool it in an Ice bath to stop it from cooking stirring every once in a while so that it cools uniformly and the middle does not curdle.

Chill your custard in a cooler. 


At this point your have made Creme Anglaise and can use it as a sauce or base for other desserts if you wish.

Turn on your churning machine and chill it.

Add your creme Anglaise.

If you wish to add pieces of chocolate, fruits or candied nuts, this is the time to do it. Just remember that when adding fruit pieces, first brine them in sugar and some form of liquor, so that they don't form water crystals.


Check your churning cream every 5 to 10 minutes, until it gets to an ice cream consistency. 


Remove it from your machine and keep it frozen until service time.


You can serve your ice cream on top of a Tuile cookie, as we did.

Tuile Cookie:

• 8oz Unsalted Butter
• 8 oz Powdered Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 8 oz Egg Whites
• 8 oz ap Flour
• 2 pinches Salt

Cream the butter and the powdered sugar together. Incorporate your egg whites slowly, your vanilla, salt and flour.

Mix carefully.

Cut a hard paper mold or use similar mold and on top of a sil pad place your mold steady and some dough, just enough to create a paper thin layer of cookie.


Form your very thin cookies and bake them at medium oven for about seven minutes or until golden.

With an off set spatula, unstick them and mold them to the shape you want as soon as they come out of the oven while they are still soft.


Let them cool at their final shape.

Strawberry Ice cream, chocolate chip and peach over a Tuile cookie.

Here are some of the cookies we made this day as well.

The two most used methods that are used mix your cookies:

• The creaming method, such as Chocolate Chip Cookies
• The egg foam method, such as the Madeleines

There are different make-up methods of cookies that are used:

• Drop Cookies, such as Chocolate Chip cookies that are dropped with a spoon forming random shapes.
• Icebox cookies, such as the Check Board cookies that need to be shaped into logs and chilled before baking.
• Bar cookies, which are the cookies that are rolled into a log, then baked, such as Biscotti.
• Sheet cookies, made from dough that is pressed on a sheet, baked and then cut into portions.
• Cut out cookies, which are cookies made from a dough that is chilled, rolled out and then cut into shapes, such as Sugar Cookies.
• Pressed cookies, such as Spritz that are forced through a tube or even Pipe Bag cookies.
• Rolled or molded cookies, made from a stiff dough that is hand shaped.
• Wafer Cookies, thin and delicate cookies that are made from batter that is spread into a variety of shapes, such as Tuile Cookies.

And there are also different cookie textures that are preferred and chosen for each cookie type:

• Crispy cookies, usually are done with a high amount of sugar and fat, low amount of liquid, and cooked to well done. The dough usually looks thin and the flour used is usually strong in gluten.
• Soft Cookies, usually use a low amount of hygroscopic sugars and fat, a high amount of liquid, and are under baked. The dough should look thick and the flour used is usually weak in gluten.
• Chewy cookies usually us a high amount of fat, hygroscopic sugars and liquid and are usually under baked. The flour is usually strong in gluten.
• Spread cookies usually use a high amount of granulated sugar, fat and liquid, especially eggs. They should be baked at low temperature.

Nut and Chocolate cookie are rolled and molded crispy cookies.

Check Board Cookies are Ice Box Crispy Cookies

Pumpkin Nut Bread

Coconut cookies are drop soft chewy cookies

Cranberry Nut Bread

Almond Prelines are Wafer Spread cookies

An eaten Vanilla and Strawberry Ice Cream

Beg Piped Cookies with a Raspberry Jelly filling

Even though Prelines are sweeter, they are basically made the same way as Tuiles

Prelines being formed. The Tuiles above are made the same way

Cutting the Boxed Check Board cookies while it is still raw.

Forming our Beg Piped cookies

Forming our Wafer Tuile Cookies while the batter is still raw. Below is also our cardboard round mold.

A table that is being set even though we have eaten all the cookies we can handle

Puff Pastry. October 2011

Puff Pastry and Quick Puff are kinds of a Laminated doughs. 

What defines a laminated dough is a process of rolling and folding some kind of fat into the dough, usually butter, so that it forms fat/dough layers. It will help the dough leaven.

Products made with laminated dough, such as Puff Pastry, Croissants and Danish dough, have a distinctive flaky texture created by the repeated layering of fat and dough.

Even though the formula for making laminated dough may differ, the techniques are quite similar since the main objective is to achieve from 800 to 1200 layers of fat/dough layers.

Here are four basic stages for the production of laminated dough:

1. Preparing the dough before it's been rolled out and layered (the Detrempe).
2. Selecting and preparing the fat for the lamination (cutting the butter into pieces and leaving it at room temperature. This way it won't break the delicate dough and it should also not melt in the dough as it is rolled on to it. It should simply blend between the dough and create a layer of about the same thickness as the layers of dough0).
3. enclosing the fat inside the dough (usually in 33% of the laid out dough, since you will be folding it in 3 parts).
4. Flattening, rolling and folding the dough to develop the proper layers). 

The ingredients for Puff Pastry or Quick Puff are usually Flour, Salt, a small amount of Fat and Water. Don't over mix the dough, so that to much gluten is not formed. 


Quick Puff:


In case of the Quick Puff, you will mix it kind of like a Pate Brisee, leaving chunks of butter unmixed. This will allow you to work quicker, make less folds if desired and not have to wait so long between each fold. The final product is great, but not as flaky as the Puff Pastry.


Once the dough (Detrempe) is mixed it should be rested for at least two hours in the cooler to relax the gluten and so that the flour absorbs the liquid.

Now pull it out and roll it into a rectangle that can be folded in 3 parts. In one third of the rectangle, add your pieces of chilled but pliable butter, fold the dough in 3, a Letter Fold. If the dough and butter feels too soft, you may but it back in the fridge and allow it to rest for one hour before doing the next fold. 

Once the dough is chilled you shall turn it in a 90 degree angle and roll it out again in a rectangle of 3 parts.  Fold it in 3 and you will then be concluding your 2nd letter fold. 

You shall repeat this process until you reach 5 letter folds or 800 to 1200 layers of fat and dough.

Now wrap the dough and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour. It can be refrigerated up to a few days or from 2 to 3 months.

Shape and bake as needed.

Below are some ready Puff Pastry savories:

Cinnamon Straws, Feuilletee, Chocolate filled triangle and swirls.

A feuilletee before being baked.

An envelope fold.

Puff pastry can also be done with a Book fold, below. The only difference is that you would do 4 book folds instead of 5 envelope folds.

Rolling out the dough in a rectangle shape with equal parts of 3.

Puff Pastry Recipe:

• 0.5 oz salt
• 10.5 oz water chilled
• 10 oz bread flour
• 10.5 oz ap flour
• 4.5 oz unsalted butter soft
• 15 0z unsalted butter cold

Today, as I was distracted and too “busy” walking down Canyon Dr in Boulder, a street person who was sitting still on the side of the road looked at me and said:

"Hey, you dropped your smile." 

Surprised, I slowed down and looked at him.

He smiled. 

I smiled back.

He picked that up for me. 

I shall not lose this gift again.

I wish you can also hold this gift tight with both hands.

I especially hope you can pick and give those ones that have been dropped along your way.

Smiles for Today and 2012!

Sugar Cookery October 2011

Here is the basic procedure for making syrup

In a very clean sauce pot, add your granular sugar and water, bring to a boil, until it reaches the consistency you are looking for. 

To minimize crystallization, add a few drops of lemon juice. You will then be creating an Invert Sugar. This inversion makes it more difficult for acid to form.

DON'T STIR while the sugar is cooking in the pan. This would immediately for a crystallization. 

Also, keep a clean brush with cold water next to the boiling pot. If you see any crystals form on the sides, brush it down with the cold water, or else this crystal will attract other crystals and all of your sugar will crystallize in seconds. 

Here goes some basic proportions you can follow:

To make a light syrup, use 2 parts water to 1 part sugar.

To make a medium syrup, use 1.5 parts water to 1 part sugar.

To make a dark syrup, use 1 part water to 1 part sugar.

To measure your syrup texture:

Thread: 135 degrees F

Soft Ball: 140 degrees F

Medium Ball: 145 degrees F

Hard Ball: 160 degrees F

Caramel: 338 degrees F

If you don't have a thermometer, you can measure by dropping some of your sugar with a clean spoon into an iced water bucket, removing it and placing it on a plate.

For soft, medium and hard ball, biting it with your teeth will give you a more precise answer to what you are measuring.

Also, always keep a shocking station (an ice bath) on your working area. Once your syrup has come out of the oven you should shock it so it does not keep cooking.

Once shocked, you can start working with it. If it gets hard, you can bring it back to the oven and soften it.

Other considerations

• If you are working in a mutual kitchen, always let people know that you are working with sugar, since it is a very dangerous hot product. 
• Always keep butter close to you, it will help unstick a burning sugar from your skin.
• If possible, cook sugar away from other things, to minimize risks of getting burnt.
• To clean your sticky sugary pan, cover it with water and let it sit for a while. It will eventually unstick.
• Don't store Sugar products on moist places, such as refrigerators, near an air conditioning or in any moist atmosphere. It will melt right down.

Below is a Sugar Swirl. We made it on a Sil Pad and put it on this cone.

A sugar Wolf.

A sugar Spacial Form.

I removed the sugar from this Brioche Cup and it formed a nice Cave.

The sugar Syrup we were working with.

Cooking our sugar on a clean stainless steel pan.

Making Caramel. Once you reach a syrup, add your hot cream and mix. you will then have a caramel sauce.

If you want to make caramel candies. Add Butter to the warm syrup.

The hot cream that we added.

Baking and Pies October 2011

Today was in interesting day of pie baking. We baked several different kinds of pies, some with a Pate Brisee crust (Broken crust), others with a Pate Sucree crust (Sugar Crust) and others with a Cookie Crumb Crust. 

The fillings also varied, some were Baked Fruit Custard fillings and some were Stove Top Custard fillings.

Below is a Blue Berry Sour Cream Tart. 

We used a Pate Sucre crust that was formed and Blind Baked before at a 325 degree oven. Once the crust was crunchy enough, we covered it with the sour cream and fruit filling and baked it until it set. 

Here goes a basic recipe for Pate Sucre, that is easy and tastes simply delicious:

Yields about 10 9 inch pie shells. ( you can also divide this quantity by the amount of pie dough you want to make).

• 24 oz unsalted butter
• 19 oz powdered sugar
• 16 oz egg yolks (about 26 yolks)
• 56 oz AP flour

Cream the butter and the powdered sugar. Add the eggs, mix. Add the sifted flour little by little and mix until you get the right texture.

Refrigerate until hard. 

Pull out part of the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface, always moving it around while you roll so that it does not stick to the table. 

Fold it on a metal pie shell form pinching on the sides and freeze it for about 30 minutes so that it gets hard and holds it's shape. 

Dock it with a fork or pie docker and if you are using a small pie shell, cover it with another one and pre bake it until golden brown on the sides. If you are using a big pie shell pre bake it with parchment paper and baking beans.


Once you get the golden crust color, remove the beans and finish baking the center so that it becomes golden and crunchy.


Add the filling and bake it in a medium oven, 325 degrees.

Here goes a Cookie Crumb Crust Key Lime Pie:

For the Cookie Crumb Crust:

Gently crumble the cookie pieces to make it into a coarse meal. Add any kind of spices of your choice and melted butter. 

Press it firmly to a lightly greased pie shell and bake it briefly before filling it with your desired filling. 

One major mistake we did to this beautiful Key Lime Pie was add Evaporated Milk instead of Sweetened Condensed milk as the recipe called for. It tasted pretty bad...

Below is an Apple Tarte Tartin

The apples were caramelized on the stove top with it's crust over it and turned around.

Below is our Apple Pie, ready to eat.

Hint: When putting fruit filling on a pie crust, either cook the fruits and filling before and then add it to a baked pie crust or pre bake it very lightly, just until crunchy and then add the filling and finish baking.

You can also bake a raw filling on a raw crust. In this case, start with a very hot oven so that you activate the starch and get a jelly like texture on you filling. This way it won'd drain into the crust and help keep the crust crunchy.

The apples that we were about to cut for your apple pie are being held in acidulous water so that they do not get brown.

Here we are adding the flaky dough (Pate Brisee) top to our Cherry Pie, right after adding the cherry filling to the pre-baked Pate Brisee.

The filling for your Cherry Pie. 

Even though we diminished the amount of sugar, it was still to sweet.

When Pre baking a Bate Brisee, it is important to blind bake it at a high temperature oven, so that as the layered butter in the flour melts, releases steam from it's water particles and mechanically leavens the crust. 

This is what makes the crust flaky, tender and light.

Here goes a delicious recipe for Pate Brisee:

Yields 42 oz of dough, or 3 Pie Shells. you can proportionally diminish the quantity to fit your needs.

• 16 oz unsalted butter (chilled)
• 19 oz Pastry Flour (or AP flour)
• 4 floz Butter Milk or Water (chilled)
• 0.4 oz Water
• 0.5 oz Granulated Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract

Cut butter into cubes, either with knife or pass it through a meat rack and lightly blend it with the flour, salt and sugar. 

Add the water, vanilla and mix until it forms a very crumbly dough. You should be able to see butter pieces in it.

Cover it in tight plastic wrap and refrigerate it until hard. 

Follow the same procedures as making Pate Sucree, except for the baking temperatures that were mentioned above.

Here are the baking beans we used to blind bake our Pate Brisee: a mix of Chick Peas, Black Beans and other kind of beans.

The raw Pate Brisee as it was just about to be  blind baked.

You can also make your Pate Brisee by hand, but I personally prefer using a blender with a paddle attachment.

On this years Rosh Hashanah 5772 one of my friends made me a very nice Honey Cake. It was very moist, fluffy, sticky like honey on the outside and it had a nice crunch to the bite from the roasted sliced almonds.

A good honey can be the best kind of coffee cake.

Honey cake can be also eaten during the week of Rosh Hashana on Shabbos night. 

10 steps for bread making. October 2011

Today was a random day at school, we received a mystery basket with some vegetables, meats, starches and dairies and decided on some recipes upon those ingredients.

One of the things we decided to make was bread. I will explain how we make most of our breads in  school.

Before you begin, you will need to make your starter, let's call him Boris. 

You will use:

• Bread Flour (10oz)
• Active Dried Yeast (1tsp)
• Warm Water (6.5 floz, about 90 F)
• Salt (1 1/4 tsp)

If you don't want to use these exact measurements that is fine. As long as your dough looks like a bread dough.

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl and knead on medium speed. Let it sit for about 15 minutes, now add the salt and knead about 10 more minutes, until it develops gluten. You can test it by punching it with your finger. It should bounce back, not holding an indentation.

Ps: You should add the salt after a break of 15 min. because salt inhibits gluten development and yeast growth. 

Now put the dough, Boris, in a lightly oiled big aluminum bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, leave it in a relatively warm spot of the kitchen (about 90 F) and let it double in size. It will take about 4-6 hrs.

Once it has doubled, punch it down to give the yeast new feed. You may use Boris immediately or retard it in the cooler.

Remove Boris from the cooler about 1 hour before use so that it warms up to room temperature.

Once you have used the amount of Boris needed, you must feed it with a minimum of 1 cup of water (room temp 70-90 F) and 1 cup of Bread Flour. This is a daily measurement.

• If you are using it in a constant basis, feed it with a ratio of more water than bread flour, such as 1 to 0.5 since water will accelerate its growth.

• If you are not using it in a daily basis, feed it with more flour than water, such as 0.5 to 1. This will give it structure and not let it grow to much.

• If you are using it a lot and you feel it is diminishing in size, feed it a bigger quantity of food, such as 2 to 2. 
• You can also feed it with some new starter from the new bread you are making that day.
• That would be a portion of your flour, yeast, water, salt and Boris. After it has been fermented twice and before you are about to form it and proof it. That is the moment when you would take a portion of it and feed it to Boris.

10 Steps in Bread Production:

• Preheat oven at 550 F.
• Scale ingredients:
• 12 oz Boris (starter)
• 24 oz Bread flour
• 1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
• 15.25 floz water (90 F)
• 0.5 oz Kosher salt
• Bread flour as needed
• In a mixer, with a bread hook attached, mix the flour, water and yest in medium speed for 1 minute. The water and yeast should be mixed together before so that yeast does not lump.    Now add Boris and mix for 2 minutes. Now stop and let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes. This is called Autolyse. This allows the starch of the flour to absorb the water. Resume mixing and add the salt at the end of the process. If needed add a touch of more bread flour. Mix well until resistance is felt when the dough is tugged on. At this point the dough should feel sticky but elastic.

• 1st Bulk Fermentation: put the dough in an oiled container and cover it with plastic wrap. Outline the the outside of the dough with a marker on the plastic wrap. This way you will notice when it doubles in size. Place it in a warm spot of the kitchen (90F) and let it ferment.
• Once it has doubled, punch it down to even out the temperature of the dough and give the yeast new feed.
• 2nd Bulk Fermentation: This will help develop structure and flavor development, especially at high altitudes.
• Once it has doubled in size again, scale and weight your dough. Give it an extra 13% weight since it will evaporate once baked.
• Shape your dough to the desired shape, such as a Baguette or a Miche shape. Hint: When making Baguette, if you want it to have bigger air bubbles and a crunchier and darker crust shape them initially only to half their length size and let it proof. After 30 minutes gently stretch it out to its final shape and let it proof until done. This way you are stretching out the initially-formed bubbles length wise (horizontally), making them bigger and giving the a bigger shape to grow taller).

• Place your bread on a Couche (your "Bread Bed" can be made by placing a clean and folded in 6 parts table cloth on the under part of a baking sheet and covering it with flour). place a small container with steaming water next to your dough that is about to ferment and cover it without touching it, such as with a plastic box. This is called Proofing. It should double in size. You can test for doneness when you punch it with your finger and it holds its shape. Place it on a Bread Peel covered with a little bit of flour and corn meal (so that the bread slides easily from the peel) and Score your bread at a sharp 45 degree angle. this will break the surface tension of your bread and allow it to expand correctly during the baking process. Obs: you place your Couche on the back of a baking sheet because when you transfer it to the bread peel it will slide downwards, more easily without hurting the delicate risen dough.
• Immediately after scoring place it on the bread stone of the hot oven. Now put a sheet pan with about 1 cup of ice water on the bottom of the oven. This steam will retard the crust formation of the bread, making it grow taller. The combination of the steam, hot air and carbohydrates will also give the bread a caramel color as it bakes.
• Once ready (it should have an internal temperature of 190 F), remove it from the oven and let it sit for 15 minutes before cutting. This will allow the gluten strends to cool and reconnect.

We had our dough rising in a basket called Willow Banneton. That is how it got this shape.

The Beurre Rouge that I made that turned out very nicely. We ate it with our Pan Seared Striped Bass.

Also, I roasted the Delicata Squash seeds from the Squash that was used to make our soup.

It was a nice Garnish for our Soup, thrown in right before serving time. This way they kept crunchy.

Above you can see the Beurre Rouge and the Roasted and Salted Squash Seeds.

Making Beurre Rouge:

Beurre Blanc (made with white wine)/Beurre Rouge (made with red wine) evolved from the practice of enriching cooking liquids with butter. 

It is made by preparing a flavorful reduction of vinegar or (and) wine then whisking very rapidly pieces of butter into it while it is still hot and on the stove.

Each piece of butter carries all the ingredients necessary for a new portion of sauce, so it's up to the you to decide how much butter you want to use in your sauce. 

The consistency of the Beurre Rouge should be similar to the consistency of thick cream. If you wish to make it thicker you can do so by using clarified butter (which does not contain water particles) once the initial emulsion with butter has been formed.

Detail: You need to use normal butter to form an initial emulsion between the fat and the acidic liquid in Beurre Blanc (Rouge) because the complete butter contains protein particles that make this emulsion happen.

Once you create an emulsion and get it to the consistency and adjusted flavor that you desire, you should keep you Beurre Rouge warm but not hot. 

If it gets over 135 F it will begin to separate and leak butter fat. 

If it gets below 86 F (body temperature) the fat crystals will solidify and separate from the liquid as well.

An overheated Beurre Blanc that has been broken can be restored by adding a bit of cool water while whisking. 

The addition of a bit of cream at the end process of making your Beurre Blanc provides the sauce with more emulsifying materials. This makes the Beurre Rouge more stable.

Above you can see a Striped Bass en Papillote. It is fairly easy to make, but since it does not get any Maillard browning flavor, I advice you to use flavorful vegetables that are well seasoned so that the steamed final product tastes interesting. 

You can fill the fish and vegetable Papillote with fresh seasoned Bell Peppers, seasoned Red Onions and Fresh Herbs. This combination will create a more intense Papillote "surprise".

Delicata Squash Soup Ingredients.