Monkey Bread - October 2011

With the scraps of your perfectly cut Croissants you can make what we call Monkey Breads.

Roll each scrap into light balls and dip it into melted butter.

Now roll it over cinnamon sugar and place each ball on top of each other inside a cake pan. Bake at 400 F.

The process of making it.

Once they are ready, turn them over on a plate and serve.

A delicious sweet treat that will be devoured immediately!

Souffles: A breath of hot air.

And on a nice fall day in Boulder, I am in the kitchen making delicious souffles...

Souffles can be among the most delicate "puffed", "breathed" and "whispered" foods to make, but if made right, it is not difficult as it's been said.

It is certainly one of the most delicious foods to eat.

Pumpkin Souffle

• 12 oz Milk
• 2 Egg yolks
• 2 oz Sugar
• 2 tbsp Cornstarch
• 6 Egg whites
• Pumpkin puree (or other desired pureed fruit)

Procedure

In a small sauce pan, medium heat, bring the milk to a scald.

Meanwhile whisk the sugar and two egg yolks together, then the cornstarch. Stir until you have a smooth mixture.

Temper the hot milk into the egg mixture. Strain and return to the pot.

Bring to a boil and boil for one minute stirring constantly until thickened and smooth.

Remove from heat, add the desired flavors and cool.

Whip the egg whites to medium peeks. Do not over whip or let the eggs get dry.

Fold the two mixtures together lightening the base with a portion of beaten whites first.

Place in a large or individual buttered and sugared souffle dish and bake at 400 F

from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of your dish. 

Lower your temp if needed for larger Souffles to avoid browning on the top.

Open the oven the minimum times possible while baking. It will be done when risen, golden brown and slightly firm on top.

For a Savory Souffle

If you want to make a Savory Souffle, you can omit the sugar and add instead of using cornstarch, make a flavored Bechamel as your dairy base (flour + butter melted and mixed and seasoned. Add your milk and stir until thick), and then temper your eggs.

Now you may add whatever ingredients you choose to your base, such as grated cheese, onions, sauted vegetables, cured meat, etc.

Once your base is ready you may fold in your whites.

When coating your baking dish, coat it with butter and bread crumbs.

Key Point: To achieve maximum lightness with flavor!

Points to remember about Souffles:

• Combo of a flavored base and whipped whites folded in
• Base can be thickened or stabilized with flour, cornstarch or yolks
• It can be a savory bechamel with yolks or a sweet pastry cream
• Whites are whipped to very soft and flowy peeks
• Pouring them into a buttered crumbed or sugared dished gives them a more attractive texture. Unlike people think, it does not increase traction when rising
• Fill them to the rim
• Bake them in a hot conduction oven 450 F and close to the heat source
• Serve them immediately
• Test for doneness by touching the tip

Below is the folding of the whites into the puree base.

The batter being filled into the remekins.

The "Puffed" hot souffles that just came out of the oven.

Les Croissants

Le Croissant is a crescent shaped roll generally made with a leavened dough layered with some sort of fat.

There are two theories to where the croissant originated.

The first says that the croissants came from Budapest, Hungary in 1686. When the Turks were invading the city, they dug an underground passage to reach the center of the town. The Hungarian bakers, who were working at night heard the noise and gave the alarm.

People took action and the country was saved. 

The bakers who saved the country were then granted the privilege of making a special pastry in form of a crescent in memory of the emblem on the Ottoman flag.

The second theory states that the Croissant was first seen in The Paris World Fair when brought by the Austrians in 1889. They were originally enriched yeast-raised breads shaped into a crescent.

Around the 1920, the French improved the dough adding the lamination technique, thus making a flaky, moist, rich and tender pastry.

Apart from the real invention, I do believe that the real Croissant has also created the real purpose for the use of butter.

Here goes a great Croissant Recipe

• 1/2 oz Dry Yeast
• 7 oz Water

• 3 oz Sugar
• 1/2 oz Salt
• 1 1/4 oz Dry Milk
• 3 oz Butter (chilled)
• 17 oz Water
• 1 lb 3 oz Bread Flour
• 1 lb 3 oz Ap Flour

Procedure

Making the Detrempe (The initial dought):

Heat a 425 F Oven

Proof 7 oz of warm water and the dry yeast.

Combine the dry milk and 17 oz of water.

Combine the flours, sugar, butter (3 oz) and salt in a mixing bowl. Mix briefly.

Pour in the proof yeast mixture and milk mixture and mix until the dough forms. If necessary, turn the dough out onto the work surface and knead briefly just to bring the ingredients together.

Put the dough it in a container, cover it with wrap and let it rise in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.

Preparing the Layers:

Slice the chilled butter into thin (1/3 inch) malleable pieces. If it gets too soft put it back in the refrigerator.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature before rolling.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle three times longer that its width and about the same thickness as the butter pieces.

Cover the upper 2/3 of the dough with the sheets of butter. If they are not to pliable press them with your fingers when laying them on the dough.

Fold the top 1/3 up over the center 1/3 of the dough. Fold the upper 1/3 down over the middle 1/3 and to seal the packet. This way of forming is called an Envelope Fold although this does not count as your first envelope fold, you are just folding in the fat. 


Now you will do Four more envelope folds.

Turn the packet 1/4 to the right so that the fold is on your left hand. All edges and corners should be kept as square as possible. To keep it square, square it constantly with your bench scraper while adding sprinkles of flour to the surface when the dough starts sticking.

Gently roll out the dough to a rectangle again that is 3 times longer than it is wide.

Now make your First Envelope Fold. Chill the dough if it starts getting too soft to work with.

Again, roll out the dough 3 times as long as wide, keeping your fold to your left side.
Repeat rolling and folding and make your Second Envelope Fold.

Wrap the dough tightly and refrigerate 45 minutes or until cold.


Again, roll out the dough 3 times as long as wide, keeping your fold to your left side. Repeat rolling and folding and make your Third Envelope Fold.


Wrap the dough tightly and refrigerate 45 minutes or until cold.


Finally, roll out the dough 3 times as long as wide, keeping your fold to your left side. Repeat rolling and folding and make your Fourth Envelope Fold.

Wrap the dough tightly and refrigerate 45 minutes or until cold.


If your feel you would still like to have more layers in your dough, you can repeat this process and make a fifth envelope fold. Just remember that it ideal for you to have from 850 to 1500 layers in your Croissant laminated dough.


Final roll, cut shape and proof.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it warm slightly ( 15 minutes) before rolling it into a rectangle of approximate 1/4 inch thick.


For Classical Half Moon Croissants
Cut the dough into 6 inch squares and then cut them into half diagonally. Roll each triangle to extend its short point and then roll the triangle up towards the point.
Bend the two ends to make a crescent shape and place them 2 inches apart on a parchment paper lined sheet pan with the end point underneath.


For Square Filled Croissants
Cut the dough into rectangles ad the filling in one corner and roll.


Glaze 
Brush your croissants with egg wash (1 egg whipped with a bit of water)


Proof the Shaped Croissants
Add a small hotel pan or bowl with hot steaming water to the corner of your Sheet pan, cover it so that your croissants are in a warm steamed environment and let your croissant rise until it holds its indentation when it is pinched with your finger (about double in size).


Bake until dark golden brown.


Obs: If the butter rips through your dough while you are rolling and folding, just cover it with some flour and continue rolling and moving it off the surface. The dough naturally has so much butter that a bit more flour while rolling it won't hurt it.


Below is the initial rolling of the Detrempe.

Adding the pliable but chilled butter.

Shaping the Classical Croissants once it has been folded, rested and rolled four times.

Egg Washing before going in the oven.

Adding the Filling to other square Croissants.

The half moons are just out of the oven and ready to be eaten.

The square ones are just out of the oven and ready to be eaten.

As my chef instructor says:

"I've got three words for you: Delicious, Delicious, Delicious!"

And Delicious!

These are the chocolate filled ones.

Chocolate Mousse. October 2011

Mousse is a light soft preparation, usually sweet in which the ingredients are whisked and blended and then folded together. 

They are often set in a mold and served cold.

Here goes a classic french Mousse recipe:

• 5 oz plain dark chocolate
• 3 oz butter
• 2 large egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 1 oz caster sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla flavored sugar (or increase your castor sugar by 1 tsp and add a few drops of vanilla essence)

Procedure:

Melt the chocolate in bain marie, remove from the heat and add the butter to melt. When the mix is very smooth, blend you egg yolks and mix until smooth again. 

Whisk you egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff then whisk in your caster sugar and vanilla essence.

Now fold in your your egg whites into the chocolate preparation. It will loose a bit of it's volume, but that is ok. Once it looks smooth and all blended, put into your mold and refrigerate for several hours.


As the mousse cools, the cocoa butter congeals and the bubble walls become rigid enough to maintain the foam structure indefinitely. The chocolate thus strengthens the egg foam and the foam spreads to nice chocolate mass that when eaten melts on the tongue.

Below you will see the egg whites being mixed with the chocolate mix.

Since we used these small molds to set the chocolate, we used a piping bag to put them in. It was just less messy.

The piped chocolate in the molds.

Once the chocolate was set, we removed them onto a flat surface before plating. At this point you have to work fast on plating and serving it, since it will melt very quickly and loose its shape.

Before plating it we used a candy spray to give it a nice texture and them played with some caramel sauce and vanilla sauce.

Here is a chocolate and vanilla sauce and the mousse is served plain.

Finally, you can also spray your mousse while on the plate and play with the design. This one was served on top of a sugar cookie I made.

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!