Off for the holidays...

The pastry chemist is off in parts MidWestern for the moment, and while some baking has occurred (ciabatta, cinnamon rolls, anise-olive oil crackers, and a whole wheat cracker crust for pizza), the camera was left behind. At least the recipes were all crafted on-the-spot (with the exception of the anise-olive oil crackers, based on the ciabatta dough and a recipe from a Spanish recipe text), and all turned out reasonably well. I would have liked to try the cinnamon rolls and the ciabatta again with a higher-protein flour, as the gluten was far less developed than I would have liked. (I used a bleached AP flour, a generic brand, that was much lower in protein than King Arthur's AP.)

Reponding to Mr. Palmer's question about the polenta loaves:
The polenta dough was wet with a water sprayer, rolled in polenta, and allowed to rise in a canvas-lined banneton. Once risen, I turned each loaf out on to a piece of parchment, which I could then spin freely on the granite while I held the razor reasonably still (relative to the spin, but out from the center as it spun). Unfortunately, the raw polenta on the surface would catch the razor, and I had to use a sawing motion for much of the cut, going back over some sections as I went. This led to some parts being cut a bit deeper than others. Had I let the dough rise further, and had a uniform cut (straight in to the loaf, perpendicular to the surface), I might have had a more uniformly round loaf. Still, the results were good, and the crumb was tight, much as you might expect from such a loaf anyway. I recommend trying it.

Note that I did not follow the recipe exactly at the time -- my sourdough was not yet at full strength, so I added a small amount (1/4 tsp) of yeast to boost the dough (that it, post-levain). (This was true of both the polenta and French country loaves.) I did later make 4 French country loaves with 100% sourdough, and was quite pleased with the results. Regrettably, I had to allow the sourdough to expire, as I have been traveling and unable to feed it. If the whim strikes again later, I may try the rye-and-water, stiff sourdough once again. (It wants to be fed every 8-12 hours in a warm kitchen, so it's quite demanding!)

Trufflage COMPLETE

So that's the end of the truffles for another year. Here's the full selection of 14 flavors:



If you can't tell the players without a scorecard, here it is. Note that, while none of the truffles have a significant amount of alcohol in them (only enough liqueur to flavor), those with names in purple are sans alcohol:

Raspberry truffles were flavored with locally made Bonny Doon Frambiose. Orange truffles were flavored with both Patrón Citrónge and Stirring's Blood Orange Bitters (the latter of which is non-alcoholic). The Diablo is flavored with espresso, orange peel, and chipotle (unlike previous years, I did not add tequila).

Word to the wise... chocolate shrinks when chilled. Peanut butter does not.

Waist Deep in Chocolate

No, dear readers, I haven't forgotten you... I've just been in the midst of chocolate hell. Well, not hell -- perhaps chocolate purgatory. At any rate, spending any time on chocolate puts a serious dent in baking production schedules. Still, we are at twelve different flavors (if you count caramels), and counting -- somewhere around 1,000 chocolates.


These are the Nutella chocolates, a dark (72%) chocolate shell over a roasted hazelnut and Nutella. It's really time consuming to draw each of those lines by hand with a paring knife.


This should give you a small idea of what the kitchen looks like -- this is the chocolate tempering machine in a particularly pristine state. (See an earlier posting for a wider view of the work space, post truffle-making.)


Still, I took some time to bake over the weekend, and made some Danish snails -- those on the left are made with a really nice Saigon cassia (cinnamon), and those on the right are made with a dash of turbinado sugar and a nice seed mix from King Arthur Flour (including anise, which gives a nice flavor).

OK, back to the truffles.... Nearly done!

Cake.

Today, cake. Cake, and another meeting. So much for vacation... There's a Board of Directors meeting this afternoon for the SF Bay InfraGard Members' Alliance chapter, so that will have me out of the kitchen -- no sense in firing up the chocolate factory if I'm going to have to shut it down again by 1. Instead, I'll bake off some cakes for a birthday party (to deliver tomorrow; party is on Sunday -- for twin boys, age two, and some 50 people, mostly adults) (those boys know how to party).

Chocolates ahoy

Yesterday was regretfully spent at the office for the bulk of the morning. Not that I dislike being at the office per se, but it's somewhat difficult to refer to it as "vacation" if I'm at the office. The afternoon was spent struggling with chocolate that just wouldn't tempter well. Previous chocolate days (see below) were spent elbow-deep in E. Guittard 71%, which tempers beautifully. The 62% stuff, while really tasty in its own right, doesn't seem to take to a temper quite as easily, at least not in my kitchen this week. Thus, the struggle. It takes much longer for the forms to set in the molds, so there's a fair bit of waiting.

I had to re-take a photo of the florentina truffle I made the other day, so as to better show how it's made: it is a half-sphere of florentina cookie (with almonds, rolled oats, and candied orange peel), filled with orange ganache (flavored with orange liqueur and blood orange bitters) and "bottomed-off" (as opposed to "topped off") with solid bittersweet chocolate. I only hope the florentina stays somewhat crisp for a while so they can be delivered without softening up too much.

Today, more truffles, as well as coating caramels. No breads, but maybe some pastries, as I have a mess of Danish dough still left. If I don't bake it off today, it will be increasingly difficult to use (the dough loses its strength, and tears when you roll it).

Back to Baking

Two days of chocolates tends to take a bit out of me, so I'm going to spend most/all of today working on breads and pastries -- there's nothing quite like 2 kilos of Danish pastry dough to make me feel back in the pink.

Unfortunately, my sourdough took a turn for the worse -- it seems to be rising very slowly, so I was forced to add a bit of yeast to the polenta and French country bread recipes. We'll see what happens. The sourdough isn't completely dead by any means -- it's just very, well, sleepy, and is not gaining 3-4x in volume over the requisite 8-12 hours. Rather, it's going at about 2x in 12 hours. Still, it smells lovely, and should give the doughs some leavening (and certainly the taste and other characteristics).

Danish dough is the same old thing I've done for years, so we'll see what I produce from it. Folks in Palo Alto are due some deliveries, and I have to be in tomorrow morning for a meeting.

Photos from the day:


Three photos showing the steps in a turn of the polenta dough -- in the first, the dough is turned out from the container. (At this point, it has been through a few turns, so it has already firmed up.) The dough is gently spread out, while retaining as much of the volume as possible. Photo two shows half-way through the turn, where two "corners" have been pulled in to the center. The other two "corners" are pulled in and the dough is turned over in photo three, and is ready to be returned to the container to rise until ready for forming. (Using this technique, you can turn a very soupy dough into a well-formed dough without much kneading -- and that can be a very good thing, if you are trying to avoid incorporating too much oxygen into the dough, which can oxidize away some of the color and better flavors. Or if you're trying to avoid killing your mixer or your hands.)


Here are the completed polenta loaves. Note the spiral pattern -- this is done by slicing with a razor in a spiral pattern. The polenta on the surface of the dough made that somewhat difficult, as it would catch the razor and stop a clean slice. Next time, I should slice a bit deeper and try to be more uniform -- but still, the results were good, and the flavor excellent. It had a nice tight crumb, a bit of toothiness from the polenta in the dough, and a bit of tang from the sourdough.


Here are the French country sourdough loaves. The crust of the prebaked dough was easy to slash well -- probably because of the extended rise time.


Danish dough... before the butter block is to be added...


sliced with a deep "X" and pulled apart...


with the butter block placed on top...


and most of the way through the dough being sealed over the butter block. Now it gets two turns (twice it is rolled out and folded in thirds), a rest in the fridge for 30 minutes, another turn, another rest, and a final turn, for a total of four turns.


After 4 full turns, the dough is ready for a final resting before being rolled and formed.


Here you can see the layers formed in the final Danish dough (sliced for easy viewing).


Two completed danish, post-bake: a braided "ring" filled with almond pastry cream, and a ring with apricot and almond filling. (Subsequently delivered for meetings at work, where I never even got to try a piece! But what the heck, I've had Danish from that bakery before. It's OK.)

Back to the Kitchen

For those of you following along rather than working (and I think you know who you are), I apologize for not having any updates over the weekend, but I was too busy with cookies and chocolates (and various wife-related activities, which are generally much more interesting than sitting in front of a keyboard). Yes, chocolate production has begun, which will temporarily supercede the baking activities, at least for the most part. This week's baking activities were to focus on specialty breads, and they generally take a while to prepare, so chocolate production works well while I wait for dough to rise.

This evening, I will prepare the levains for both a polenta bread and a country French sourdough loaf, both of which should be ready to bake off tomorrow afternoon. My sourdough starter has been much less active lately, but I hope it is only because the kitchen has been fairly cold at night (in the 50's). Both breads make use of the sourdough as the leaven, so I will leave it in a warm spot for the day, feed it, and hope for the best.

Photos from over the weekend:


Anne takes out some frustrations from the week on a defenseless piece of brysselkex dough.


The young apprentice takes to the kitchen with gusto.


Taste testing the apricot lekvar.


The three tenors have nothing on the three... lawyers? No, chefs.


"Here, mom, this is how you do it."


Brysselkex ready for the oven.


Gingerbread fresh from the oven. (This dough, from Baking with Julia, was too difficult to manage, so we gave up after one batch.)


Rolling the rugelach.


Legal and compliance review the jam cookies. "I don't think that one's compliant. Let's be sure it's appropriately shredded."


Rolling dough takes great skill and determination.


Meanwhile, a chocolate house was under construction.


Destroy the evidence! "I don't know where this piece goes, so I'll just eat it."


The final chocolate house, complete with gingerbread Santa-bear and marshmallow smoke.


"Now what?"


The cookie selection from the day.


...and this is what the kitchen looked like 24 hours later, after a day of making chocolates. Three flavors down (plain bittersweet ganache, Framboise, and orange with blood orange bitters and orange peel, all in bittersweet chocolate).

Pandoro Aplenty

Overnight, the pandoro had a chance to rise, and a soupy mass had a chance to ferment in preparation for panettone. Unfortunately, there were a number of large bubbles in the pandoro, and I feared that they would give the final cakes a less-than-ideal appearance (given just how extensible that dough was, I feared it would balloon up horribly in the oven). Here is what the rising pandoro dough looked like:

Here, the dough is nearly ready for the oven -- it just has to rise a bit more.

Then, I popped the pans in the oven, and here's what happened to one of them:

Stand back!


After cooling in the forms for about 30 minutes, they were inverted on a cooling sheet. They smell wonderful -- I can hardly wait to tear in to one.

Meanwhile, the rest of the day will be spent working on panettone (from The Village Baker's Wife, adopted to use my sourdough levain instead of the refrigerator sourdough called for in the recipe, simply because I can't be bothered to wait for the refrigerator version), another 1Kg (of flour) batch of French dough (this time with 60% bread and 40% white wheat flour), and cookie doughs for my company's Legal and Compliance team's cookie fest tomorrow (gingerbread, brysselkex, florentina, jam cookies, and perhaps almond macaroon in short dough).

Back to the ovens...

Pandoro Pending

Today, the sourdough starter looks to be ready, so I can begin both the panettone and pandoro recipes -- to be baked off tomorrow. I have to go to the office for a meeting (but it's not work, I swear), so there's little time to get much else done. I'll try to whip out a Finnish pulla before I head in (out of Baking with Julia).
...

That last bit was written around 7, and between then and 10 I managed to produce the aforementioned pulla, which turned out to be a fairly easy and quite delicious sweet, cardamom-scented bread. I used cardamom straight from the pods, and ground it in a spice grinder with a bit of sugar (as it wasn't working too well with the mortar and pestle we own). I should have spent a while longer with the grinder, as there were still some fairly large bits of cardamom in the dough -- but the results were still delightful.

Above is the formed dough, after its rise and before egg wash, pearl sugar, and sliced almonds are added. The result:



Later, I crafted the pandoro dough (from Artisan Baking Across America). This dough took some time to produce, but was frankly spectacular -- it was like caramel, but held together in gorgeous long strands. It even smelled like caramel and vanilla.


Here you can see just how the final dough behaved. It was then cut in two, formed into balls, and placed in the pandoro molds to proof overnight.

Day Three: Big Bread.

On with the bread forming... Today I spent some time with larger loaves. I had previously struggled to keep a couronne open in the middle, and this time I think I nailed it:


This was made with about 1kg dough.

I also made a boule, and attempted a wheat design. Clearly, I need to practice more:


This was very nearly a tragedy, as we have only one baking stone, so I used a Dutch oven in the lower oven to bake the boule. I preheated the Dutch oven (in the oven) to 450, pulled it, and attempted to drop the risen boule into the Dutch oven -- at which point, it folded in half. I scrambled to "unfold" it, and I think it was not much the worse for wear... but that was a scary moment. I think today sees me purchasing a second baking stone for the lower oven.

Later that day...

I made two more loaves, this time with whole wheat making up 30% of the weight of the flour. I also purchased another baking stone (less than $10 at Target for a ceramic "pizza stone"). Here are the results:

The Experiment Continues

Day two, and boy, am I vacating.

Last night saw the production of two ciabattas from the pain ordinaire dough. One was delivered next door and promptly destroyed, with some amount of glee. This morning, I split the sweet dough in two, added egg wash and cinnamon sugar, and made two 8x4.5" loaves -- that dough is extremely soft, and did not seem to rise overnight in the fridge at all, but it is rising in the pans (about 2 hours to bake time). The pain ordinaire with old dough (pate fermentee) addition rose nicely overnight, and was split into 10x10 oz balls to form into baguettes (5), epi (3), and pain fendu (2). I also have a Kaiser roll recipe brewing (sponge is bubbling away at the moment) in an attempt to find a good recipe for non-dairy bread rolls that are akin to Spansk boller (from Denmark).

Notes from the day:

Results from the cinnamon-raisin bread experiment, using the Team USA sweet dough (ABAA). The dough rested overnight in the fridge, and did not appear to rise much. It was extremely soft and still quite sticky -- gluten was there, but clearly hindered by all the margarine. (Note that the dough was modified to test as a non-dairy dough, using almond milk and margarine in place of scalded milk and butter. I strongly suspect the dough would have behaved similarly with dairy.) I pressed the dough out by hand on a well-floured surface -- it was too soft and sticky for a rolling pin, and small enough to not be worth the trouble -- brushed on an egg wash, and covered liberally with cinnamon sugar. I rolled the dough and put into a parchment-lined pan (as shown above), let rise for two hours, and baked off. The results: fine crumb, almost cake-like, and just a hint of cinnamon. Clearly, I could have been more liberal with the cinnamon, but would have had to add some sort of binder (like more margarine) to make it stick. Michaline describes the bread as being like brioche, and she enjoyed it toasted with butter in the morning.




Baguettes in their larval state. Here, the ten bundles of joy rest before being formed. You can see little bits of the rye flour in the dough -- a very naughty thing, according to the French. (This is not a "true" French bread unless it has a maximum of 2% rye -- this has about 10% rye. Still, it adds flavor, and I'm in California, after all.)


Baguettes proofing, nestled in their linen couche. With a true French dough (or at least the equivalent -- only flour, yeast, water, and salt), it won't stick to the linen. (Although I have to imagine that, if the rye content is high enough, the dough would be fairly sticky, and would require a lot of flour to avoid sticking.)


Here, the baguettes are slashed and are ready for the oven. I've used a straight razor (single edge) rather than a lamé, just to see if it's any easier. It was a bit, although I understand that it may be more difficult to cut flaps ("shag") with a straight razor.


The finished product. At the top, the five to the right are traditional baguettes, and I'm pleased with the general uniformity -- clearly, the trick is to remember to form the dough carefully, first by pressing the rested dough into a uniform oval, folding and pressing the dough thoroughly into a roll, and straightening the baguette form once it is in the couche. The top left and the middle loaves are my attempt at a pain fendu, and pain is right -- clearly the two lines of dough (to be separated by a thine line of dough) re-merged in both cases. The upper-left loaf was somewhat more successful, but the two halves need to be better separated before putting in the oven. Note that I used rice flour on those, as directed in Baking with Julia. The bottom three are pain epi. Not much to add there -- they are fairly easy to make, and I like the results.



(Non-diary) rolls, akin to Spansk boller (Danish white bread rolls), made with rice milk instead of dairy milk (non-dairy). These turned out well, if a bit overdone (just a tad dark), although that may have been from the rice milk for all I know. The crust is thin and relatively crisp, although it softened quickly. These were made based on the Kaiser roll recipe from The Village Baker, with the obvious substitution of rice milk, and the dough was split in eight rather than 6 (and formed as plain rolls). The resulting rolls have a tight crumb, and the flavor is not too exciting, but takes well to some butter and marmalade.