Setting aside spades and worries

It's been a quiet summer for the two of us. We stuck pretty close to home, busy tending to ideas and vegetable beds, hoping that in time they'd flourish. But summer is fast fading, which means that many of our good friends, who've spent the summer away, will be back in town. I'm thinking that it's time that we set aside our spades and worries for a little and think about breaking the quiet, about maybe having a party.

When we do, this flatbread is sure to be a part of it. (If you want to get fancy, this flatbread is technically a Catalan coca of sorts.) It is perfect late-summer party fare--just red pepper, onion, and eggplant cooked down into a luxurious mess, spread out on thin stretches of dough, and then slipped into a hot oven for a scant few minutes. There, the onion especially melts and chars, while the dough blisters and bakes up shatteringly crisp. Cut into squares, it is ready to be passed around.

This flatbread is decidedly unfussy. The dough, though yeasted, is forgiving. I have let it sit out an hour or two longer than it really should have and then stuck extra in the fridge for later use. It held up just fine. You could definitely cook down the vegetables a few hours, maybe a day even, in advance. And with everything prepped, you could easily keep turning out flatbreads with a party in full swing.

Onion, Red Pepper, and Eggplant Coca

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East

DOUGH

112 g / 1 cup bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1/3 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

75 ml / scant 1/3 cup water

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

VEGETABLES

1 medium eggplant, cut into half-inch cubes

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

6 tablespoons olive oil, plus more as needed

2 medium Spanish onions, roughly chopped

2 red peppers, cut in half lengthwise, seeded, and thinly sliced

1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped rosemary

To make the flatbread dough, place the flour, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir together the oil and water in a cup. Make a well in the flour and then pour in the water mixture a little at a time, mixing constantly with your hands. When all the yeast mixture has been incorporated, transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead well for at least 5 minutes. If the dough is still stick, add a little more flour; if it is too stiff, a little more water. It is ready when no longer tacky but soft, elastic, and smooth. Put the dough in a clean, oiled  bowl and leave to rise until doubled in bulk, 1-2 hours. After proofing, it can be chilled until needed. Give it some time to come back to room temperature, about an hour.

For the topping, first toss the eggplant with the salt in a colander and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a heavy, 10-inch sauté pan and, when hot but not smoking, add the onions with a pinch of salt. Give them a good stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add the peppers and cook for 15-20 minutes more, until the onions are golden and sweet and the peppers soft. Be sure to stir them often so they cook evenly and do not stick to the bottom of the pan. Blot the eggplant dry with a towel, add to the pan along with the rosemary, and cook for a final 15 minutes, stirring often, until the eggplant is soft all the way through. Remove from heat and rain off any excess oil. Check the seasoning and set aside to cool.

When ready to bake the flatbread, preheat the oven to 525 degrees F (with a baking stone, if you have one). Divide the dough into two and roll out half very thinly to make a 12-inch by 8-inch oblong. If it's being stubborn, cover and let rest for a few minutes for the gluten to relax and then try again. Place it on a peel, if using a baking stone, or on a baking sheet, if not. Spread half the vegetables over the surface, right up to the edges of the dough. Bake for 8-15 minutes (flatbread baked on a stone will take significantly less time), until browned and crispy underneath. While the first flatbread is in the oven, start rolling and topping the next one. They are great served piping hot from the oven or at room temperature.

Serves 6-8 as an appetizer.

Above all, flakiness

When Octavian and I were in Berlin last summer, we were more or less on two different trips. He was there for a workshop and so was limited most days to a view of the city from a hotel conference room. I, however, was only tagging along and so had the luxury of spending my days wandering the winding streets, drinking in everything. There was a lot to the trip, then, that Octavian only ever saw in photos, heard about. And, unsurprisingly, there were spaces, moments, flavours, that were pretty well impossible to capture or convey, that he would've had to have just been there for.

One of those things was a pastry I had at Brot und Butter, a buttery, delicate swirl of a pastry filled with poppy seeds. I ordered it pretty much at random. It was one of my first days in Berlin, and I had been walking all afternoon, paper map in hand, and had already had a few awkward I'm-sorry-my-German-is-awful-sprechen-Sie-Englisch? moments that day. So by the time I'd found my way to the cafe, I was tired and couldn't quite find the courage to speak up and order something. (I also couldn't figure out whether I was supposed to order from the counter or just take a seat.) So instead I just stood there, looking at the pastries in the cases, then at the rows of canned and boxed goods, indecisive about what to do and on the verge of just fleeing the situation. Apparently, I looked pathetic and stricken enough that about ten minutes in one of the women behind the counter asked me if I needed help. So I fumbled my way through another conversation, pointed at one of the poppy seed pastries, and was relieved just to be able to sit down with something, anything, and not feel so much like the silly North American that I was. It helped that the pastry was good, very good. For a few moments, anyway, I forgot the awkward exchange, lost between flakey, poppy-filled bites.

I knew as I ate that this pastry wasn't one that I'd be content just to remember. I needed to be able to make more just like it at home, long after this trip was over. But given all the awkwardness that had just transpired, I wasn't about to start asking questions about pastry methods and ingredients. So I settled for scribbling down its name from the pastry case--Mohnschnecken--and retreated.

This brings us to this past week, when I finally accepted that I would have to pull together a laminated yeasted dough if I wanted more Mohnschnecken.* Now, just what a Schnecke is seems to depend on who you ask. Some recipes have you add sour cream to the dough, some have you make letter-folds with it for flakier layers, some have you laminate in the butter for even flakier layers still. Most agree that the dough should be rolled up with its filling and cut into spirals--hence the name Schnecke, which just means snail in German. But because I remembered flakiness above all, I decided I would have to make a laminated dough--beat cold butter into a pliable slab, tuck it into a yeasted dough, and letter-fold it for layer upon layer of flakey pastry. But honestly, the prospect of working with a laminated dough again scared me. I'd only done it once before, and as I knew, it could get messy. You need to work quickly, so that the dough and butter don't get too soft to work with. But you also need to be gentle. If there isn't enough flour on the counter and the dough sticks and tears, the butter will start seeping out, and you might not get those perfect flakey layers. (I don't want to overstate the difficulty of working with laminated dough, but it's definitely something that I'm still working to get better at.) So it took me a few days to work up the courage. Then I dove in.

And it wasn't all that bad. I had a bit of trouble towards the beginning getting the butter the right consistency, and there were a few minor tears in the dough, which I tried my best to pinch together and then forget, but that was it. By early the next afternoon, we were tucking into our first pastries, puffed, golden, still warm from the oven, and ever so flakey. Totally, totally, worth the trouble, awkwardness and all.
Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with poppy seed fillings--well, I just think we ought to see more of them around here. Poppy seeds have a pleasant bittersweet quality to them, which I think lends itself particularly well to pastry. I saw poppy-seed-filled pastries everywhere in Berlin and poppy seed ice cream too. The Berlinners have the right idea.

Much of my success with the Schnecken, I think, owe to the step-by-step photos that Joe, the man behind the pastry recipe, took the trouble to take. You can find his instructions for pulling together the pastry dough here, his instructions for laminating (especially helpful!) here, and his instructions for shaping here. I am actually looking forward to my next encounter with a laminated dough. These particular Schnecken, by the way, are a marriage of two recipes. The poppy seed filling comes from a New York Times recipe for hamantaschen via Smitten Kitchen.

Poppy Seed Snails (Mohnschnecken)

From Joe Pastry and Smitten Kitchen

Note: About freezing. I have to say that in my experience, pastries that have been frozen and then thawed, proofed, and baked are never quite as good as ones baked fresh. They just never have quite the same airy crumb. But these Schnecken held up pretty well. I'm probably just being overly picky in saying that they're not quite, quite as good. About the raisins. The next time I make this poppy seed filling, I might consider giving the raisins a rough chop before adding them in. This filling is about the poppy seeds after all!

1 batch pastry dough, chilled for at least an hour (recipe here)

1 batch poppy seed filling, chilled completely (recipe here)

2 egg yolks lightly beaten with a splash of milk or cream

Roll out the pastry dough into a rectangle (the exact dimensions don't really matter--I'd aim for it to be at least twice as wide as it is long) just shy of a quarter-inch thick, dusting the work surface, the dough, and the rolling pin with flour as necessary. Gently spread the poppy seed filling in a thin, even layer over the dough, leaving a half-inch border at the sides and bottom of the rectangle. (You might not need all the filling.) Starting from the top of the rectangle, roll the dough up into a cylinder about 1-1/2 to 2 inches in diameter. Trim the ends and then cut the dough into 1-1/4 inch pieces with a bench scraper or a sharp knife.

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, six to a sheet, and cover to proof until soft and airy, about 2 hours. (At this stage--before the final proof--you can also put them in the fridge overnight and then proof them the next day or store them in the freezer for up to three months. Just be sure to thaw frozen pastries overnight in the fridge before proofing and baking. From the fridge, the pastries may need an extra hour to proof.) Then brush with the egg wash and bake in an oven heated to 375 degrees F until golden, about 15 minutes.

Makes about 12 pastries.

*It occurs to me now that the Mohnschnecke I had in Berlin might not have been made with a laminated dough. Looking back at my notes from the trip, my guess is that that pastry was made with a sour cream dough, which made it crisper and less croissant-like. But hey, I'm not going to complain.

A happy coincidence

Berlin, at least as I experienced it, is a city with a complicated personality, one that I feel I can't really have begun to fathom having had only two weeks there. I think I'd need more time, a lot more time, to wander its streets and to piece together what I'd find, to really say anything definitive. Still, I'll say this much--Berlin is a city that resists easy definition, a city that's a lot of things. Parts of it have the look, the feel, the grandeur of another time. My first night there, I followed the cobbled streets from the hotel towards the Spree, the river that runs through the city. Reaching the river, I was taken aback by the view--the Bode Museum towered at a fork in the waters, its dark, gilded dome awash in the setting sun. It was magical. And the city kept doing this, kept leaving me breathless when I'd least expected it. I'd turn a corner and stumble into a beautiful shaded courtyard, or I'd lose my way in a neighbourhood and find myself at the gates of an old palace. And just walking through the halls of the Neues Museum, those light-filled, airy halls, was worth the price of admission. But for all that, Berlin never felt old or tired or stuck up. There was too much going on in its streets, in its myriad, hidden courtyards, for it to feel anything like that. People were gathered, wherever I was in Berlin--in lines waiting for kebap, in spirited protest in the streets, at market stalls overflowing with chanterelles, in leafy, light-strung courtyards, drinking the night away. Berlin to me felt young, alive, still in the midst of finding and defining itself.

And the food, I think, reflected this, this complicatedness about Berlin. I ate plenty that was decidedly very German--leberkäse with mustard, a sort of pinkish slab of finely ground pork, onions, and liver, the edges crisp and golden from baking, the best and simplest of potato salads, sharply dressed and slicked with olive oil (Cafe Sgaminegg), a meltingly tender pork knuckle, flaky pastries chock-full of poppy seeds (Brot und Butter), and Wienerschnitzel, of course. But I also ate lots that was decidedly and excitingly less traditional--a pizza with perfectly crisp, blistered crust scattered with edible blossoms (Prinzessinnengarten), a crunchy, hazelnut-crusted potato dumpling suspended over green gazpacho (Lucky Leek), gem-like squares of lokum whose flavour lingered hauntingly in the mouth (Confiserie Orientale), morsels of sesame-coated, sweet-miso fudge savoured between sips of matcha (Oukan). So Berlin's food scene, like the rest of the city, I would say, resisted definition, was a lot of things. 

Of the city's more traditional offerings, vollkornbrot was definitely a favourite of mine. Vollkornbrot is a dark, dense, seed-studded whole-grain rye bread. And, quite frankly, to those of us most familiar with the lofty, open-crumbed loaves of a more French provenance, it can look a little uninviting, a little intimidating, even--like you might break a tooth on your first bite. But let me assure you, vollkornbrot is wonderful stuff. There's an earnestness to its dense, coarse crumb, which, I think, is all the more appropriate to its dark, complex flavour. I braved a slice at one of my first breakfasts in Berlin, and after that, I always made sure to look for one of those tell-tale dark, squat loaves wherever I was.

I knew that I would miss vollkornbrot back at home. I was determined to find a way to make it myself. It didn't take much--as it happened, the last issue of Lucky Peach (my airplane/laundromat reading for the trip) included a recipe. A happy coincidence. I got started as soon as I could.

Making vollkornbrot doesn't take much, though you do need sourdough starter for the levain. (Making friends with a more intrepid baker than yourself can come in handy for this part.) The night before, you start the levain and soak sunflower and flax seeds in water. Soaking the seeds prevents them from pulling water from the bread and helps to keep the loaf moist. In the morning, you mix the levain and seeds with the remaining ingredients--coarse rye flour, hot water, and salt. Then, you transfer the dough directly to loaf pans to proof. There's no kneading, no shaping involved. After that, the loaves just need a thorough bake.

The resulting vollkornbrot is incredible. The long bake leaves the exterior of the loaves dark and toasty and brings out a nutty, almost coffee-like sweetness in the rye. I'm not sure that I've had bread crust more flavourful, more complex. This gives way to a moist, dense, seed-speckled crumb with the distinctive sourness of a long, wild-yeast-driven proof. I like starting my morning with some, thinly sliced and generously buttered, sometimes topped with a spoonful of preserves. But maybe one of these days, when I'm feeling really nostalgic for Berlin, I'll have to have my vollkornbrot like the Germans do and pile my buttered slices with some good cured meat.

Rhonda Crosson's Vollkornbrot
Adapted, just a little, from Lucky Peach no. 4

Note: About the flour. I had trouble finding rye flour milled to an appropriate coarseness, so I used a combination of stone-ground medium-grind rye and rye meal. The latter is basically rye berries ground to the consistency of something more like steel-cut oats than flour. (You can find rye meal pretty easily through Amazon, if it isn't available at your local grocery store.) I decided on the ratio by feel. It ended up being about 40 percent rye meal and 60 percent medium-grind flour, which I liked quite a lot. About the loaf pans. I made my loaves in 4" by 8" loaf pans, letting the dough proof for about 4 hours, just until it crested over the lip of the pans. If you own a pain-de-mie loaf pan, this might be the time to use it. I saw a lot of loaves of vollkornbrot in Berlin with those perfectly rectangular sides. There's something aesthetically pleasing about that.
UPDATE, 2013-01-30. About its shelf-life. I haven't yet tested the recipe's claim that this bread will last for months in the fridge, but I have tried storing a loaf, very tightly wrapped, for three or so weeks. It does keep remarkably well in the fridge, though, unsurprisingly, it is a tad drier around the edges, more so than I would like. I've found that this is nothing a quick spell in the toaster and a good slathering of butter (or mashed avocado and salt) won't fix. Even so, I might stick to baking one loaf at a time in the future.

RYE LEVAIN:
53 g sourdough starter
538 g coarse rye flour (see note above)
457 g water

SOAKER:
92 g flax seeds
92 g sunflower seeds
182 g water

FINAL DOUGH:
350 g coarse rye flour
218 g hot tap water
20 g fine sea salt

Make the levain. In a large bowl, combine the levain ingredients and mix by hand. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to ferment at room temperature overnight, about 8 to 12 hours, until the mixture is gassy and doubled in size. Meanwhile, combine the soaker ingredients and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to soak at room temperature overnight, 8 to 12 hours.

The next day, combine the levain, soaker, and remaining ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Using the paddle attachment on slow speed, mix until very well incorporated and smooth--this could take up to 10 minutes. Slow speed is important to avoid breaking up the delicate pentosans, the gummy sugars responsible for the structure in rye breads. The resulting dough, though cohesive, should be rather wet and batter-like. Rye, unlike wheat, has very little gluten in it.

Portion the dough into two 9-1/2" by 5" loaf pans that have been greased and lightly coated with rye flour. Using wet hands, press down to level out the dough and smooth the surface. Proof in a warm place until the dough almost reaches the top of the pan. This will take anywhere from 2 to 6 hours.

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Bake the loaves for 40 minutes, then drop the temperature to 400 degrees F and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the top of the loaf is very brown. A thorough bake is important with a dense rye like vollkornbrot. If it isn't baked all the way through, it will be gummy and sticky.

After baking, let the bread cool completely--as long as a whole day--before slicing. Wrapped very tightly in the fridge, this bread will keep for three or four months.
Makes two 9-1/2" by 5" loaves.

Those first few minutes were glorious

Common sense recommends that you not fry doughnuts in your kitchen when it's 82 degrees F out or when you're planning to attend a rather technical philosophy talk in a few hours or when the only ventilation in your kitchen is an open window. It also recommends that you not down four or five such doughnuts (as modestly sized as they might be) within seconds of one another. But some considerations tend to drown out that sober, well-meaning voice in your head--for example: grapefruit-jelly doughnuts! Just the idea of them--it's like bells ringing in your head. It chimes and crashes 'til you wake up one day thinking, "Common sense--what's that?" and then find yourself juicing grapefruits in the kitchen.

So it was under the spell of these doughnuts that a few friends and I gathered in my sweltering, cramped kitchen this past week, dropping bits of brioche dough into hot, shimmering oil to have them sizzle, puff, and blister golden. It got pretty sticky and greasy in there, but that didn't matter to us. Warm doughnuts filled with grapefruit jelly--the idea kept us going.

And when we were through, those first few minutes were glorious. We stood there together in the thick air of the kitchen, just eating. We reached for one doughnut, then another, then another. Whatever sense we had had left us. We blissfully gorged ourselves. It was not, perhaps, our finest moment. Five or six doughnuts in, we started to feel the grease on our fingertips, the sugar going to our heads, and had to stop ourselves. But I maintain that those first few minutes were glorious. The aftermath--not so much. Octavian and I, anyway, were headache-stricken and drowsy for the remainder of the day. Doughnut coma is a phrase that comes to mind.

But I don't mean to discourage you from making your own doughnuts at home. It's a good way to spend an afternoon with friends (you should just round up more than I managed to to help you with the eating), and these doughnuts are really good. Make a party of it. Your friends will thank you.

That said, making these doughnuts in particular does require a bit of planning ahead and a few extra hands (remember those friends?). It's easiest, I think, to spread the work over two days. On the first day, you should put together the brioche dough. This is my favourite part. You start by mixing together a basic yeasted dough. Then you add butter, a lot of butter, to the dough, bit by bit, until it's satiny and yielding. This process takes a while, and you may find it tedious, but I am all for the waltz of dough and butter whirling around the bowl of my stand mixer. I find it mesmerizing.

Brioche dough is not typically what you'd use for jelly doughnuts. By weight, the butter-to-flour ratio in brioche ranges from 1:2 to 4:5, which makes the dough far richer than what you find in most doughnuts. But this, I think, makes these doughnuts all the better--airy, delicate, meltingly tender. (I wouldn't have thought to do this myself. I came across the idea in Tartine Bread.) And the grapefruit jelly does help tame some of that richness.

You should make the jelly on the first day too, if not beforehand. It's a cinch and can be made well in advance (I made mine several weeks ago, when it was still legitimately grapefruit season)--just transfer it to a clean jar and store it in the freezer until you need it.

On the second day, gather your friends and put them to work (what else are friends for?). You should at least have one other person on hand. You'll have a much easier time with the deep-frying that way--maintaining the oil temperature, keeping track of the time, and turning the doughnuts in the oil are a lot for one person to do, given how quickly the doughnuts fry. And if you have more friends willing to help, all the better. Make yourselves a little assembly line. You'll definitely need a second set of hands when filling the doughnuts. (Try holding a pastry bag full of jelly and piercing a doughnut with the filling tip--no good can come of it.)

So, these doughnuts do call for a good deal of effort, and many of them will disappear into your friends' mouths seconds after you've put your pastry bag down. But I can think few better things to do with friends when you've got an afternoon.

Grapefruit Jelly Doughnuts

Adapted from the December 2011 Bon Appétit and Tartine Bread
Note: About the grapefruit jelly. The first time I cooked the jelly, it didn't set. I failed to note the importance of using a large saucepan. If this happens to you, just return the mixture to a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Let it boil for 3-4 minutes and pour it back into the shallow dish. You do not need to let the jelly reach 220 F while on the stove--it will set too hard if it reaches this temperature. If the jelly has set too hard, return it to a saucepan and cook over medium heat. Add up to 1/2 cup more of fresh grapefruit juice and whisk to incorporate. Bring it to a vigorous boil and then pour it back into the shallow dish to cool and set. And if you find yourself with extra jelly, it's wonderful on toast. About the brioche dough. I used Tartine Bread's brioche recipe for my doughnuts, which involves using sourdough starter and poolish for leavening. I'm pretty confident, however, that just about any brioche dough with a similar butter-to-flour ratio, 1:2, will produce good results. I like this Dorie Greenspan recipe. You might also consider using this brioche dough (but without all of the savouries, of course). Or, if you have Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice, you could also use his recipe for "middle-class" brioche. Whichever recipe you settle on, it will most certainly make more dough than you'll want for doughnuts. Scale the recipe and portion out the dough so that you have just as much as you need or bake a loaf of brioche with the extra like I did. Follow your chosen recipe's directions up to and including bulk fermentation (the first rise) and then chill the dough (for up to a day) until you're ready to follow the procedure below. About the safflower oil. Depending on the size of the pot in which you're deep-frying, you may need up to 1 quart of oil. Once you've finished the frying, you can let the oil cool and then filter it through a fine-mesh sieve or a coffee filter to get at least one more use out of it. Store it in the fridge until then.

GRAPEFRUIT JELLY

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups fresh grapefruit juice (from about two and a half grapefruits)

1/4 cup liquid pectin

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

DOUGHNUTS

700 g brioche dough, chilled (see note above)

Safflower oil for deep-frying

Powdered sugar for dusting

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

Long-handled slotted spoon

Deep-fry/candy thermometer

Stand mixer

1 1/2-inch biscuit cutter

Pastry bag fitted with a Bismarck tip (no. 230)

Make the grapefruit jelly. Combine the sugar, grapefruit juice, and pectin in a large saucepan (the mixture tends to foam as it heats up--a larger saucepan will allow it to properly boil and release enough of its water content to set into a jelly). Scrape in the seeds from the vanilla bean and add the pod. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat to high and whisk until mixture boils vigorously, about 6 minutes. Pour mixture into a shallow, heat-proof dish. Remove the vanilla bean pod. Let cool completely at room temperature. Cover and chill until set, at least 2 hours. The jelly should have a consistency similar to preserves--thick enough to cling to the end of a spoon. The jelly can be made up to a week in advance (or earlier if stored in the freezer in a clean jar).

Shape the doughnuts about 2 hours before serving. Lightly flour the dough and the work surface. There are two options for shaping the dough. (i) divide the dough into 3 equal portions and roll each portion into a cylinder about a 1/2 inch in diameter. If the dough feels as if it will not stretch further, let it rest for 10 minutes and continue rolling. Transfer the dough to a cutting board and set in a draft-free place or cover with a kitchen towel. Let rise until the dough looks soft and inflated, 1 to 2 hours. Cut the dough into on the diagonal into pieces about 2 inches long or as you prefer and then place near the stove. (ii) Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/2 inch. Cut circles out the dough with a biscuit cutter. Transfer the circles to two lightly floured half-sheets and set in a draft-free place or cover with a kitchen towel. Let rise until doubled, 1 to 2 hours. Place near the stove.

Pour oil into a heavy, high-sided pan to a depth of 2 to 3 inches. Heat the oil over medium-high heat until it registers 375 degrees F on a deep-frying thermometer.

When deep-frying it's best to set up your prep area like an assembly line so you can work safely and efficiently. Set a rack near the stove and under it place a layer or two of papers towels.

Carefully slip four pieces of dough into the hot oil and fry until golden brown, about 1 minute. Using the slotted spoon, turn the dough and fry until brown on the second side, about 1 minute.

Carefully remove the doughnuts from the oil and transfer to the wire rack. Fry the remaining pieces of dough, checking the temperature of the oil intermittently. If necessary, allow a couple of minutes for the oil to return to 375 degrees F in between batches.

Transfer the grapefruit jelly to a pastry bag fitted with a Bismarck tip. Filling the doughnuts is a two-person job--you need one set of hands to hold the pastry bag upright and to pipe out the jelly and another set of hands to insert the Bismarck tip into the doughnuts. A squeeze bottle fitted with a 1/4-tip would also work. Fill each doughnut with about a 1 teaspoon of jelly. 

Dust the doughnuts with powdered sugar and serve immediately.

Makes 40-50 two-bite doughnuts.

I made a beeline

I don't often get nostalgic about my undergraduate days. I'll admit it--I was an awkward, geeky kid coming out of high school. I was nowhere near ready for the droves of rowdy frat-boy types, the 11 am beer pong, the near constant party going on somewhere down the hall. This, of course, wasn't all there was to college, but when I lived in a dorm it seemed like it, and I was miserable. It took me a long while to find my place.

But one of the things I do remember fondly about those days (once I found a real place to live) is the splendid bakery downtown, Pan Chancho. Octavian and I would often wander in on Sunday afternoons to admire the rows of burnished sourdough boules and enjoy a cup of soup. I was doing most of our baking at home at the time, but there were a few things we always found hard to resist taking with us, like a couple of the savoury brioches. They were our favourite--lofty, buttery, herb-flecked--and just perfect with a sharp, lemony salad on a warm day. When it came time to move, I knew I'd miss them. 

And clearly, I still haven't stopped thinking about those brioches. When Octavian and I were visiting this past December and popped into Pan Chancho, I made a beeline for the cookbooks. The bakery had published a collection of its recipes a few years ago, including one for the savoury brioches. I was determined to have those brioches, wherever I happened to be.

Getting the recipe to work for me took some tinkering. The translation from professional bakery to home kitchen has got to be a little tricky. So, while the first attempt was a little disappointing, the second--when I did what made the most sense to me--turned out brioches just as we remembered them--gleaming, golden, buttery, and tender.

If there's anything challenging about making brioches à tête like these (tête is just French for head), it's in the shaping. You want to make each round of dough as smooth and uniformly round as possible, and you want to place each tête dead-centre on top of its round. (You also don't want to handle the dough for too long and have the butter melt out on you.) Imperfections will be obvious once the brioches hit oven and start rising. Misaligned and unevenly shaped têtes will bake off-centre. (You can see from my photos that I haven't quite mastered the technique!) It just takes a little practice, and even if your brioches are a bit wonky looking, I don't see anyone complaining once they've taken a bite or two.

I planned to have the brioches with a modest soup over a few lunches, but I never quite got around to making any soup before all of the brioches disappeared. (We gave some away...I didn't eat all of them!) But I can say that these brioches are not out of place at breakfast and definitely make for an outstanding afternoon snack. I can even see them taking the place of dinner rolls if anyone wants to have me over for something that needs a little mopping up.

Savoury Brioche
Adapted, somewhat liberally, from The Pan Chancho Cookbook

Note: Mixing. It might be possible to mix the dough by hand, but I wouldn't recommend it. It will be difficult to pull the dough together, I think, and using your hands to knead the dough will warm the butter too much. Shaping. It takes a bit of practice to get the technique down for shaping the brioches. Alternatively, you can use the method that Dorie Greenspan uses here for bubble-top brioches, which is more forgiving.

375-500 g / 3-4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 tablespoons sugar
2 sticks / 225 g unsalted butter, soft but still cool
5 large eggs
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 teaspoon fresh sage, finely chopped
2 teaspoons fresh chives, finely chopped
2 teaspoons rosemary, finely chopped
1 scallion, thinly sliced
60 g sharp cheddar, grated (about a 1/2 cup)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg + 1 teaspoon water

Sift 375 g / 3 cups flour, the salt, and the sugar together. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter. Paddle in three of the eggs and scrape down the bowl. Incorporate the flour mixture at low speed, 1 cup at a time, and scrape down the bowl. Paddle in the remaining eggs at medium speed, one at a time. Add in the yeast and beat for 1-2 minutes. The dough should have pulled away from the sides the bowl at this point. If it's too wet and hasn't, mix in as much of the remaining flour as necessary on low. 

Re-fit the stand mixer with the dough hook and knead the dough at medium-low speed for about 5 minutes. Knead in the herbs, cheese, and pepper at low speed. The dough should be smooth and elastic enough to pass the windowpane test. Press it into an even rectangle and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight to firm up the butter.

Butter 16 of the cups in two muffin tins or 16 small brioche moulds if you have them. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Divide into 16 equal pieces, about 65-70 g each. Cut a bit of dough off each piece, about 1/5 of the total, for the tête. You don't want the tête too small, or it will dry out while baking. 

Working quickly, shape all 32 pieces into rounds--cup your hands around each and press the edges of your palms into the edges of the dough and pull them in and towards the work surface, rotating the dough and repeating this motion until you have a smooth, even round; pinch the round from the bottom to tighten it. Place the large rounds into the greased muffin cups seam-side down. Press a well 3/4 of an inch deep into the centre of each round. Gently press a tête into each well. Cover with a damp tea towel and let rise for about 90 minutes or until doubled in size. The brioches should pretty much fill the muffin cups, their têtes clearing the tin. 

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Beat the remaining egg with the water for egg wash and brush the brioche. Bake for 18-20 minutes. The brioche should be golden and their têtes a deep mahogany. Unmould immediately and cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes. The brioche are best eaten the day they're baked but will keep for another day in a zip-top bag.

Makes 16 brioches.

The first

I have a problem when it comes to complicated, days-long baking projects. As you may have noticed, I can't seem to take on enough of them. I want to better understand ingredients. I want to master techniques. I want to be challenged in the kitchen. I want to be awestruck. So last week, when I found out that two of my classes wouldn't be in session that week, I decided, naturally, that I would use the free time to get ahead in my reading and make some croissants.

I'd wanted to tackle croissants for a while. You should know by now how I feel about buttery, flaky things, and croissants are pretty much the pinnacle of buttery and flaky. I'd just been putting it off because I knew that it would be an especially demanding project and that there was plenty that could go wrong. But with two days in a row clear of commitment, it was time. Hello, Tartine Bread croissants.

I ran into problems from the start, and these just compounded as the process went on. First, the sheer amounts of flour, milk, leaven (sourdough starter), and poolish (a similar mixture of flour, water, and commercial yeast) that went into the croissant dough made it really difficult to pull together. The biggest mixing bowl in my kitchen could barely contain it all (I should have foreseen this). And this led to a dough that wasn't evenly hydrated and rather lumpy (I should have mixed it more instead of rushing it). I tried fixing this by giving the dough a few more turns in the bowl during bulk fermentation, but that just overdeveloped the gluten in the dough. So when it came time to rolling it out and laminating in the butter, rolling was a huge struggle and led to tears in the dough.

So I was pretty sure that the croissants were doomed. Croissants, after all, are only as wonderful as they are because of their buttery, flaky layers. And to get those layers, what you do is pound cold butter into a pliable slab, encase that slab completely in the croissant dough, and then repeatedly fold the dough onto itself as you would a letter and roll it out again. When the butter hits the oven, it creates steam, and all of those lovely layers you made separate: buttery, flaky heaven. (How cool is that?) But, of course, if your dough tears repeatedly like mine did, the butter escapes, and you lose those layers. But I was already a day in at that point, so what could I do? I held my breath and hoped (and fretted and fretted some more).

It all turned out all right. My croissants had buttery, flaky layers aplenty. We ate the first few in a matter of seconds, leaning over the kitchen sink to catch all the buttery shards. They weren't perfect, mind you--not quite airy enough, a little too chewy--but they were satisfying, a good first attempt, anyway.

These croissants definitely won't be the last I make. I want croissants that will transport me to Paris. So, if you have a favourite formula or a tip or two for me, I'm listening. (Though I still love Tartine Bread for its country loaf, its croissant directions weren't always clear--some of them even conflicted with what was going on in the accompanying photographs.) Tell me what I should be doing or what else I might be doing wrong. Really, I want to know!

P.S. I really have to thank my friend, Freerk, for responding to my frantic messages about my poor torn croissant dough so promptly and with such kindness. Thank you for the reassurances!

Bread with butter in it

There are few things I like better than bread and butter, plain and simple, but every now and then, the thought of having something fancier gets into my head, and I have to stop and bake, even if I don't really have the time. This weekend, for example, I thought to myself: bread and butter is fine and good, but what about bread with butter in it, lots of butter?

Now, I had a few options: slipping in the butter in soft gobs and making a glossy brioche dough (which would be good for doughnuts as well as brioche), pulling out my rolling pin and laminating it between thin layers of dough, as you would for croissants (there's some great PBS footage of Julia Child and Michel Richard making puff pastry this way here), or cutting in cold flecks of it and (again) layering the dough.

A quick glance through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain decided it for me. I was going to have to go with the final option if I wanted her maple danishes. Now, before you shy away from the idea of making pastry at home, let me say this: don't be intimidated by the directions, making a "rough puff" like this one is really not all that hard to do--you just have to remember to keep your butter cold. Really, it's like making pie crust, except those are made all the more complicated by fillings and par-baking and potentially soggy bottoms. All you need to make these danishes is cold butter, a metal bench scraper, and some nerve. Setting aside a few quiet hours one morning is pretty important too. You don't want to feel rushed.

You start the night before by grating frozen butter into the dry ingredients. Easy-peasy. You don't even have to cut the butter to size and decide for yourself what "pea-sized" really means. The grater does the work for you. Just remember to toss the ribbons of butter with the dry ingredients every now and then as you're grating. There's no point in making all those pretty ribbons if they're just going to get warm and clump together in the bowl. Next, you add an egg and some milk, stirring just to get everything a little wet--don't be tempted to overwork things. The dough will be a bit rough-looking, but breathe easy--you've gotten past the first stage.

In the morning, it's time for the messiest bit--turning the dough. Basically, what this comes to is rolling the dough out, folding it over itself into layers, then rolling it out again, and making more layers. Repeatedly folding the dough onto itself like this layers the flecks of cold butter. And just as with pie crust, when the butter hits the hot oven, it'll melt, and its water content will escape as steam, leaving little pockets in the dough. With the butter layered so, what you'll get are layered pockets of buttery, flaky goodness. Just remember to keep the butter cold. If between turns you find that the dough is getting warm and more difficult to handle, feel free to cover it in plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge for 15 or 20 minutes before moving on. And don't be shy with the flour--flour your work surface generously before rolling out your dough, and while you're rolling it, gently lift the dough at the edges with your bench scraper occasionally, peel it back from your work surface a bit, and throw down some more flour. It can't hurt.

When you've rolled out the dough for the final time, rest easy. The worst is over. Spread a bit of softened butter across the dough, sprinkle it with brown sugar and maple sugar, roll it up, and cut it into pretty spirals--ready for proofing and baking. Leave the rest to the oven. Soon, you'll have a plate piled high with burnished and buttery beauties that you can be proud of.

Maple Danishes
Adapted from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain

Note: About making these in advance. As the recipe says, these pastries are best eaten pretty much right out of the oven. If you want to make the whole batch (and you may as well, if you're going to go through the trouble of making them at all) but don't have twelve (or maybe just six, realistically) takers waiting for your oven timer to go off, you can freeze what you don't want to eat right away. Set the danishes destined for freezing on a separate half-sheet and let them proof with the rest. When the two hours are up, put them in the freezer for about an hour, just until they harden. Then, remove them from the half-sheet and return them to the freezer in a freezer bag. The night before you need them, thaw them on a half-sheet covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator and bake them as the recipe directs the next day. About maple sugar. Reduce maple sap far past the syrup stage very, very carefully, and you get maple sugar. I bought mine from KAF.

PASTRY:
1 cup rye flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
6 oz unsalted butter, frozen
3/4 cup whole milk
1 large egg

FILLING:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
4 tablespoons maple sugar
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Sift the rye and all-purpose flours into a large bowl, pouring back into the bowl any bits of grain that remain in the sifter. Stir in the sugar, sea salt, and yeast. Using the large holes on a box grater, quickly grate the frozen butter into the dry mixture--this will ensure that the butter stays cold. With your hands, very briefly stir the strands of butter into the mix.

Whisk together the milk and egg in a small bowl. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and stir just to moisten the flour. There will still be some drier bits of dough; that's fine. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill overnight.

The next day, take the dough out of the refrigerator and scrape it onto a well-floured surface. It will be quite rough, but don't worry; it will come together as you work with it.

Flour the top of the dough and use your hands to shape the dough into a rough square, pressing the loose bits together as you go. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle about 9 inches by 15 inches, keeping the longer side closest to you.

For the first turn, fold the rectangle of dough into thirds like a letter. Then turn the dough to the right once, so that the longer edge is closest to you and the seam is at the top. As the dough is still quite rough, a metal bench scraper will help you lift the dough to make these folds.

Flour the surface and the dough and repeat the step above two more times, for a total of three turns. As you do the turns, the dough will become more cohesive and streaks of butter will begin to show throughout. The dough will also soften as the butter begins to warm and the yeast begins to react. (If the dough is getting too warm and difficult to handle at any point, cover it in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes before continuing.)

To shape the dough, cut it in half with a knife or a bench scraper. Roll each piece of dough into a 12-by-8-inch rectangle, keeping the shorter side closest to your body. Rub the softened butter over the rectangles, dividing it equally between the two. Sprinkle the sugars evenly over the butter.

Roll up the dough, one rectangle at a time. starting with the shorter edge closest to you and keeping a tight spiral as you roll. Slice the log into 6 even slices and lay them on 2 parchment-lined half-sheets, spiral side up, 6 to a sheet.

To proof, cover each half-sheet with a towel or plastic wrap and allow to rest in a warm area for 2 hours. While the dough is proofing, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. After 2 hours, the spirals will be slightly swollen but will not have doubled in size.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, rotating halfway through. The pastries are ready to come out of the oven when the sugars are caramelized and the tops of the danishes are golden-brown. These pastries are best eaten the day they're made, ideally within the hour.

Psst. Fellow Canadians out there, Happy Thanksgiving.

Simple pleasures

For me, summer is about simple pleasures. It's about eating wild blueberries straight from the bush along a well-worn, wooded trail, about marvelling at the fireflies in the yard at dusk, winking in unison, about strolling between stalls at the farmers' market on sun-drenched mornings, everything fresh from the fields. And so, when summer hits, most of the activity in my kitchen comes to a standstill. It's too hot to labour over the stove, and I just want to eat everything pretty much as it is anyway.

Bread is an exception. For warm, fragrant loaves to be torn into at the end of the day alongside radishes and butter or a simple salad, it's worth it--I will sigh and fire up the oven. Sure, it requires a bit of planning and mixing and waiting--a drag, I know--but eating it? Now that's a simple pleasure...especially if what you've got is brioche.

Brioche is one of those breads that needs no adornment that first day--no butter, no jam, no preserves. Just savour it as is--plush, buttery, and barely sweet. If the croissant had a darling little sister, brioche would be her. Unlike with the croissant, the generous amount of butter that goes into brioche is incorporated bit by bit directly into the dough, making brioche more bread than pastry compositionally but almost every bit as buttery and luxurious.

Typically, my style in the kitchen is a little old-school--I'm a wooden spoon and whisk kind of girl. I've waved off the need to get a stand mixer, happy to mix and whip and knead with my own hands. But last week, I caved when my boyfriend's parents offered to buy us one (a housewarming gift--but more on that some other time). One of the reasons I gave in was, of course, brioche.

You can make brioche by hand. I did it a couple of Thanksgivings ago and ended up with quite the collection of blisters. The brioche was really good, but as you might anticipate, I haven't tried it again since. 

The stand mixer makes brioche a breeze--once you've got your yeasted dough together (from Tartine Bread in my case), you just drop in the butter, one half-inch cube at a time, until you have a gorgeously silky and buttery dough. And if you aren't imprudently eager to break in your stand mixer like I was this week, you'll do all this in a kitchen that isn't breaking 80 degrees--though, if you really can't wait, just let your dough proof in a bowl set over an ice bath, and you should be fine (the butter will melt out of the dough, otherwise).

I won't post the recipe for Tartine Bread's brioche here--because it takes off from the basic method used throughout the book, it's a little complicated and probably best explained in the book itself. I've already gushed about it before--if you're into making bread and want to try your hand at sourdough, it's well worth having. However, you can find Dorie Greenspan's recipe for brioche, the one I used two Thanksgivings ago, here--it's a little more traditional, a little fussier, but, again, still a breeze if you've got a stand mixer.
Need I even say that brioche makes the most indulgently awesome and custard-like french toast?

In anticipation of my next post: my copy of the first issue of Lucky Peach finally arrived in the mail late this week, and it's so awesome. David Chang is a madman. Using instant ramen as an ingredient in another dish? Perverse but likely brilliant. 

The pursuit

Everyone--drop your wooden spoons and get yourself a copy of Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread. This man will instruct you in the making of some seriously magnificent wild-yeast loaves. Think blistered, burnished, and crackling crust. Think lush, open, and irregular crumb. I had never baked loaves quite so lovely (okay, my scoring needs work, serious work), and now there's no turning back.

If you're like me, baking bread for you isn't just a matter of putting food on the table. It's about nourishing the people who sit with you at that table and about carrying on a tradition as old as any. And just for those reasons, it's something you do in pursuit of the perfect loaf. You have a vision of what bread should be like, of what breaking bread with those around you should be like, and you constantly look for ways to get that much closer to it. Well, Tartine Bread might just be the thing you've been looking for. You get to drink deeply of Robertson's particular vision-- bread "with an old soul"--and to understand what goes into the loaves at Tartine, his bakery in San Francisco. And this, I must say, goes a long way.

One of the things I like best about the book is what you're to take from it--not just a recipe or two but a more immersive approach to baking. You're encouraged to bake with your senses--to smell your starter to gauge its maturity, to feel your dough's readiness for its first shaping, to recognise by its shape that you've developed its tensile strength adequately. Throughout, Robertson's voice is instructive and reassuring, but he leaves you to make and, therein, learn to make the right calls. It takes attentiveness and sometimes even a bit of courage, but, in the end, you're a better baker for it.

As with any such use of wild yeast, baking bread by Robertson's methods takes some dedication. There's the starter to maintain (though, I've been getting away with feeding mine about once a week since I only bake about that often), and proofing from start to finish takes a good 6-8 hours. But the bread is outstanding.

Robertson's method combines a lot of familiar home-baking wisdom, but I've never seen it all come together in one place and so beautifully. It goes something like this: (1) start with young leaven, that is, leaven still in a sweet-smelling and relatively immature stage of its development, (2) mix a very wet dough, at least 75 percent of the flour's weight, (3) to help along the dough's development, turn it in its bowl every half-hour during the initial proofing (much easier than conventional counter-top kneading), (4) shape the dough twice before its final proofing for better tensioning and oven-spring, (5) bake the bread in a pre-heated cast-iron dutch oven, which mimics a professional oven and gives the loaf the steamy environment it needs for its first 20 minutes.

And if you ever find yourself with leftover bread, there is a trove of gorgeous-looking recipes that call for day-old bread at the end of the book. The porchetta is certainly off-limits for me is crazy good (I've had a change of heart regarding meat-eating since having written this post), but the French toast? Custardy, caramelised, and buttery as it should be.

Baked French Toast
Adapted from Tartine Bread

Robertson suggests that you serve this with a very ripe Hachiya persimmon spread on top and maple bacon on the side, but blueberries and maple syrup are fine by me. I suspect that if you returned the skillet to the stove after baking and flipped the toast and let it caramelise for a minute or two, it would be even better. All the better to soak up more of that buttery goodness in the bottom of the skillet and get more crunch. I'll try this next time around.

3 eggs
1 oz / 2 tablespoons sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
0.5 oz / 1 tablespoon armagnac (optional)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
8 oz / 1 cup milk
2 slices day-old country bread, each about 1 1/2 inches thick
1 oz / 2 tablespoons butter, salted if you like

To make the custard base, in a bowl, stir together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla, armagnac, salt, and milk.

Place the bread slices in the custard base and let stand until the bread is saturated, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat a skillet over medium-low heat. Melt the butter to coat the bottom of the pan. Lift each bread slice from the custard base and place in the pan. Cook the slices for about 3 minutes, occasionally pressing them against the bottom of the pan with a spatula so the bottoms cook evenly. This step seals the bottoms of the slices by cooking the outer layer of the custard base. It also prepares the bread for receiving more custard base.

Spoon or ladle more custard base into the center of each bread slice. If the liquid leaks out of the bread and onto the skillet, the bread slices are not quite sealed. Continue cooking for 1 minute, pressing the slices slightly to seal. When the slices are full of custard base, carefully transfer the skillet to the middle rack of the oven. Do not turn the toast.

Bake the slices for 12 to 15 minutes and then gently shake the pan. If the custard base is still liquid, continue baking and check again. Depending on the thickness of the slices, the custard may take up to 20 minutes to cook all the way through. The French toast is done when the custard seems solid and each slice appears inflated, as the custard souffles when fully cooked.

Using the spatula, remove the French toast from the skillet and place them, caramelized-side up onto plates. The skillet side should be caramelized and crisp.

Serves 2.