Potato Rolls

This recipe makes soft rolls that are really good as sandwich bases. As usual, when baking I weigh things, so it may be tough to convert to volume measures. This really is best done using a stand mixer. Working butter into a sticky dough is a chore by hand.

Ingredients

12 oz water

1 oz honey

1 tsp instant yeast - yeah I cheated and didn't weigh this

16 oz bread flour

3 oz semolina

1.5 oz powdered dry milk

1 oz instant mashed potato flakes (easier than baking a potato for the small amount needed)

1/3 oz salt

1 oz unsalted butter at room temperature.

Method

Combine the water, honey, flour, semolina, potato flakes, yeast, dry milk into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the dough hook knead until the dough is smooth and stretchy. Add the salt, and the butter gradually. Knead until the dough is shiny and elastic.

Lightly oil a bowl and turn the dough out into the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough proof for at least an hour - until it has doubled in size.

Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured board and shape into 12 rolls (~4oz dough per roll(. Lay them out onto a parchment lined sheet pan, sprinkle with a little rice flour, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, remove the sheet pan from the fridge. Turn the oven to 350 and allow to heat up. Give the oven at least 15 minutes after it has achieved its target temperature.

Uncover the rolls (they will have been out of the refrigerator for about 40 minutes) and bake for about 25 - or until they are well browned.

Cinnamon buns - again

My sister has been raving about some cinnamon buns that she had from a bakery in Cornwall. I have posted about these before. But whatever I did, they didn't measure up to her exacting standards. She finally sent me a picture of what she was after. So I figured that I would try to replicate them. Not an easy task as it turns out. But over the weekend I had a cinnamon bun from "The Village Baking Company" here in Texas and I now understand what Alison was going on about. I set to re-recreating the buns. Who in their right mind would attempt to make a laminated dough in the Texas heat? No one that I can think of!

The brioche dough seems to be a bit weird. It is incredibly dry - until the butter is added. Then it comes out beautiful and silky. But I was a bit worried looking at the liquid ratios.

There is lots of butter in use. Butter in the dough, butter in the laminations, butter in the cinnamon....

Sorry about the metric measures, folks. I do all my baking that way.

 Sinful Cinnamon Bun

 Just out of the oven

Ingredients - The Dough

1 Kg Bread Flour

70 g 2% milk

5 g half and half (approximates whole milk - very approximate - I eyeballed the calculation)

4 egg yolks (of course the whites went into macaroons)

6 whole eggs

20 g salt

15 g rapid rise yeast

150 g unsalted butter cut into 12 cubes

A further 375 g unsalted butter for lamination

Method - The Dough

Warm the milk and half cream to about 90F. Add the sugar and the yeast, to allow the yeast to hydrate. Whisk the milk/sugar mixture with the eggs until completely combined.

Whisk together the flour and salt. Stir in the egg/milk mixture to make a shaggy dough. Turn out on to a board and knead gently. It is too stiff for my Kitchenaid mixer at this point. Stretch and fold four times over the next hour until the gluten is well developed.

Place the dough into the bowl of the mixer, fitted with the dough hook. Knead slowly, adding the butter one cube at a time. It will take about 20 minutes to get all the butter mixed in and for the dough to become smooth again.

Leave the dough to rise at room temperature for an hour and then refrigerate overnight.

Method - Lamination

The key to lamination is to make sure that everything stays cold. Hard to do in a Texas kitchen in the summer.

Pound the refrigerated butter flat between 2 sheets of cling wrap - or inside a plastic bag. The butter must not become warmer than about 60F.

Roll the cold dough out into a large rectangle. Place the butter into the rectangle and then fold the rectangle over the butter into thirds. Roll very lightly and immediately wrap the dough and return it to the refrigerator for an hour. 

After an hour, chill the work surface with ice bags/freezer packs. Remove the dough from the fridge. Roll into a rectangle again and then rewrap and refrigerate - 1/2 hour should be adequate.

Repeat the chilling, unwrapping and rolling twice more, resulting in a 30" by 10" (75cm x 25 cm) rectangle. Now ready for the filling and baking.

Filling - Ingredients

3T finely ground cinnamon

8T granulated sugar (I used Bravetart's toasted sugar). I didn't want brown sugar's flavors

100g melted butter

pinch of salt

Method

Grease 2 12 muffin pans with non-stick spray. Spread the butter/sugar/cinnamon mixture over the rolled out dough. Using a pizza wheel cut the dough into strips about 1 1/4" in width (10" lengths). Roll each strip into a wheel and place into the muffin pan. It should be quite crowded. Cover the tins and refrigerate while heating the oven to 350F. Again keeping the butter from premature melting is key.

Once the oven is heated, place the prepared muffin tins into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes - until the tops of the rolls are browned and the internal temperature is 205F.

Note, if I were to do this again, I would make much more cinnamon/butter/sugar and put some in the bottom of each. These weren't quite as gooey cinnamony as I would have liked. Nut not too bad for a first attempt! 

Strange Bread

I recently bought Stella Parks's wonderful dessert cook book, "BraveTart". Of course I had to try some things - so the recipe for a Japanese style bread was attempted.  It didn't turn out as intended, but it was wonderful, nonetheless.
There were several issues.

• I had a timing problem - was due to meet some friends for lunch so didn't quite give it enough time
• The recipe called for malted milk - but I didn't have any
• The coconut oil/fat that I had was very strongly coconut flavored

But apart from that, it was a matter of improvisation.

I did have some dry non fat milk lying around, so I thought it might be cool to add that instead of the malted milk powder. But, of course, I wanted some toasty flavor. So i baked it in a 350 oven for 8 minutes to get it toasted. It worked a treat!

Also, because this was from an American cook book, most of the measurements are in lbs/oz not in metric measurements.

The technique hydrates some of the flour with hot liquid first - a way to get water into the recipe without making everything too sloppy. 

Ingredients (Paste)

1 1/2 oz AP flour

6 oz 2% milk

Ingredients (Bread)

15 oz AP flour

2 oz sugar

2 oz toasted milk powder

1 1/2 oz virgin coconut oil (solid)

2t active dry yeast

5 oz 2% milk

1 oz half and half

1 1/2 t kosher salt

Method (Paste)

Mix the flour and milk together in a saucepan. Heat gently stiffing occasionally until the mixture thickens. Keep it on the heat until the flour mixture comes away from the sides of the pan (while you are stirring with a silicone spatula).

Let the paste cool for about 20 minutes

Method (Dough)

Dissolve the sugar in the milk/half and half. Add the yeast and allow to sit for 15 minutes.

Combine the flour, paste, salt, coconut oil, milk powder together in the stand mixer. Add the salt and the milk/yeast mixture, stir to combine and then knead for 15 minutes (in the mixer). It needs to be kneaded until the dough window -panes.

Cover the dough and leave to rise for about 45 minutes in a warm place. It should be a bit fuffy. 

Set the oven to 350 and preheat for 20 minutes.

Turn out the dough and shape into an 8" square. Fold the dough like you would fold a business envelope.  Pinch the edges together to make a seam. 

Place in a loaf pan, seam side down and leave to rise a second time until the top of the loaf is just above the edge of the pan.

Bake for 45 minutes at 350. Internal temp should reach around 202 degrees.

Turn the loaf out of the pan onto a wire rack. For at least an hour before cutting it.

Eat with mashed avocado - or just with butter and jam.

Delicious

Pie Dough

Like all dishes this one starts with a story - and a little known secret. First the secret. Cartons of 18 eggs (in the US) are usually fresher than 12s - at least in my local supermarket. Yesterday was no exception. A whole week fresher.
So, with convenient storage for 12, a carton of 18 looked to be inconvenient. Then it hit me. Quiche would take care of the rest. But I needed a pie crust. Not to worry, Milk Street came through. Erika Bruce took ideas from a variety of places to come up with the genius recipe below.

Ingredients

2t Corn Starch

3T cold water

1 Cup + 2T  All purpose flour

pinch salt

10 oz butter, cut into 1/2" cubes and chilled (If using unsalted, up the amount of salt to 4 pinches)

2T Full Fat sour cream

Method

Whisk together the corn starch and water. Microwave on high for 30-45 seconds. Until a clear gel is formed. Chill the cornstarch/water gel.

Measure the flour into the food processor. Add the salt and run the food processor to incorporate and aerate. Add the cornstarch gel. Pulse 5 or 6 times (1 second pulses) to incorporate.

Add the butter and sour cream. Run the food processor continuously until the dough mass forms a mass,

Remove the dough mass from the bowl, wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.

To use the dough, roll it out as normal. Not the dough is smooth, but not elastic.

Tarte Flambee (From Alsace)

It's getting to be the time of year when we want to cook outside. So the grill gets to become the star. Our favorite things to put on the grill are flat breads of one kind or another. We use pizza stones directly over the grill grates to help moderate and even out the cooking. Sometimes we do simple pizzas, sometimes other dishes. Yesterday was no exception. We had an old friend over for dinner and wanted to do a dish that she had never tried.
While tidying the cook book shelves the other day, I came across a book we had bought on a trip to Alsace several (about 10!) years ago. What better time to try one of the Alsacien classics. Hence Tarte Flambee.
Tarte Flambee is like a very thin crust pizza and is traditionally made using bacon, onions, and cream. Of course the recipe book was rather vague as to technique, cooking, etc. So some detective work was required.
So this is what I ended up doing:

Ingredients - 3 x 10" (25cm) Tartes

Dough

300 gm bread flour

175 gm water (room temperature)

1tsp instant dry yeast

2T olive oil

1tsp kosher salt

Tarte

2 medium onions sliced pole to pole in crescents

6 slices thick cut smoked bacon

3/4 cup heavy cream

1/2t finely grated fresh nutmeg

finely ground black pepper to taste

Method

Dough

Mix the dough ingredients together (i usually add the yeast to the water first, but am told that is unnecessary). After they are well mixed, knead for 10 minutes by hand or 6 minutes in a mixer (e.g. KitchenAid). The dough wants to be smooth and elastic. It will be relatively dry. This is typically less water than I use when making artisinal breads (58% or so hydration for those who care). This dryer dough is much easier to roll out than the relatively wet (65+%) doughs I make for normal consumption.

Place in an oiled (use the same kind of oil as you used in the dough) bowl, cover with cling wrap and leave to rise n a warm place until about doubled in volume.

When risen, remove from bowl, knead a few times and divide into three pieces (each weighing about 160gm). Form these into individual balls until you are ready to use them. Time here is fairly flexible. From beginning to mix until rolling out was 3 hours. However you can speed up/slow down the process by controlling the temperature. If the first rise is going too fast, then it does little harm to slow it down by refrigerating the dough. However, always make sure that the dough is covered when in the fridge. It can pick up off odors and dry out very quickly (both extremely undesirable individually, and deadly in combination).

Topping (can be prepared several hours in advance).

Cook the bacon lightly until much of the fat has rendered, but the meat is not crisp. You want it the same sort of texture as Canadian bacon. Cut into batons about 1/4" wide. Set the bacon aside

Slice the onions and sweat in a little oil without salt for about 10 minutes until translucent. Set the onions aside.

Assembly

Preheat the grill for about 30 minutes on as high heat as you can muster. The whole cooking time for one tarte is about 2 minutes.

For each dough ball, roll out thinly until it is 10" in diameter. Place the disk onto a peel with cornmeal on it to prevent sticking. Brush with a little oil. Ladle 1/4 cup of heavy cream onto the dough disk. Make sure you get close to the edge. Spread 1/3 of the onion and 1/3 of the bacon on each. Grate some nutmeg over the top, add a few grinds of pepper if desired.

Off to the grill! Cook on the pizza stone with the grill lid closed for around 2 minutes. You want a slight char on the bottom of the crust.

Serving

This dish goes well with a simple salad - although we served it with a Caesar salad and (of all things!) a Vinho Verde with its slight bubbles and yound, fresh taste.