Desserts & Pastries

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

No knead bread - whole wheat

So I experimented with whole wheat no knead bread.  It worked as expected.  I followed the ingredients in the recipe on the Jo Cooks blog, but used the same technique as for the white bread - 4 cups of wheat flour, 2 tsp salt, 2 cups water and 1 tsp yeast overnight  (Jo used 3/4 tsp but I used 1 tsp for lack of a proper measure).  

I noticed that the NY Times whole wheat recipe added rye and corn meal to the wheat flour and took less rising time.  Since my dough was quite cool in the morning, I decided to leave it longer in the kitchen which was quickly warming up with a south facing exposure. But I'll definitely try mixing in the rye flour and corn meal next time to perhaps  give it a lighter texture.  Unlike the white bread recipe, this NY Times recipe did not use a cast iron pot but used a regular loaf pan instead, which would be a plus for bakers who don't own a cast iron pot, however useful it can be.

Given the almost anything goes nature of this no knead bread, I think one can safely try experimenting with different times, ingredients, utensils, etc. I am certainly going to continue the experiment when I get home!

Fold after taking it out of the bowl

Floured and flipped over on a cotton towel, cover, let rise for two hours, and flip again seam side down into Dutch oven.

This is what it looked like when done

Great texture!

Friday, 2 January 2015

No knead bread!

The first time I heard about the "No knead bread" was at a dinner which I blogged about in my last post "Portuguese homecooking".  My hostess, who baked the delicious bread, told us it was like the bread her grandmother used to bake in Portugal.  When she told us how simple the recipe was, I (and I'm sure everyone else who first heard it) listened with some skepticism.  When I googled "no knead bread", the first thing that came up was the New York Times recipe.  With a video and step by step instructions, it seemed almost too good to be true.  It's inevitable that I'd try it.

It didn't take long for the opportunity to come up.  New Year's Eve, I was showing my dinner host this blog and he questioned me about the No knead bread in the Portuguese homecooking post - whether I have tried it.  So here I was, at my son's house for an extended stay and with time on my hands after an early dinner.  My sister had left her Le Creuset pot with me for the week.  I checked the cupboards and found unbleached flour, a package of active dry yeast (with a 2016 expiry date - what a surprise, considering that there isn't a baker in the house!). And then water and salt are the only other ingredients. 

It was close to bedtime.  I did the calculations and figured that if it's that easy I could get the batter ready in 5 minutes (just mixing the flour, yeast, salt and water together), and it would be ready around noon the following day (recipe says 12-18 hours). Allow another 2 hours for it to rise, 45 minutes for it to bake, and I'd still be able to leave for a dinner date at 4 pm. It all turned out as the recipe indicated, and I was even able to go out for a walk while waiting for the bread to rise. 

Yes, it seemed that working out the logistics was the hardest part of the recipe.  No wonder it was the most popular recipe on the New York Times cooking page!  Check out the recipe and try it.  Since it came out there have been whole wheat and sour dough among other versions.  I know what I will experiment with next...

Finished bread in the French oven which was slightly too big for it 

Enticing on the rack

Visibly great texture and crust

2 comments:

Sunday, 11 August 2013

Kings of Pastry

In “Three Stars”, we saw how stressful it was to stay on top as a Michelin Three Star chef.  But wait till you see “Kings of Pastry”.  This is about a group of pastry chefs competing for the honour of being one of the “Meilleurs Ouvriers de France”.  This is a contest that is held once every four years in France for various artisanal professions, including everything from pastry making to steel engraving through a range of highly skilled crafts.  The process is brutal.  These craftsmen spent years preparing for the three day test.  But when they get the award, it’s for life, and because of its gruelling requirements, much honoured and respected.

In “Kings of Pastry”, we followed several pastry chefs in their preparation for the test.  They have to prepare a fancy sugar sculpture centrepiece and all kinds of pastries and chocolates for a wedding party.  They drew on all their creative and technical resources to design the sculpture.  The rest is probably easy for these skilled craftsmen.  But the most draining was the actual preparation of the sugar sculpture at the test site – the sculpture had to be made in the kitchen and then carried by hand to the tents that were erected for this purpose.  They actually had staff directing traffic to ensure there is no collision during this transportation.  A slight change in humidity could be disastrous for the sculpture – and it happened to one chef whose sculpture collapsed as he placed it on the table.  It was devastating – but after calming down, he went back and finished the competition, gathering up his creative juices, he salvaged what was left of the broken sculpture and quickly turned it into another creation, almost like a phoenix rising out of the ashes.  I won’t spoil the film by telling you the results of the contest.  But it was finger-biting exciting.

Chef repairing the damage after the collapse of his sculpture 

One can’t help but admire these dedicated artisans who put their all into this test of their endurance over the course of just a few days.  They have to have their technique down pat in order to survive all the ups and downs during these stressful hours.  Their reward, if they win, (there is more than one winner - they just have to get a certain number of points) is a prestigious collar ribbon presented by the French President at the Sorbonne. 

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Is It Really Cake?

A friend of mine brought this remarkable "cake" to my attention.  It was too good an opportunity to pass up so I asked her to do a guest post for us.  To my surprise, she agreed - another example of "never ask, never get".  Enjoy ~

Few of his clients know that Bob Hansen, a multi-talented construction contractor who does work for me from time to time has another life as a painter cum cake master.  His often whimsical, always Food-Network-worthy cakes are the stuffs of legend and perennial winners at the local July 4th county fair.  The only times Bob didn't win was when he didn't compete in order to (in his own words)  "give others a chance". Lucky for us fans, this year Bob somehow managed to vanquish his altruistic feelings and reentered the fray.  The result? What else but another cake that took the cake:

Love the details!  crumpled paper on the floor,  note on pad, printer output on the floor...

Lest anybody thinks this tour de force is a mere concoction of colorful plastic gizmos and thingies, I should point out that all but the legs and antennae of the butterfly are edible. The chair pad and back are real ginger bread; the cables are black licorice; the pencil and apple are gum paste; the floor is royal ice painted with food coloring to look like wood planks.  

The desk is a multi-functional engineering marvel featuring a built-in printer, an USB port with flash drive and a few SD memory slots. One side is the printer's in-feed and the other side is the out-feed with a catch rack made from sugar dough.  Great space saving design with patent pending by the way. The legal pad, which most would agree to be the pièce de resistance, is gum paste overlaid with icing upon which an edible food printer is used to print the lines with food colored ink. Ditto for the computer display and printouts.  

Left side view - more details: cellphone charging, printer paper feed...

What is that iridescent butterfly doing on the back of the chair, you ask? It turned out it's Bob's trademark signature which is guaranteed to give copycats nightmares. Originally Bob intended to create a figurine to sit at the desk but ran out of time.  No problem, the absence was ingeniously covered up by the inscription "I'll be right back" on the legal pad. Pretty slick, eh?

Crumpled notepaper turned into crumbs!

Incredible?  Apparently others agreed.  On the first day of the fair, some faithless soul came along and, instead of stuffing a chunk of cake into his/her mouth (which would have been reasonable), pulverized  the computer printout and legal pad page that were on the cake floor just to be satisfied that they weren't real paper.  Not to be outdone, the next day another (or maybe the same) villain ripped off the loose page from the legal pad.   After that, since the fair still had two more days to go, I no longer had the heart to follow the fate of Bob's masterpiece.  Now who says the Americans are a nation of lemmings that blindly run over cliffs?

- With thanks to sanssoucci

Bob Hansen actually makes custom cakes -  http://isitreallycake.com/

SATURDAY, 23 MARCH 2013

Can bread pudding be "elegant"?

My answer is "yes".  We had bread pudding at Sorrel in Yorkville last night.  It was "Jazz Night" with Errol Fisher crooning tuneful jazz standards in the background.  After a delicious dinner of calamari, parsnip soup, veal scaloppini and lamb sirloin, we thought we'd have dessert to stretch out the evening.  I was also curious how a restaurant like Sorrel would serve bread pudding; afterall, all the dishes were elegantly served and bread pudding was not typically an "elegant" dessert.

Bread pudding used to be known as "poor man's pudding" because of its basic stale bread ingredient and was usually a clunky and heavy-looking dessert.   I've learned that it's now turned into a rich, creamy and decadent dessert served in the finest restaurants made with all kinds of specialty breads like brioche, croissant, challah, panettone, etc.  Far from looking like the traditional chunky and plump dessert, the bread pudding at Sorrel were two "slim" triangles.  Now some, including me, would argue that biting into slim bread pudding could not possibly duplicate the rich, homey taste and sensation resulting from chomping into a thick piece of bread pudding and letting the custard spill onto your palette.  But to my surprise, the slim triangles were every bit as rich and satisfying.  I'll let you use your imagination looking at the photo and would love to hear about your experience with bread pudding...

MONDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2013

Best almond croissant ever - Alsatian patisserie in Toronto

I saw the almond croissant on the table as I walked into the patisserie - I knew I have to have it.   When I sat down at my table with my croissant, the woman at the next table took a bite of hers and said, "This is the best almond croissant I have ever tasted in my life!".  I looked at her and said, "Really?"  She looked like she is thirtysomething, haven't been around for long for sure but it set the right tone for my first bite.  And what a sensation it was!  Biting through the crunchy top layers, toasted almonds breaking up in my mouth, warm almond paste spilling onto my palette, then gently (trying to act civilized) tearing through more soft and crunchy layers  - it was heavenly!  

This IS the best almond croissant I have ever tasted!  It's better than the ones I'd tried in Paris, the home of the croissant.  The layers, density and consistency of the dough were all just right, as was the filling - it literally filled the croissant from end to end.  This is one instance where it doesn't matter how the croissant was cut up if we were sharing.  And of course, in the end, after I finished my half, I had to go and get another one, my lenten resolve shredded in pieces.  

After I calmed down enough to look around me, I found myself surrounded by the most exquisite pastries and cakes.  I thought I was sitting in a Parisian cafe.  But this is the Patisserie la Cigogne on Bayview Avenue, an Alsatian patisserie in Toronto.   The photos speak for themselves.

I visited on a Sunday afternoon around 1:45 pm - in case you want to time your visit when the almond croissants are still warm...

MONDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2013

Pork aspic (肉凍) and the best puffs ever (高力豆沙 or高力芝麻)

One of my favourite foods when it was Chinese New Year at home was the pork or chicken aspic my parents used to make (and I mean both my mom and my dad).  They would boil a whole chicken or pork trotters, remove the meat from the bones, add gelatine to the soup (in the case of pork trotters, they need only to add very little gelatine because of the natural gel from the trotters), put the meat back in with a touch of fish sauce and put the whole thing in the fridge.  When it's unmolded, it was one of the best  cold appetizer ever, which made it handy for serving to the non-stop stream of visitors on the first couple of days of the lunar New Year.  Those were the days!  Today, in a fit of nostalgia, I went to a Shanghai style restaurant that serves something very similar.  It's not as good as what my parents made, but good enough - now if only there were more jello and less meat!

This restaurant with the odd name, Skyland de Shanghai, serves one of the best desserts ever.  This is deep-fried egg whites with bean paste inside (高力豆沙).  This is a dessert which originated from Beijing and is called 高力 (high power) because the egg whites have to be beaten with very high power until they are stiff, flour and corn starch are then folded in to make it into a paste, bean paste or other sweet paste added in the centre, then deep fried.  Whipping the egg whites is the tricky part, as in all puff pastries, the egg whites have to be at room temperature and the beater clean, the flour folded in gently without overstirring, making sure not to let the air out of the egg whites.  Other than the traditional bean paste, I noticed a version with black sesame paste today and promptly ordered it as I've never tried it.  Obviously the black sesame has a more intense flavour but I prefer the texture of the bean paste - that didn't stop me from eating three of these, in lieu of noodles or other starch...