Croissants - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 28th Installment.  The recipe is Croissants.

Loved this recipe - delicious result and it is quite a project!  I had made croissants from a different recipe before, so I had a little bit of prior experience.  It was very helpful to watch the video from the TV series to see some of the techniques for the initial step of adding the butter and flattening the dough to embed the butter inside.  I mixed first thing on Saturday, took all day Saturday as the eight hour rise, did two turns on Saturday evening, and then the last turn, plus shaping and final rising on Sunday, ending up with the first batch coming out of the oven at 11:00.

I made 3/4 of the recipe as plain (actually they're anything but plain) croissants, and 1/4 as chocolate.  It seemed essential to stick with the times to keep the dough very cold, and it was good to prepare this in the winter, since it didn't warm up much when I worked on it at each stage.  The dough really seemed durable to me, rather than fragile - really not to hard to work with.

The last phase, where you shape them (an hour or more of work) and then they rise for 3-4 hours seems problematic - how does one have croissants for 9:00 am breakfast?  Clearly the workers in those patisseries are chronically sleep deprived :-)  I got up at 5:30 a.m to get the last turn in, and we ended up eating them in the late morning and then the chocolate batch in the late afternoon.

I felt the results were fairly authentic (I'm sure with more practice, they would be even better), but I will be on the lookout for how to manage this without it ending in the middle of the day - I'd really like to eat them first thing in the morning.
Here's are the chocolate croissants - one ounce of chocolate per croissant made these quite chocolatey (in a good way). 

 I used Girardelli semisweet bars.  I tried chopping the chocolate as described in the recipe, but in the end, the best technique seemed to be cutting the squares into thin sticks and piling them up before rolling the dough over them.   The chopped chocolate was more likely to ooze out during baking than the larger slices did.  Here's  a photo of chopped versus sliced, before rolling:




I did have one mishap, so here's my warning for everyone: don't put them to rise in an overly warm oven!  I heated the oven a bit, and then turned it off and left the door open, thinking it would then be good for the formed croissants in their last rise.  When I opened the oven after an hour of rising, there was a lake of butter on the cookie sheet and the croissants were looking melted and deflated.

Sad sack croissants from rising in an overly warm space

I soaked up some of the melted butter, put another sheet of parchment underneath to try and sock up even more, and then baked them anyway.  We decided they were kind of like fried bread, because all the butter was on the outside making them kind of crunchy.  The best failed croissants around :-)

Sad sack croissants after baking - still edible!

Boca Negra - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 27th Installment.  The recipe is Boca Negra.

 

I'm starting to think these posts should have subtitles.  Subtitle this one "I'm not sure Jack Daniels is my favorite choice for baking"!

This recipe went EXACTLY as described in the book.  I used the food processor for the white chocolate cream, and then used it again for the cake batter - talk about speedy.  I liked pouring the sugar syrup on top of the chocolate and blending it - it worked well.   I remembered to have butter and eggs at room temperature, and then I baked it exactly 30 minutes, and it did, indeed have a firm top, and then I took it out.

Just after baking

We ate it warm, and it was pretty yummy (see note on bourbon below...).   The texture is amazing, and it's very intense.  The rest went into the fridge, so we'll eat that chilled.

This recipe calls for bourbon in both the white chocolate cream and the cake.  I'm not so savvy when it comes to liquor, so when I looked in the cabinet, and found Jack Daniels, I asked Richard (my husband) "Is this bourbon?"  It's whiskey, but we weren't sure it was bourbon, and we thought probably not.  (Some of you are laughing at me right now for my ignorance :-)  We decided that it was close enough, so I used it in the cake.  I don't think I would do that again - it seemed to make it kind of harsh, even after baking, although perhaps that's just my lack of sophisticated taste for whiskey.  Richard thought it tasted pretty good, so maybe just a matter of personal preference.  I left it out of the white chocolate cream, and was glad, since I think it would have been overwhelming in that topping.  I am going to check out what my fellow BWD bakers did with this recipe, since someone is sure to have done something creative with the liquor component of this (Grand Marnier, anyone?).    I did like the fact that this recipe was SO reliable and simple - exactly as advertised.

Foccacia - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 26th Installment.  The recipe is Foccacia.

 Second attempt - looks good, but is it really foccacia?

This was very tasty, and a multi-day odyssey - but seemed to turn out much flatter than I expected! I tried the recipe twice, and still didn't get what I expected, based on the photo in the cookbook.  

 

On the positive side: bread that is full of (and covered in) flavored olive oil is delicious! :-)  The dough was also very easy to mix and shape.

The details on my odyssey: the first batch was made in too much of a hurry, and did not get enough time to rise before its long (36 hour) stay in the fridge. It tasted good, but was a lot flatter than I thought this bread should be:

 

 

 

 

Batch 1 - not enough rising before going in the fridge

I would love to have a reliable recipe for Foccacia, so I decided to try again,.  I followed the recipe and recommended rising times to the letter.  The result was somewhat similar - a bit puffier, but not bubbly and puffy and soft on the inside.  It was more similar to a thick flavorful pizza crust.  My yeast is fairly new, so I'm pretty sure it's not that.  I left it out of the fridge for quite a while before baking, and it really puffed back up:

Batch 2 - Puffy dough after sitting in the fridge

I flattened it as described, for baking in a square, with slashes, and it never seemed to recover its loftiness.  I will look forward to seeing what my fellow Tuesdays with Dorie bakers did with this - maybe someone's got some good advice on how to get a puffier loaf.

French Apple Tart - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 25th Installment.  The recipe is French Apple Tart.

I should have taken a picture of this unmolded, as it looked a bit prettier out of the pan.  I don't have a 9" tart pan, so I gave it a try in a 9" springform pan.  The edge doesn't look as pretty, but it worked - the crust held up well, and released from the pan just fine.

 

The pie crust part of the recipe was very good - I have found that the mix of vegetable shortening (I know some of you are saying 'ugh' right now :-) and butter makes it very flaky AND flavorful.  My mother and grandmother always used only shortening, and their crusts were always excellent, but I think I like the combo crust.  I've even used lard in some pie crusts recently, since we have a local source of fresh lard, and that is good too, especially in combination with butter.

 

I thought the roasted apple sauce topped with thin slices was interesting and tasted good. I also liked the carmelized browning of the edges of the apple slices.  My tart was done before it got too brown - I wasn't sure whether to leave it in, but since I didn't want the crust to burn, I pulled it out.   I was wondering why I'd never seen this style of tart before (I don't remember it from the TV series either).  and why French? Any one know if this is traditional in France?

 

 

Here's how it looked before baking

I'm not sure I would make this again, with all those steps, but it was fun to make and the family liked it.  It was feeling like a bit of a slog to get this done over the weekend (busy schedule, so had to squeeze it in between other activities), but in the end, definitely worth it.

Pizza with Onion Confit - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 24th Installment.  The recipe is Pizza with Onion Confit.

 I like this recipe, and thought it was fairly easy.  I even stored the dough overnight after mixing the flour into the sponge, and it turned out well after its stay in the fridge.  Usually I made pizza dough in the food processor, but this was just as easy in the electric mixer.  I used all-purpose flour, but I am wondering if it might have more nice chewiness if I had used bread flour.  The pizza stone definitely helps with the texture, no matter what kind of flour is used.

Purple onions - they started out yellow!

The onions were simple to cook (just needed time at home for the hour of slow "confit-ing"). They did turn very purple from the red wine.  I think I didn't really cook them long enough either, becuase the wine flavor was still somewhat noticeable.  I was hoping for more sweetness.  I may try this again with less wine - I'm a big fan of carmelized onions on pizza, especially with other sharp ingredients like olives and goat cheese.

I made one pizza with the onion confit, plus oil-cured olives and goat cheese (yum), and one with red sauce, cheese, sausage, mushrooms and peppers, so the diners wouldn't completely rebel.  

Finnish Pulla - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 23rd Installment.  The recipe is Finnish Pulla.

I really enjoyed this recipe - it was fairly simple to make.  I was able to neglect it slightly by leaving it rising in a cool room all morning while I was out running errands - no problem at all with the finished (or should I say Finnish, har har) result.  It took lots of space to braid, since it is so long before looping it back into a circle. 

Cardamon is one of my favorite spices for this kind of slightly sweet bread.  I had some pods on hand (leftover from some previous recipe), so grinding those fresh made the flavor even better.  I also had the pearl sugar that I got a while back from King Arthur Flour, and that gave it the authentic look.   It was excellent as toast, days later. I had actually prepared this for the BWD "deadline" of December 18th, but time got away from me.  All too common an occurrence in December!    This would be an excellent recipe for a special occasion brunch or breakfast.

Before baking - very puffy dough

Gingerbread Baby Cakes - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 22nd Installment.  The recipe is Gingerbread Baby Cakes.

Yummy! 

 

I baked this as a large single cake, instead of the "baby cake" size, since I don't have any baby cake pans.   I greased and floured a 10" cake pan, but after attempting to fill it with the batter, I found that it was too shallow.  Take 2: I used a German pan which is a deeper dome-shaped 10" pan ,and that held all the batter.  I had to bake it longer than the recipe said, until it got firm in the center.  The cake is still very moist, even after all that baking.  As described in the recipe, it did look rather curdled while I was mixing it, but then evened out.

I really liked the spiciness of the cake (1 teaspoon of black pepper - wow!).   It didn't taste just like conventional gingerbread.  I was amazed at the 2 cups of molasses included - and even with that, plus the brown sugar, it didn't seem overly sweet.  We enjoyed it with whipped cream.

It would be fun to try this in the smaller pans - something for when I have more cupboard space for baking equipment.