New Baking Horizons

On an uncharacteristic whim, I (Katie) resigned from my research job at Pennington Biomedical for a position at Baum's Fine Pastries, a family owned bakery in Baton Rouge. I figure, you only live once, and medical school does not lend itself to many time-consuming hobbies such as baking so why not dabble while the gettin's good.

My new job (which I start Aug 30!) and a trip to the public library with Bingham inspired me to check out a professional baking book, The Baker's Manual, in the hopes of learning more of the "whys" of baking rather than the "whats." Right away, I became convinced that weighing ingredients instead of measuring is key (even though Alton Brown has been preaching that to me for years through my TV). So I made Alton's day and bought a pretty expensive scale (and of course a few other nifty baking gadgets which I couldn't resist). After reading, I also came to the conclusion that all baked good are like high maintenance divas; they require strict ingredient quantities and temps, you gotta treat 'um right (no over kneading or under mixing) and they need alot of "beauty rest."
I decided to put my health conscience aside and try my new baking by weighing method with croissants.

Croissants

Detrempe (Dough)
6 fl.oz (3/4 cup) water
6.25 fl.oz (3/4 cup) milk
1 3/4 oz (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
0.4 oz rapid rise, instant yeast
1 tsp salt
8 1/4 oz shifted bread flour
8 1/2 oz all-purpose flour

Beurrage (Butter)
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups unsalted, cold butter in pieces

The recipe calls for the water and milk to be cold and the use of fresh yeast (aka compressed or cake yeast) however, that is no where to be found in Baton Rouge. Fresh yeast does not require hot water for appropriate hydration of of the yeast, however rapid rise does (105 degrees to be exact) which is what I settled for.
I started out by heating the milk and water to 105 in the microwave (checking temp with a thermometer) while weighing out all my dry ingredients. Once at 105, I whisked in the sugar, yeast and salt. Sugar feeds the yeast, salt keeps yeast growth in check.


The recipe then says to gradually add the flour with the dough hook of your mixer at a low speed (Katie translation: mix with large spoon, bowl on hip, use much muster). After all the dough is mixed in, turn on mixer to medium speed for 2 min. (Katie translation: mix harder, switch arms when tired).

Form the dough into a loaf and retard (refrigerate) overnight. I just did this for about an hour because I didn't have all night but the longer you retard the dough, the more flavor will develop from the yeast.


For the beurrage, put the "heart attack" of butter in your mixer with the flour and mix on lowest speed until malleable but still cool. (Katie translation: mix on hip, get frustrated, figure a clumpy mess is the best you can do). Form the butter into a 5-in square block on a floured surface by pounding with rolling pin.

Take out the dough and roll into a 7-in square. Place the 5-in block catty-cornered on top the dough. Wrap the butter up like a little package, folding the corners of the dough over the butter. Press the dough and pound gently with rolling pin to seal the dough.

Roll out dough package into a long rectangle roughly 9x21 in. Please notice the 3 tubs of cottage cheese in my fridge, with sunflower seeds and Tony's...it's an addiction.

For the second turn, turn the dough 90 degrees (so that the layers of the fold face you) and roll out into a 24x8 in rectangle.

Fold the dough in a 4-fold or book turn by taking both short ends towards the middle to look like an open book, then closing the book. Chill for 45 min.

Turn and roll out the dough once more finishing in a business letter fold. Retard for 1 hour.

Now the fun part (FINALLY only took 4 hours). Roll the dough out into a long rectangle with 1/4 thickness. I found it helped to do on hot-dog fold in the middle of rolling to get the dough to roll out long enough but to still keep a skinny rectangle. Make sure you flour your board very well. Let the dough rest before cutting to prevent shrinkage.

First cut your long rectangle into squares and then each square in half for a triangle. Gently pull and stretch the triangles to enlarge them. To roll them up, put a small piece of scrap dough at the base of the triangle and roll it up. Stretch out the arms by rolling the triangle ends against the table as you roll.

Recipe says to proof them (meaning pop them in the oven with a pot of boiling water) until 1.5 times larger. However, being that it was 11pm at this point and fatigue became overpowering to the desire to finish. I greased some Saran wrap and put them in the fridge overnight and proofed them in the morning.

Brushed them with some egg wash and baked at 375 for 20-25 min, until golden brown cooling them down on my newly purchase cooling rack! They got rave reviews from my parents, Bingham's parents, and work friends!


Check out those layers! You can see Elizabeth, my friend from work, in the background going back for more :)


Speaking of work, my friends at Pennington threw me a going away party in which case I demanded to make my own cake. Unfortunately my friends and I decided to do $1 wine at JL's the night before, meaning that the morning of the party I'm trying to throw together a cake while battling and pounding head-ache.

Inspired by a Baking with Julie Child episode, I decided to do a very easy, light Chiffon cake (like sponge cake) with fig filling and whipped cream. No weighing ingredients this time however due to the circumstances.

Chiffon Cake
1 cup cake flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs, separated
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Recipe calls for 2 9-in cake rounds but I only own one so I just did mine in a spring pan, greasing and flouring the bottom (NOT the sides).

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together then add the egg yolks, oil, milk, and vanilla until smooth.

I then beat the egg whites to a stiff peak. It's better to have them room temp (no time in my case) and to use a metal bowl. I folded the egg whites (in 2 additions) into the cake batter (see Julia video for technique) and the dough went from a muddled mess to a light, fluffy cloud.

Baked at 350 for 25 min, cooled, then cut the cake in half with a long serrated knife using a very helpful technique I learned from the Julie video. Meanwhile I whipped up some heavy whipping cream with some sugar.

In the center, I slapped on some homemade fig preserves (with pecans!) made by Bing from the figs in his parents back yard and on top of that a layer of whipped cream. Put the top layer on, iced the whole thing with whipped cream and sprinkled with pecans.

Heaven! And approved by the PBRC InPatient unit, who've seemed to benefited the most from my new passion for baking. I will miss them.

Bagelthon

Don't know what possessed me, maybe it was my boss eating bagels at work, but I decided to take on a new baking challenge: bagels. After some internet prowling and an inspirational youtube, I was determined to master the Jewish post-Sabbath tradition. Bagels are much easier and quicker to make than any bread recipe (that is, without the luxury of a bread maker) so traditionally Jewish families, having taken a day of rest on the Sabbath, cooked bagels to whip up some quick carbs.

Having no feel for the rising of bagel dough, my first attempt produced little baby bagels, very cute, but not very filling. Not willing to settle for my mini-bagels, a few days later I decided to try again this time making 2 batches: one cinnamon raisin (at the request of my boss) and wheat (at the request of my parents).

While the shorter cooking time is always a plus in my book, the fact that bagels require very few ingredients earns bagels boocoo brownie points.

Wheat Germ Bagels
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour (better for bread flour in my case)
1/4 oz rapid rise yeast
3 3/4 cups wheat flour
1 cup wheat germ
1 1/2 cup warm water (~110 degrees F)
3 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp white sugar

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
4 1/4 cups unbleached white flour (bread flour again for me)
1/4 oz rapid rise yeast
1 1/2 cup warm water
3 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp white sugar

For all 3 batches, I started out whisking together the warm water, 3 tbsp sugar and yeast. I didn't measure the water temp, just put the faucet on hot (rapid rise yeast is the bomb, unlike high maintenance active yeast).

First add 1 1/2 cups of the flour and beat quickly for a few minutes. Mix in most of the rest of the flour/wheat germ (leave about 1/4 cup). Without a bowl mixer this can be tricky, I just did the best I could with a wooden spoon, then my hands, and finally resulted to kneading the clumpy mess together which worked well.

The hardest and funnest part is next: kneading. After dusting your surface with the remaining 1/4 cup of flour, knead the dough for at least 10 minutes (although when baking is therapy, this turns into like 20 min) until the dough is smooth and elastic (when you stretch it it shouldn't tear). Note: the wheat dough will be alot less smooth, after all you can't have both healthy whole grains and light fluffy heaven.


For the cinnamon raisin, I kneaded in about 2 tbsp of cinnamon (just eye ball it really), maybe 1-2 tbsp of brown sugar and then one small box of raisins. In hindsight, you should probably mix the raisins in the dough before the kneading because they don't stick very well but the cinnamon and sugar are good to add in towards the end of the kneading that way you get lovely streaks of goodness rather than a homogeneous mixture. Kneading complete, let the dough rest for 15 min.


Now comes the partitioning of the dough. For my first round of babies, I cut the wheat dough into 15 parts. For my second round, I each dough into 6 parts. However, I realized that the wheat dough rises much less than white dough; 6 parts of wheat dough makes a pretty standard sized bagel while 6 parts of white cinnamon raisin dough makes a large bagel. I found elongating the dough before cutting helped a bit with getting equal portions.

After the chopping, roll the dough into smooth balls. I learned my lesson with this one. I had trouble getting the cinnamon raisin dough to reshape so the balls weren't smooth and the end product turned out a little crazy. The wheat ones had better luck.


Poke a hole through your balls and shape them into bagels. Make the center hole bigger than you want the end result because the dough will expand. Let the shaped dough rise for 20 minutes, preferably in a warm, moist environment. While they rise, boil a gallon of water mixing in 1 tbsp of sugar.


Time to boil those suckers! The boiling is really what does the trick for the bagel's tough skin. Reduce the boil to a simmer and put in either 2 large bagels or 3-4 baby bagels. The number is important because the bagels will expand even further in the water and if you crowd them they'll start pushing against each other and deform into triangle-looking things.

Boil each batch for 7 minutes turning them once. It's going to smell a lot like pasta, which was surprising to me but makes sense. Drain them on some paper towels once they're done.

Set the oven to 375 and then use an egg white wash to give the bagels a shiny finished look. Bake for 30 minutes on an a greased baking (don't worry about spacing, they won't expand anymore). They are done when you drop them on the table and hear a thump. As you can see the cinnamon raisin weren't as picturesque because of my lazy ball rolling earlier but I kinda like the homemade look; they tasted amazing so who cares really.


As one bagel-taster put it, "They taste just like bagels!" which was the greatest compliment I could get since mastering the texture of a bagel is more of an accomplishment than having it taste like a yummy piece of circular bread. For less cost, less time, and less ingredients; bagels win the bread war on all counts.