le sauce

LS baking academy: cookies & bars

It's been more than I expected it would be--for instance, I actually learned how to bake!--but the le sauce baking academy is wrapping up soon. At least it is in its current form, however, given my almost-comfortable comfort level when it comes to all things involving flour, you will definitely see baked goods from now on here at le sauce. I've learned how to make bread, the best pizza dough, light cakes, oil cakes, every kind of pastry (with success! to my surprise) and more. I'll have a round-up of the highlights for sure, and you can bet we'll be ending with a bang. For now, all I can tell you is that we're rounding out the lessons with how to make cookies, but you'll have to keep an eye out for the grand finale!

For the first cookie recipe on this site, and the first one I've ever baked, I choose one of the most the most famous. Jacques Torres' 36-hour chocolate chip cookies are reknown across the internet for two reasons: the recipe's appearance in the New York Times three years ago and because testers everywhere widely regard them as the "best". You can read the article for yourself but here's why this cookie and method are deemed superior:

• the 36-hour rest in the fridge allows the liquid (eggs in this case, which are thicker and therefore slower than water) to fully absorb into the dough, making it drier, and firmer and yeilding in a better consistency than freshly-made and baked dough...
• ...but this is really about flavour. That rest results in a cookie with deeper flavour and a darker, more caramel-y sweetness and...
• size matters, it turns out. The 6-inch cookie allows for a soft centre, a chewy but crisp edge with caramel flavour and the "ring" between where the flavours and textures combine. But as you can see above, a baking sheet can hardly contain 6 of these generously-sized cookies (I weighed mine for accuracy). They bled into each other while baking so mine were a glorious mess by the end.

Oh, and one more thing...

re-baking: custards (& flans)

People say that mistakes made in the kitchen lead to great recipes. Don't they? I feel like they say that. That hasn't often been true for me, however. Mistakes lead to burns on my arms. But this time, my procrastination and faulty memory combined to make a successful(?) mistake. I forgot to get light rum for this custard recipe and was left with no choice but to use some Sauternes that remained from a previous recipe I'd tested. I've made the custard here twice now with rum once, then Sauternes and while both were enjoyable, I'd say Sauternes is deinitely the way to go. The sweetness is beautiful but more than that, the flavour of the Sauternes is postively made to be paired with vanilla beans--I will remember this every time I think of one or the other from now on.

Every time I've tried my hand at custards and flans for the le sauce baking academy, I see that the rewards are quite worth the effort. No dough to roll out, little more to do than mix and pour, and you end up with a lovely texture (silky throughout or, depending on the custard, a covetable pudding "skin" as seen above). I still don't know if I'm sure on the difference between custards and flans but you still have time to help me figure it out. As usual, with these baking academy posts, please leave and learning, tips and other comments here and help me figure all of this out--thank you!

La Tarte (Vanilla Custard)*

YS note: This recipe first appeared in Saveur magazine (though I can no longer find it on their site) as Vanilla-Rum Custard. It originally called for rum and a much shorter cooking time. I've made it twice, in different ovens each time and with both liquers. I find Sauternes is lovely in place of rum, and that this definitely needs the longer cooking time that's noted below.

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
4 eggs, beaten
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped and reserved
4 cups heavy cream
5 tbsp. Sauternes

Heat oven to 300°. In a bowl, whisk together sugar, salt, eggs, and vanilla. Whisk in cream and Sauternes. Transfer mixture to a 3-qt. baking dish; set inside a roasting pan. Put pan on oven rack; pour boiling water into pan to come halfway up sides of dish. Bake until slightly loose in center, 60-70 minutes. Remove dish from pan; chill until set.

Serves 8-10

LS baking academy: custards (& flans)

A custard is simply a liquid that has been combined with eggs or part of the egg...and then cooked until set or thickened. --From James Peterson's "Cooking"

I love James Peterson for breaking things down so simply. Now if only he or someone else (you?) could explain the difference between crème caramel and caramel flan to me, I would sleep so much better at night. No matter--at the moment, I just want to learn to do this right, by any name. Today, the le sauce baking academy tackles whatever it is that's described above.

First up, a savoury custard (surprise). This is a baking academy, and I'm interested in learning about temperature and cooking time, so although the recipe below originally calls for steaming the caramel on the stove, I chose to bake it and pay attention to how long it takes for caramel to set at a moderate 350F degrees. The recipe calls for this custard to be "lightly set", different than my family's caramel flan which is creamy but semi-firm. The latter is also served cool whereas this softer custard is served warm.

re-baking: biscuits & scones

I feel like I should apologize to those of you who'd like to see more dessert recipes turn up here, at least on the baking posts, for Pete's sake. I, on the other hand, get excited when I get to learn to bake something new and don't end up with a bunch of sugary things that after a bite or two are just too much for me and that I then have to pawn off. So I jumped on the chance to make scones and biscuits totally savoury with herbs and cheese. This time, it's Gouda buscuits to top mushroom and lentil pot pies.   

The stew (it really was a stew that you could enjoy even without the biscuit topping--but why would you deprive yourself?) was thick but still bubbled up and boiled over. It finally made sense then, that this biscuit called for a drier ratio of flour to butter than the scones had. They were a little more crumbly on top than most biscuits I'd had, and if you were making these to be enjoyed on the side, I would suggest you add more fat actually. But sitting atop this stew, the bottom of these biscuits almost steamed while baking which made me grateful for their drier texture and crispy cheese topping which stood up to all of that. The texture was also a perfect match for the softened mushrooms and lentils. After two attempts, I've already discovered that scones and biscuits are easy to manipulate, even for a non-baker like me, and also, probably discovered my Thanksgiving entree in this perfect little recipe.

LS baking academy: biscuits & scones

(sun-dried tomato, comté and tarragon scones, to be specific)

You know I welcome the chance to turn a sweet recipe savoury, but with the recipes I make for the le sauce baking academy, it's not always that easy. When I chose to focus on biscuits and scones, I knew I had my chance. I came across a scone recipe on Chocolate and Zucchini, and though that version with cheese and dried pears sounded lovely, I opted to tweak it to one that I'd find even more satisfying. It may not be a scone you eat at breakfast, but then again, why not? I have, twice this week. It's not overly complex--the sun-dried tomatoes are minced so you never trip over a chewy piece, and the tarragon adds an essence more than a strong flavour. Comté is, well, comté, it is bold. But that's what you want in a cheesy scone. 

 

And though this was my first time making scones, I can already see why everyone regards them as easy. No machinery, no real kneading, you sort of just coax the dough together. In the end, you have that familiar biscuit/scone texture: dense yet layered with an outside only slightly crisp. The fact that I felt I could play around with the recipe my first time out is indicative of how un-intimidating this is. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to hear from those of you who make scones every weekend!

This is, after all, the le sauce baking academy where those of us who can't, rely on those of you who do. Please leave tips about and links to your scone or biscuit pursuits in the comments on this post, and I'll be back on October 5 with a follow-up post and recipe based on that learning and more scone exploration. Thanks! 

Sun-dried Tomato, Comté and Tarragon Scones 
(Adapted from More from ACE Bakery via Chocolate and Zucchini)

180 g (1 1/3 c) all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
Pinch of ground cayenne pepper (or better yet, piment d'Espelette)
3/4 tsp kosher salt
75 g (6 tbs) unsalted butter, diced
85 g (1 c) coarsely grated comté (or another aged firm cheese like gouda or Parmesan)
20 g (2 tbs) minced, dry sun-dried tomatoes, or if packed in oil, drained, squeezed of any oil and blotted until dry
1 tbs finely chopped fresh tarragon (or basil, chives or dill)
100 ml (7 tbs) light (15%) cream
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tbs fresh water

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cayenne pepper and salt. Add the butter and rub it into the dry ingredients with the tips of your fingers or a wire pastry blender, until the mixture forms coarse crumbs. Add the cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and tarragon, and blend with a fork.

Add the cream and mix it in gently with the fork until the dough comes together -- add a tad more cream or ice-cold water if the dough is too dry. Turn the dough out on a lightly floured work surface, gather into a ball, and roll out into a 2-cm-thick (3/4-inch) circle. Cut out circles of dough using a 6-cm (2 1/2-inch) cookie cutter or juice glass and transfer onto the prepared baking sheet, leaving about an inch of space between each. Gather the rest of the dough into a ball and repeat the rolling and cutting steps until you've used up all the dough.

Use a pastry brush or the back of a teaspoon to brush the top of the rounds with the egg yolk mixture. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until puffy and golden, rotating the baking sheet halfway through the baking. Let cool on a rack for a few minutes and serve. The scones will keep for a few days at room temperature, wrapped tightly in foil. Reheat for five minutes in a warm oven before serving.

Makes 9 pieces.

re-baking: oil cake (olive oil and sauternes cake)

It's so rare that I crave anything sweet, but going through pictures of this cake was torturous. I can still remember how enjoyable it was, the sweetness of the sauternes and dense yellow flesh, even though I made it weeks ago. The bottle of sauternes is still at my parent's house, where I'd made this last time and where I'm headed again this weekend. I really have no choice but to make this again while I'm there--it's the only way to exercise this craving.

That's right, I'm voluntarily going to bake this again! Not just bake because I promised I would when I started the le sauce baking academy. I have to admit that I'm more confident around a bowl of flour and eggs than I was at the start of all of this, but I still approach each new recipe with more than a little trepidation. The first cake, a genoise, was not easy. Thankfully, this olive oil cake was not that difficult. The two results were quite different as you'd expect, with olive oil replacing butter as the fat in this classic.

This is the famous recipe of Alice Waters and, not that I could, but I wouldn't change a thing. I ended up taking it to a family gathering and the rich, thin slices fed many, all of whom were unanimously enamored. It pleased a visiting aunt so much that she reminded my mom twice to get the recipe from me, and it had my cousins' kids, pre-school to pre-teen alike "mmm-ing" over it. 

And what I loved almost as much as eating it was admiring it beforehand. It depresses in the centre (Alice warns us it will) and gets all droopy on the edges, like the quintessential cake animated in kids' books and TV shows. The kind of thing I'd expect Baker Smurf to be whipping up during Saturday morning cartoons.

 

LS baking academy: the classic cake (génoise)

Here's the thing. The le sauce baking academy started because I can't bake, am/was not a baker, and I wanted to learn. Non-bakers do not own big, powerful stand mixers. They work hard, hand whisking and beating where possible, and borrow electric hand mixers from their aunt when attempting to make a cake. But cake recipes basically warn you that using hand mixers takes, oh, 20x as long as using a stand mixer, so I'll warn you of that as I was warned. I moved a new, strong electric hand mixer diligently across my batter for over 20 minutes and my egg whites still didn't get as stiff as they should have before I gave up, so my cake didn't rise as high as it should have. But it was still light, delicious and the quintessential cake.

A chef friend of mine suggested that I start with génoise when I said I wanted to begin my foray into cakes with the classic version. Provided you have a stand mixer, this recipe couldn't be any easier. Four simple ingredients, the eggs being the only leavener, it could come together in a few, non-exhausting moments. It is still possible to use an electric hand mixer or just your own two arms since cakes were made for a million years before Kitchenaid was born. Just don't give up as easily as I did, and even if you do, you won't be disappointed. In the end, there will still be cake!

If you have more cake experience than me (and that would be all of you), do share your wisdom and tips in the comments, and links to your best recipes on your own blogs. The le sauce baking academy is where we learn to do this together, remember. I'd love to see your best cakes and tips before September 6, when I'll be back with more results from my cake trials and a new and very different cake recipe. If you try this génoise recipe, please let me know how you liked it or better yet, blog about it and leave us the link in the comments so we can see for ourselves.

re-baking: savoury choux (gougeres)

 

Even better. I favour this choux recipe over the last not only because it's savoury, it's also much easier. I found the batter a little looser, therefore a little easier to whip with all my might, the cheese gets mixed right in so nothing further needs to be done with them after they puff up, and you're allowed to spoon them onto the baking sheet--no tricky piping.

But, though not the only reason, I like them best of all because they're cheese puffs and not a sweet dessert. My girlfriends and I ate the entire batch with chilled glasses of wine in under an hour. That's not bragging, that's a warning. Don't bother to cut this recipe, just freeze any leftovers if you have them. (You won't.)

Gougeres
(A Laura Calder recipe with slight changes.)

6 tablespoons butter
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Pinch of paprika
1 cup flour
3 large eggs
4 ounces Gruyere cheese, very finely diced or coarsely grated
Milk for brushing

Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Put the butter in a heavy saucepan with the water, salt, pepper, and paprika. Bring to a boil and pull from the heat. Dump the flour in all at once, and beat until smooth with a wooden spoon. The mixture will pull away from the sides of the pan and form a ball.

Put the pan back on low heat and beat for a minute to dry the paste somewhat. Remove from the heat and let cool about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating vigorously with a wooden spoon after each addition. You want a smooth, soft, glossy paste that falls easily from the spoon. Stir in the cheese. Using a pastry bag, pipe 1-inch/2.5 cm balls onto a buttered or parchment paper-lined baking sheet, or simply drop the mixture by spoonfuls. Brush with milk so they will emerge golden and shiny. Bake until puffed up, nicely browned, and feather light when you pick one up, 25 to 35 minutes.

Makes about 40-50 gougeres.

If you have any comments or tips on choux pastry, please leave them on the original LS baking academy post where all the learning happens. Thanks!

LS baking academy: choux pastry (pâte à choux)

Well, we're back to the pastry recipes, here at the le sauce baking academy (my kitchen), so naturally, I started to sweat again. I chose pâte à choux, the puff pastry that is used to make cheese and cream puffs, like profiteroles and éclairs. The ingredient list looks standard: eggs, butter, flour and water. But, being a French pastry recipe, it wasn't without its tortures. I mean techniques.

Ok, it wasn't that bad, but there's this part where you have to add "all the flour at once", which every recipe for choux specifies clearly. Having watched pastry chefs do this, what the recipe should really say is "turn your bowl of flour immediately upside down over your bowl of boiling water and butter, so it gets added all at once, and expect the potential for mess that may come with that especially if you hesitate or your aim sucks". Not to mention the mess that comes when you try to whisk the hell out of a glue-like dough and the wet eggs you're adding to it. It's another one of those French recipes that come complete with a upper arm workout and a test of your self-esteem.

Working with a piping bag for the first time was humbling and stressful. You can see from my less-than-perfect puffs in the first picture that I could use some practice in this area. Yet I bet if I do a YouTube search there will be a video of a 7-year-old Parisian and her petit chat piping les choux perfect apres l'ecole! Well, some of us just started, Marguarite!

But enough about the stumbles! Finalement, there were perfect, light little puffs! Success, albeit it in varying shapes and sizes! And here's the science behind choux: the pastry calls for significantly more water than puff pastry recipes do. The water within steams in the oven, causing the pastry to rise, leaving a little hollow centre ready to accept the filling of your choice.

Once the little puffs come out of the oven, it's a good idea to pierce them so that the steam escapes and doesn't make things soggy and heavy. Make your cuts at the bottom if you are piping filling into the puffs. I poked them on the sides since I was going to be slicing mine to spread a vanilla, pistachio cream into them.

I looked at many a recipe, but before we get to my favourite, a reminder that this is the third installment of the le sauce baking academy! The deal is, I bring a tried and tested recipe and whatever learning I can so that we can bake a particular treat together. But you need to chime in too. If you have tips to share, please do so in the comments here and please link to recipes or trials on your own blog too so we can all check them out. On the first Tuesday of next month (August 2), I will be back with any new choux tests based on your feedback and also, with a savoury choux recipe. I hope to hear from you before then. Thanks!

re-baking: pizza dough (overnight fermentation and whole grain crust)

Hi bakers. Can you believe it's been a month since we tackled pizza dough? Thank you for all of your comments on that post. I was surprised and happy with how easy it was, but I didn't stop with that initial success. I did some more reading and as with bread dough, it's widely believed that the secret to better pizza dough is a long (24+ hour rise). The New York Times writes about it, and if the Gray Lady believes, I had reason to believe.

The result? Not as impressive as I'd expected. Perhaps my 24-hour dough was a little easier to work with, and maybe a little more impressive in terms of a golden crust that shatters at the edges. But in terms of flavour, I can't say I noticed a significant difference. Maybe I need to do a side-by-side test to be sure. But I would say that the dough in my last post is just as delicious after 2 hours as it is after a day.

Then it was on to whole grain crusts, and I was going to attempt a half-and-half whole wheat to white flour ratio, or maybe get crazy and make a spelt crust. And then I found a wonderful recipe on Heidi Swanson's site, 101cookbooks.com. Who knew white whole wheat--a white, whole grain wheat--existed? Heidi, of course. I became obsessed with making this whole grain pizza. I went to many stores to source this very special flour. And failed. Yes, therefore I have no whole grain crust to report on. But I will not give up. I will find this flour and when I do, you will hear about it. Until then, feel free to leave me your favourite whole grain recipe links or suggestions on the original post. If you have a tried-and-true crust you love, I need to try it. Thanks!