Baking Bouchon - Recipe 7 & 8: Brioche & Sticky Buns

This recipe was quite a little process, but if you're looking for a breakfast sugar bomb, it's totally worth it!  I actually went and brushed my teeth again after eating these.

While the sticky buns turned out super delicious not everything went according to plan.  It started out so well.

The first thing I had to do was make the brioche dough because, of course, it had to sit in the fridge overnight.  Brioche is basically a bread dough but it has a higher egg and butter content which makes it extra rich and puffy.  The dough came together pretty easily.

The flour and yeast go into a bowl.  You add your sugar, salt, eggs and milk and combine.  Then, you add softened butter and knead with the dough hook for about 10 minutes.

Then you turn the dough out onto a floured surface and stretch and fold it a few times.  You leave it alone for an hour, then stretch and fold it again and stick it in the fridge.  No drama yet.

I woke up earlier than CA the next morning so that I could assemble, proof and bake the sticky buns by a reasonable breakfast hour (11 am is reasonable, right?)  First, we make the schmear and thank goodness, there's finally some BOOZE in this book.  It's easy to convince me to add liquor to any recipe but rum in a sticky bun is a no brainer.

The schmear whips up easily by creaming the butter and brown sugar, then adding the honey, RUM and vanilla paste.

In the bottom of each of your muffin cups, you put a little bit of schmear and then stick it in the oven to melt.  Then you drop a few pecans on top.  After the buns bake, they get flipped over so the pecans and gooey deliciousness here theoretically ends up on top of the bun.

Next step... pull the brioche dough out of the fridge where it's been resting and roll it out.  Now we can start assembling...

First, you spread a layer of the pastry cream I made yesterday, then a layer of schmear and then sprinkle with cinnamon and pecans.  Finally, you roll up that bad boy and slice him...

The note I should make here is that, just like the corn muffins which posed no issues, I was supposed to bake these in six large muffins cups.  Again, I don't have a large muffin pan so I made them smaller and put them into 12 cups.  First mistake. 

Then you let them sit out to proof (or rise) for about an hour.  Mine didn't rise much at all, but I don't think that affected the final texture of the brioche, it was still pretty light.  Then, into the oven they go.... Here's where the bad stuff started to happen.

First - the gooey deliciousness started bubbling over from my SMALL muffin cups, ran over the sides of the pan and into the bottom of the oven creating a lovely morning haze (AKA smoke) that filled the kitchen.  So what did I do?  Nothing, except open the windows to keep the smoke detector from going off.  You see the buns looked just fine, it was just the bottom of my oven that was creating carbon so I kept baking them until they were done.

The last step of making sticky buns is to flip the whole pan over to release the buns and reveal the perfectly swirled and golden topped buns.  Not so much.  Most of them stick to the pan and unraveled themselves.  Sigh... Maybe I should have sprayed the pans with non-stick spray?

Despite the smoke and stickage, these are pretty darn tasty (and at least 3 of them didn't look hideous).  CA and I each gobbled up what we estimated to be two of them.  I though the addition of the pastry cream to the filling was odd when I first read the recipe, but I think it really helped keep the buns moist on the inside and added just a touch of creaminess.  The pecans were yummy and perfectly caramelized.  CA liked them too - thankfully he can get past their looks and see what's on the inside... butter and sugar.

Now I have to go clean the oven.

Julie

PS - a large muffin tin is headed my way thanks to my friends at Amazon.

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 6: Pastry Cream

I need Pastry Cream for two upcoming recipes; Sticky Buns and Cream Puffs so I made a batch big enough for both recipes.  Since it keeps in the refrigerator for up to 4 days, I figured it was safe enough.  I just hope this stuff makes it through the next two recipes because I keep sticking a spoon in it and eating it (ok, fine, I don't always use a spoon).

Most of the ingredients are pretty basic, egg yolks, milk, sugar, vanilla beans and butter.  The new one for me was Custard Powder and, of course, I had to go to two stores to find it... sigh.  You can substitute flour for the custard powder but Thomas says the custard powder results in a richer pastry cream with a brighter color.  I don't know about the richness, but this stuff was bright freakin' yellow so he's got at least one thing right.

First you beat up the egg yolks and vanilla beans, then slowly add the sugar.  Then you beat the crap out of the yolk/sugar mixture until it thickens up and runs off the whisk in ribbons.  Then, slowly add in the milk while the mixer is running.

Then comes the scary part.  You cook it on the stove, whisking like your life depends on it until it thickens and turns a 1980's neon yellow.

I, unfortunately, could not take a photo of myself pushing the cooked cream through a strainer to make sure it's smooth and has no lumps in it.  I was too busy sweating because it was freakin' hard.  The recipe has you put the bowl you're straining it into over an ice bath so the cream can cool down before you whisk in the butter.  I think the mesh on my strainer was too fine because it took me so long to push the stuff through that the ice bath was superfluous.

Once you whisk in the butter, you put plastic wrap against the surface of the cream to keep a skin from forming and refrigerate overnight or for up to 4 days.

This stuff tastes pretty darn good, nice and rich and creamy.  I am, however, a little confused about how it will get used in the cream puffs.  When reading the description of this cream, Thomas indicates he often combines it with whipped cream to give it a lighter texture but I peeked at the cream puff recipe and that doesn't happen, it goes in straight.  I guess we'll see in a couple of days.

Julie

Pizza Dough

I promise we'll get back to baking tomorrow, but since we had this for dinner along with the Kale Salad I told you about yesterday, I thought you might like to hear about our approach to pizza.

We rarely order pizza but we eat a lot of pizza.  I'm a big fan of making my own pizza dough and it really is pretty darn easy.  I've tried quite a few recipes and my go-to is this one from Martha Stewart.  I like that it's got half whole wheat flour in it to keep it on the healthier side.  The recipe makes 2 crusts but because CA and I both prefer a thin crust pizza (again, a little more healthy), I typically divide the dough into 3 crusts.  The dough freezes really well in a quart size baggie and defrosts in no time.   We always have a few crusts in the freezer ready to go.

90% of the time we make veggie pizza with whatever we've got lying around... peppers, artichokes, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes... as well as whatever cheese is lingering in the drawer... mozzarella, parmesan, feta, goat cheese.  Sometimes, we go sans-sauce and make flatbread (that's what we had tonight pictured on the left with garlic, pancetta, roasted orange pepper and buffalo mozzarella).  I even went an entirely different direction once and made this Malaysian Chicken Pizza (super yummy if you're tired of the same old pizza).  Sometimes I make my own sauce if we've got the stuff for it, but often it's just jarred spaghetti sauce.  My favorite, though, is grilled pizza.  You can stretch out the dough and throw it straight on the grill, just be sure to oil the grates first.  Once one side is set and have some nice grill marks, flip it over.  Once that side is set, take it off the grill and put on your toppings.  You can either put it in the oven at this point or back on the grill on low or indirect heat.  See the photo on the right?  Grilled.

I say all this like it's not scarier than watching The Shining to put raw dough on your grill.  It still freaks me out so I make CA do it.  He is a superhero after all.  Generally, if the grill is involved so is he and it makes for a good strategy when I don't want to cook everything myself and/or clean a cooking vessel.

Something else I've done with the crust is make "hot pockets" that CA takes to work.  I originally used this blog's recipe as a guide, then got creative with the fillings.  I've done roast beef & cheddar, Southwestern chicken & black bean and pizza versions (Southwestern is always his favorite).  I bake them off and stick them in the freezer.  CA can just grab one and microwave it at work.  Aren't I a nice wife?  I like to remind him often.

Julie

Kale Salad

I love buying those enormous bags of greens at the grocery store.  It's so much easier than trimming and washing my own, especially on a weeknight.  We eat a ton of veggies around here and I'm always trying to find ways to keep it interesting.  I sauteed up a bunch of kale last night as a side dish, but had some leftover and figured I'd make a salad out of it to go with the flatbread I made for dinner.  It turned out pretty good, so I wanted to share it with you.

 

Inspired by this recipe on food.com 

Ingredients:
1/4 cup golden raisins
2 T dried currants
5 T balsamic vinegar
6 cups chopped kale
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 T olive oil
salt & pepper (to taste, I think I used about 1/2 tsp each)
1 T honey
1 T agave
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

Place raisins & currants into a small bowl and pour balsamic vinegar over them.  Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
Mix lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, honey & agave together and toss with kale.  Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
Add the raisins & currants to the kale mixture along with all but 2 T of the balsamic.  Toss along with the almonds.

I really liked the way this came out.  You can absolutely use all honey or all agave, I just happened to only have 1 T of honey in the house, so supplemented with the agave.  I also think other kinds of dried fruits would be good in this as well (cherries, cranberries, etc.).  As I've said before, I don't really like dried fruit but I had raisins leftover from the oatmeal cookies I made a few days ago so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Soaking them in the balsamic helped plump them up and make them less sticky so they didn't bother me.  Letting the kale sit in the dressing for a few hours softens up the greens a little bit so they're less tough.

Enough of this healthy stuff, where's the pie?
Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 5: Madeleines

Lookie what I got on sale!

Don't you love it when you walk into a store, quickly find the one thing you need and get it to the register only to discover it's on sale?  Of course you do, surprise discounts are better than expected discounts.  If you're in need of a madeleine pan, get yourself to Williams Sonoma STAT... $9.99 people.  I bet you could use this pan for any cute little cake or whoopie pie type thing.  Come to think of it, I should have checked if other stuff was on sale.

This is the first special piece of equipment I've had to buy as I'm cooking my way through the Bouchon Bakery book and I have a sneaking suspicion it won't be my last.

Guess what? Madeleines are really just little yellow cakes.  Tasty yellow cakes, but yellow cakes non the less.  I had to make 2 adjustments to the recipe.

1. I substituted agave for the honey in the recipe.  Right before mixing this batter, I used all the remaining honey I had in a Kale Salad.  There's only 1 1/4 tsp so I figured it would be fine and it was.

2.  The recipe called for lemon oil which I didn't have, so I used 1/8 tsp of lemon extract.  Just enough to give it a slight lemon flavor.  This substitution also worked just fine.

 The batter came together pretty easily.  I love watching ingredients transform - the first photo above is what happens when you beat the crap out of eggs and sugar.  It all emulsifies together and doubles in size.  Science.

I've come to expect now that I have to refrigerate everything overnight.  This batter was no exception so it went into a plastic container and got chilly.  In the photo above you can see what the batter looked like when I went to scoop it out this morning.  It had these cool air pockets inside of it from the leavening starting to work.  More science.

These little buddies baked up so cute.  I'm a big fan of things in miniature (or giant) so these are right up my alley.  They really do taste like yellow cake... if only I had some chocolate icing to put them.

Julie

PS - here's the recipe posted on USA Today if you're interested.

Pastrami Hunt

CA and I hit up DGS Delicatessen for lunch the other day.  I recently read this article in the Washington Post about the rise of deli meats, particularly pastrami, in the city and since then I have been craving the meaty goodness.  DGS was the closest of the bunch to the part of the city we needed to be in for other purposes so it won our patronage.   Bonus: it's on the Washingtonian 100 Best Restaurants List so we get to mark yet another restaurant off the list.

We were both very pleased with our meal.  It is incredibly rare that we both order the same thing in a restaurant - we like to order different items so we can try more stuff.  However, this time we both wanted the Pastrami Sandwich on Rye bread with House made Mustard.  Since DGS cures the meat, in house, for 8 days, it was a no brainer.  The sandwich was super tasty.  The meat had just enough fat still on it to make it nice and juicy.  My only complaint was that I felt like the bread could have been a little crispier and/or thicker.  However, I have to caveat that comment with my extreme aversion to wet bread and pre-made sandwiches.  The thought of a sandwich that was made more than 5 minutes before I ate it and some kind of liquid penetrating the bread rendering it soggy makes me gag.  You know those trays of sandwiches everyone orders for work lunches? - they're my worst nightmare.  Not that this was anything close to that, I would have just preferred a little more crunch to my Rye.  CA had no issues with the bread.

Look, I took a picture of my food.  The place was casual, so I wasn't too embarrassed.

In addition to the sammies, we ordered the Pickle Plate and a side of Fries with Roasted Garlic Yogurt to share.  The pickles were pretty darn good (although the ones we had recently at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore have them beat).  We couldn't identify all the veggies present but there were definitely cucumbers, carrots, an egg and we think Kohlrabi.  The carrots were my favorite with a bit of curry flavor.  I was also very happy with the fries.  They were perfectly crisp which is big deal for me.  Fries are potentially my favorite food (partly because of their association with ketchup), but I don't do soggy fries.  I actually get really grumpy when I order fries and they're not crispy because if I'm going to spend the calories, they better be good.  The yogurt sauce that came with them was a nice touch, although I did ask for ketchup and dipped equally.

Maybe we'll go on a pastrami rampage and try all five places in the article...

Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 4: Corn Muffins

The truth is that the recipe for Corn Muffins is in the same section of the cookbook as Plain Scones so I shouldn't have made them today.  You should be reading about Madeleines right now but I wanted something to go with the roast chicken and sauteed kale we were having for dinner and I haven't purchased my Madeleine pan yet so you get Corn Muffins.

This picture is highly inaccurate... the recipe actually calls for Baking Powder, not Baking Soda.  Good thing I read it again before I added it but I was too lazy to re-stage my ingredients for another photo op.

The roasted chicken recipe I use is this one from my Williams Sonoma Chicken cookbook.  I've made it a few times and it always comes out super moist which is due to the fact that you brine the chicken in salt water for a few hours before roasting it.  Plus, there's Wine Jus.  Yum.  Anyway, back to muffins.

Thomas instructed me to make the muffin batter and let it sit overnight before baking.  He insists this is the key to moist muffins because the liquid has time to hydrate the flour in the batter.  I really wanted these muffins today so I let the batter sit in the fridge for about 4 hours before baking.  The muffins were pretty darn moist so maybe he's got a point and maybe I'll grow some patience before Bran Muffins come around and let the batter rest a whole night.  Patience, generally, is not my thing.

 I took yet another liberty with this recipe, as it wants you to make 6 big muffins.  I don't have a giant muffin tin, so we got 12 regular size muffins.  I just decreased the baking time by a few minutes.

In theory I shouldn't have liked these muffins.  You see, I'm from the South (well, kind of.  Some of my people are from the South and I've lived in the South more years than not but I didn't grow up there... anyway, when it's convenient, I claim to be Southern).  In the South, cornbread doesn't have sugar in it (or very little) and is ALWAYS cooked in a cast iron skillet.  No exceptions.  I also prefer my cornbread with a higher ratio of cornmeal to flour (these are 1:4, I usually like a 2:1) On top of my issues, was CA's issue that they have corn kernels in them, which he's against.  Jalapenos OK, corn kernels, bad.  Against all odds, these were actually really good.  Then, I convinced myself that this isn't really cornbread at all (yes, I'm aware that the title of the recipe is not cornbread and yes, it took me a couple of hours to figure that out).  This recipe is in the Scones & Muffins section of the cookbook so they may actually be Muffins - like the kind you eat for breakfast.  Which is exactly what I plan to do tomorrow.

Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 3: Plain Scones

I've made scones quite a few times with varied success.  One of the keys to good scones (like making biscuits) is to have really cold butter.  That way, when you cut it into the flour you keep little butter pieces that make the scone flaky.  These may be the best scones I've made so far.  I think I like them so much because of how light and tender they are, normally I find scones to be pretty dense.  I think the lightness in this recipe comes from using a combination of all-purpose flour and cake flour.  I love the smell of cake flour, it smells like cake batter which makes me happy.

A new ingredient for me in this recipe for me was creme fraiche.  Previously, any recipe I saw with creme fraiche in it, I just substituted sour cream which has never caused an issue for me.  According to my research (the 1 minute I just spent on wikipedia) creme fraiche is less sour than sour cream (shocking) and has a higher fat content.  No wonder it tastes so good.
True to form I did not read the recipe closely enough before beginning to know that you had to refrigerate the dough for 2 hours, cut it into triangles, then freeze it overnight.  So, I ended up with scones later than anticipated.

Once out of the freezer, you brush the scones with cream and sprinkle them with some fat sugar.

Then, you bake them up.  It's actually kind of convenient to make the dough the day before, then you can just bake off your scones in the morning and have one with a cup of Joe.... Who am I kidding?  Have two with a cup of Joe.

Julie

Gumbo, not made my me.

Captain America made me Gumbo.  It was a little late for Fat Tuesday, but I'll take it when I can get it.  I love it when he cooks and I don't even have to think about it.  I did help, though.  As in, I put rice in the rice cooker and brought him another beer.  We are definitely not Cajun connoisseurs (is Gumbo Cajun or Creole? Wikipedia says it can be either depending on the proteins.  Details...)   but I thought it turned out pretty darn good.   He used 2 recipes and did sort of a mash up.  This one from Emeril (because why wouldn't you trust Emeril for your Gumbo recipe?) and one from the Williams Sonoma Soup & Stew cookbook (I scoured the Internet for this recipe but can't find the exact one).  It is very similar to Emeril's except that it does not have celery in it (which CA used) and it does have a can of diced tomatoes in it (which CA also used).  CA was dedicated to that Gumbo - he stirred the Roux for an hour to get it nice and dark, no joke, one full hour.  He also burned the end of my wooden spoon in the process.  Booooo.  But the results were worth it.

Two of the stars of this show were Gumbo File and Tabasco... that is if you ignore the shrimp, andouille and okra - which you can't, because they're delicious.  I actually really like okra, regardless of his slimy reputation.  (BTW, file is supposed to have an accent over the "e" but I can't figure out how to do that on blogger, darn grammar)  Lately I've been totally into spicy so I added quite a bit of Tabasco to the finished product.  The Gumbo File was, frankly, a pain in the butt to find.  Can you believe they don't carry it at Whole Foods?  I get very grumpy when I have to go to multiple stores to find ingredients for a meal.  It happens less here in DC than when we've lived in smaller cities but it still winds me up.  Gumbo File is essentially Sassafras powder and is used as a thickener but also has a nice flavor.  Since I found it, I was determined to use it so I sprinkled a little extra into my bowl.

By the way, I must disclose that I am in LOVE with my Williams Sonoma cookbooks.  They're pretty much my go-to for classic recipes.  It's a set they released years ago and don't sell anymore but I have 30 of them and have rarely been let down by the recipes.  My favorite pie dough, french toast, royal icing and gingerbread men are in there.  Oh and roasted asparagus too.

Back to baking.
Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 2: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I don't like raisins, but I do like these cookies.  I'm generally against fruit outside of its natural state.  I just recently started eating jelly, canned pie filling makes me gag and please, please, do not suspend fruit in jell-o.  I'll eat Craisins in salad or a rice dish but that's about as far as I'll take the dried fruit thing.  But for some reason, I can get past the raisins.
If you want the recipe, just search for Bouchon Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and you'll find it on some other blogs who posted it.  The ingredients were pretty basic oatmeal cookie stuff with the exception of the Vanilla Bean Paste.  I've been hunting for it for a while and finally bound it at Sur La Table the other day.  It is kind of a cross between scraped vanilla beans and vanilla extract.  However, I think you could easily substitute Vanilla extract.

One of the things about the Bouchon recipes are that everything is measured by weight.  I happen to love this technique.  I have a little scale that I use and the best part is that you actually end up with less dishes because you don't have to use measuring cups or spoons.  Just stick your bowl on the scale, zero it out and pour the ingredients in.  However, this was the first time that I've ever weighed eggs.  Thomas instructs us to crack the eggs, beat them with a fork and strain them before weighing them.  My only issue was that I didn't know how much a typical egg weighs so couldn't even guess how many I needed to come up with 62 grams of eggs.  Well, it's not quite 2 eggs and since I couldn't bring myself to throw out the rest, I now have 1/4 of an egg sitting in my fridge.

I was supposed to divide the dough into 6 cookies using an ice cream scoop.  I did use my ice cream scoop but ended up with 12 big cookies so had I only made 6 they would have been as big as my head.

The cookies have a nice crispy exterior and are still chewy in the middle.  There's a great cinnamon flavor to them (which I worried wouldn't be prominent enough because I didn't have quite as much cinnamon as the recipe called for, but I think in the end it was plenty).

Overall, redemption from my first crack at a Bouchon recipe.  I plan to rotate through the sections of the book so I don't overload on one type of baked good.  Up next are Plain Scones.  Mmmmm, Butter.

Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 1: Pecan Sandies

I have officially conquered the first recipe on the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook.  Isn't she pretty? and clean?  Not for long, I imagine.

I was pretty excited about this recipe and I found it for you right here.  I do love a good Pecan Sandie - those Keebler elves do a pretty good job and I've made them before from other recipes with good success.  Honestly, I figured this would be super easy.

There are only 4 ingredients and they're cookies.  I've made thousands of cookies.  I couldn't screw up cookies.  Well, I did... or the recipe has issues.  Either way, not a big fan of these cookies.  I'm positive I did exactly what Thomas told me to do.  Cream butter, add sugar, add dries, scoop, roll into balls, press down, bake, eat remaining dough...

By the way,  I love to eat dough and batter.  Sometimes more than the baked item itself.  I'm aware that it's not good for me, but I don't care.  I currently have a bag of raw cookie dough balls in my freezer and I eat them straight out of the freezer.  Yum.

So after doing all these things right, I ended up with cookies that were really flat and too buttery (it's actually possible).  CA suggested that I put them on paper towels to soak up the butter... like bacon.

If I made the recipe again, I would not press the dough down before baking, but would leave it in a round ball so maybe it wouldn't flatten out so much.  I'd probably also refrigerate it for an hour or so before baking which would also help with the flat issue.

While my first recipe was a bit disappointing, I still have faith... mostly because I already baked the second recipe and it was pretty delish.

Julie

Hey There!

This is my very first post on my blog... hooray!  I am excited to start sharing my food adventures with everyone.  But first.....

Ground Rules / Disclosures

1. This blog is about food.  I don't intend to share details of my personal life that do not involve food, however due to my often spastic thinking, I imagine you'll get a few random personal details here and there.
2. My goal is to bake my way through the Bouchon Bakery cookbook.  I received the book as a Christmas gift from my sweet in-laws and (although I've never tasted his food because getting into the French Laundry is too freakin' hard), I hold Thomas Keller in high esteem.  There's some stuff in this book that scares the crap out of me, but I want to conquer the whole thing... we'll see.  
3. I will not be copying all the recipes from the Bouchon book onto the blog.  I'm no copyright expert and don't want to learn about all that business.  If you want a specific recipe, let me know and I'll share it privately.  Any recipes I use that are already on the Internet, I'll link up.
4. It won't be all Bouchon all the time, I plan to share other things we're cooking up (both savory and sweet).
5. I won't talk about everything I cook and eat.  Honestly, most of what I eat is pretty healthy and boring.   So don't judge me if everything I post is terrible for you.  I promise I'm eating my veggies too.
6. I'll talk about restaurants too since we do a lot of eating out.  We're currently trying to dine our way through the Washingtonian 100 best list.  However, don't expect a ton of restaurant food pictures because I am easily embarrassed when taking photos in restaurants.
7. Speaking of pictures, I'm not a photographer so don't expect high quality here.
8. I wasn't an English major and I imagine my grammar is pretty poor so, again, no judging.
9. I'm kind of a dork, so expect dorkiness.
10. My husband is my favorite person to cook for, but he has an aversion to being talked about on the Internet so I won't use his name here.  He has requested to be referred to as Captain America (seriously?), so I'll refer to him henceforth as CA.  Our dog is another story, his name is Sconnie and he'll be well represented.
11. Did someone say crafts?  I do craft occasionally and might share some of that too.
12. Parties?  Yes, please.  I love to entertain and plan to share.
13. Cocktails?  Yep, that too.

I think a baker's dozen rules is enough for me.  

The first recipe happens tomorrow so stay tuned.

Ready, set, eat.
Julie