My Food Geek

A long time ago a fellow San Diego blogger was gifted a Kitchenaid stand mixer and asked me for a mixer-friendly brioche recipe. This is probably a few months late but….

Brioche is an enriched French bread with a large amount of butter and eggs that gives this bread a soft, sweet crumb. Brioche are formed into many different shapes but the brioche a tete is probably the most widely known. They’re usually cooked in small fluted pans with an extra small bun on top.

You can see here that I had my best go at the ‘a tete’ variety. I didn’t have access to the small fluted pans so I used a large muffin pan and tried and stay with the theme. They don’t quite look as beautiful without the fluted sides but the muffin pan worked in a pinch and produced a reasonable facsimile.

What many people don’t know is that brioche is made into other shapes including plain old loafs of bread. It seems like brioche should deserve a better fate than a normal loaf, but on the contrary, it is as a loaf that it really shines. When baked as a loaf it can be transformed into some really rich French toast, a mean bread pudding, or just the best slice of white bread and jam you’ve ever had.

This is a recipe that I learned while I was a student at the San Diego Culinary Institute. Our instructor, Yves Fournier, an accomplished pastry chef, was the son of a baker in France. Yves would always give us practical baking tips, whether it was the correct way to shape baguettes, form croissants, or make brioche, he was always full of useful baking knowledge. While we were learning how to make brioche, Yves showed us an alternative way to make this rich dough using a commercial mixer.

This recipe is a little different than a lot of the brioche recipes you will see out there; don’t worry, it works just as well (or even better).

Brioche

500g flour
65g sugar
15g salt
15g yeast
6eggs + H20
250g butter, softened

Dissolve the yeast in a small amount of warm (100F) water. You don’t need much water here, just enough to get the yeast to dissolve.

Combine eggs, sugar, yeast mixer, and all the flour in the work bowl of the mixer. Mix using the dough hook until all the ingredients come together. Add salt.

At this point you will need to adjust the consistency of the dough. If the dough is too tough, adjust consistency with a little more water. If the dough is too wet, add enough flour until you have a soft, tacky dough.

Add all the butter to the dough and continue to knead until the dough absorbs all the butter. You may still need to adjust the dough with a little more flour. It is ok to have a sticky dough but it should still be able to hold it’s shape somewhat.

Remove the dough from the mixer and form into a tight ball.

Place dough in an oiled bowl and refrigerate the dough overnight.

When ready to use the dough, remove from the chiller and allow to return to room temperature. Let rise until dough has doubled in size. Punch dough down and shape into loaves, buns, or whatever you desire.

Proof shaped dough until doubled in size. Brush egg wash over the tops of the dough and bake at 375F for about 25-35 minutes and golden brown.

A monthly event dedicated to food photography.

CLICK is theme-based. Each month, entries will be invited based on a culinary ingredient or concept. This month’s theme is noodles. I tried my best to come up with something original yet photogenic as well. While I think the pasta came out much better than expected, my photos came out just average. The dish was good enough to talk bout so here’s the story.

A few weeks ago at the local farmer’s market I picked up a butternut squash, just because. I really had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew it would keep for at least a month while I decided its fate. While I was thinking about what I could do for this month’s CLICK I came up with the idea to make a twist on butternut squash ravioli.

The raviolis are usually filled with cooked squash puree that is mixed with a light cheese like ricotta and some select spices. They’re quickly cooked in some salted boiling water and then served with a light sage butter sauce. This is usually a good dish but I didn’t want to go through all the troubles of making the raviolis and a filling to go along with them. I decided to deconstruct the dish into the parts I liked best and make a few changes. First I started off with some freshly made, extra thick noodles.

Fresh pasta is something that everyone should know how to make. There’s only a few ingredients to knead together, a little bit of rolling (by hand or by machine), and then you cut the pasta into any shape you want. I skipped using the pasta maker for these noodles and just rolled them out on the counter top with a rolling pin. I left these noodles quite thick and cut them in wide strips to keep with the ravioli inspired dish. The recipe is a quick one and very easy to remember:

Fresh Pasta

3 cups flour
4 eggs
pinch of salt

If you choose to make the pasta by hand, pile the flour on the counter top, make a well in the center, and crack the eggs into the well. Slowly incorporate the eggs into the flour until you can bring the dough together for kneading. You may need a little more flour, you may not use all the flour, it all depends on the day usually. Once the dough is smooth, let it rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

If you choose to make the pasta by machine, throw all the ingredients in a food processor and process on high. It should turn to a course meal. You may need to add either an additional egg or some olive oil to the food processor while it is running to get the dough to come together. Dump the pasta meal on the counter and knead for a minute or so. Let dough rest for about 20 minutes and then roll out and shape as desired.

I use both of these methods regularly depending on my mood and they both are fairly easy and always reliable. There’s only a few things that can go wrong and they’re easily fixed. If your dough is too dry, add more liquid: water, oil, eggs — they all work. If your dough is too wet, add a little more flour. If your dough is too lumpy, knead more. That’s it.

While my pasta was resting I worked on turning the filling of the ravioli into a sauce. I started working on the squash first. It was peeled, diced, tossed with olive oil, and baked in the oven until it was just browning on top. I set it aside to cool and contemplated a sauce. I knew I wanted something buttery but I also wanted to have something a bit creamy. Butter was the first ingredient, nearly a whole stick, cooked slowly until browned and fragrant. I finely sliced a large shallot and softened it in the browned butter sauce until nearly transparent. For the coup de grace, I finished the sauce off with a good shot of heavy cream which helped to emulsify the sauce somewhat. I added a bit of pasta water to the sauce to bring it all together and tossed the squash in to heat it through. The pasta made it into the sauce shortly after and the sauce coated everything nicely. I sprinkled the whole thing with some freshly dried sage and plated it up.

How did it come out? The eater loved it. As usual I was unhappy with some aspect of the dish. I thought the noodles were a little too thick and the dish wasn’t as pretty as I hoped. While the sauce did have a good deal of butter and cream in it, it didn’t come off as being too heavy or oily. The squash matched well with the sauce and the wide noodles were a very good vehicle for the rich, creamy sauce. Did it capture the spirit of butternut squash ravioli? I’d say so.

Choux paste is one mighty useful item. It is one of those recipes that can be transformed into so many different things. The French flavor it with savory ingredients and pipe small bits of it into boiling water and call it French Gnocchi. In southwestern US long strips are piped with a star tip into boiling oil then covered with cinnamon sugar and called churros. The French also give it a similar deep-frying but with cheese added to the paste and call them gougeres. The most common of uses is probably baked goods like chocolate eclairs. Here’s a look at several variations on the baked good which may or may not be familiar to you.

Profiteroles are the classic sphere-shaped choux puffs that are split in half, filled with ice cream, and topped off with chocolate sauce. These lovely pastries usually pop up in French restaurants and bistros and they’re easily reproduced at home. This example was put together with some leftovers I had in the kitchen: frozen choux puffs, chai tea ice cream, and whole butter ganache from my Bostini Cream pie. I like to keep richer desserts like this on the small side. The full flavor of the ice cream and the rich taste of the ganache can be too much on a restaurant sized dessert.

I think everyone is familiar with eclairs. You can find these things at just about any supermarket or bakery if you’re lucky to find one in the states. In my opinion, they are always made wrong: they’re huge, they’re soggy, and they’re too sweet. I find that small, bite-sized eclairs are more satisfying to eat and lend themselves well to a pastry platter. At this small size, it is easy to change up the fillings and icings and experiment. I was a little bit lazy and filled all of these with a praline diplomat cream and just varied the icings to make the display more visually appealing.

The name of these pastries will bring a smile to your twelve year old brain: Paris-Brest. No, not that breast! These pastries were created in honor of the Paris-to-Brest-to-Paris bike race that started over one-hundred years ago. They are supposed to represent either a bicycle wheel or the round trip ride, either way, they’re good. They are classically topped with sliced almonds and filled with an almond praline pastry cream. Sometimes they are dusted with powdered sugar, sometimes they aren’t.

I recently learned about these little pastries called Chouquettes from an old post on David Lebovitz’s site. These little snacks are small bites of choux paste that are usually covered with very course, crackly sugar and left unfilled. While I couldn’t fine any of that stuff around these parts, I did have some large-grained Maui sugar that worked quite well. These things are borderline addictive, yet so simple you can’t imagine why they’d be so good. Imagine a light and crispy cookie with just a crunchy sweetness on top, that’s a chouquette!

The final choux I created was the Religeuse. These are supposed to resemble a little nun but I’m not entirely convinced. This pastry is comprised of one large choux puff and one small choux puff, filled with pastry cream, dipped in poured fondant, stacked up, and decorated with icing. These are usually medium sized pastries about the size of your palm. Laduree, the famous macron people, are also somewhat famous for their Religeuse. They ice and fill their pastries with exotic ingredients like rose, tomato, and black truffle. I wasn’t so daring and used a mocha faux-fondant and the praline diplomat cream from the eclairs.

In the end, choux recipes don’t really vary all that much. I really liked this recipe from Michel Roux’s Finest Desserts because the proportions were easy to remember and the choux came out nice and smooth. If you desire, you can either use all milk, all water, or both like I used here. I don’t really see much of a difference in the end product but I haven’t thoroughly tested the variations.

You can use this recipe for all of the creations I’ve listed above. Profiteroles, chouquettes, and religeuse are all made with small balls of dough either piped or made with a spoon. Eclairs and the Paris Brest should be piped out to the desired shape. All of these pastries will benefit from a light eggwash before cooking and a slight flattening with the back of a fork to promote even puffing in the oven.

Choux paste:

125ml water
125ml milk
100g butter (diced)
pinch of salt
pinch of sugar

150g flour
4 eggs

egg wash (1 egg with a pinch of salt and a little water)

Combine the water, milk, butter, salt, and sugar in a saucepan and boil over high heat. Continue boiling until all of the butter is completely melted.

Remove pan from heat and quickly dump all of the flour into the liquid. Stir continuously until a smooth paste is formed.

Return the pan to the heat and stir the paste with a spatula for one minute. Try not to let the paste dry out too much or it may crack during baking which will affect the presentation of your choux puffs.

Transfer the paste to a bowl and immediately use a spatula to beat the eggs in one by one. Beat the paste until it is very smooth.

The choux paste is now ready to use. If you are not going to use it right away, press plastic wrap on top of the paste and refrigerate for up to three days.

If you are cooking your choux immediately, pipe into the desired shape on a parchment or silpat lined baking sheets and bake at 425F for 8 minutes then lower the oven to 375F for about 15 minutes more or until the choux are golden brown and mostly dried out. You may have to sacrifice one to test for doneness, but it is worth it.

I cut this Daring Bakers Challenge close. I waited until the last day and pretty close to the last hour to get this cake made and posted!

This month the bakers took on the challenge of a Bostini Cream Pie. I’d probably classify this as a restaurant version of the classic dessert; it is small, loaded with eggs and cream, and intended to be made in individual servings. If you check the recipe, you’ll see that the recipe is actually from a restaurant so my initial impressions were correct.

As is true with many pastries, this one is easily broken into several basic parts: chiffon, pastry cream, and ganache. I chose to make a few (allowed) adjustments to the recipe: using coconut milk in place for orange juice, only making a half recipe of pastry cream, and coming up with my own presentation. I was surprised to see how much pastry cream there was leftover even with half the recipe; I’m sure I can find a way to make it disappear though.

I served this to the eater and my parents tonight and the pies disappeared shortly before I was done taking photos. I’d consider making this dessert again but I’d change a few things up that are mostly personal preference. I’d probably choose a thinner cake like a joconde and would most definitely use a pastry cream that is a bit less rich. I was really surprised at how thick it was after it was chilled. I prefer a cream with a lighter, less dense, texture. I might even soak the sponge with some sort of boozey concoction that would tie all the flavors together.

Here’s the original recipe to try, if you dare…

Bostini Cream Pie
(from Donna Scala & Kurtis Baguley of Bistro Don Giovanni and Scala’s Bistro)
Makes 8 generous servings

INGREDIENTS:

Custard

3/4 cup whole milk
2 3/4 tablespoons cornstarch
1 whole egg, beaten
9 egg yolks, beaten
3 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 vanilla bean (EDITED: vanilla extract is okay)
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

Chiffon Cake

1 1/2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1 1/3 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup beaten egg yolks (3 to 4 yolks)
3/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 1/2 tablespoons grated orange zest
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup egg whites (about 8 large)
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Chocolate Glaze

8 ounces semi or bittersweet chocolate
8 ounces unsalted butter

INSTRUCTIONS

To prepare the custard:

Combine the milk and cornstarch in a bowl; blend until smooth. Whisk in the whole egg and yolks, beating until smooth. Combine the cream, vanilla bean and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into the egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain the custard and pour into 8 large custard cups. Refrigerate to chill.

To prepare the chiffon cakes:

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Spray 8 molds with nonstick cooking spray. You may use 7-ounce custard cups, ovenproof wide mugs or even large foil cups. Whatever you use should be the same size as the custard cups.

Sift the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add the oil, egg yolks, orange juice, zest and vanilla. Stir until smooth, but do not overbeat.

Beat the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gently fold the beaten whites into the orange batter. Fill the sprayed molds nearly to the top with the batter.

Bake approximately 25 minutes, until the cakes bounce back when lightly pressed with your fingertip. Do not overbake. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack. When completely cool, remove the cakes from the molds. Cover the cakes to keep them moist.

To prepare the glaze:

Chop the chocolate into small pieces. Place the butter in a saucepan and heat until it is just about to bubble. Remove from the heat; add the chocolate and stir to melt. Pour through a strainer and keep warm.

To assemble:

Cut a thin slice from the top of each cake to create a flat surface. Place a cake flat-side down on top of each custard. Cover the tops with warm chocolate glaze. Serve immediately.

Here’s a quick pastry I made from leftover puff pastry, pastry cream, and choux paste. It makes for a great breakfast pastry and a good way to use up your leftovers. There isn’t much recipe here but I’ll give you some pictures to show you how it is done.

Roll out some puff pastry about four inches wide and about the length of a half sheet pan. Prick the dough all over so it doesn’t rise all that much. The goal is for a flaky texture not a tall puff. Spread the pastry cream over the entire pastry in a nice thin layer.

Place the choux paste in a pastry bag and pipe out figure eights down the length of the pasty. Try to keep the eights close to each other but don’t have them touching. Pipe a nice think line of jam down the center of the pastry where the eights overlap.

Combine sliced almonds and some large-crystal sugar together and spread over the entire pasty. I left the center jam portion uncover just for presentation purposes. Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes or until the choux paste is a nice dark mahogany and the puff pastry is cooked all the way through. If you don’t cook the choux enough, it will deflate as it cools and it will have an unpleasant undercooked center. After the pastry cools garnish it with some simple icing (powdered sugar and milk) lightly. Slice and serve!

That’s about all there is to it! Slice up the pastries and enjoy.