barton springs eternal....

Barton Springs is the heart and soul of Austin.  It is a spring fed pool that is about 68 degrees year round.  In recent years, it has become the battleground between developers and environmentalists.  It is about 2 blocks from my house and I can probably count the number of times that I've been there on two hands.  I take it for granted.

I started my week off with a 7 mile run that started in the pool parking lot at 5:45am.  It's been over 100 degrees in Austin for weeks now.  When it gets that warm, it never seems to cool off very much at night.  Even at 6:00am, it was probably in the low 80's.  When I finished, I took off my running shoes, socks and shirt and walked into the pool.  A heartier soul would jump in but I was worried about the shock of the cold water.  It was a good way to start the day.

mmmmm...sprinkles....

Thursday was kind of a knock off day at school.  We made beignets and donuts.  The donuts were the yeast variety as opposed to the cake variety.  If it wasn't for the boiling vat of oil, these would be fun to make at home.  Maybe I could install a deep fryer in the backyard....

Friday was the end of laminated doughs (croissants, danish and brioche).  I have next week off from school.  I see a week of home projects, movies and book reading in my future.  On July 6, we start a block on custards, fillings and creams.  That would include chocolate mousse which is something that I've been looking forward to.

the dough that keeps on giving....

We made more goodies with brioche dough on Wednesday.  The roll is Pain au Raisin (raisin bread).  The dough is rolled out into a thin rectangle, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with raisins marinated in sugar syrup and rum.  The dough is then rolled up and cut into individual biscuits.  yum.

The other is Pain Perdu (french toast).  We start with balls of brioche bread and cut off the top and bottom.  Rather than dipping the bread in raw eggs (yuk), this is dipped in Creme Anglaise (pastry cream without the cornstarch) and cooked.  This may threaten my good standing as a Yankee, but I prefer this version of french toast without maple syrup.

streeeeetch......

Today we stretched strudel dough for making apple strudel.  The dough was initially rolled out to be about 18" long and 8 inches wide.  With our handy partner, we floured up our arms, reached under the dough and started stretching it down the table.  It probably quadrupled in area and became so thin that you could see through it.  We then rolled up some apple filling in it and baked it to make strudel.  

brioche dough day....

My experience with Brioche in the bread block was disappointing.  It tasted like a stick of butter.  We made a couple of items from a slightly tweaked brioche recipe and I might be a convert.  The rectangular Nantere bread is slightly sweet and very fluffy.  A tasty application is to pull those little segments apart and make French toast out of them.  Each segment is roughly a 2 inch cube.  That would be a fun little breakfast treat.

The round Galette bread is about 10 inches in diameter.  It is also made with brioche dough.  It has Creme Chantilly in the middle.  It would be a great dessert.

if i was vienna, i'd be mad....

For our practical test this week, we made croissants and danish.  Both were originally made in Vienna.  Croissants are now thought of as a French pastry and a danish has made Denmark famous.  A lot of the credit (or blame) is said to go to Marie Antoinette.  She's credited with bringing a lot of the recipes from Vienna to Paris.  I'm dubious but that's the story.

We also made baklava and spanikopita this week.  My favorite of the two was the spanikopita.  It's a mixture of spinach, onion and feta cheese in a very thin, flaky dough.  Baklava is good but it's really sweet.  I'm saving my sweet tooth for next week - strudel, beignets and donuts.  Yikes

i wonder who suzette was...

We made Crepes Suzette today.  I'm a big crepe fan and I love oranges so this is a great breakfast for me.  For the pyromaniac in me, it was fun to flambe the Suzette sauce.

In addition to the crepes, we made savory croissants. We made three types of fillings for the croissants.  (1) Ham and swiss.  (2) Roasted red peppers and feta cheese.  (3) Apple, onion, bacon and cheddar cheese.  It's getting tough to keep my girlish figure.

wienerbrod.....

"What do the Danish call danishes, Alex."  The French don't call fries french fries and the Danish don't call danishes danishes.  Wienerbrod is Dutch for Vienna Bread which is where most of the recipes came from.  The spice cardamon, which is in all danish dough is originally from Denmark, hence the name, danish.

The dough is relatively easy to make but perfecting the shapes will take some practice. But, for my first attempt, you can probably pick out the pinwheel danish. Those rectangular danishes are tasty.  The one with the heavy powder sugar has chocolate in the center. The other one has almond cream in it.

Croissant dough is very similar to danish dough so we did those as well.  These are Croissant au Beurre (in butter).  Tomorrow is a taste comparison using shortening or cream cheese as substitutes for butter.  I'm already guessing that butter will be my fat of choice.

i'm a pepper, you're a pepper...

I made my yearly pilgrimage to Dublin, TX for the Dr Pepper birthday celebration.  They turned 118 this year.  Dublin is home to the only Dr Pepper bottling plant that still uses pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup.  I ran in the 10K (6.2 miles) run which started at 8:00am.  I wish Mr and Mrs Pepper had the good Doctor a little earlier in the year.  It's hot in central Texas on June 13.  It's about a 3 hour drive so it made for an early morning.  They have the run, arts and crafts, music, factory tours, and all the Dr Pepper you can drink.  I think I drank too much.  It was much more plentiful than water so I kept on drinking it.

If you look at it logically, it's hard to justify the 3 hour drive for the activities listed but I enjoy these little Texas town festivals.  It's a nice change of pace.  I'll be there next year.

smile and say cheese....

Another item for savory puff pastry day was brie.  Brie en Croute (in crust) is a chunk of brie that is topped with apricot jam, gift wrapped in puff pastry dough and baked.  This bad boy would be great right out of the oven as an appetizer.  Maybe with a glass of wine.  Or two.

waiter - there's some salmon in my puff pastry...

Thursday was dedicated to savory recipes for puff pastries.  Salmon en Croute (in crust) was one recipe. A slab of salmon is seasoned and placed between two appropriately shaped pieces of puff pastry dough.  The dough is rich in butter so that, combined with the seasonings on the salmon, made for a tasty catch.  giggle.

lobster newberg...

Ben Wenberg introduced this lobster dish at Delmonico's in NYC in the late 1800's. The W and N were switched in his name to produce the popular menu name.  These are bite size pastry cups filled with pieces of lobster and sauce.  If someone supplies the lobster tails, I'll bring the pastry dough.  

from layers of bureaucracy to layers of pastry...

Laminated doughs are used to make puff pastries. The process of making the lamination is kind of fascinating. You start with a layer of dough and lay a sheet of rolled out butter on top of the dough. There is then a series of foldings and rollings.  This is done over and over until you have over a 1000 layers of dough / butter. The butter expands during baking and produces the flakiness in croissants and danishes.  The first few days of this week were dedicated to fruit puff pastries. The pinwheel is a Pithivier (pa-tiv-ee ay) and it has almond cream in the middle. The rectangle is a Band Au Fruit (band oh fwee). The fruit slices are pears that were poached in white wine, lemon juice and cinnamon sticks. The pear slices are lying on a spread of almond cream. The tart is a Tart Tatin. The fruit is caramelized apples.  Not pictured is a Chausson which is basically a little apple turnover.  I'm stuffed.

and then there were two...

I tried my hand at eclairs today for the gang at Green Mesquite. I thought they might want a change from chocolate chip cookies.  They were apparently good because I only have 2 left.  I took some recipes (pastry cream, puff pastry and chocolate glaze) from school and cut everything in half.  It yielded about 14 puff pastries and mini eclairs.  It took a few hours but they came out pretty good for the first try at home.  Kevin volunteered to be the tester so I took a few over to him.  I think I'll increase the next batch to get it up to 20.  I want a few left over for myself next time.

there's no crying in baseball....

But there was almost crying in petit fours. At the risk of sounding melodramatic (it's probably too late), I'm glad that block is over.  My final project came out OK. My favorites were the Pecan Diamonds in the center. The macaroons were a little big and the lemon tarts a little skimpy on the filling, but all in all, everything was tasty.

We start laminated doughs next week. That includes puff pastries, danish, croissants, phyllo and strudel dough.  I'll host a breakfast in the near future.

bulldozers and spatulas......

The city has decided to run a new water line down our street. They estimate 3 weeks to run 200 ft of line.  I've never had any water issues but I imagine the current line has been there since the 50's when the neighborhood was built.  I do feel bad for the guys because we're supposed to have our first 100 degree day this week. They should have a moratorium on selective street surgery during the summer.

I switched from strawberry macaroons to apricot macaroons and they were much better. Those little chocolate filagrees in the picture are fun to do but they need to be more uniform and with thinner lines.  urgghhh.