Really had intended to post on Wednesday, day after 2nd exam and delivery of paper. It was a day off, and all, but you know how things go. Somehow the day got away from me. In the end I think the paper came together pretty well, especially considering how few direct sources I could find. Came across a copy of Larousse Gastromique in Boston on Friday and that gave me the structure I was looking for. I needed someone to say that certain items are classically French, and he did it. So then I could piece all my randomly accumulated bits around that outline.
As an aside, I also came upon the motherlode of cookbooks at the Brattle book store in Boston : 2 Nancy Silverton books (Desserts and Breads from the LaBrea Bakery); the Harold McGee On Food And Cooking; Shirley Corriher's Cookwise; the Bittman/Vongerichten Simple to Spectacular; Deborah Madison's Local Flavors (love that woman's cookbooks); a Beth Hensperger quick breads; Jacques Torres' Dessert Circus at Home and Artisan Baking Across America by Maggie Glezer. It was quite a haul, Brattle is a great used book store. One of the perks of being married to a rare book dealer: he knows all the good places to score inexpensive books.
So the paper was written in one long stint at the computer at the table in the place in Maine, while Don read the sunday Times and the dog slept. It took me about 6-7 hours, and I cleaned it up on Tuesday before I handed it in. But Don read it, gave me some help, and thought it was pretty good too. It was a relief to hand it in and be done with it. The next module's writing assignment is to compare, contrast and critique three dessert menus from restaurants of our choice. Requires more legwork, but somehow seems more accessible to me. It will probably dovetail nicely with my trailing ventures, so it should be pretty straightforward.
The written and practical exams were good. I had no weaknesses with the written part, it was all there in my head. Suprised myslef by doing a little choke with the making of the puff pastry. The detrempe came togther well, pounded the butter out nicely, but then when I wrapped the beurrage in the detrempe and was set to start rolling I was somehow unsure of my wrapping. Can't remember if I discussed puff here or not. The basic concept is three part. You make a plain dough with AP flour, cake flour, salt, a little butter and the minimum water necessary to get it to hold together. This is the detrempe. Then you pound out your butter with some flour till it is soft and pliable but still cold. This is the beurrage. Next step is to roll out the detrempe into a square with wings. You put the beurrage into the center of the detrempe and fold the wings over to enclose the beurrage like a letter in an envelope. The butter needs to be completely covered and i think that was my problem. Think I made my beurrage too big for my detrempe so when I folded there was some butter peaking out. Then the package gets rolled out to a long rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. When the dough is rolled out you fold it in on itself: the two ends meet in the middle and then you fold that package in half. The point being to layer that butter and flour as many times as possible without making the dough tough with overhandling. It gets rolled out again in the same fashion, folded again, and then you let it rest and cool down in the fridge for a good while. Then you bring it out and do two more folds. Then you have puff pastry ready to go. I think when my butter was leaking out in the rolling process I got a little flustered. I pulled it togther and did all my necessary rolling and folding, but we will see what my grade is. Ah well, no big deal. Not once while I was working in the kitchen at 11 Madison Park did anyone ask me what my grade were in school. Ultimately it's all about your work. That I am not worried about, I work hard, I pay attention, and I admit when I make mistakes, or am in over my head. That last one comes from experience and when things get down and dirty that is a very good quality. No one wants to work with someone who can't keep up and doesn't admit to it. Honesty is a very valuable commodity in that situation. Don't tell someone you can do pastry cream if you can't because you will cost them time and money when you fail.
But I digress. I brought my puff and one of my classmates' home so I now have about 6 lbs of puff in my freezer. Ready to be whipped out to throw together a Gateau Pithiviers at a moments notice. Yeehaw. It's not the easiest thing to make but luckily it keeps well in the freezer, so you can put yourself out once and reap the benefits for weeks.
Sunday night I will be trailing at Blue Hill, a place in the west village that highlights the food of the Hudson Valley. Dan Barber, the chef, is involved in the Stone Barns project at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate. The project is fostering the agriculture of the Hudson Valley with a center for food and gardens that is restoring the original barns from the estate. There will be an informational center, gardens and demonstrations, and a restaurant. It's a pretty cool project, I am a computer spaz so I don't know how to include links here otherwise I could point you directly to info about them. But if you google Stone Barns you will find lots to read. So I go in to Blue Hill at 2:00 on Saunday and work through dinner. Don't know what I'll be doing, seems unlikely that they would have a first time trail plating, but who knows.... I will let you know.
Called Bolo this AM to see if I can trail there. Was told to call the pastry chef, Vicki Wells, back at 4:00. Still debating where else to trail. Would love to work at Per Se, but don't know how realistic that will be. Also keep hearing from people that Thomas Keller is not a nice person to work for. Trying to make the most of my externship. Would love to have it turn into a job, but think it will also be useful to have a recognizable restaurant name on my resume (even if I don't get a job there) for when we move to Maine. There would obviously be advantages to working at a smaller place: more chances to actually do something other than peeling and dicing apples. But a larger place will have more name recognition outside of NYC. Places I am currently thinking about are: Gramercy Tavern (though I have been hearing things about this place being tired, and Claudia Fleming is no longer there); Bolo (Bobby Flay, but the pastry chef is supposed to be great, Spanish food); Savoy (another fresh food type place, small) and Fleur De Sel (small french place, great reviews). Guess I will just trail in all of them and see what the vibe is. 11 Madison Park was a comfortable place, nice people, great reputation, award winning pastry chef. So that would certainly be a good choice. I also know from the job boards at school that both Blue Hill and Bolo are looking for pastry people, so if I fit in either place the likelihood of getting a job out of school would be better. Both places have good reps, Flay's place perhaps more outside of NYC, although Dan Barber is a big name in the fresh food world. So many things to think about.
And I am now officially half way through school. We started on cakes last night with a new teacher: Chef Reeni. She is a Phillipino woman who seems to know her stuff very well. She is not themost forceful personality I have ever met, but we've only had one class, I will reserve judgement till I've had a week or so with her. I wasn't thrilled with the level of respect shown to her last night by my fellow students. They were talking while she was lecturing/demoing, I'm sure a bunch of them missed out on things because of it. Don't get that, still, after months with these people. Why they are here if they don't want to absorb every bit of information offered to them. There is all sorts of subtle stuff you learn when you give a teacher your full attention. Ah well, their loss, not mine.
Doggie is starting to settle in. He lets us sleep a full six hours from midnight to 6:00 AM when he asks for his first walk. I am feeling less sleep deprived, which is a good thing! We are pretty much house trained and his personality has bloomed as he gets more and more comfortable with us. He is a joy and we are very happy with him.
Maine last weekend was a reaffirmation of why we want to move up there. Saw all our friends, life is stirring in the frigid tundra. Walks at six AM are much more enjoyable when the landscape includes flocks of geese flying overhead making this quiet whistling sound. We are now thinking that a move to Portland, Maine's cultural center, would be the best transition for us. A small yet dynamic city with many restaurants, bookstores, markets, coffeshops, yoga and a great knitting store. Lots of culture, including an art movie house, a truly amazing video rental place and a fabulous music store. Not till next winter for a move, I think. But it's in our heads and our hearts.
Time to walk the dog.
A bientot,
Samantha
Tuesday I trailed at Eleven Madison Park.
Trailing, in case I have not been specific, is when you volunteer in a kitchen for a chef and basically work for free. It is a pretty standard restaurant term, it is also another way of saying training for a job. A new waiter will trail an established one to learn the ropes before they start working tables on their own. In the kitchen it does have a slightly different meaning, in that one can trail before even getting hired. It's a way for the chef to see if you have what they need to get a job done, and a way for you to see if you like the vibe in a particular kitchen. I can imagine if more professions did this the world might have a higher sticking rate for new employees. There is also another level of trailing that is called doing a stage or being a stagiere. From what I can tell I believe this is what my externship will be. It's an apprenticeship to a chef or restuarant for an extended period, in my case six weeks but in Europe they can last as long as six months. For the most part they are unpaid positions, and I need to ask around more to find out how people support themselves while doing them. I have heard tales of various chefs who go to Europe and work for, for example, Pierre Herme for a couple of months and then come back to the States with another impressive line on the resume. It's a way for a cook at most levels to gain new skills without going to school. It seems to be common practice.
So anyway, there I was Tuesday morning filling one inch tart shells with pate sablee and thinking to myself, yes, this is where I belong. It felt right. I will not misrespresent myself here, I was the lowest man on the pastry kitchen totem pole. But I can see where I can progress, with some hard work and some skills, to the place I would like to be, spending my days making apple frangipane tarts with thyme ice cream. It is within my reach, and I am excited. I spent my day at 11 Madison doing basic tasks. I made sorbet bases (water/sugar/vanilla bean/glucose powder etc): I cut out a gazillion chocolate cookies of various sizes; I unsucessfully made cornbread for a staff meal (oops, although the chef was unfazed, said the rescipe was off); I peeled and chopped apples and I sheeted linzer cookies. The last task involved using a piece of machinery not unlike a huge pasta machine. It is a set of rollers that are adjustable through which you feed dough on a piece of linen. It goes back and forth and you can gradually space the rollers closer and closer till you have dough that is 3/16 of an inch thick. It make short work of rolling out dough, and is therefore very useful for making large numbers of cookies, tarts or pies and puff pastry. I believe that I was well received. When I first arrived I was met by the pastry assistant and one of the pastry sous chefs. The pastry chef herself, Nicole Kaplan, was not there. I worked with those two for an hour or so before Nicole showed up. When she showed up she did not acknowledge my presence at first. I was a little put off, but figured let's just keep my eyes open and see what I see. After a little while she began addressing me with things she wanted me to do, eventually she got to calling me by my name. I'm not sure what was up, she didn't seem overly shy, nor overly egotistical. Perhaps I needed to prove myself to her before she could recognize me. Or maybe she has had so many students come through that kitchen that she doen't have much time for pleasantries. I'm not sure, but by the end of the day she let me know she was pleased with my work and said I could come back anytime, just to give her a call. I would definately like to do another day, at least, before I make any firm decisions on whether this is the extern place for me. One week from this Sunday I will be doing the same thing at Blue Hill, a smaller restaurant in the West Village that puts an emphasis on local ingredients, specifically from the Hudson Valley. For that trail I will go in at 2:00 and stay through service. Should be interesting. I was also very happy to see that Per Se had a table at the career fair at ICE this past Monday. I was even happier to note that they were there specifically for externs. I practically ran up to the table and enthusiastically expressed my interest in externing this coming July. [Per Se is the Tom Keller place in the Time Warner Center, and while I find irony in the possibility of working in that building, I would very much like the opportunity to work with him. Oh yeah, Keller is the French Laundry in Healdsburg- phenomenal restaurant] The two laid back indiviuals at the table seems a little overwhelmed by my enthusiasm, but they told me someone would call about my coming in to trail. So I have my little toe in the door. Want to do this trail thing at a number of places before the time comes for decision making. thinking of Gramercy Tavern, Bolo, Savoy, maybe Tabla...
Just to back track a shred, Tuesday was a LONG day. I was on my feet and cooking from 8:45 to 4:00 when I took a break, had some food, and then went to class where I was again on my feet and cooking from 6-10. I need to get in better shape if I am going to do this regularly. This schedule on top of the dog induced sleep depreivation has left me a little drained. Don left for Maine yesterday (with the dog) so I had a good nights sleep last night, and I am taking the train to Boston tomorrow AM where he will meet me and so we can have a long weekend in Maine. Don says he let the dog sleep on the bed last night and he let him sleep till 6:00. I am afraid that may be the solution, letting him sleep on the bed, but I'm not sure what the cat will have to say about that. It's a damn good thing we have a king sized bed....
While in Maine I need to write another paper for school which I have somehow neglected to mention here. It is a 1000 word piece on the French baking tradition. It is due on Tuesday, the same day of our next practical exam, and I have not started writing it yet. Yipes, don't tell Chef Gerri, but I will have something to turn in, I swear. I had some panicked days there, went out and spent $100 at the Strand looking for research material and realized there is NO comprehensive treatement of the French baking tradition. If any writers out there are looking for a good subject I would heartily encourage them to look at this topic. It would require lots of research in France, much tasting and traveling, sounds interesting, no? Maybe I will have to think about this some more. But right now I am trusting in my abilities to spew, that I will come up with something this weekend in the quiet of Maine. Feeling some pressure to maintain that 4.0 grade point average I have achieved, but then realistically speaking, Nicole Kaplan did not ask me how I was doing in school...... More concerned with the practical where I will have to make puff pastry and a soft roll bread dough. Feel pretty confident about both, we did puff all week this week so it's fresh in my mind.
Forgot to report on the meal at Gramercy Tavern last Friday. It was lovely as was to be expected. Although must mention first up that one of the desserts was less that stellar, which came as a suprise. I will start backwards: we had the Lemon panna cotta with blood orange sorbet and then this canneloni that was filled with apples (or pears?), roasted and served with thyme ice cream. The best part of the equation was the thyme ice cream. The canelloni was tough and the fruit was tasteless. I was frankly suprised, especially as our waiter had been very encouraging in selling it as his favorite dessert. Ah well, win some, lose some? Then as entrees we had a roasted Salmon which was delicious with roasted tomato sauce and fingerling potatoes, and fresh bacon, with spaetzle and red cabbage, which was fabulous. As appetizers we had grilled octopus and an artichoke salad with arugula, fresh shell beans and a lemon confit. To drink we shared a Gigondas which is one of our favorite wines. It was a lovely meal in a lovely room (the tavern). We arrived at about 3:30 and just before we left at 5:30 there was a shift change which was remarkable for the change in the energy level in the room. I felt the same thing when I left 11 Madison Park at 4:00 on Tuesday. These big high end restaurants are impressive when they are in gear, a finely tuned orchestra of players all working together with this kinetic energy to make fabulous food. The analogy between the restaurant world and the theatrical world is a good one. There is a lot of hustle and bustle behind the curtain to make magic for the people in the house. This may be the way in which I can tie my previous career as a dancer to my future one as a pastry chef. Those years in the corporate world were just a detour....
sigh
a bientot,
Samantha
Just when you thought we had covered this material we make more tarts! I really did think we had gone through the tart thing, but it seems there were more. We worked on Konfekt. Sounds vaguely industrial, no? They are little Swiss tartlettes. And between you and me, they are a pain in the ass. I imagine they would be part of a petit fours display but they are another example of a confection to precious for it's own good. These are the tiny little tarts you often see in patisserie cases filled with ganache or buttercream. They are a one bite, two if you're very dainty (or small), experience. By the time we were done making them I wanted to throw them across the room. The shells were simple enough. Pate sablee (creamed butter/sugar, eggs and cake flour) rolled paper thin and filled into tiny tart shells, maybe 2-4 inches in diameter. I think I'm getting pretty good at rolling the dough, had no prolems with these. Then they blind bake to a light golden brown. So far so good. But then the mayhem begins. These precious little campers need to be filled with something. Our filling of choice was ganache. Ganache, in case I haven't covered it already, is equal parts chocolate and cream. This mixture needs to be administered to the tart shells in an artful manner. This is a painstaking delicate process utilizing a small offset spatula. The ganache needs to be the right temperature or it doesn't spread well. As you might imagine these little devils need to be perfectly and precisely filled with the ganache, uniformly, each one needs to look the same as the last one. I don't have the greatest eye to hand coordination, all those years of tennis lessons when I was a kid were a testament to this failure of mine. Cannot play tennis for shit. So I was quite quickly frustrated with the tart filling process. [As an aside I must remind all that I am still rather sleep deprived from the loving puppy who likes to go out very early in the AM....patience is at something of a premium.] Once we had gotten the little buggers filled we were supposed to decorate them (again perfectly and uniformly) with fondant. If I thought working with the ganache was tricky, try fondant. Fondant is sugar and water that have been brought to 248 degrees and then tempered not unlike fudge to a sinewy consistency. It is a bitch to work with. You may have seen it on wedding cakes, it's that outer layer that makes the cake look smooth and uniform, as if it was extruded from an industrial machine. I cannot say I am a big fan, bet you could guess that one. Anyhoo, piping the stuff through a cornet is another tricky process, as fondant cools even faster than ganache, and becomes a solid block of intransigence. My hands were cramping from trying to pipe even straight lines. ugh. I was so frustrated by the whole experience that I almost didn't bring any of them home. I have not eaten one....
The other part of that class was a Breton tart which is quite lovely, thank you very much. And much more up my alley. It is a rustic tart from the Brittany area of France. It is a two layer tart with a traditional filling of apples, pears or some nut mixture. The dough was like a sablee but a little more substantial, although very sticky. It needed to be rolled out between two sheets of plastic wrap. It is baked in a basic cake pan so it doesn't need any special equipment. We made a walnut version, the filling was a mixture of chopped walnuts, brown sugar, butter and honey. YUM. Very rustic looking when you're done, would be perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Something I would certainly have on a menu someday.
The next night we did strudel which was a cool process but a disapointing result. Strudel is very rarely made by hand in NYC anymore. Even more rarely does it appear on any menus. It is a labor intensive procedure. You make a basic dough with high gluten flour and eggs and then instead of kneading it, you throw it on the bench repeatedly. It's a good way to get your aggressions out. It was fascinating to watch the dough come togther through it's beating. Not sure why you don't just knead it like bread dough, but Chef Gerri didn't have an answer. Hopefully I will find that info somewheres. So after you beat it it rest for an hour or so and then you get to the stretching part. You start with about a pound of dough and end up with a table full. It gets stretched slowly and carefully across the table (which has been covered with a floured tablecloth) till it is thin enough to cover a 30x48 surface. This stretching process is cool, the dough gives so much, you wouldn't think it possible. You need to use the back of your hands and it gets rather meditative, easing the dough into it's new shape. I could see spending many hours coaxing dough into unusual shapes and making heirloom edibles for an appreciative market somewhere else. The unfortunate problem was that the Strudel, when baked, was unremarkable and bland. It may perhaps merit some attention, maybe a couple of weeks working with doughs and fillings, I could come up with something more dynamic. Feel like I need to try some one else's perfect example of the formula.... Will have to search out those folks who are still making it by hand.
Finally we moved on from tarts, to layers. Layers means puff pastry. Puff pastry is a precise equation. So much flour, so much butter so many folds and you get flaky pastry layered with an obscene amount of butter. We worked on quick puff first. The general idea of puff is to layer the flour and butter so that when the dough bakes the water released by the butter creates steam that raises the dough to make airy pastry. So you need to create many layers of butter and flour. It's a pretty straightforward process, not unlike pate brisee in it's beginning. You cut the cold butter into the flour, add some water and make a crumbly dough. But this time you roll it out to a quarter inch and then fold it back on itself, and then repeat this process once more before putting it in the fridge to cool for an hour. Then you have puff pastry which you can roll out to make turnovers, mille feuilles or parmesan discs, among many other applications. This is your basic quick puff, it has fewer steps and makes a less flaky pastry. True Puff is a more complicated version. You make a detrempe, which is the pate brissee part(flour salt butter water), and then you make a beurrage, which is a large amount of butter flattened with some flour. The beurrage gets wrapped in the detrempe and then you start the rolling and folding process. It is time consuming and precise, but the results are lovely. We made our classic puff dough last night but it is sitting in the freezer until Monday night when we will bake it. Puff is going to be on our practical exam for this module so I am glad that it is coming at the end so that I will have it fresh in my mind. Although I must say once you understand the basic concept it is pretty straightforward. you just need to move quickly so your ingredients don't get warm, everything needs to be icy cold.
Tuesday I will be trailing in the kitchen at 11 Madison Park with Nicole Kaplan. I am very excited and not just a little nervous. It seems hard to believe I am at this point so soon. We are about half way through the course, Chef Gerri says we are ready to start trailing in kitchens. The externship lady came in on Monday and told us to start working in kitchens so we know where we want to work for our externships. I called Nicole Kaplan up, she was perfectly nice, seemed to be expecting these types of calls, so I'm going in at 9:00 tuesday AM. And then on the 28th I will be trailing at Blue Hill. Blue Hilll is a restaurant that focuses on local purveyors from the Hudson valley. They are all into Slow Food and using local ingredients wherever possible. I am very excited about getting the opportunity to work in these kitchens. Don and I are going to have a late lunch at Gramercy Tavern today, because that is another place I want to try working. It is amazing how quickly this is all going now. I will be actually working in a kitchen in 4 months. Yeehaw!
A bientot,
Samantha
Sleep deprived.
No, we certainly didn't have a baby. We adopted a dog! Still being without a digital camera I have no photo to post. I am working on that problem. In the meantime let me tell you about Tarts. (more about the doggie below)
We covered most all the bases when it comes to the various forms of pie/tart/galette dough this week. I wasn't really aware that there were so many different doughs to make, and that they have different applications. I thought pie dough was pie dough, maybe that there was a different version for quiches and the like. But it would seem that there are many ways to skin this cat (I'm an animal lover, remember). There are a couple of French names for these doughs that seem to have meaning for many. There is pate brisee, pate sucree and pate sablee. Then there are galette doughs, sour cream pie doughs and pasta frolla. The crucial element here is the integration of the fat. Sounds technical but it's all about the butter (or lard or sour cream or crisco[I hope not]). The best place to start is the pate brisee which is your classic flaky pastry dough. It can easily be used for an american apple pie, a savory quiche or a fresh fruit and pastry cream tart. It is the most difficult to deal with because if properly prepared it is very crumbly and broken (which is what brisee means in French). When you are making a brisee you have trouble believing that this shaggy, crumbly mess on your counter could ever make a tart. You're not even sure how you're going to get it to roll out flat and thin enough to put into a tart or pie tin. The basic procedure is to mix your flour with a little salt and some baking powder (although these 2 items are more for flavor than structure) and then cut in your butter. Cutting in can be tricky. You want all your ingrediants to stay as cold as possible, if the butter melts you have a different beast on your hands, nothing flaky or tender. So you cut your butter up into half inch cubes and cut it into the flour. Cutting is an action whereby the butter gets broken down into smaller pieces and yet still maintains it's integrity. The reason you don't want the butter fully incorporated into the dough is because when it bakes the water in the butter releases steam which raises the dough up leaving layers of pastry, which makes a flaky crust. The best way to cut is to use a bench scraper, a flat dull metal blade that is a bakers best friend, to chop the butter in pieces while it swims in the flour. Some people like to do this with their hands but you run the risk of melting the butter with the heat of your hands. There is also a tool for the home baker, think it's called a pastry blender that is a number of strands of wire connected by a handle that you mash into the flour butter combo. The general idea is to break the fat down into small pieces but not completely integrate it into the dough. You still want to be able to see small pieces of butter. Then when this is accomplished you add the smallest possible amount of ice cold water, just enough to bring the dough together. You know you're there when you grab a handful, press it tight and it stays in the shape of your palm. The dough then goes into the refrigerator to chill completely. This can be anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours. You could also freeze the dough at this point if you know it will be days before you are going to be baking. When you let the dough cool like this it allows the flour to absorb as much of the moisture as possible, it also chills the butter further to help it maintain it's integrity. This is the point at which it seems hard to believe the dough could be made into anything cohesive at all. It barely hold together. And when it comes out of the fridge it will only be slightly better. Another thing to keep in mind is not to overwork the dough because, unlike the bread we did the week before, you do not want any gluten to form. You want this dough to be tender and flaky, you don't want it to have any protein formation going on, that would make it chewy and tough. When it has fully chilled you are ready to roll it out and again this seems like some sort of pastry farce. It's crumbling all over the place and you're supposed to form it into a coherent circle of thin dough that can be placed in a tin? Right. So you flour the *^$%$# out of your counter, you keep your trusty bench scraper close and you go at it with a rolling pin, again remembering not to over work it. And somehow, magically, as you are rolling, it comes together. The butter holds the flour just enough for it to roll out. If you have a lot of cracking you may have to cut it into quarters and stack them and roll it out again. You don't want to do that more than once. But if you did everything else right the dough will roll out and you can move it into the tart pan, press it gently into the sides of the pan, allowing yourself some extra overhang for the inevitable shrinkage, and you've got a shell ready for chilling (again) baking and filling. You do want to put it back in the freezer for at least 15-20 minutes again before it goes into the oven to prevent too much shrinkage. And then this type of dough is blind baked: lined with parchment and filled with beans or pie weights, then baked till golden brown. The weights prevent the dough from rising too much due to all that steam being released from the butter and the water in the dough. After the crust is blind baked it can be filled with a pastry cream or a curd or some other such pre cooked filling.
I must say that I was skeptical that the whole process was working up until the moment that I cut into one of my tartlets, saw the flakiness and then put it in my mouth. Holy #@$% it worked! It was a tender flaky delicious tart! There is a certain amount of faith that must be applied to this concept of baking. Sometimes you have to put your gut feelings aside and go with what your head (or your instructor/cookbook) tells you. I learned this concept with bread when I realized that I had been putting way to much flour in my doughs because I didn't know how to deal with a sticky dough. My breads were often dense and heavy, but that sticky dough makes for a better crumb and a light, tasty bread. With pie dough you want to leave it at a stage where it doesn't feel fully mixed and is difficult to work with, because then you will have a perfect crust. I saw it with my own two eyes, it works! I am converted. And now I want to practice. We are having friends over for dinner Saturday and I am going to make a tart with pistachio frangipane (a nut paste with flour eggs and butter, usually almond) and apricots.
I did just spend a lot of time discussing pate brisee after mentioning many other types of dough above. That's because pate brisee is the most challenging and so the others are a walk in the park after brisee. Not that that makes them any less delicious or fun. Pate sucree differs from brisee in that it includes sugar and eggs, two ingredients that make it both more stable(less delicate) and more manageable. You do not have to worry about overworking sucree, it is a much more forgiving dough. You go through the same procedure with the cutting in of the butter, although you can mix it more than with brisee, but the addition of the eggs to the mix hydrates the dough so it holds together better. You go through the same steps with the chilling of the dough but this one does not have to be chilled. After placing it in the pan, it gets filled immediately and baked. The resultant crust is more mealy, sweeter and crumbly when baked. It is well suited to frangipane or cooked fruit fillings. It is not however a dough you would match with your traditional apple pie filling. It definately is more European in feel. Sucree can be flavored as well, so you can have a cocoa sucree or even a almond sucree.
All the other doughs mimic these two in one way or another. A sour cream dough replaces some of the butter with sour cream and so has a lighter color and texture. But it can be used much the way a brisee can be, though it does not get blind baked, it is often used with fruit filling for pie. A galette dough is like a brisee but with eggs, it is to my mind, half way between a sucree and a brisee. It is good for making free formed tarts, or galettes. Pasta frolla is the Italian version of Pate sucree, it just has more eggs. Tonight we are doing pate sablee so I will have a better sense of that tomorrow, although I know it uses pastry flour which is the lowest protein flour you have, so it must be a very tender dough.
Ironically when I came home last night Alton Brown (Good Eats on the food network) was making pie dough and he covered all the same points we did in class. If you are looking for more material I would recommend going to their website and looking up his link.
I am sleep deprived because I am not getting more than 3-4 consecutive hours of sleep a night. And this is because of Raleigh, the new addition to the family. He is a terrier type dog, a definate mix of various breeds, perhaps part norwich terrier, part lhasa apso. He is wheat colored and very soft coated. He stands about 12 inches at his shoulder and is a very friendly doggums. We got him from a rescue group in Westchester over the weekend. They told us he is from one of the Carolinas, hence his name. He is trying to be good with the housebreaking, he wants to please, and we are learning his signals. But there are bumps in the road along the way. So I don't sleep very soundly and go for walks at odd hours, including 3:30 last night. We are very happy to have him here with us, I am not sure Rudy is so happy. He will adjust, in the meantime he gets to sleep on the bed and Raleigh sleeps on the floor (or in his crate, which he luckily seems to like). I keep telling Raleigh that we won't be in NYC forever and someday he will have a nice home in the country somewhere. He just smiles and says, whatever Ma.
A bientot,
Samantha