Palmiers
Palmiers are made with laminated puff pastry that has been sheeted, doused with sugar, then rolled up so the sides meet in the middle. The dough is then cut into disks, sprinkled with a bit more sugar and baked until all of the layers become golden brown, the butter has rendered and the sugar has caramelized. The first bite of a palmier is beautifully crisp and flaky with notes of brown butter and caramel – a perfect accompaniment to a steaming mug of hot cocoa, coffee or tea.
Mini Lemon Meringues
Sometimes commitment is hard. But when things come in “minis, ” a new logic seems to form. In pastry, especially, it seems much easier to make the investment on a couple of small bite-sized delicacies than one individual piece.
Dark Chocolate & Red Currant Mini Tart
When faced with a full, robust, glistening pastry vitrine that is calling to you, a whole new kind of indecisiveness takes hold; Chocolate or fruit? Caramel or coffee? Tarte, entremet or verrine? Sweet or savory? I usually just go for the gusto and try a bit of each – however, for the more conscientious guest, mini pastries are like a security blanket – a small investment, just enough until the full-fledged and out of control pastry addiction takes hold – the kind that when you wake up in the morning you just have to have that one sweet morsel of delicious pastry…..until then, a mini will be the perfect gastronomical gateway drug indulgence.
Berry Tartelettes
Maca-Rainbow
From front to back: Grand Cru Chocolate, Mandarin, Lemon, Pistachio, Earl Grey, Cassis, Chocolate Raspberry, Rose and Vanilla
Work was a little bit long and crazy today, so here is the final product from the last six days. We take it out at room temperature for 3 hours, shape the dough and proof for 3 hours. Then we bake it! I do give credit to Benji, since he perfected the technique for the Sour Dough. The Pictures will tell the story!
Campagne Shape
Campagne Bench
Campagne Oven
Campagne Steam
Campagne Cool
“Les Pralines Roses” are a special French confection from Lyon consisting of roasted almonds that have been coated in a pink sugar and panned. They are a close relative of the Jordan Almonds we are familiar here with in the States, yet with their bumpy and knotty texture, they are not nearly as smooth and sophisticated looking.
Praline Rose Macaron
We became familiar with les pralines roses while working at The Fat Duck, where Jocky and the gang of chefs were inspired by Les frères Troisgros’ usage of these popular pink confections in their Michelin starred pastries. There are many interesting ways to incorporate les pralines roses into French pastries – including brioche, meringues, macarons, ganaches and of course, crushing them and using their poppin’ pink color for garnish. We are keeping the tradition alive by creating our own versions of les pralines roses, as well as pastries that are inspired by their flavor and color.
The flour and fermented water mixture was out all night at room temperature and a film covering it.
This is the result, a nice and healthy starter. I will divide the starter to make a bread dough and feed the starter again.
Sour Starter Day 5
Recipe for Starter:
500 grams of Starter
600 grams of Flour
Sour Dough Recipe:
1000 grams of Bread Flour
690 grams of Water
500 grams of Sour Starter
22 grams of Salt
5 grams of Sugar
1 gram of Malt Powder
We mix this all by hand, leave it at room temperature for 2 hrs and place them in the cooler for 12 hrs.
The starter is in the back right and the doughs are on the left.
Sour Starter and campagne
This is the most exciting day! The bag POPS!
Fruit Water
So I drained the water and decided to make a Liquid Sour Starter.
We used:
1000 grams of the Liquid
1200 grams of Bread Flour (Sir Galahad King Arthur)
Sour Starter
I will leave this at room temperature for 12 hrs.
Icing Eclairs
The next step in eclair preparation is finishing – so that they can be given their own flavors and garnishes and can be sold. We finish all of our eclairs by hand every morning and sell them fresh every day.
Eclair Finishing
To finish an eclair, we first begin by refreshing the pâte à choux shells in the oven for a few minutes, to crisp them back up in case they have lost any of their delicate texture. Next, each shell gets filled with a richly flavored cream, on each side and in the middle. It’s important to us that there is a sufficient amount of cream in each section of the eclair – we like them the best when they are very full and very fat.
Chocolate Eclairs
After the eclairs have been filled, we finish them with either a fondant icing or glacage, which evenly enrobes the top half of the pastry. This look can be achieved by using a paddle to glaze the eclairs or by using the dipping method – both are widely used. Once they are glazed, we can finally move on to the last step – garnishing each eclair to give them their finishing touches!
Now this is the fun part, we can see the fermentation taking place! Tomorrow we will take the water and give birth to the mother!
Sour Starter Day Three
