Please don’t fear the carbohydrates

There are many things you can make with dough but I’m not going to try naming all of them.  Bread, pastries, crusts, etc.  You can have fun with dough too - you can take your frustrations out while kneading. And kneading. And…kneading. Yes dough is the foundation for many things but like pasta and other carb family members, it’s so needy. Don’t start baking bread if you’re hungry. Because you will be one arm short by the time you’re ready for your first slice. 

On the menu:            Brioche , southern France style
                                        Pate Brisee or ‘broken dough’ -
                                                       Quiche with leeks & sundried tomatoes
                                        Pita bread w/ hummus
                                        Pate a choux

Brioche

Light, fluffy brioche.  Only THE best kind of bread for bread pudding (my favorite dessert ever).  Brioche includes butter, flour, eggs,  yeast, and a little sugar and salt.  The southern France version includes orange blossom.  It’s best to look up exact measurements for all the recipes since we halved and quartered ours until we weren’t sure how many ounces of what we were putting in our mixers. 

First up, you have to take care of your yeast.  A little warm water, sprinkle of flour and sugar.  Let it come alive. In a mixer add your flour, pinch of salt and room temperature eggs. Your orange blossom if you have it should go in too.   Add the yeast and let the ferminatation begin! Mix mix mix, your dough. It should be sicky.  The gluten needs to develop and pretty soon, the dough will look very elastic-y.   Now you can add your soft butter slowly while the  mixer is running.  Pretty soon the dough will start to turn into a ball and/or wrap itself around the mixer paddle.  It’s ready to proof. Proof in a proofer if you have one (which you probably won’t) or anywhere warm. I just put it on my stove.  After a few hours take your dough out and slap it around a bit to redistribute the yeast. Now it has to proof in the fridge.  The dough must rise. Ready for your third proof? Cut your dough into several pieces depending on how you want the brioche to look. I recommend at least three little humps in your loaf.  Roll into little balls and place in a greased loaf pan, one after the other. Cover and, you guessed it – let proof.  When you’re finally ready to bake brush with egg wash and pop in a 350-375 degree oven until nice and golden brown.  Because this whole process takes quite a while I literally left class with a hot loaf in my hands. I enjoyed it the next day for breakfast, toasted with peanut butter and jam since I figured there was already enough butter in it.  It was out of this world.  So soft and light and warm and aromatic.  Oh it was good.  I actually look forward to making several loafs of this soon, so I can save one for bread pudding.

Broken dough

Why do people steer clear of quiche? Because they’ve never had it the Chef Patrice right way . Soggy crust. Overwhelming egginess – blach.  Pate brisee is starts by mixing flour with very cold butter and cold water - you can do this with the blade attachment or by hand.  The dough should be crumbly at first. Then form into a disc shape, wrap and refrigerate.  Don’t overmix or you’ll melt the buttah.  It needs to rest for at least 45 minutes, then you can roll into a thin cirlce type shape and place in whatever you plan to bake it – whether it’s small individual dishes or a pie dish.  You have to ‘blind bake’ it as Chef Patrice says, or pre-bake it. In the middle weigh down with either beans or pie weights and Chef Patrice actually had us put these in plastic wrap. Yes plastic wrap. I will not replicate this at home since well, baking thin plastic freaks me out just a little.  Bake 10-15 minutes at 300 degrees until the bottom is fully cooked.  Then, you can fill your quiche.  Sauteed leeks and sundried tomatoes is what we used but I’m pretty sure you can use just about anything.  Add a little custard (cream, eggs [2 eggs per cup of cream], salt and pepper and nutmeg, because all custards must have nutmeg), sprinkle some cheese on top and back in the oven until cheese is browned.  The verdict? I really liked the filling but the crust had a weird consistency and reminded me of cardboard. Chef Patrice said it was because I didn’t roll my dough thin enough. Doh!

Easiest bread you’ll ever make

Yeast (same process like the brioche but without the sugar), flour, olive oil, salt and warm water get mixed together. The dough must be very sticky because if it has no moisture, it won’t puff. So, add more moisture if you need to.  Cover and let rise/rest and when you’re ready, roll.  Roll into a circle, making sure you roll it pretty thin or else it will not be nice and fluffy and hollow in the middle.  Place on hot pan in a very hot 500 degree oven. Once it starts puffing and has a nice color, it’s done. Cut into wedges and serve with hummus or whatever your heart desires.  I didn’t roll my dough thin enough and ended up with a very dense, but still warm and delicious, pita.

Then there was shoe

Pate a choux is the dough used when making eclairs or other French pastries.  My favorite is creme a la choux, mmm.  What’s great about this dough is that it doesn’t have to rise or rest or anything like that.  Bring milk,  butter and pinch of salt to a boil. Once butter is melted and your milk is boiling but not burning, take off the heat and add flour, stirring vigorously.  Put back on the heat and stir until you see a film on the bottom of the pan, then take off the heat. Start adding your eggs one by one, stirring before adding another.  Stir to make sure all eggs are incorporated and fill pastry bag. Pipe little balls (easier said than done, trust me) and with a brush dipped in eggwash, flatten the little ‘tail’ they will all have.  Sprinkle some sugar on top or just bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes until they puff. Then turn down the heat to 325 and bake until they’re done on the inside. How do you know they’re done? You eat one.  You can fill these with whipped cream for a nice dessert.  I have made pate a choux before but somehow the batch we made in class  turned out pretty bad. They were too small, heavy and… angry.  However, here is a nice artistic representation of swans by Chef Patrice.

Well?

Dough class was really fun, although I assumed we’d be covering some basics like, regular old bread.  Either way I left feeling confidant that I would at least be making home made pita to go along with my home made hummus.

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