Category: Pastry

The Filling Files

I’ll be putting up a few filling recipes tomorrow, specifically for kolaches. This got me thinking: I get regular requests for filling recipes…apple, cheese, poppyseed, etc.. Should I create a catch-all category for fillings under the Pastry Components menu? Something that would contain an exhaustive list of fillings for Danishes, blintzes, kolaches and cakes? Many of those recipes are identical from one pastry to the next. The same cream cheese filling, for example, can be used in kolaches, coffee cakes and Danishes. Would it be useful if all my various filling recipes were collected under a single heading? I dunno, you guys use the blog. Tell me what you think!

UPDATE: Well, the verdict seems to be in. I’ll start it today, but I’ll warn you that the category may take some time to complete, so please be patient with me! – Joe

READ ON

Frankie Says Relax

Wow, I’m really dating myself with that headline. That was a huge hit back in my high school days. I think I had the 12″ maxi-single, laser-etched. I drew the line at the obnoxious t-shirts.

But where was I? Oh yes: I wanted to make a point of reminding all you folks out there working with short crust to spare no opportunity to rest your dough. Years ago in my bakery days I remember customers asking: how do you get your pies to turn out so well? My crusts always shrink! At first I didn’t know what to say, because as far as I could tell we just made the pies and baked the pies.

READ ON

Kolacky Recipe

This is how I remember the spelling in many of the Czech bakeries along Cermak Road. There, kolaches were usually round and puffy, made from a yeast dough instead of a short crust. The ingredients are:

12 ounces (1 1/2) cups warm milk
3 ounces (6 tablespoons) melted butter
2 egg yolks
2.5 ounces (generous 1/3 cup) cup sugar
17.5 ounces (3 1/2 cups) flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg or mace
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

READ ON

Making Kolaczki

These cookie-like kolaczki — which in my understanding are a Polish version — are some of the easiest of the breed: essentially a cream cheese pie crust tube full of jam. Make yours by combining the butter and cream cheese in a large bowl or in the bowl of a mixer.

READ ON

Ongoing Tree Management Issues

You know how yesterday I was having fun picking up wood? Today not so much. Regarding that huge tree limb — off my neighbor’s tree — that fell in the street in front of my house. Workers from the City came out with a small backhoe, dumped the whole thing in my yard, and told […]

READ ON

Immigrants & Ovens

Reader Gerhard from Vienna submits this interesting email:

I think if you leave your homeland for another continent, you’ll hold on to anything that evokes the feeling of home. So why fresh pasta once a week if you can bring in Italy every day? Still you have to get accustomed to the new environment.

A fascinating thought for me as an European, btw. All our roots can be traced to some other place… but living in America, almost everybody’s roots have been unearthed just a very short time ago… a couple of hundred years ago or less… which makes me wonder if people do hold on to the things, the food, the traditions of their origin.

READ ON

Pennies from Heaven

The answers to my day-today problems don’t typically fall right out of the sky, but this weekend they did. I’ve been fretting about brick oven fuel supplies for a while now, since I’ve been lazy about acquiring a load of green (i.e. “fresh”) wood to start curing for next year’s baking. My problems were solved […]

READ ON

Making Fig Jam

Didn’t expect this, did you? Well I happened to receive a quantity of figs yesterday. They were very small and ripe, so action was called for. Fig jam is incredibly easy to make since you don’t have to worry about gelling like you do with most fruit jams. Figs are plenty thick and sugary in their natural state. The only issue you have with figs is — depending on how large they are — softening their thick skins. These were small and ripe so they didn’t need much softening. I had just 1 1/2 pounds.

READ ON

Rumford Low-Sodium Baking Powder

I recently received a press release about this new product from Rumford (really Clabber Girl, which now owns the Rumford brand). I was interested by it since I get regular requests for low-sodium recipes, and the good folks at Clabber Girl were happy to send along a sample for me to try. Though I have yet to test it comprehensively, I did use it for biscuits (American biscuits) last night. Biscuits are an excellent proving ground in our household because I make them once a week on average. Mrs. Pastry and the girls pick out deviations from the norm with spectrographic sensitivity.

READ ON