Category: Pastry

Making Kugelhopf

Eating kugelhopf is a little like traveling in time. You’re reminded of what “cake” was like before it became the ultra-rich, ultra-sweet, ultra-moist sort of device that it is now. I’m not complaining about modern cake, mind you. I’m just saying that “cake” as it was defined a few hundred years ago is a beautiful thing. I served this as the closer for Mrs. Pastry’s birthday party the other night, complete with candles, and it was a hit. A sweet white dessert wine positively makes this, as it blends elegantly with the toasty-sweet crust, tender buttery interior and tangy rum-soaked raisins. Talk about a grownup cake, I want one for my birthday!

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Butter Consumption Hits 40-Year High

And people complain that news reports never have anything positive to say. Long time Joe Pastry readers know that I’ve been on the saturated fat bandwagon for years. My feeling is that consumers aren’t “looking the other way” as the article claims, but rather emerging from a long, long dietary expert-induced stupor. What rational person, left to their own devices, could ever conclude that something as delicious and wholesome as butter could ever be unhealthy? Now all we have to is rehabilitate lard and we’ll be living in paradise.

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Mixing and Crumb

Reader E writes:

This mixing discussion is fascinating! I never realized that how I mixed can have such an impact. Can you tell me if the way I mix effects the size of the holes in bread?

It certainly does, E! There’s a whole world in the subject of mixing, so I don’t want to make too many generalizations here, but there’s a correlation between the degree of mixing and the relative openness of a bread’s crumb. As we’ve been discussing, lots of butter and yolks and lots of mixing results in thousands upon thousands of very small, very evenly dispersed droplets of fat. Those fat droplets prevent a lot of gluten formation

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Fat, Flour, Sugar and Timing

Reader Jim writes:

Your fine pastry story — about the struggle between the forces of Up and the forces of Down — illuminates the dark “glutenian” conflict at odds when we bake. It has inspired me to question “when” I add the various ingredients into my bread recipes. Any future post regarding “ingredient timing” would be much appreciated.

That’s a fascinating question, Jim. I may have written down all I know in the below post. What I will say is that it is possible to create a variety of textural effects depending on when — and how much — fat you add to your mixture. Since gluten is going to develop quickly once flour and water are combined, you’ll want to add at least a little fat at the very beginning of the process if you want to cut down on the gluten development and create a more tender crumb: some egg yolk, oil, cream or very soft

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Bread of the Magi

Where does kugelhopf come from? The Holy Roman Empire. That term isn’t terribly helpful since at its height the Holy Roman Empire comprised everything from Belgium to the Czech Republic, Northern Italy up through Switzerland, Austria and Germany to Western Poland. That’s a big area, can we get any more specific? Well we know that kugelhopf, which is German word, is made from brioche. That’s a French word for a Viennese bread that was probably first invented in Poland. Does that help any? Nah, not really.

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Speak to Me of Brioche

Brioche is one of those base pastry components that most of us take for granted, and that’s a mistake because brioche is miraculous in itself. It’s a bread, but more than that a golden bread, and more than that a very rich but still feather light golden bread, full of egg yolks and butter (sometimes brown butter, which cranks the deliciousness factor still higher). But how can a bread contain so much egg and milk fat yet remain so light? Friends, it’s all in the mixing.

The story of pastry is one of war between the forces of Up and the forces of Down. The Up brigade consists of all the materials that give a baked item its volume and lightness: mainly white, gluten-rich wheat flour but also water, egg whites and leavers like yeast and baking powder. Together these components form what you might think of as the beams and girders of a bread or cake layer. They are the structure that surrounds and contains the empty space in the crumb.

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Well that s*cked.

Today is the first day I’ve felt close to normal in over a week. My doctor warned me I’d feel sick until Monday and be exhausted ’til Thursday, and his prediction was pretty much spot-on. I’ll be back after it tomorrow morning, thankful that even though I had the world’s longest bout of flu, at […]

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Chocolate Just Got More Interesting

Chocolate- and/or sugar-extruding 3D printers have existed on the margins of the pastry world for a year or two. Beginning this week they may just become commonplace, following 3D Systems’ unveiling of the ChefJet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The cheapest models cost about $5,000, which means only high-end pastry departments will be able to afford them for now. And maybe that’s for the best. I’m not sure I’d eat something like this in front of the TV on a Tuesday night. Photo from Make Magazine.

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