Author: joepastry
The Pastry Signal
Got some good suggestions on the pastry “bat signal” overnight. Most folks seemed to think that either a doughnut, a chocolate chip cookie or a raw egg would show up the best when projected onto a cloud. Pieces of pie, layer cake or single cupcakes were also good ideas. The most unusual one came from […]
READ ONBrownies, anyone?
Regular reader Gerhard wrote in from Vienna to tell me of his urgent need to understand this thing we Americans know as the brownie. Never let it be said that I failed to heed the call of a baker in need! Let’s do it! You know, I’m starting to wonder if some sort of big, […]
READ ONPuff Pastry User’s Guide
Reader Chana writes in with a special request/conundrum: I recently made my first batch of puff pastry (following Nick Malgieri’s recipe/technique); it did come out okay, but mostly it was a wonderful learning experience. So now I have several half-pound blocks of puff pastry in the freezer. My overwhelming desire is to ignore them — […]
READ ONHot sand works too.
Reader Derek wrote in on Friday to alert me to the fact that on one of Michael Palin’s exellent travel shows, he enjoyed a bedouin feast in which the bread was not baked on a hot rock, but rather on sand. The transcript of the show reads thusly: “Akide Osman is making bread, kneading the […]
READ ONHow to Make Pita Bread
Now that’s what I call a big ol’ pile of fresh-baked goodness. For a summertime mezze (Middle Eastern appetizer) party, homemade pitas can’t be beat. Sheesh! There I go getting all Martha Stewart on you again. Plain old chicken salad sandwiches work great on them, too. One of the really nifty things about pitas is […]
READ ONThe rewards of procrastination
Reader Herb wrote in to ask if pita dough can be left in the fridge longer than eight or ten hours. It certainly can. Once it’s chilled down, it’ll hold in the refrigerator for up to three days. You can “retard” most yeast doughs in this way, and yes, they will continue to develop flavor […]
READ ONGood Company
Though sometimes it feels like it — especially when I read my email — I’m not the only one out there criticizing Michael Pollan. Here is a very interesting essay by farmer Blake Hurst in The American. Blogger Matt Yglesias at thinkprogress.org has this to say (scroll down to the Food Network Logo)…and this lively […]
READ ON“Sourdough” Pita Bread Recipe
I was fiddling with pita over the weekend and came up with this new formula. It’s much faster than the original version, assuming you have some refreshed and active starter hanging around. I put sourdough in quotations since a bread that’s not made with a starter that’s local to the San Francisco Bay area can’t […]
READ ONFrankie Says RELAX
Whenever I do a flatbread recipe I always get one or two questions about dough “improvers” and/or dough “relaxers”. It seems they pop up in more than a few published recipes for pizza, pita, focaccia and they like. What are they and are they really necessary? The short answer is they’re extra things ingredient makers […]
READ ON