Seems I can’t even say the word “brioche” without the New York Times jumping on the bandwagon. This week’s food section has an article (and accompanying recipe) extolling the virtues of morel mushrooms, specifically when consumed on toasted brioche. It actually sounds delicious.
READ ONThough you wouldn’t think it were possible to ascribe sticky buns to the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, some food historians in fact do. It’s yet another example of food researchers gone wild, since those cultures had nothing like our brioche doughs, cane sugar and butter. All of them did have yeast-raised dough, however, so […]
READ ONNothing like springing out of bed at the crack of dawn for an early morning round of crêpe making. Only I forgot how hard these things really are. I also switched recipes, since I only now noticed that the one I linked to last week is for savory crêpes. It has no sugar to speak […]
READ ONA brioche by any other name…would still make a hell of a breakfast. Though I do wonder exactly when brioche as we now know it first come into being. The only thing that can be said definitively about brioche is that the current eggy, buttery version is a recent development, perhaps 200 years old at […]
READ ONAs I mentioned yesterday, the utility of brioche dough goes far beyond the standard muffin-with-a-topknot mini-bread you might have for breakfast at your local pastry shop (though that’s pretty darned fabulous). Most of the time brioche is baked into much larger loaves, sometimes in an extra-large brioche mold, but most often in a standard loaf […]
READ ONMy sincere apologies to anyone’s who’s tried to email me with comments the last two weeks. Turns out my new host didn’t even have my email turned on. The messages were just disappearing into the void. I don’t get many comments or emails to begin with, so I just figured it was business as usual. […]
READ ONA big weekend at the Pastry household. A friend came by and helped me pour the pad for our future brick oven. Doesn’t look like much at the moment…but I can already taste the pizza. I’d never smoothed concrete before. Not unlike icing a big layer cake, the same basic skills apply.
READ ONObviously the homemade stuff turns out a little more, how shall I say…textured than store-bought. But the flavors are vastly superior (and it’s also about a quarter of the cost). It has a much deeper toasted nut flavor, and the good, honest aftertaste you get from zero additives. Working through this recipe, it was very […]
READ ON…is a task that’s dreaded among bakers. Probably why we tend to save hazelnut desserts for really really special occasions. I myself remember my twin sister making a hezelnut torte when we were high schoolers. She peeled each individual toasted nut by hand. Ouch. Happily we’re older and wiser now, and much better at peeling […]
READ ONSince every culture on Earth can lay claim to some version of the pancake, it takes quite a bit of moxie to declare that pancakes of the very, very thin variety are singularly French. Of course they do it, and just maybe they have justification. The French invented those very shallow crêpe-flipping pans and the […]
READ ON