How long can this last?

This rolling-style lamination really has my attention these days — what a ball! However I heard even my 8-year old whispering to my wife yesterday: “Mama, daddy is using an awful lot of butter”. Mrs. Pastry has also threatened to make me do my own laundry from now on if I paint any more melted lard on the bedsheets. Well I’m having fun at any rate. Isn’t that what really matters?

READ ON

Well THAT Was Interesting

11.9 inches of snow yesterday at Louisville airport, something we northerners like to call “a foot of it”. Back in my Chicago and Minneapolis days something like this would only be a small-to-medium deal. Here it’s literally a disaster. Roads closed, schools closed, even grocery stores and gas stations are closed. Some parts of the state got a full 20 inches, which is just about unprecedented. Being one of the only families on the block with multiple snow shovels and a jumper kit, we Pastrys have been busy. Hope to return to baking shortly.

READ ON

Bi-Cultural Pie

Murcian meat pie is a piece of bakery that’s literally split between two cultures. The top is made from roll-laminated dough, which as I discussed last week was invented by Arab pastry makers sometime before the Renaissance (exactly when isn’t well established). The bottom crust is more like a traditional European pie, made of short crust.

READ ON

A Short History of Pie

Murcian meat pies are relics from time when pie wasn’t a food so much as a strategy: a way to preserve bits of food that you might otherwise lose as a result of spoilage. Pies were the original Tupperware: handy, portable containers you could eat from. Notice here that I said eat from. For early pies weren’t meant to be eaten crust-and-all. That’s newfangled modern thinking…but more on that in a moment.

READ ON

Murcian Meat Pie Recipe

Like virtually all meat pies, these can contain just about any mixture of meat scraps or leftovers you have handy: ground or shredded meat, organ meats, sausages, ham, whatever’s around. The crust is a two-part affair. The top is made from roll-laminated dough, the bottom from short crust, puff pastry or puff pastry scraps. Short crust is the most common bottom crust, or so I understand, but do as you wish. Obsessing about ingredients is against the spirit of savory pies, which are all about making do with whatever’s available. Note that if you’re using pre-cooked shredded meat you’ll probably want some sort of a binder to hold the filling together, like a beaten egg.

READ ON

Let’s Press On to Murcia

Murcian meat pies were the whole reason I got interested in this dough to begin with, and I still have some left. So why not do this thing? We’re going to get another big snow here in Louisville today, so some dinner pies will go well with the weather. Hit it!

READ ON

Making Sfogliatelle

Hey yo, howzitgoin’? It’s me your boy Paulie P again. Joey had another thing he had to go do, so he asked me over for the day, and just in time, too. Those sfwee-a-dells down there are pretty friggin’ sad if you ask me, pardon my French. Time for a pro to step in and take care of business, knowadimean?

READ ON

“Roll” Laminating

Laminating via a roll — instead of a series of folds — is a very old technique. It likely predates folding lamination by several centuries. Introduced to Europe by the Arabs sometime around the high Middle Ages, it found favor in the more fashionable courts of Spain and Italy during the Renaissance. Over time it’s mostly faded from view, though it still hangs on in a few odd corners of the culinary world. I think it’s ready for a comeback.

Lamination by roll, just like lamination by folding, takes practice to truly master. I certainly haven’t mastered it, but now that I’ve more or less nailed down a formula and a process I think I’ll be doing it a lot more. I formulated and mixed the dough in such as way as to maximize gluten development. What results is an unusually soft yet elastic dough that can stretch even beyond what’s necessary for most roll-laminated projects. But that extra pliability makes it a lot more forgiving than other formulas I tried, and that’s always a nice feature.

READ ON

Almost There…

I initially thought these were the ones, but it seems that a.) I didn’t put enough filling in them and b.) my filling needs to be thicker. Also I think I need still more layers (I’m pretty sure I can stretch the dough a little thinner). Where are Jo, Jo, and Joan when I need them? Daddy has a pastry emergency!

READ ON