Halloumi & Herb Cheese Rolls

Happy Sunday, folks! I'm testing and reworking cake recipes this weekend so today I have a guest post from Mother Humble: Her Halloumi rolls. The family is very fond of these soft, cheese filled rolls (a bit more so than we are of her bottomless bag of cheese jokes).

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I promised Ms. Humble before the newest adorable little humble was born that I would help her with her blog.  Well, I quickly realized that I don’t enjoy writing about food as much as I enjoy cooking and eating it.   I also realized that my lovely daughter, Ms. Humble, has more patience and skill than I when it comes to making food look good and photographing it well.  (Really - all that time in photographing really should be spent scarfing down the fresh and yummy just cooked foodstuffs. It is agonizing.)

Cinnamon Rolls With Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting

Happy Friday everyone!

Sorry for my lengthy post-valentines day hiatus. The third trimester has made me a little slow in the kitchen and I've had my hands full with family. Like my mother, who was in town last week and thinks a day at the spa is a better use of my time than baking (hey, I'm not going to argue). Then we had Mr. Humble's laptop crashing and needing to be resurrected after the latest Windows 7 service pack, something that makes the Mac user in me smirk with smug hipster superiority.

Mr. Humble (and his laptop) were necessary for today's post, since we're using one of his bread recipes. A recipe I've been begging... scratch that, demanding he make in recent weeks. You see, I've had some pretty crazy pregnant woman cravings for all things creamy. Cheesecakes, eclairs, cream puffs, donuts, and cinnamon rolls topped with pillows of creamy goodness. Knowing that Mr. Humble's soft, tender enriched white dough makes a beautiful cinnamon roll, I lobbied hard.

Of course, once I actually got my wish for a pan of delicious freshly made cinnamon rolls, I spent more time eating them than photographing them. Thus all I have to accompany this post is a bunch of photos of minimally-staged cinnamon rolls that are in the process of being eaten.

Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

I'll try to keep this post brief today (HA!). Mother Humble is arriving tonight and that means I need to get the house in order. It also means I need to hide any food I don't want her to swipe for the gigantic cooking projects she tends to undertake during her visits.

Anyway, so despite the near constant bread baking around here, I have yet to post a single sourdough recipe on the blog. This has everything to do with Mr. Humble's deciding he is the 'artisan' bread maker around here and his completely taking over the job of supplying the household with bread. However, I was able to commandeer a bit of the sourdough starter this week and start the process of creating sourdough cinnamon rolls.




I found a recipe on The Fresh Loaf that sounded great. I love really soft, tender cinnamon rolls. So when I'm hunting for a recipe, I look for heavily enriched doughs (woohoo butter!). This one delivers and has additional tenderizing ingredients (eggs, mashed potato and of course, wild yeast) so I was expecting a super soft billowy roll.

They were. Oh yes.



The catch... they took days to make. DAYS. Spanning thirty-six hours, to be exact.

I'm not the most patient baker. I understand that delicious things happen when dough cold ferments for extended periods and that waiting is usually rewarded, but I'm not sure I can handle making these again. They just took soooo long. Mr. Humble doesn't agree, he loved them and promised to make the dough for me whenever I had the urge to bake cinnamon rolls. Not that it will do anything to relieve my impatience...

Still, if you're looking to make sourdough cinnamon roll and happen to be in absolutely no rush, this is a good recipe.




Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
by Mountaindog @ The Fresh Loaf
yields 12 large rolls

Levain
150 grams 100% hydration sourdough starter, recently fed and ripened (when it has just doubled it's volume is a excellent time to use it)
340 grams lukewarm water
340 grams all-purpose flour

Let this mixture sit at room temperature for 12 hours, until doubled (usually overnight.) If your starter tends to double in less than 12 hours or you're not going to make the final dough for a while, then keep the levain in the fridge until you're ready to make the dough.


Final Dough
113 grams (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
225 grams 3 large eggs
42 grams (1 1/2 tablespoons) honey
24 grams (2 tablespoons) pure vanilla Extract
130 grams mashed potato (I recommend Yukon Gold)
195 grams (3/4 cup) buttermilk or whole milk
850 grams levain
700 grams all-purpose flour
21 grams salt

In your stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter then beat in the eggs, honey, vanilla and mashed potatoes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix until well blended.

Swap out your paddle for the dough hook and add the milk/buttermilk and levain, mixing until blended and then gradually add the flour and salt to the bowl. Continue mixing with the hook until well-blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Allow the dough to rest covered in the bowl for 20 minutes.

After the rest, mix with the hook for another 2-3 minutes.

The resulting dough will be very moist and sticky.

Turn the dough out into a large, lightly-oiled bowl. Cover and allow to ferment in a cool location (55-65°F) until doubled (this should take 8-12 hours, depending on how warm the location is). Every 4-6 hours, lift the dough to stretch and then fold it onto itself.

Towards the end of the fermentation you can ready the filling:

Filling
double the dry ingredients for extra coverage/fun
170 grams (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted.
85 grams cream or half & half
300 grams dark brown sugar
180 grams raisins (I omitted these because I consider them a blight on cinnamon rolls)
3 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) cinnamon
12 grams (1 tablespoon) vanilla extract

Combine the melted butter, vanilla and cream. In another bowl combine the sugar, cinnamon and raisins.

Once the dough has finished the ferment, you can roll it out and fill.



Since the dough is so sticky, I highly recommend using a well-floured baking couche. Don't have one? No need to hit a specialty store. Just visit your nearest fabric store and buy a large heavy piece of linen or canvas. Thoroughly wash it, flour it and never wash it again (if for some reason, dough sticks to your couche, let it dry and then scrape it off). It will make rolling, handling and proofing any sticky dough so much easier. The scrap of cloth happens to be one of the handiest things it my kitchen. When you're done using it, simply dust off the excess flour, fold it and stash it.

Okay, back to the rolls...

Turn out your dough onto your floured couche and dust it lightly with flour. Roll it out into a rectangle, (how large will depend on how thick you want your rolls and how many spirals of cinnamon you desire). I rolled mine a bit larger than 18"x20" ...I think.

Brush the sheet of dough with the butter/cream mixture and then sprinkle with the cinnamon and sugar.



Roll up the dough, using the couche to help roll it onto itself (I told you it was handy).

Then using a piece of floss or thread, cut the 1"-1.5" rolls from the log. Place these into a greased baking pan or casserole. Brush the rolls with a little butter and then cover. Slowly proof the rolls for 12 hours (or overnight) in a cool place (or the refrigerator) until they have doubled.



Bake straight from the fridge in a 400°F oven for 25-35 minutes (if you have very thick rolls it may take a bit longer) or until the internal temperature hits 195-200°F on instant-read thermometer.

Once out of the oven, brush the rolls with a little more melted butter to keep them soft and work on the topping.

Mountaindog provides a recipe for a cream cheese icing (you can find it here). I went with my own favorite cinnamon roll slathering glaze:


Glaze:
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup heavy cream
whole milk

Whisk together the ingredients, adding just enough milk to make a fluid glaze that flows thickly and smoothly off the end of the whisk.

Use the whisk to drizzle the icing over the rolls and serve warm.




If you're not able to serve the rolls immediately, they'll keep for a couple days covered and refrigerated. Gently rewarm before serving.

Enjoy!

The Trauma Of Raising Yeast

My sourdough starter is starting to make me feel bad.

I've been taking such good care of my little pot of yeast and I am so proud of it. Every day I take charge of feeding it, watering it, keeping it warm and it grows, bubbles and thrives under my care.

This makes me feel quite aware that my Mr. Stinky is a living breathing thing.

(Well... things)

Now the anthropomorphized Mr. Stinky is making me feel really guilty about his care routine.

I can see him over there, giving me the yeast stink eye....

Allow me to explain in web-comic form:

>

I'm so sorry, Mr. Stinky!

Wild Yeast

Doing another little 101 of sorts. Today's post is on how to create your own sourdough starter.

I decided I would let Mr. Humble guest blog for this one, since he is my resident microbe expert and because he thinks he knows a thing or two about bread. After making phenomenal panini with his amazing wild yeast focaccia, I can't do anything but agree with the man...

~Mr. Humble~

Ms. Humble asked me to write up a guide on starting your own natural yeast starter and I quickly agreed (I don't want to get into trouble).

Making one is very easy, though you wouldn't know that from reading most of the information about it on the Internet. Not only is there virtually useless information, but there is also exceptionally bad advice. I will cut through all that, explain some possible pitfalls, and give you what you need to know to create your own natural yeast starter.

Why do you want a natural yeast starter? One pretty good reason is that it is cool to say you do. People will be envious. They will ask how you did it and say they wish they could make bread. You can then magnanimously offer them a portion of your starter (you don't have to tell them you toss out gobs of the stuff if they don't take it.)

I do not know if any of the supposed health benefits of using a natural starter are true, as I haven't bothered to do a literature search. It could be pure quackery, simple truth, or a happy medium. It doesn't matter. A real reason to use a natural starter is because of the bacteria Lactobacillus. As the Lactobacillus bacteria grow, they create an acidic environment hostile to many other organisms (the icky ones you don't want), except for strains of acid-tolerant yeast. This helps the bread's texture, shelf life (it won't turn into a hard brick after 12 hours on the counter), and imparts a distinctive flavor.

The Only Natural Starter Recipe You Really Need
(This makes a 100% hydration starter)
100g Whole Wheat Flour
100g Water (roughly room temperature)

You do not need any of those things you occasionally see called for on the internet: sugar, potato/pasta starch water, bits of vegetables, or store bought yeast. Just flour and water. The wheat comes with its own wild yeasts, the nutrients to feed it. All you have to do--as cliche as it sounds--is add water.



Select your container, one that can hold three times the volume of finished mixture (once active, the starter will double in size). I use mason jars for maintenance and larger plastic storage containers for bulking up the starter before making bread. Weigh out the water. Add the flour. Stir until well mixed. Cover with plastic wrap or anything that will keep the moisture loss low and can allow for the escape of gas. Let stand at 20°C (68°F) to 27°C (80.6°F), with an optimum at closer to 26°C (78.8°F). This is the range of temperatures which encourage yeast multiplication, which is what you want. For more detailed information, click here.

The mixture will be thick and a bit lumpy at this point. But don't worry, it will quickly turn into a globby, bubbly mess and stay that way.

12 Hours:

At around 12 hours, take a look at how the starter is doing. If it is a little bubbly, nor not bubbly at all, give it a good vigorous stirring to oxygenate the mixture, and let sit for another 12 hours. If it is very bubbly and kind of gooey, then you will want to begin feedings.

For the first couple of days, the Lactobacillus have yet to establish themselves and create the proper acidic environment, so you have a mixture of bacteria and some yeast. So even if your starter is bubbly, it might smell a little off because it isn't ready. But it will get there.

Feedings:
50g Starter
50g Flour
50g Water

Stir the starter and measure out 50g (discard the remaining starter or find someone else to pawn it off on). Mix the 50g of starter with the 50g of water. When dissolved, add the flour and stir vigorously to mix well.

You will feed your starter every 12 or 24 hours when kept at the temperature ranges above. How often depending on how it grows or how fast you want to get it up to speed. Regardless of how often you feed it, you will not want to use it before 5 or 6 days. Mind you this is 5-6 days of the starter behaving appropriately (i.e. rising to nearly twice its size after each feeding). If your starter cant double itself, it is going to have a very hard time doubling the volume of your dough.

To determine when the starter can be fed, it should have doubled in size (or nearly so) indicating a rapid growth phase. Many suggest feeding it when it collapses or when it begins to collapse. That works OK, but in doing so, you risk a lag of up to a few hours before the yeast get back into a high growth phase. That is fine when you are merely maintaining a starter, but for the initial production, I prefer to feed it before it collapses and the growth rate is still high.




24 Hours:

If at 24 hours you still have no bubbles, you might need to start over. There are a variety of reasons why you didn't get anything, or you got something you suspect is very wrong. I suggest simply trying again, but if it doesn't work the second time, try the troubleshooting tips below.

Possible Problem 1: Your flour was bleached or otherwise processed too much. Bread makers tend to go for unbleached, organic flours to get the starter going because they are less likely to have been highly processed and thus still have plenty of natural yeasts. This is easy to fix. Buy organic whole wheat flour. You can switch to all purpose after a few days.

Possible Problem 2: Your water is highly chlorinated. Depending on how chlorinated the water is, the fix is either simple or complicated. If your municipality uses chlorine to treat the water, the chlorine can be removed by letting it sit out for a couple days on the counter. If the water contains chloramines (another form of chlorination), then that will not work, as they are rather stable. If that is the case you can use bottled drinking (not distilled) water. I myself use tap water and haven't had a problem.

Possible Problem 3: It was too cold. Try again, but keep the starter a little warmer.

48 Hours:

You should have a pretty happy little starter and the smell should be pretty developed. It should be active and bubbly and routinely double in size several hours after being fed. At this point and you can switch the feedings to all purpose flour to create a white wheat starter.

Maintaining Your Starter:

Well, I haven't been doing this long, but it isn't hard. Take a little, add equal parts flour and water, put it back. When I want to use it, I just increase the amounts of starter, flour, and water I add so that I will have enough for my batch of dough. When the leaven is strong, you can add 2 or 3 times as much flour and water as you do starter, as long as the flour/water ratio stays the same (ex. 100g starter, 200g flour, 200g water).

I keep mine on the counter because we've been using it a lot. If you will not use it frequently, I would feed it, put it in the refrigerator, and then take it out, at most, weekly for feedings. Some say every 2 or even 3 weeks, but I like a strong, capable starter, so I'm not taking any chances.

If you do refrigerate it, you will probably need to feed it normally for a couple of days to make sure it is very active.

Using Your Starter:

Your starter should be ready to use in 5-6 days. As long as the starter dough is fed flour and water daily, the sourdough mixture can stay at room temperature indefinitely and still remain safe and usable.

I'm not going to talk about bread recipes here, but you should know that using a starter requires some planning. You need to stop discarding the starter to build up your supply. You will want to keep the ratios the same (one part starter, one part water, one part flour by weight) for a few days and soon you will have a bucket of starter ready to go. The day you wish to bake with your starter, I advise you use it when it has doubled and before it falls. Meaning you don't want to feed your starter and then immediately use it, you need to give it time to eat and multiply.

Without naming names, I will list two of the more horrifying things I saw being advised on the internet while researching my own starter.

If you discover your starter has mold or black liquid on it. Don't just pour it off and soldier on. Your starter should not contain anything that looks darker or hairier than what you put into it. Flour and water are not dark and hairy. If your container starts to contain dark fluid or fuzz of any kind, discard immediately and begin again. And for the love of all things good in the world, do not use it to make bread.

A starter is not a fish. Do not sprinkle flour on the top of your starter as if little yeasts are going to dart to the surface and gobble it up. The yeast will die off and that creates an environment in which mold can grow (see above). Unfortunately, feeding your starter is more involved than just tossing a few pinches of flour at it.

There you go.

With this you should have all the tools you need to tend your little pot of wild yeast. You can even name it, like our Mr. Stinky.

Croissants: Part Two

Back to the top 10 "Most Difficult" Recipes: #9 Croissants.
Picking up where we left off with Croissants: Part One.

Getting ill this month threw my croissant plans for a loop. I had intended to mess around with the pastry a bit (I think the hydration levels in the recipe I use could be tweaked just a bit) but that will just have to wait.

Getting ill did have another, somewhat unexpected result...

When I was bedridden with my wonderful virus, I gave Mr. Humble the chore of baby-sitting 'our' wild sourdough starter. Suddenly he became obsessed with it and with bread making. In the last two weeks he has been learning to bake with his little pot of wild yeast and gobbling his own sourdough breads fresh from the oven.

Our starter.

Nicknamed: 'Mr. Stinky'

He is prodigiously proud of the vigorous Mr. Stinky and his breads. In fact, he has started calling himself an 'artisan' bread maker. Keep in mind though, when I met my husband his cooking skills were limited to some of the worst bachelor fare on the planet. Though he has taken it upon himself to learn how to cook in the last year or so, as a way to help lighten my work load since having our daughter.

So yea my husband, the 'artisan bread maker', a title I think he adopts to tease me. In fact, he told me last week he will be starting his own food blog since he is so great. I'm not certain if he is being serious, I think he just wants to tease me about eclipsing my blog with his own.

Mr. Humble... oh sorry, Mr. Artisan Bread Maker, feel free to dazzle me with your uber-bread skills. In fact, perhaps you could inaugurate your blog with some croissants?

They're certainly a pain for me to turn out, what with my spindly arms and all. However, a man with your skills would certainly have no trouble with them.

So, the croissants.



I'm sorry it took so long to get part two posted. I've had these photos ready to go for almost two weeks. However, I really wanted to bake the third batch of dough before doing the post. When I got sick, that third batch of laminated dough sat in the fridge for a week only to be tossed. All 5lbs of dough, a full day's worth of work (sigh).

However, I do have a set of good croissants and a recipe that works to share. This is from the Culinary Institute of America's baking book, however I've changed the recipe to give correct metric weights.

CIA's Croissant Dough
adapted from Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft
Yields 5 lb 8 oz /2.26 kg (roughly 11 Croissants)
716 grams (1.58lb) whole milk, room temperature
120 mL (4 fl oz) malt syrup
907 grams (2lb) bread flour
28 grams (1oz) yeast
113 grams (4oz) granulated sugar
142g (5oz) butter, cold but pliable

Roll in:
680 grams (1lb) butter, cold but pliable

A few notes:
If making pain au chocolate you're also going to need about 2oz of chocolate for each croissant. You can find chocolate batons made for pastry making online, I like Valrhona's Batons de Chocolat. They do make rolling the croissants easier, however you can use any semi-sweet chocolate you have lying around. I've even molded my own batons from 53% cacao chocolate.

Also, this recipe is vague regarding the malt syrup and butter. For this recipe I'm using unsalted butter and a diastatic malt syrup. For folks who are wondering what I am talking about, diastatic refers to enzymes in the malt syrup which convert starch to sugar. There are non-diastatic malts out there, which simply acts as a sweetener. Unfortunately, this recipe doesn't specify which...

Start by turning your 142g of butter into a pliable mass. I do this by loosely wrapping cold butter in parchment and then beating it with my rolling pin. Mind your overhead cabinets, this is a violent process. Once the butter is pliable but still cold you're ready to start.

Mix the yeast with the room temperature milk and allow to stand for 5 minutes.

Add the flour, sugar, malt syrup, the pliable butter broken into pieces to the bowl of your stand mixer. Pour in the yeast/milk mixture and mix with the paddle attachment until it comes together. Once it is too stiff to mix with the paddle, swap out for your dough hook (The book's recipe calls for doing the entire process with a paddle but this has to be an error as it would be murderous to any household mixer. I did it with one of my batches and I will never, ever do it again.) Mix with the dough hook for 3 minutes on medium-low and then crank it up to high speed for 2 minutes.

Line a half sheet pan (13" x 18" x 1") with a piece of parchment paper. Turn the dough out (it will be a bit sticky) into the pan and roll it out so that it evenly fills the pan.

Cover the pan with plastic wrap and then retard the dough for 5 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

Now prepare the butter for the roll in. Take the pound of cold butter, wrap in parchment and beat senseless with a rolling pin. You want to create a pliable slab of butter half the size of your sheet pan so roughly 13" x 9". You also want a uniform thickness and no hard lumps or bumps in the butter. Hard butter can punch through the dough when rolling, messing up the lamination process. When the slab is ready, wrap the butter and refrigerate for 5 hours or overnight.



Turn your sheet of dough out of the pan, it should be puffier and less sticky from the night in the fridge. Place the butter (if it is too hard, beat it up again before doing this step) on one half of the dough and fold the dough over. Pinch the dough around the butter to lock it in, make sure the edges of your slab are straight and the corners square.

Roll the slab back out to roughly 13" x 18". (Note: It is very important to keep the dough cold during lamination. On a hot day, I deal with this by tossing a large bag of ice onto my marble pastry slab and letting it chill. I do this between each step and it keeps the dough nice and cool. Using a chilled marble rolling pin is also useful.)

Preform a four fold on the dough, folding the two narrow sides to the center and then folding in half like a book.



Poke the dough to mark what step you're on (one dimple: first set of folds, two dimples: second set of folds...etc)

Wrap the slab in plastic to prevent it from drying out and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. This process not only helps maintain the dough's temperature but allows the gluten to develop in such a way that it can withstand the punishment of lamination.

After 30 minutes, roll the dough back out to 13" x 18" and preform a 3 fold (like a men's wallet). Mark with two dimples and return to the the refrigerator and allow to chill for 30 more minutes.

Then preform the final three fold on the dough, wrap and return to the refrigerator for two hours.

When the two hours are up you can roll out the dough and prepare your croissants.



Roll the dough into a long rectangle (roughly 9 x 25"). For the next step I find using the wheel of a sharp pizza cutter is the best. Zig-zag the cutter over the dough creating triangles roughly 9" tall and 4" wide at the base.

Cut a 1" slit at the base of each triangle, gently stretch the points of the triangle and then roll them up on an un-floured surface. Using the heal of your hand to exert pressure and keep them tight. Place them seam side down on a parchment lined baking sheet and curve the sides inward to give them that crescent shape. Brush the croissants with egg wash (1 part egg, 1 part whole milk) and proof at 85°F/29°C until doubled in size.

After proofing, gently brush the croissants with egg wash again and bake at 375°F/191°C until well browned (Brown! Not pale gold or not golden brown. Brown), about 15-20 minutes.

Once cool, fanatically cut open all your croissants and examine the insides.



Considering the fact that I do not own an industrial dough sheeter, I think these turned out lovely. Moist, feathery interior, crisp buttery exterior. Dangerous little pastries.

Of course, not as dangerous as...

Pain au Chocolat (chocolate filled croissants)!



To do this, cut your dough into long rectangles. Place a chocolate baton at one end (or if just use chopped chocolate/chocolate chips because at this point, I was all out of batons after making 2 dozen croissants the day before) and roll the dough over it once it is completely inclosed, place a second baton down and roll the dough up completely.

Place the croissants seam side down on the baking sheet and brush with egg wash. Proof at 85°F/29°C until doubled in size.




After proofing, gently brush the croissants again with egg wash and bake at 375°F/191°C until well browned, about 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Croissants: Part One

Top 10 "Most Difficult" Recipes: #9 Croissants
Total Batches: Three
Time: Two days to mix, ferment, retard, laminate, roll, proof and bake.
Butter: TWENTY THREE sticks of butter
Difficulty: My arms hurt so bad I can barely lift a croissant!

Okay, so croissants are no picnic, but I always knew that. Know what makes croissants harder? When the recipe from a cookbook you trust is flat out wrong and you blindly follow even though your gut is shouting: Turn back, matey! Thar be danger ahead!

Yes, my gut speaks pirate.

Anyway, I took on croissants this weekend and as per usual whenever I need a good baseline for a classic pastry recipe I pull out my CIA Baking book. It's basically my baking encyclopedia; dense, heavy and packed with recipes and excellent technical information. Unfortunately the croissant recipe in my edition is bad. The measurements are incorrect and the instructions treat your stand mixer with roughly the same tenderness that a teenager gives a borrowed sports car.

However I didn't know this last weekend and blindly followed the recipe thinking Ms. Humble would never know better than the exalted CIA. So I did and the results were disastrous. Both the milk and the flour weights in metric are wrong (granted they do give correct imperial weights, which I ignored preferring to use metric). I caught the typo for the flour right off the bat, as 1.13g of flour is obviously not going to yield 5lbs of pastry.

Yea, those weights are not right...

The milk error however was not caught before the first batch and Mr. Humble and I stared at our bowl of crumbs befuddled.

Mr. Humble: Maybe you should have used the dough hook instead of the paddle attachment on your mixer?

Me: Trust me, a dough hook isn't magically going to make this mess into a dough. This is powder. Something is wrong... did you weigh the dry ingredients correctly?

Mr. Humble. YES, I did! Maybe it turns into dough after you let it ferment.

Me: I'm not sure how that is physically possible but fine, I'll give it a shot.

So we let it ferment on the counter for two hours and then checked on it.

Nope. Nothing magical occurred and the 'dough' remained a pile of croissant sand.

Now it has been years since I last made croissants but I knew this wasn't right. So I just tossed out the recipe and threw the crumbs back into the mixing bowl and added an additional 3/4 cup of milk, the bare minimum to bring it together into a coarse dough. I toss that onto the counter to ferment and it two hours later and a quick kneading we had something that resembled a dough. That slab went into the refrigerator overnight and the next day I had the pleasure of laminating my 5lbs of intensely tough dough.

And that is WITH the 'extra' milk.

It wasn't pretty. Laminating that dough was just brutal. In fact it probably wasn't possible. The dough survived up until the final batch of rolling and folding before it started breaking down. In a dough that dry, there just isn't enough gluten development to give it the bare minimum of elasticity for lamination. I knew it was wrong but for some reason I tried to keep my faith in the recipe. So after wrestling with the dough for much of the morning I tossed it, the recipe and started over.

I came up with my own version of the CIA's recipe, adding more milk and a little brown sugar: I was rewarded with these:

Flaky, golden and delicious. Not bad for a recipe created by feel. Not perfect though. Those pesky little gaps between the spiral of dough! Grr! Something is definitely wrong there.

The interiors could also be better. Sure, the flaky golden brown outsides contain the standard soft airy interior, but I aim for perfection (is my OCD streak starting to show?). I want the honey comb like interior I experienced from true Parisian croissants.

Check out this great blog post about french croissants, he lets you see inside them! Look at those interiors! So delicate, you can tell how perfectly the dough has been laminated. Of course I'm wondering if such a croissant is possible at home (as I lack a bakery dough sheeter ). Nevertheless, I'm going to try again today.

Mr. Humble said this last batch was very good, insisting that they were the best homemade croissant he had ever had. Still, another go at them can't hurt. Besides, when the pain au chocolat were pulled from the oven, the natural light had faded and I didn't get any spectacular photos of my chocolate croissants. I need those photos. So back to the kitchen I go!

Chopping up my croissants so I--and everyone else--can peer inside
...just like with my macarons.

Tomorrow I'll post the results along with the recipes. Unless I decide a 4th batch is needed, in which case there will be napoleons up tomorrow.

Til then!

Mother Humble's Carmel Pecan Sticky Rolls

I'm going to visit my grandfather and run errands today, so I thought I would post one of Mother Humble's recipes to tide folks over.

... and because Mother Humble has been hounding me to post her sticky buns since Christmas. She even provided me with the recipe and her own photos. She must be really proud about winning that dueling potato roll contest.

I believe this dish is commonly called monkey bread, but around here we call just them Mom's sticky rolls. Growing up, it paid to get up early when Mother Humble was making her sticky rolls. The best rolls are always on the outside of the ring, thoroughly coated in syrup and coveted bits of caramelized sugar.

The base uses Mother Humble's potato roll dough, which can be found here: Dueling Potato Rolls. It won't require a full batch of the dough, generally we make rolls for dinner and reserve 1/3-1/2 of the dough for sticky rolls the next morning.

Mother Humble's Caramel Pecan Sticky Rolls:

Caramel Syrup:
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
cinnamon
pecans

"Combine 3/4 cup of butter melted with 3/4 cup of brown sugar. Stir and boil one minute. (Don't whisk just stir.)

Make potato rolls. Grease a tube pan with non-stick spray. Roll approximately 27 balls of dough, roughly 2 inches in diameter. Place a layer of 9 rolls into the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon and whole pecans then pour in a third of the caramel syrup. Repeat with 2nd layer of rolls and more cinnamon and caramel syrup. Repeat with 3rd layer. (Can be made without the nuts)."



"Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. When rolls are done, invert onto serving platter and serve warm."

Meatless Meatball Banh Mi

So Mr Humble decided he wanted to eat fewer critters as part of his new years resolution (perfectly fine by me, as he has always been the carnivore of the two of us). So, I'm finding ways to modify some of his favorite dishes. Lunch today is a spin on meatball banh mi, pescetarian style (since the fish sauce prevents it from being vegetarian. Though you could substitute it with a little light soy sauce, if you must do without).

Rather than using a meat substitute, which I am generally not a fan off, I went for chick peas, bread crumbs and spices to make my 'meatballs'. Sort of a Vietnamese play on falafel. I baked up fresh rice flour baguettes, stuffed them with my meatballs, cilantro, shredded carrots, daikon radish and my special sauce.

The result... deliciousness.



Not so Humble's Meatless Meatball Banh Mi:
makes roughly 25 'meatballs'
2 15oz cans of chickpeas drained
3 tablespoons chopped thai basil
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
5 cloves garlic
2 thai chilies
2 green onions chopped
1 tablespoon sriracha chili sauce
1-2 teaspoons fish sauce (Nam Pla)
2 large eggs
1 cup plain bread crumbs
chick pea flour

cilantro
carrot shredded
daikon shredded

Combine the chickpeas, basil, cilantro, garlic, chilies, white portion of the green onion, chili and fish sauce into a food processor and blend for about 30 seconds until well blended but still slightly chunky. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and blend in the eggs. Pour the mixture into a bowl and stir in the remaining chopped green onions. Add the bread crumbs and mix well.

Using your hands, form the mixture into one 1 1/2" meatballs and roll in chickpea flour. Bake in a 350 for 15-20 minutes turning once. You can also flatten the balls and pan fry each side in vegetable or peanut oil over medium high heat until golden brown.

Place the meatballs into a baguette with fresh cilantro, shredded carrot and daikon radish and a generous amount of the following:

Special Humble Sauce:
1 cup mayonnaise
3 green onions, finely chopped
4 teaspoons sriracha chili sauce
few drops fish sauce (Nam Pla)

If you are feeling ambitious, you can make your own fresh crusty banh mi baguettes, too...



Simple Banh Mi Baguettes:
makes 6 medium sized baguettes
2 3/4 cups bread flour
1 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon sugar
15 grams dry active yeast (two 1/4 oz packets)
1 1/2 cups warm water (100°F)
2 teaspoons kosher salt

In a bowl, combine the warm water with the yeast and sugar and allow to sit for 5 minutes. While waiting on that, sift together the flours and salt.

Add the yeast to your stand mixer with the paddle attachment and slowly add the flour on medium low speed. Once combined switch out the paddle for your dough hook and kneed on medium speed for 5 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and allow to rise for 2 hours, or until doubled. Punch down the dough and divide into 6 equal portions. Shape each piece into a slender almond shaped baguette and place on baking sheet. Leave enough room between baguettes for the dough to rise. Cover the baguettes lightly and allow to rise for two hours or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 420 degrees. Slash baguettes with a razor or sharp knife and bake for 20-30 minutes until golden brown.



Oh, and if you're wondering why I'm posting Vietnamese sandwiches and not science cookies, patience! Cookies take time.