Baking by Hand (23 page)

Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C. Bake the Danish for 12 minutes, then turn the pan for even browning and bake for another 12 to 15 minutes, until a deep reddish brown color is achieved. Some of the leaking filling may burn on the parchment, but this can easily be separated from the croissant when still warm or peeled off when cooler.

18 oz/510 g cream cheese, softened

2 oz/60 g confectioners’ sugar

½ tsp/2 g grated orange zest

Using a rubber spatula or a countertop mixer with paddle attachment (booooo), mix and fold the cream cheese until smooth. Add confectioners’ sugar and orange zest, and mix until well combined.
C’est finis.
Refrigerate until ready to use, or for up to 1 week.

10.5 oz/300 g granulated sugar

2 ½ tsp/7 g grated lemon zest

4.5 oz/130 g egg yolks

5.75 oz/160 ml lemon juice

2 pinches fine sea salt

3.5 oz/100 g unsalted butter, cubed and softened

Rub the sugar and zest together in a 2-quart/2-L heavy-bottom stainless steel pot until fragrant and moist. Add the egg yolks to the sugar-zest mixture and whisk until combined. Add the lemon juice, salt and butter. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula and taking care to drag the spatula along the bottom to avoid scorching or scrambling your eggs. Cook until the butter is melted and the mixture is steaming. Never boil or even simmer the mixture, or you’ll coagulate and scramble the eggs. The curd is done when it coats the back of a spoon and leaves a trace when you run your finger along the spoon’s covered surface, about 10 minutes. If you want to use a thermometer, it’s done when it reaches 175°F/80°C.

Strain the curd through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl and cover the surface immediately with plastic wrap to prevent the curd from forming a skin. Refrigerate it immediately. After cooling completely, remove the plastic wrap and use it immediately or store in a covered container for up to 2 weeks. The curd will have stiffened at this point, and will sit nicely in your Danish.

2 quarts/2 L stemmed grapes (3 dry quarts grapes equals about 2 quarts stemmed grapes)

Water as needed

5 cups/960 g granulated sugar

Separate the skins from the pulp by slipping the green innards out of the skins with your fingers.

Put the pulp—seeds and all—in a heavy stainless steel pot, and put the skins in another pot. Cook the skins gently for 15 to 20 minutes with just enough water to keep them from scorching (about ½ cup/120 ml to start, adding more as needed). Remove them from the heat and set them aside. Bring the pulp to a boil and cook until the grape pulp takes on a whitish hue. Strain the seeds out by pushing the pulp through a fine-mesh sieve.

Combine the pulp, skins and sugar in a pot and slowly heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Boil rapidly for about 10 minutes to reach a gelling point of 216°F/102°C. Remove from the heat. Skim off the foam. Cool and refrigerate in an airtight container for several months.

2 cups/360 g seeded, sliced kumquats

1 ½ cups/130 g chopped orange flesh (about 2 medium oranges)

1 ½ cups/130 g thinly sliced orange peel (about 2 medium oranges)

1 ½ quarts (40 oz)/1.5 L water

⅓ cup/80 ml lemon juice

Granulated sugar as needed

Slice the kumquats into thin rounds, getting four or five slices per kumquat. Remove the seeds by scraping them out with a paring knife.

Add the kumquats, orange flesh and orange peel strips to a heavy stainless steel pot, and add the water and lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 18 hours.

Bring to a boil and simmer until the peel is tender and most of the water has cooked away, 15 to 20 minutes.

Measure the pulp, skins and liquid into a measuring pitcher. For every cup of the mixture, add 1 cup/190 g sugar. Return it all to the pot and stir to dissolve. Return the pot to the stove along with a candy thermometer and cook until you reach 220°F/104°C. Cook the mixture at this temperature for about 3 minutes. Watch the temperature, color and aroma of the marmalade. You don’t want to scorch it.

Skim the foam from the surface of the marmalade and cool in the refrigerator. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for several months.

2 quarts/2 L raspberries

⅓ cup/80 ml water

1 tbsp/15 ml lemon juice

1 tbsp/9 g lemon zest

1 (1.75 oz/50 g) package pectin, such as Ball
^®
Original Fruit Pectin

42 oz/1 kg granulated sugar

Combine the first five ingredients in the pot. Stir and bring to a boil over high heat, making sure to watch carefully to prevent scorching. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve the sugar.

Then, bring it all back to a rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Boil like that for 1 minute. Skim the scum and store the jam in an airtight container in the refrigerator for several months.

TIPS FOR LAMINATING AND SHAPING CROISSANTS

1. When rolling out your dough while laminating, make sure to not use too much heavy-handed downward pressure, but rather pull and stretch the dough with the pin to lengthen and thin it out. Too much downward pressure will lead to damaged, compacted layers that will not rise properly and will not yield a flaky croissant.

2. While you are laminating, if your butter breaks into a scaly texture that you can see underneath the layer of dough, the temperature of your butter was either too high or too low. Low-quality butter can also create this issue. All is not lost, but it may affect the final appearance; the croissants might look mottled. A little of the butter might leak out and the flakiness may be compromised a bit, as the hard butter could break through some of the layers. Don’t scrap it, though. Keep going. Sometimes this smoothes out over the course of the laminating process, and if you do everything else right, your croissants will still be vastly superior to anything you can get at your local chain coffee shop.

3. If you do not anchor your seams correctly, the croissants will unroll. You should not see the open cut end of the croissant from the other side of the croissant when it’s resting on the sheet pan. If you do, it’s going to unroll like a sleeping bag during proofing and certainly during baking.

4. If your croissants are leaking a lot of butter during the baking process, the oven temperature might not have been high enough or your croissants were quite underproofed.

5 lbs/2.2 kg laminated Croissant Dough (see
here
), excess flour brushed off

3 lb/1.5 kg granulated sugar

2.4 oz/70 g molasses

1 oz/30 g ground cinnamon

8 oz/230 g walnut or pecan pieces (optional)

Put the sugar in a bowl and pour the molasses over it. Mix it in with your hands until all the sugar is moist and coated. Add the cinnamon and do the same thing. Brown sugar dries out quickly if not covered, so store in an airtight container.

Roll and cut the dough into two 10-inch × 25-inch/25 × 60-cm dough strips as directed on
here
. Cover each strip with 1 pound 8 ounce/700 g of the sugar mixture, spreading it evenly almost to the edges. Then, working with one piece at a time and starting on the left side, roll the dough halfway up to the top of the strip with your fingers. You want to put a bit of tension into this first windup. Continue rolling it up all the way to the top of the strip. You do not need to seal the edge. Using your bench knife or a sharp, serrated bread knife, cut eight 4-inch/10-cm sticky buns from each roll.

Spray two 12-cup/4-g muffin pans well with cooking spray and then place them on parchment-lined sheet pans. Fill each cup with a layer of chopped walnuts or pecans if you want sticky buns “with,” and then place either cut end of the sticky bun into the cup. Fill each tray with eight buns each. Not filling all 12 cups will allow for easier, more even baking. You will see the lovely brown sugar spiral on top after placing them in the pans.

At this point you could refrigerate the trays of buns, remove them from the fridge in the morning, proof them for 45 minutes and then bake them. You would have fresh, warm sticky buns for breakfast. To bake them right away, allow them to proof for 45 minutes (at 74°F/20°C).