Whole Wheat Pie Dough
Though we’ve had a few detours along the way, we remain committed to our resolution to use more whole grains in our baking, and pie dough was next on the list to change. I’ve tried a number of whole wheat pie dough recipes, and this is one of my favorites. The good folks at King Arthur Flour published Whole Grain Baking in 2006 and for their efforts they received a James Beard Foundation award nomination. I bought the book this year as we embarked on our quest to finally change to whole grain baking and it has been an invaluable reference.
As they tested pies and doughs, the authors decided that different pies call for different pie crusts, and they experimented with traditional whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, barley flour, and oats. Some of the doughs have a mixture of whole grains and a few have a small amount of white flour. This whole wheat pie dough has no white flour and no other grains; the whole wheat flour stands on its own. Read more
The Daring Bakers Make Strudel
The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of Make Life Sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague, by Rick Rodgers.
I felt a lot of excitement for this challenge because I adore puff pastry and have wanted to try making my own for some time, and of course anything with apples, spices, and rum-soaked raisins just has to be good, right? And besides, this gave me a chance to play around with my long-forgotten high school German and prepare for my trip to Germany in a few weeks! Read more
The Daring Bakers Make Pierre Herme’s Chocolate Eclairs
Being a Daring Baker means stretching your skills and imagination while taking on new things, and practically every challenge we have tackled over the last year presented something new for me to try. This month I made choux pastry for the very first time, with many thanks to Meeta of What’s For Lunch Honey? and Tony of Tony Tahhan for choosing such a delectable and fun challenge!
It’s a good thing I made these chocolate eclairs before starting the South Beach diet, because they would have been the ruination of any diet I chose to try, unless it was a chocolate pastry cream diet. If I can lose these remaining baby pounds on a chocolate pastry cream diet, someone please tell me how!
The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s book Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé. Personally I can’t say enough good things about Herme’s chocolate pastry creme recipe for the eclairs. Practically every person who sampled the challenge thought the chocolate pastry creme was to die for. Top Gun actually stole the piping bag full of pastry cream when I ran across the street to deliver some to my friend Rose. When I came back, he was piping chocolate pastry cream onto a plate and licking it up! (Yes, a son after my own heart.) He and Monkey Boy kept opening the refrigerator door looking for more eclairs. We had some pastry cream left over, just a little, and Michael saved it to pipe on graham crackers at another time. Add toasted marshmallow, and oh my, those will be some divine s’mores.
The eclairs consist of 3 elements:
- Pâte à Choux, also known as Choux Pastry or Cream Puff Dough
- Pastry Cream (make 2 to 3 days in advance)
- Chocolate glaze (make 2 to 3 days in advance), made with Chocolate Sauce (make up to 2 weeks in advance)
The Daring Bakers Make Danish Braid
I was so excited to see this challenge when it was posted earlier this month because we love bread in any shape or form. Ask my boys what they want for a snack, and they’ll say anything in the bread category even before cake, cookies, ice cream, popsicles, and lollipops. It’s almost as if this month’s Daring Baker hosts KellyPea and Ben could read my mind! The recipe comes from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking, but it’s no big secret that this is a delicious pastry! The dough is fragrant and easy to work with. We could choose our filling and substitute flavors in the dough if we wanted, and of course we had to make at least one braid, then we could do whatever we wanted with the remaining dough. I stuck with the dough recipe as is and made a cherry filling. So far I’ve only made the braid, but I envision some nice little pastries for our 4th of July breakfast, maybe with some of the apple butter I made last fall.
I knew if I could pull it off my family would love it, but I was worried, too. My health has been an issue for a while now and I’ve been struggling in the last couple months. I won’t go into all the details here, but you can read my coming out story over at DC Metro Moms Blog. Oh, and I decided it was time to go back to work part-time after a two-year hiatus. Could I possibly squeeze anything else into this month? The answer is obviously “no” because I am late with my challenge!
My plan was to make the braid for Father’s Day weekend, but I wasn’t well. I had to work the following weekend, and last weekend we were supposed to leave for vacation, so I wrote a pitiful email to Lis and Ivonne bowing out for June. (It really was pathetic, I’m embarrassed to say.) Then on Wednesday I got a call from my doctor saying we needed to schedule a biopsy ASAP, so I’m going in tomorrow. (Not really looking forward to it, but at least we’ll have some answers.) We postponed vacation and I vowed I would start the challenge last Friday evening. Friday evening came and I couldn’t do it because my brain was in a fog and I couldn’t focus, and Saturday was more of the same. It all came down to Sunday, posting day. Read more
