Eclairs – January Kosher Link Up

Another month, and another Kosher Connection Link-Up thingy. This month’s theme – Miniatures, which is great, because I made these here eclairs a little while back, and it was totally on purpose that they came out way smaller than I was expecting. Well then, let’s get going shall we?

Of course we shall, what a ridiculous question.

Anywhoo, so eclairs, they’re pretty much awesome, correct? So why aren’t we making it more often? Well I don’t know, I guess most people assume that they’re pretty difficult to make, well I’m here to tell you not to assume (you probably think I’m going to say not to assume because it makes an ass out of you and me right? Wrong! You never assume because it makes an ass out of Uma Thurman, and that’s never a good thing). An eclair is simply baked pate a choux, filled with pastry cream, and topped with chocolate, and I intend to tackle each one starting…now.

Pate a choux, which translates into cabbage paste, luckily stuck around even after those damn Frenchies gave it that ridiculous name. Choux paste in it’s most simplistic form is melted butter with some water mixed together with flour, and then mixed together with eggs. It’s really a thing of beauty; It relies on the simple conversion of water to steam to deliver its lift, and what ends up happening is you end up with one giant bubble stuck inside the final product, which is perfect for filling.

In order to make choux paste. First butter is melted in some water, and when ready, flour is added, and cooked for a little to remove any flour-y taste.

The resulting batter is left to cool, and then eggs are added and mixed in, which will take a little time to fully incorporate,  and the resulting dough will go from the consistency of a paste to more like a thick pancake batter.

The batter can then be “cooked” in a few different ways, and one of those ways is to bake it for eclairs/profiteroles. (frying would be another great way which would get you beignets, but that’s another post). I based the recipe off of Michael Ruhlman’s ratio for pate a choux, which means you need a scale (I’m telling you, if there’s one piece of equipment you really should have, it’s a scale, but you know me, I’m not preachy). The ratio he uses (in his book Ratio, which is a great book by the way) is: 2 parts water: 1 part butter : 1 part flour : 2 parts eggs. For me the eggs are usually the rate limiting step, and I base how big/small the recipe will be on the eggs. Since one large egg weighs 50 grams, if you use 1 large egg, you end up with: 50grams water, and 25 grams butter and flour (besides salt, and other flavorings like sugar and vanilla if you want).

For the pastry cream filing, I based it on another ratio in Ruhlman’s book, the ratio for Creme anglais. Creme anglais is a loose custard (whereby custard is defined by – a mixture of eggs and a liquid, which can either be free standing [eg – quiches, cheesecakes…] or not [ex – creme anglais, which includes French style ice creams, creme brulee, pastry cream]). For the non free standing types, there are different ways to thicken the resulting cream, and for our pastry cream (or Crème Pâtisserie if you want to be fancy) it gets thickened by a starch (cornstarch being the first choice since it’s pure starch, but flour, potato, tapioca/cassava would also work). The ratio he uses for creme anglais is: 4 parts Milk/cream: 1 part yolk : 1 part sugar.

The general idea for making any type of custard usually is to mix the eggs and sugar together, to start dissolving the sugar, and to lighten the eggs with thorough whipping.

Then the milk is heated up, along with your vanilla bean.

In our case, I used some ground vanilla bean, which I got so graciously from Bakto Flavors via Kosher Scoop because I’m one of the taste testers…more on that in the future.

Once the milk is at the desired temperature, it’s slowly added to the eggs a little at a time to temper the eggs (temper means to slowly bring the temperature of one thing that’s colder to the temperature of another thing that’s warmer, but done slowly and gently to avoid overcooking), once tempered, the remaining milk/cream is added to the eggs, and then it’s all poured back into the pot to cook a little more, and if needed strained out. In our case, to incorporate the starch, you first have to mix the cornstarch with some cold milk until it makes a slurry, and then you add the slurry to the heating up milk, and it will then start to thicken (starch only thickens at a specific temperature, which is also why you don’t want to dump it all in dry, because it will begin to thicken the second it hits the hot milk, and form clumps). Set aside to allow to cool.

To cook the eclairs, preheat an oven to 450, transfer the batter to a piping bag (what you really need is a tip coupler, which can turn any cut ziploc bag into a real piping bag), and pipe onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, although you might want to pipe them a little bigger than I did. (You can push down any irregularities, by dabbing at it with a wet finger)

Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, and then lower to 350 for the last 10-20 minutes, until nicely browned. Take out of the oven, and pierce with tip of paring knife to allow steam to vent out. When cooled enough to handle, use the star tip to pipe the pastry cream inside the eclairs (this will be hard if you don’t have the tips). Set aside on cooling rack.

To make the chocolate topping, melt a whole bunch of chocolate in a double boiler with a little bit of some sort of fat (butter, vegetable oil, whatever), and dip eclairs into the chocolate. Allow the chocolate tool cool and it will slightly harden, but not too much because of the addition of the fat. (I tried making a ganache by mixing equel parts chocolate and hot milk, but it didn’t work as I had planned, but if I were to make it now, I would do it this way)

Comments: So I made a few mistake – From the beginning in order of appearance:

1. The tip I have for my tip coupler was too small, resulting in these “mini” eclairs (which I guess wasn’t that bad of a result, but not what I was trying to do).
2. I forgot to poke a knife in the eclairs as they were cooling, so they deflated (whomp, whomp)
3. The pastry cream was way too thick. I think maybe because when I made the pastry cream, I forgot about the starch, so I had to heat it back up, and add the cornstarch slurry, but I think I added to much starch, plus I’ve never used ground vanilla bean, and I wonder if it also thickened the sauce more than anticipating.
4. Because I forgot the deflate the eclairs, it made them soggy, so it was very hard to pipe the already thick pastry cream into it..so that didn’t really go over so great.
5. I thought I’d be better off making a chocolate ganache…I’m not really sure why, but I made the ganache, that was too thin, and had to make it thicker, and whatever it didn’t work out either.

And there ya have it – eclairs. So it might seem like it’s a lot, with fancy words like: scale, piping bag, temper…oooh that sounds like it’s too much…too much of a patchke…well, it’s not, and you should do it. But do it better than I did.

And to the three people who read this much and haven’t been referred here from another blog (Hey mom, dad, and fan favorite Phoenix Fresser), don’t’ forget to Check out all the other participants in this months Kosher Link-up, by clicking on the funny frog thin-a-ma-bob under here.

Eclairs

adapted from Ratio by Ruhlman

Ingredients:

For the pate a choux:

• 25 grams butter
• 50 grams water
• 25 grams flour
• 1 large egg
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Pastry cream

• I used the ratio 4 parts milk/cream: 1 part egg yolk : 1 part sugar, and used 1 yolk, but I don’t remember how much everything else came out…yet another reason to get a scale.
• Vanilla (if it’s a vanilla bean, you want to cut and scrape the pods into the milk as it’s heating up)
• 2 teaspoons corn starch
• 2 teaspoons milk

For the Chocolate sauce:

• 3-4 grams bittersweet chocolate chips (I know I’m old, because I find the sweetened ones to generally be way too sweet, and I like the Whole Foods brand which is like 70% cacao, which if I was 15, I would think tastes like bitter terrible-ness, but now I love it)
• 1-2 teaspoon fat (butter, oil, whatever)

Directions:

To make the pate a choux:

1. place butter and water in medium sized pot (to be able to accommodate the flour also), and heat over medium heat to melt butter.
2. Once butter is melted, add all of the flour in at once, and with a wooden spoon, mix together until paste forms. Continue mixing and cooking for another 3-4 minutes to cook out the floury taste. Take off heat and allow to cool, 5-7 minutes.
3. When cooled, add eggs (one at a time, if using more), and start to mix vigorously. At first it will look like the egg isn’t adding into the dough, but continue beating, and eventually it will all come together…trust me).
4. Transfer batter to piping bag fittest with widest tube, and pipe large eclair shaped ovals (I guess it’s an oval…)
5. Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 350, and cook until beginning to brown (about 10-20 minutes).
6. When done, place on wire rack to cool, and when cool enough to handle, pierce eclairs on the side with a small knife, to allow steam to escape

For the custard:

1. Mix together yolk and sugar vigorously until the color of the yolks lighten (we’re after incorporation of air (which lightens the color) and for the sugar to start dissolving into the yolk)
2. Heat milk or cream over medium heat (I hate heating up milk, because if you turn around for one second it will boil over, and make a big mess…true story…like every time I heat up milk), and if using a vanilla bean, cut lengthwise, and scrape the pods from the inside, and heat up until just about boiling…If using vanilla extract, add it to the egg/sugar mixture…I used ground vanilla bean from Bakto, which I got via Kosher Scoop to test out, and it’s really cool…more on that to come…eventually)
3. Slowly pour a little of the heated up milk to the egg yolk mixture, and whisk constantly, to heat up the eggs  ever so slightly (ie – temper), and once warm enough, dump the rest in, whisking constantly. When fully mixed, add it back to the pan, over medium-low heat, to heat up some more.
4. While milk egg mixture is heating up, mix together the 2 teaspoons cornstarch and 2 teaspoons milk, until no clumps are left, and add to the milk-egg mixture, and continue cooking until custard has thickened (when you drag the spatula on the floor of the pan, it should leave somewhat of a trail…does that make sense? meaning – it should take a little bit of time for the mixture to fill in the void the spatula created)
5. Strain through fine mesh strainer, and set aside.

For the chocolate:

1. Place chocolate chips on double boiler (that is: you take a medium sized pot, fill it a tiny bit with water (like an inch or so), and heat up to a simmer. Place smaller metal bowl over top of it) and heat up chocolate gently, with the fat in it, constantly mixing with a spatula, and stop just as everything is melted, because it will continue to cook, and you don’t want to burn the chocolate)

To assemble -

1. With star tip on piping bag, pipe custard into eclairs slowly, while back out, and stop when custard starts oozing out.
2. Dip each eclair into chocolate mixture, and set aside to cool/harden
3. Eat every last one of them with out shame knowing full well it’s 100% fat free if you make it yourself

Squash and Potato Gnocchi with Browned Butter, Sage, and Parmesan

Guess what folks? It’s Chanukka, and you know what that means?

Fried stuff with cheese.

(Friends anyone?)

This post was supposed to be part of the Chanukka Blogger party going on, but as usual I didn’t have my act together to submit my post on time. If you want to get in on the party, head on over to overtimecook.com, and there should be a list of links of all the people participating. Stay tuned for some real chanukka posting coming soon to this here blog (hint – it rhymes with shmufganiyot…I can’t say anymore)

So yeah, everyone remembers the fried part of that, but people tend to forget that eating dairy is also a tradition (because Yehudis served dairy and wine to the opposing general, and when it caused him to fall asleep she killed him, saving the town). In fact some people think that the original latke, isn’t potato,  but rather a cheese latke. So being Chanukka, I thought to myself – which one of the many posts that I have archived away, can I use for Chanukka, and somehow make a decent enough excuse as to why it somehow applies to Chanukka. Know what I mean?

Anyway, I made these a few weeks ago, and while they’re not really the purdiest things, they were pretty freaking good, ifidosaysomyself. Gnocchi is normally cooked potatoes, flour, eggs, which get boiled up, and then tossed in whatever sauce you serve it with. Along with the flour, it relies on the starch in the potatoes to make a solid structure, but you can use any vegetable with a fair amount of starch. In this case we used both potato and this variety of winter squash (I think it’s delicata) that I picked up at this farm’s stand near me.

To cook them, I placed them both in a closed ziploc bag with a little bit of water, and microwaved on high until done (like 10 minutes or so).

Traditionally, you take the cooked potato, and pass it through a ricer, but since I don’t own one, a neat trick is to pass it through a sieve, and that way you get the texture we want for gnocchi. I then combined it with flour, eggs, and salt. Whenever I make gnocchi, I don’t really measure out the flour and eggs, I just add it until it’s the right consistency I’m after. Remember that last time we made gnocchi? You don’t? Well refresh that memory of yours by clicking here.

All right, so on to the next part, the browned butter and sage.

Sage and browned butter are a very classical pairing, and if you’ve never tried it, try it, and you’ll understand. They are just made for each other (kind of like lime and coconut, youknowwhatimsaying?). Now, it’s not just butter, it’s browned butter. Butter is made up of milk solids and water, and when you melt butter, and it starts to sizzle? Well that’s the water evaporating out. Once the sizzling is over, the milk solids have time to develop flavor, and by browning, that’s exactly what they’re doing. So you take some butter, and heat it up until it sizzles, and then I like to lower the heat so you don’t wind up burning it, and let it brown away. Once browned, I add the chopped sage, let it cook just a little, and then add the cooked gnocchi to the sautee pan.

Top the whole thing with some parmesan (need I say freshly grated?), and toasted pine nuts, and thank me after.

Ok, so I know what you’re thinking. What does this whole shooting match have to do with Chanukka? Well it’s kind of fried, and it’s got dairy in it, so bingo-bango, you got yourself a new Chanukka tradition.

Roasted Red Pepper and Kalamata Olive Peetser

Peetser or pizza, however you pronounce it, you gotta admit a well made slice of pizza is pretty freaking amazing. If you’re not sure how much I love my pizza, this is the 6th post devoted to the stuff (first there was the one about the dough, and how to make pizza margherita at home [which is it’s own style of pizza]…then there was the potato-pesto pizza, which if you’ve never tried, do so now, there was also my pizzogi [pizza+pierogi] experiment, and then there was the dessert pizza from way back, when this here semi-amateur blog was in it’s infancy [sorry, the photos on that one got deleted, so you’ll just have to use your imagination, oh and there’s no recipe, so you’ll really have to use your imagination], and to make this sentance the longest run-on sentence ever, while we’re talking about how old this blog is [we were?] my 2 year blogiversary came and went, without any recognition (July 6th), so yeah, we’re officially hitting the big time baby!…wow that was a long sentence…can we keep going?? Hell yeah!…Um, so how have you been? Awesome, great job…let’s get going shall we?)..anyway, I kinda lost my train of thought there, but bottom line – I like my pizza. One thing I never really discussed is how I make pizza at home (not the shortcut method from the margherita pizza post).

Making pizza at home right, is for the most part impossible, well at least in my oven, which is only good for thoroughly heating up my apartment to about the surface temperature of the sun. Come to think of it, I should try cooking my pizza outside of the oven in my apartment, but that would be madness! Anyway, to properly cook pizza, you need an oven that can get up to at least 500 degrees, and hold it there (that last part being the challenging part), and the hotter the better. Some of the real deal pizza ovens crank it up to 800-1000 degrees. Those types of ovens (usually utilize wood or charcoal to achieve that temperature) will crisp up your pizza without drying it out too much.

The next thing to discuss with cooking pizza (or anything for that matter) is transfer of heat. Did you ever put your hand in water that’s 212 degrees (boiling), did you notice how you burnt your hand? Yeah, that kind of sucks. Now try putting your hand in an oven that’s 350 degrees. It’s hot, but you can keep it there for second, and not burn yourself. Now go ahead and touch the metal grates in the oven. Now I’m not sure why you keep on listening to me, but that burnt pretty bad right? So what gives? Well the oven uses air to transfer the heat from the heating element to penetrate your food, and as it so happens, air is a pretty crappy heat transferor, as opposed to water or metal, which are much better at transferring heat. Now if you want to crisp something up real quick, like the bottom of a pizza, we really have to consider proper heat transferring options.

There are a few tricks people use, but the one most people know about is a pizza stone.

A pizza stone is basically a non-glazed ceramic tile (and if you want to save yourself some dough, you can go to home depot and get a few non-glazed ceramic tiles [making sure they’re non-glazed], but since the people who work there aren’t that bright, I haven’t had much luck with it, but you can try), and basically it gets really hot, and transfers it heat nicely to the bottom of the dough. The thing about the stone is it’s density; it’s like a big reservoir of heat, but you need to fill that reservoir, which is why in order for the stone to work, you need to pre-heat the oven, and keep the stone in there for at least 30 minutes. I know that sounds like a lot, but you can’t just put pizza on a cold stone, and expect it to do it’s magic. In my pre-foodie days I tried to make pizza at home on a cold stone, and lemme tell you, the only magic it does, is magically make every centimeter of the pizza dough adhere as tightly as possible to the stone…not a fun endeavor.

The other two tricks I know are the skillet-broiler trick, which I explained in the margherita post. Or if you want you can make pizza on a sheet pan, that you place on the bottom of the oven. I’ve done this when I’m too lazy to lug out my pizza stone (which is in three pieces, because I broke it..but it still works), but I don’t think this has the same results as a pizza stone, but it’s definitely better than putting the pizza straight in.

Allrighty, so now that we have our pizza stone mightily pre-heating in the oven, how do we get the darn thing in there without burning myself again!? Well in comes the pizza peel. Which is pretty much an overgrown spatula. One word of caution, you want to make sure the peel is well floured (or you can use corn meal for a more authentic feel) to make sure the pizza slides off.

When people hear that I use a pizza peel, they think I’m nuts. For some reason, pizza peel is where most people will draw the line in their descent into becoming a foodie (side point – I hate that term). A pizza stone – that’s somewhat normal, a pizza peel? Well you’re just insane. It’s kind of like the difference between having a pepper grinder, and grinding your other spices also. You have a pepper grinder? Ok, that’s normal. You grind your own spices?? Lemme guess you grind your own meat also…YOU DO?! Seriously, what is wrong with you??

Call me crazy…I call it a commitment to making good food, right, but…I’m currently digressing right? Allright, let’s get back to pizza making, and if anyone wants to discuss how I feel about food, feel free to leave a comment, or email me, or whatever, I’m really always free to talk food (it’s part of my “craziness”).

Ok, so now that we’ve covered my pizza making antics, I got to be honest with you, the reason I dragged you down here today, isn’t really to share a recipe (um, couldn’t you have told me that like 40 minutes ago before I wasted my time reading this?!? Thanks a heap), but more to brag. You see, a while back, I submitted a recipe to The Kosher Scene for their Shavuos recipe contest, and I won a cheese basket from The Cheese Guy! Pretty amazing right? (Yup, shavuos…and yes, I’m fully aware it’s August…but to be fair, I did only got the basket in the beginning of the month)

As great as mozzarella is, I truly do love me some monteray jack cheese. It melts so nicely, and it really tastes great, and it doesn’t sound like a fancy cheese that people will think you’re all snobby about. If you haven’t tried it, it’s readily available kosher, and please, please buy a block of cheese, and grate it yourself. Remember how I’m a crazy food guy, and I do all these weird things in the kitchen? Well yeah, I grate my cheese. Why? Because it’s really better. You see, pre-shredded cheese is coated with some form of starch, which prevents clumping, but because it’s a starch, it will gobble up all that moisture, and leaves your cheese, well less moist. I’m not trying to tell you you’re going to go to foodie hell if you don’t grate your own cheese, and yeah even I use pre-shredded sometimes (hey I’m not always superman in the kitchen, and I get lazy too), but if you want to do it right, try grating your own cheese, and tell me it doesn’t make a difference.

To make the actual pizza, I roasted the pepper on the stove top, by literally burning it over the flame, on all sides, and then covering it with plastic (you can just stick it in a ziploc bag), and after 10-15 minutes, the skin peels off real easy, and you have yourself roasted red peppers. To cut the pepper (fresh or roasted), lop off the top and bottom, and make a slice down, and open it up like a book. Remove the seeds and ribs by running your knife parallel to the board, and slice into battons.

For the olives.

Now I know you’re going to laugh at me, but I own an olive pitter…

well let me re-phrase, my brother in law, the Phoenix Fresser owns an olive/cherry pitter, which he left at my place, so I have an olive pitter on hand, to pit these kalamata olives. To quote Alton Brown, olive/cherry pitters are “unitaskers,” and we generally frown on unitaskers, unless it’s a fire extinguisher, but I had one, so I used it…there are a few DIY ways to pit olives if you’re so inclined.

The dough I used was at 67% hydration (67% of the flour was water by weight), brushed the dough with olive oil, then topped with tomato sauce (homemade obviously, but because of my severe bout of verbal diarrhea today [my morning patients all cancelled on me today], I just don’t have the time to digress…we can further the discussion on facebook or the comments if you so desire), then topped with the chopped olives and peppers, and then with the monteray jack cheese. Popped it into my blazing quasi-inferno of an oven, with the pizza peel, and let it cook away.

As you can see, it didn’t brown and char as much as I would have liked it to, but it was in there for about 15 minutes, and was starting to dry out, so I had to take it out. It was still good, but not as crispy as I would have liked

Here’s a shot of the bottom of the pizza, otherwise known as the “under carriage,” and you can see there are some spots of char, but again, I would have liked some more.

Ok so that’s pretty much it.

Thanks again to The Kosher Scene, and to The Cheese Guy for the awesome cheeses.

Until next time

Cinnamon Buns

I know you like cinnamon buns, heck who doesn’t? And don’t give me that “Oh, I’m more of a candy person, than a cake person” because it’s just bogus, and you’re lying to yourself, and you have years of cake eating to catch up on, so let’s get started.

Cinnamon buns start with a yeasted dough, which falls under the category of doughs known as rich doughs. In general, there’s your regular run of the mill bread, which is some sort of variation of water, flour and yeast. Once you add fat you get into the realm of “Enriched breads.” Add even more fat, and you’ve got yourself “Rich breads” which by definition have at least 10 percent by weight (in ratio to the flour) of fat and/or sweeteners, but usually have more than that. An example of enriched breads are a whole wheat loaf with some olive oil added, or soft rolls. An example of rich breads are challah, or cinnamon buns.

When you add fat to a dough, besides adding flavor, it tenderizes it, and locks in moisture, which will soften the bread, and extend the shelf life (staling happens when water gets expelled from the starchy network, in a process known as retrogradation, and fats help hold this process off longer). Sugar (whether in liquid form or not) obviously make the dough sweet, but it also makes the dough soft, and will also help to retain moisture (sugars are “hygroscoptic” which mean they like to hold on to water). They also contribute to the color of the dough in the way of caramelization. When also adding eggs or dairy, they pretty much bring their own fats, sugars, and flavor, so to an extent they have similar properties as adding fats and sugar. One thing eggs have that makes it a kitchen powerhouse is the phospholipid called lecithin, which acts as an emulsifier (which for bread making, makes it useful when creaming butter, and will help trap air better, and make a lighter bread).

These cinnamon buns, which I got from Peter Reinhart’s book Artisan Breads Every Day, doesn’t call for eggs, but in baker’s percentages (which means the % is based on the weight of flour, and I’ll explain in a second) it calls for 14.25% fat, 61% milk, and 10.7% sugar. I feel like we’ve discussed this before, but baker’s percentage is a ratio of the ingredients in the recipe, but it uses flour as a starting point, and everything is based off of it. So let’s say for example you have 100 grams of flour, if the recipe calls for 61 grams of milk, then we say it’s 61% milk. And if the recipe tells you the baker’s percentage is 14.25% fat, that doesn’t mean 14.25% of the total recipe weight is fat, it means 14.25% of the weight of the flour, is fat. So in our example (of 100grams of flour) there will be 14.25grams of fat. Kapish?

(Just as an aside, if this isn’t good enough reason to buy a scale, I don’t know what is. Basically, all you need to know is the baker’s percentage for any particular bread you want to make, and you can scale it up or down based on how much you need. So let’s say you want to make ciabatta, which normally is a very “wet” dough, and usually is at a 70% bakers percentage [aka 70% hydrated], all you need to do is plop a big bowl on a scale, weigh out however much flour your cranium desires, and then multiply that number by .7 to figure out how much water you need, and you have your 70%.)

Onward.

This dough, as Mr Reinhart calls it, is an All purpose Sweet dough. You can make cinnamon buns, sticky buns, or any type of danish. I made this dough, and had so much leftover dough, that I made his version of coffee cake with this dough (which wasn’t that great). For some reason I got it in my mind to do a reverse cinnamon bun also. Often times cinnamon buns come with a cream cheese frosting, so I decided to make a cream cheese bun with a cinnamon frosting. Sounds good right? A+ for idea, and somewhere around a D- for execution. Anyway, let’s get going.

Make the dough and roll it out to a 12×15 inch rectangle.

And spread a layer of melted butter over it

Then spread your cinnamon-sugar mixture over top.

Because I wanted to kick it up a notch, I decided to grind my own cinnamon. Now, I’m not going to say how you have to grind your own cinnamon, or you’re going to go to foodie hell, but what I can say is, you can smell and even taste the difference. It’s minimal (gasp, now I’m going to go to foodie hell), but just the knowledge that you did it yourself I think makes it worth while, but that’s me.

Then roll it up (not like a jelly roll!…wait, didn’t get that last reference? Well fear not, click here, read through the post, and you’ll be all caught up) like a cinnamon bun!

 

(That’s a picture of the cheese bun by the way, which we’ll get to shortly)

Then cut it up. I find it better to cut through it in a sawing motion, as opposed to a crushing motion (ie don’t use a bench scraper like I did for some of them, use a knife, and actually cut it).

 

Allow the dough to rise for 2 hours, and then bake in a 350 oven for 15-20 minutes rotating halfway through, until golden brown and delicious

So back to me genius idea. For the cheese buns, I just took cream cheese, and creamed it with 1/4 cup of sugar, which I then spread on the 12×15 inch rectangle of dough, then I rolled it up (as you saw earlier), and cut it up

Nice right? What can go wrong right? Well here’s where things started going downhill. You see, I don’t really make frosting all too often, and in my mind, I wanted some sort of thickened cinnamon glaze; like confectionary sugar with some cinnamon and milk or what not. You know what I’m saying? Well, yeah, that didn’t work out…I ended up with this gloopy thick cinnamon soup of some kind. It tasted good, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. Oh well.

adapted from Artisan Breads Every Day

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 6 1/4 cups (794 grams) all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons (14g) salt
• 6 tablespoons (85g) sugar
• 5 teaspoons (15.5g) yeast
• 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (482g) warm milk (whole or low fat)
• 1/2 cup (113g) melted butter or vegetable oil

For the topping:

• 3 tablespoons (43g) cinnamon
• 1/3 cup (170g) sugar
• melted butter

Directions:

1. To make the dough, combine the flour, salt, and sugar in one bowl, and whisk to aerate the flour.
2. Combine the yeast with the milk, and mix until frothy, and add the butter.
3. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, and mix with the paddle attachment on the lowest setting until it just comes together.
4. Switch to the dough hook, and knead on medium for about 6 minutes, until the dough is soft, supple, and tacky (adding more flour or milk as needed)
5. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise.
6. At this point, you can place it in the fridge to allow a cold fermented rise for up to 4 days, which will develop flavor (just remove the dough 3 hours before you plan on baking), or if you’re in a rush, you can just allow to rise in a warm place, until doubled.
7. When you’re ready to bake, divide the dough in half, roll each half into a ball, and set aside the other half.
8. Roll out the dough into a 12×15 inch rectangle (you can trim it with a pizza cutter, which is what I did), and to make the cinnamon buns, spread the melted butter over the whole thing, leaving a 1/2 inch empty on the edge closest to you.
9. Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a bowl, and spread it evenly over the melted butter.
10. Starting from the part farthest from you, roll it up tightly, into a snake.
11. Cut it into 1 inch thick rounds, and place the rounds in your prepared oiled container, and set aside to rise for 2 hours
12. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and when dough has risen, bake for 10 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for another 5-15 minutes, or until golden brown.