Lenôtre

A while ago I was in France to visit the annual flea market in Lille. We have been there several years before and love to stroll around, and visit some great bakeries and enjoy some awesome French baguette.

While I was walking around I've noticed a copy of this Lenôtre book. The title is :
"Faites votre pâttiserie comme Lenôtre."
It came out in 1975! It has similar recipes inside like the other Lenôtre book I own, slightly more modern though.

What is also cool about this book is that all the recipes are made by chef Lenôtre's daughter and is aimed at the beginner (even though the book warns that some recipes are for the advanced baker.)
Second cool thing about it is that is is used, has stains, has scribbled notes in it, and almost falls apart. That is also something I like about it, the previous owner has used it!

I am a purist, and that is why I like this book so much. It contains all the great classic recipes like : croissants, brioche, pains aux raisins, éclairs, gaufres, Saint-Honoré and a ton more. I took a (crappy) picture using my built in iSight webcam, the quality isn't that great but I admit I was too lazy to take the digital camera and get a decent shot of the book. I hope you still enjoy though.

This weekend I made the brioche dough from the book and it was delicious. I also made a loaf containing dried fruits soaked in Rum and that gave a delicious flavor after baking. The alcohol evaporates and the taste stays inside the loaf. Great!
I also made some small rolls and a large brioche.

I know it might be impossible to find this book (which is totally written in the French language) but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to see how some classic pastry/bread was made like 30 years ago. Highly recommended!

Dead or alive?

Is this blog dead? It has been a very long time since I posted on this blog. Reason for it all is that my work schedule is changed and I don't bake as often as I would like to.
I only make bread during the weekend, making like four loaves and put them in the freezer. Most of my breads I made before. I made beer bread last week which was quite delicious and also the West-Flanders bread I have made many times last month.
I post some pics of our daughter's birthday party. One of them is a close up of the 'Princess' cake I made.

Remy's Party

Yesterday morning our daughter woke up and said : "Today is Remy day!" She told us that she wanted to do something special. She asked me if I could bake a cake for Remy's birthday. Well, baking a cake was going to be difficult, because I wasn't exactly prepared to do it, also it would take too much time.

Then I had an idea! What if I used this cake mix that we got a while back for free and was sitting there in my storage closet anyway taking up space.
Our daughter liked the idea. We would do our best to make the cakes real beautiful with cream and some chocolate and sugar pearls.

One thing I have to get of my chest is the fact that I hate these mixes. I am an artisan baker and believe that using honest ingredients gives superior results. I don't like artificial flavor, sugar, and all the other chemical additives you often find in these products. The taste is most of the time flat and all the same. I don't like it at all! If I did not have this cake mix, I would have baked cakes just using butter, flour, eggs and sugar. The way my mum used to do it, the way I learned it in culinary school.

We had a great time making the cakes, actually I just had to add some milk and shake to finish the batter. Then fill the bake pan and bake it.

Decorating the cakes with whipped cream and sugar pearls was actually the funnest thing to do, especially for the smallest member of this household, who managed to drop a bunch of them on our kitchen flour. :-)
I personally went on an adventure by removing a cylinder in the center of the chocolate cake and filling it with egg-nog liquor.
Eating them was even more fun, lot's of stuffed animals were invited!
One of the best b-day parties ever!

Pane Siciliano - Peter Reinhart

Mmmmm, Pane Siciliano made with a pre ferment and semolina flour. This is a golden, sweet, very tasty loaf!!! It took 3 days to finish but the result was awesome. You will like this, that is a promise.

Was there anything I did not like about this loaf? Well, staying overnight in the fridge benefits the taste, but I have to be very careful : the plastic that I use to wrap the dough in always sticks to the top of the loaves. That is why you will see flour on top of the Pane Siciliano, it has sesame seeds also (which are awesome on top of this loaf.) But like I mentioned, I need to use flour to avoid the plastic sticking too much to possibly deflate the loaves when I remove it.

I did enjoy making these, I guess I haven't made that many loaves that take 3 days from start to finish before, but it was worth it.

Paris

So I was in Paris yesterday once again. I love it! We checked out the first arrondissement and visited some cool stores. If you find yourself being in Paris and love to bake - and chances are you might, because you are reading this blog- :-) make sure to visit :

G. Detou, 58 rue Tiquetonne, 75001 Paris
It's a store where you will find a ton of professional baking supplies available.
Very cool!

Also Dehillerin. If you are looking for anything to use in your kitchen, or baking equipment make sure to visit this store, it has a huge selection and left a deep impression on me.

I love Paris, because we always seem to stumble upon something we did not know was there, or even existed. I can't wait for my next travel to Paris again.

Hope you all enjoy the pics.

Bake Marathon

I have been extremely busy! I baked a ton of stuff yesterday. I made :

Two Finnish Rye breads.
A batch of Bialys.
A batch of rolls.
A batch of rolls filled with pastry cream.
A cluster of rolls.
A flan tart.
and choux pastry.

The Finnish Rye breads were perfect! Also the choux pastry was delicious!!
Enjoy the picture!

Pain a L'ancienne - Peter Reinhart

Pain a l'ancienne : the dough was kinda too wet to shape in a decent baguette style, so I made it more like a ciabatta style bread. I did not use 100% white flour though, I added some whole wheat. I do like just plain white bread, but I love some bite/crunch in it, so that is the reason why I altered the recipe. Also, it is way better for your health.

No large holes in the crumb here. I still need to manage to get a decent crumb with these flat breads, but the whole wheat might also be the reason why there are no large holes in the crumb. I do like the taste though, overnight retarding is always beneficial to the flavor.
I ate waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much of it today. I ate one loaf myself... I know, too much, but so delicious!

Hope you'll enjoy the pic, I am off working out now, that is the downside of eating too much, need to burn all those calories right now!