Logical next step...BREAD!

"I like bread and butter, he likes toast and jam..."  I find myself singing this lyric quite often as there really is nothing quite like bread and butter...or toast and jam (with butter too, of course!).

Having said that, a natural segue from my beloved baked goodies is bread.  And not just ANY bread, but of course bread who's key ingredient IS....butter - of course.  I'm talking about that bread that you see in the fancy bakeries and your mouth instantly waters...you're amazement at how it glistens in the shop window...how mouth wateringly it tastes when made into french toast.  What am I talking about?  Brioche, of course.  And in this case in particular, Brioche Nanterre, or the Brioche loaf.  While the rolls are certainly delectable, I've been purchasing a beautiful french Brioche loaf from a good grocer and it got me wondering why I haven't thought to make it myself.  How hard can it be?  Afterall, I have dabbled in croissant dough, so what can be more intimidating?

Pulling out my trusty Bouchon Bakery cookbook, of course I find immaculate instructions on how to make 4 versions of Brioche, and specifically Brioche Nanterre.  I'm in heaven.  The ingredients are few, but the process is time consuming - though not difficult.  What I would do without my KitchenAid mixer, I have no idea.  Flour, instant yeast, sugar, fine sea salt, eggs, milk and butter (the last three all at room temperature) are the ingredients.  Time, correct mixer speed, patience and house chores are required.  After combining all ingredients except the butter, you mix them all with a dough hook on low for 30 minutes.  After you clean your kitchen, may I suggest doing a load of laundry and other house chores while your mixer churns away for the 30 minutes?  After said 30 minutes, you then begin to add the butter in small parts.  I'd say it was all incorporated in about 10 or so minutes.  After the butter has been absorbed, you scrape the dough off the hook and from the sides of the bowl and allow the mixture to mix for an additional 10 minutes.  When the 10 minutes is up, you fold the dough.  After folding the dough, you put it in a greased bowl, cover it, and set a timer for an hour.  Once the hour is up, you fold it yet again, put it back in said bowl, cover it, and refrigerate it overnight.

As of now, my dough is comfortably being refrigerated.  Tomorrow I'll remove it from the refrigerator, form the dough into 12 balls, place 6 balls in one loaf pan (the other 6 in another) and then let them proof for 2.5-3 hours. After this time, they then will be ready to be baked for 25 minutes.  Voila!  Brioche Nanterre!

As you can see, the ingredients are straight forward, and the recipe is quite simple.  It's just the time requirements that make the process lengthy.  The dough already smelled fantastic and I look forward to seeing how the Nanterre will turn out.  I'll post pictures tomorrow of the preproofed state, proofed state, and then post baked state of the bread.  Fingers crossed that the time required to 'coddle' this dough was well worth it (something tells me it will be).

Hopefully many a yummy French Toast breakfast is in our near future :).

Thanks for reading!
Julie

Coffee & butter...no, really!

While I exploit my love for butter, many friends of mine know I feel similarly about coffee.

Living in tea nation, it is quite difficult to find a good cup of coffee.  I do prefer my coffee at home than those cups I can buy at the local cafes.  Thanks to Illy Caffe and our Rancilio Silvia, along with some yummy chocolate and Monin Syrup, I've been able to perfect my own Hazelnut Mochaccino.

Having said that, a wonderful friend of mine that I knew back in CA sent me an article about how to make your coffee 'bulletproof'.  Of course I was interested.  And not surprisingly, butter was the secret ingredient.  Have a look:
http://www.bulletproofexec.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproof-and-your-morning-too/

While I have yet to try this at home, I have little doubt at how extraordinary it is.  And I also imagine that this too will be something I yearn to perfect on the homefront!

UPDATE: selling to local cafes

I managed to rope in a good friend of mine, Chrissy, into this business venture.  She's also a great baker, and is planning on opening up her own cafe in Seattle when she returns there for good in July (bummer for me, awesome for her). 

We met with two cafes on December 21st, The Beehive in Chiswick & The Milestone Cafe in Sheen, and had 9 baked items for them to sample.  The items included: Buttermilk Orange Cranberry & Currant Scones, Blueberry Muffins, Double Chocolate Pecan Biscotti, Buttermilk 'American' Cinnamon Buns, Cranberry Pecan 'Coffee' Cake, Vanilla Rum Tea Cakes, Cinnamon Sour Cream Muffins, To.Die.For double chocolate chip cookies (seriously TDF), and Raspberry Bars.  All items received rave reviews from the owners, staff, and customers.

We are now planning to meet up again with the cafes to review the items against the cafes current 'line-up', discuss pricing, and also understand what other products they might be interested in that weren't part of our samples.  We also suggested to do a one week trial of a selection of our baked goods to see what their regular customers like and identify which items were the biggest sellers. 

Chrissy and I need to think about what we really want out of this venture, as it's becoming very apparent that there is a very large market just waiting for us out there (should we so desire to tap it).  
This is, of course, due to my wonderful friends out here in London who are putting me in contact with all of their favorite cafes that, they believe, would love our home baked goods (i'm beyond touched that they think that highly of me and my baked goods...you have no idea!).

Our next steps will be working with the cafes to identify which products they'd like to do the trial with, decide the pricing, and choose a timeframe to do the trial.  Once that's nailed down, we will wait and see how the products sell to see about a possible future.  Should we be so lucky as to have the cafes want to bring us on suppliers, our next steps will be to drum up some more local business with other cafes and begin thinking about expanding our operations (looking for commercial kitchen space, hiring folks, etc.).  VERY exciting stuff...stay tuned!

Selling my goods to a local cafe...

I've always had a dream of opening up my own cafe.  It would be in Woodside, CA tucked into one of the spaces somewhere within the 4 corners (for those of you who know the area, you know where I mean).  It's cycling central due to being at the base of the best climbs on the peninsula and just far enough away from home where most cyclists end up stopping for one reason or another.  The cafe would be cycling related in that I'd have cycling gear on the walls, bicycle parking outside or an attendant to watch your bike, cycling videos playing non-stop, and of course if any bike races are being broadcast, you know they'd be on!  I'd have kick ass coffee, because that's how Tim and I roll.  I'd also have an array of delicious baked goods, but always on rotation and would be whatever I felt like baking that day. 
Upon thinking how I'd make that dream a reality, I did kickstart a small organic cupcake business out of my home when I was living in CA.  For various reasons, I didn't love that experience.  My oven ran hot, the cakes were all of various types and folks never seemed 100% satisfied with them.  I grew frustrated pretty quickly and decided that perhaps selling my baked goodies wasn't the best idea afterall.
Fast forward to life in London, and every week the mums from nursery to do a coffee morning where usually folks bring something to contribute.  Of course I enjoy this immensely and always bake whatever I feel like that day and something that I know is a crowd pleaser.  My goodies received such rave reviews that a dear friend of mine decided to take it upon herself to become my personal PR spokesperson.  She recently moved a town away and has had difficulty finding a coffee shop with decent baked goods.  So much so that she entered the cafe on the corner of her road, said in so many words that their baked goods were crap and told the owner that he had to try mine and sell them in his shop.  To which the owner replied, 'ok'. 
Alas, here I am...a cafe is interested in meeting with me, sampling my goodies and giving them a whirl at selling them in his shop. 
Of course the big question I'm in the throws of answering is, what baked goods should I bring to him to taste?
I figured about 3-5 different items would be a good start.  In the running are my scones, and cranberry swirl coffee cake (because that cake is my PR friend's favorite and she wants it locally!).  I'm now deciding what the remaining items should be.  Ideas on the list include the morning buns (croissant cinnamon buns: received rave rave reviews, though they are hard work to make), blueberry muffins, double chocolate almond biscotti and buttermilk cinnamon buns.  Out of those items, what 1-3 items would you add to the scones and coffee cake?  Or do you have better ideas that I can try out?  The plan is to present him the items next Friday, so I have a week to prepare.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

Follow up: Nutter Butters

I'm learning that I'm terrible at documenting as I go.  Thus, I did make the Nutter Butters shortly after the last post, and they were delicious and received RAVE reviews.  The dough was incredibly sticky and therefore had to be very cold to work with and you had to work quickly.  After doing a handful of cutouts, the dough had to be returned to the refrigerator to be chilled again before continuing.  The dough was simple to make, but just forming the dough into cookies was very time consuming.  I'm also not sure about the cookies being frozen before baking.  I tried both ways - popping them directly into the oven after cutting the dough, and freezing then popping into the oven and didn't notice a difference.  Due to the rave reviews, I think i'll make a few batches of these cookies again and follow the recipe to a T.  I'll also take notes and pictures of the progress and then post it for you to see :).  I'll also post the recipe.

To chill or not to chill...that is the question.

I recently purchased Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery cookbook, and it is To.Die.For.  Rarely do I open a cookbook and IMMEDIATELY want to make EVERY item in it!  Alas, this one does just that.  And to my surprise (it has a big section dedicated to bread making - a new arena for me), I'm VERY interested in trying some of the breads!  This most likely has to do with the fact that i'm very much in love with a French Brioche bread that costs a small fortune, and i've been thinking about trying to make one myself.  Alas, there is a very lovely recipe for Brioche that i'm going to try shortly.

The common theme in many of his recipes, no matter what type (cookies, doughs, etc.), is refrigerating the dough either for a couple of hours or overnight.  I'm discovering that the 'serious' pastry chefs plan their items very much in advance (taking into account chilling times, etc.) and allot the appropriate time for chilling.  The recipes themselves aren't that different from others that i've seen, what's different is the chilling time.  'They' say that allowing doughs (of any kind) to chill and 'relax' allows the dough to absorb the ingredients to their fullest, which then, in turn, makes the flavors in the dough more intense.  I don't doubt this for a second.  Even your traditional chocolate chip cookie dough, if you allow the dough to chill overnight, will produce a tastier cookie - go ahead, give it a whirl ;).

Next on my agenda is to try a peanut butter cookie in said above cookbook called 'Better Nutters'.  The recipe is modeled after Nutter Butters (an old favorite cookie of mine).  It calls for roasting peanuts, beating and mixing butters of sorts along with dry ingredients, and then, of course, chilling the dough (for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days).  You then cut rounds from the chilled dough, freeze the rounds for 2 hours, bake them (frozen), and then make a peanut buttercream where you sandwich two cookies together filled with the buttercream.  YUM!

I'll keep you updated on the progress and, of course, post the recipe.  So far i've only roasted the peanuts (but the house already smells delish!).

The cinnamon buns...

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but after rolling out the dough, putting the sugar mixture on the dough, rolling it into a cylinder and cutting the dough into buns, I neglected to take any pictures!  And once they were proofed, baked and out of the oven, I neglected then, too, to take pictures (I'm pretty useless, aren't I?).  My excuse?  I was hosting a breakfast morning at mine and was literally incredibly eager to make these suckers that I forgot all about telling you wonderful folks about it! 

So then, you'll have to trust me when I say that they came out AMAZING!  They flew off the table and were gone before I could blink.  Everyone did compare them to Gail's bakery cinnamon buns and said mine were better!  I think they were being nice, but they insisted they weren't.  I did like them and thought they came out quite well, but I thought they needed a bit more cinnamon.  No one else agreed!

So then, here's the 'Morning Bun' recipe (from the Art & Soul of Baking - Sur La Table) that I then used following Bo Friberg's croissant dough recipe:

1 recipe of croissant dough (see prior posts for this)
1 large egg
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup granulated sugar

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into an 18 X 11 X 1/4 inch rectangle.  Position the dough with a long side parallel to the edge of your work surface.  Brush any flour from the surface of the dough.  Whisk the egg in the small bowl just to break it up, then brush the entire surface of the dough lightly with the egg. 

In a medium bowl, stir together the brown sugar and cinnamon until thoroughly blended.  Sprinkle evenly over the dough, leaving a 1-inch border along the long edge of the dough farthest from you.

SHAPE THE DOUGH: Beginning with the long side closest to you, roll the dough into a cylinder, gently tucking and tightening as you roll.  Finish rolling the dough onto the border.  Roll the dough cylinder backward so that the seam is facing upward and pinch all along it to seal the dough.  It should be 18 inches long.  If not, roll it gently back and forth until it lengthens.  Cut the cylinder into 12 equal pieces, each about 1 1/2 inches wide.  Generously butter the muffin pan and place each piece cut side up in a muffin cup.

PROOF THE DOUGH: Cover the pan loosely wiht plastic wrap and allow the buns to rise in a cool room-temperature spot until they have almost doubled in size (they will be slightly higher than the top of the muffin tin), 45 to 60 minutes. Don't try to rush the rise by warming the croissants - you don't want the butter to melt.

BAKE THE BUNS: Preheat the oven to 375F and position a rack in the center.  Chill the buns in the freezer for 10 minutes or in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.  This will firm the butter and create a flakier texture.  Bake for 25 minutes, or until the buns are deep golden brown.  Place the granulated sugar in a medium bowl.  Remove the tin from the oven and set it on a towel next to the bowl. Gently remove each bun with the tongs and drop it in the sugar, turning it to coat all sides.  Then transfer each bun to the silicone mat or parchment paper to cool.  Serve warm or at room temperature. 

DELICIOUS!!!! 

Enjoy!