Baps (part two)

Before and after cooking pictures of the baps. I will post tasting notes later!

Baps (part one)

I do like to make my own burgers every now and again, but the problem living outside the UK is getting hold of really nice soft burger buns or baps. So, imagine my excitement when the other night, I was watching the Fabulous Baker Brothers and they made breakfast burgers from scratch, including the baps. Now, I got my favourite fool-proof white bread recipe from them, so I decided to give it a go.

The key to their recipe, which is basically for milk bread, appears to be to allow three proofs (first after a long knead, and second and third after shaping). I am writing this while the dough is proving for the first time. I will add an update when they are finished. Fingers crossed!

Sunday dinner

I made another batch of brioche dough on Saturday night and baked it on Sunday morning to provide my breakfast for the week. However, this time I didn't want to freeze the dough as last time that resulted in a loaf that didn't rise so well, so I baked one loaf and then eight individual muffin sized brioches. I  know that sometimes brioche is eaten savoury so I scoured the Internet for savoury recipes and found one for brioche stuffed with tuna. You make the tuna filling with emmental and gruyère cheese so ideal for a cold snowy Swiss winter evening. Bon appetit to me!

Some of my best friends use cups

Let me start out by saying that I have nothing against Americans, but the thing I hate more than anything else in baking are recipes that use cups, teaspoons and tablespoons, instead of units of weight. I have no problem with pounds and ounces even if I prefer the metric system, but recipes written in cups drive me nuts. The main reason for this, is that they are so unpredictable. Even with a set of standard measures, it's quite difficult to make sure that you are using exactly the amount called for in the recipe and also to replicate the volume every time, so that recipes that work once can turn out a mess next time. And scraping the flour off the top of the cup to make sure it's level makes such a mess!

The internet, whilst being an amazing source of recipes, is full of cups! Cups, cups, cups everywhere I look which frankly drives me nuts!!!

I am sure there are many people out there who cope quite happily with cups and maybe I should practise using them a little more, but I'm sorry, I find recipes with weights far more easy to work with and much more predictable.

Rant over, 'nuff said!

I'll leave you with a picture of a bread roll I made last night, using a recipe written in grams.

Real men DO eat

I learnt how quick and delicious it was to make Quiche Lorraine from scratch, while sharing an apartment with a very dear French friend of mine here in Zürich. I had always been of the opinion that French food was excellent but living with her was a real eye opener in terms of how the French actually cook view food. My daily repetoire of food was heavily dominated by Italian food, but now I am keen to add more classic French dishes.

Quiche Lorraine is remarkably simple but freshly baked is so much better than shop bought, even if only for the satisfaction of having performed alchemy with milk, butter and cheese. And, although it is possible to buy nice ready made pastry and even ready blind baked flan cases, it really is very simple, quick and satisfying to make your own.

Aside from watching my dear great aunt Ada baking in her kitchen, my first experience of making shortcrust pastry was when I was 11 years old, having my first term of Home Economics classes at secondary school. The fearsome teacher, Mrs Cook (I kid you not!) barking orders at us as we all got our hot little eleven year old hands stuck into the beige ceramic bowls in front of us clouding the room in flour and melting the butter. I don't remember what the pastry tasted like but I remember being put off by this experience.

It is a commonly held belief that you need cold hands to make shortcrust pastry by hand, as warm hand melt the butter in the initial mixing with the flour and ruin the final texture of the pastry. If this was the  case then I would be doomed from the start since I have the warmest hands of anyone I know. Even in subzero temperatures my naked hands feel warm: it can get to -15 here in Zürich in the winter, and if I do venture out in gloves, I have to remove them within a few minutes as my hands feel too hot. As a child, my snowballs always melted as I was making them. However, by following a couple of basic tips, even I can make good pastry by hand.

First, make sure your butter is really cold. Unlike making cakes, making pastry calls for cold butter and not room temperature. Secondly, run your hands under the cold tap before putting your hands into the bowl and thirdly don't work too hard. The correct technique for rubbing butter into flour is a gentle tickling motion, picking up small amounts of flour and butter and combining them as they fall from your hands. It's quite sensual really, but I will stop there.

So here are some photos of my Saturday Quiche Lorraine made with a home made shortcrust pastry shell.

Blind baking the case with beans

add some lightly fried lardons

and some grated Gruyère cheese 

milk, eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg

et voilà!