an upside-down cake

As you can see, I had a hard time wrapping my head around this cake. It looks nothing like the caramelized and streusel-filled Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon cake by pastry chef Mary Bergin in Baking with Julia. And while my version has a pretty face, I do wish I had remembered to include the streusel; I made it but forgot to add it when filling the cake pan. My cake could have used that extra punch.

Replicating Mary’s nectarine cake was just not to be. First of all, this has been a great year for fruit in Colorado, and our most important fruit crop is probably peaches (move over Georgia). I had bought a case, “inherited” a case and then was given cases of peaches. I needed to preserve the onslaught of peaches without having an extra freezer or the time it takes to make several batches of jam or butter; these babies were RIPE and needed to be processed right away. So I now have several pint jars of canned peaches in light syrup in the basement. I used three of them to make this cake! I opted for granulated instead of the brown sugar under the peaches thinking I’d get some caramelization during baking.

Chiffon cakes, like genoise (remember June’s French Strawberry cake) rely heavily on the nature of eggs, in this case separated yolks and whites. Since I used these lovely farm-sourced eggs which vary in size as well as color, I selected the ones closest to large size. You can also measure them if needed allowing 1/2 oz per yolk, and 1 oz per white. (Check out this new and amusing way to separate eggs.) At this point, the rest of the dry and wet ingredients have been combined and are just waiting for perfectly whipped eggs whites at medium stiffness. If the whites are under whipped they won’t contain enough air to lift the batter, but if they’re over whipped they contain too much air and end up popping as the heated air expands in the oven and your cake collapses. At sea level, you can whip the whites a little stiffer than mine at 5000 feet, but definitely don’t let them start looking like popcorn or weep, both signs of severe over beating and impending cake disaster. Start over, it’s worth it.

“Sacrifice” 1/4 to 1/3 of the whipped eggs whites to lighten the batter. I just quickly whisk in with the mixer attachment and avoid one more things to wash. Don’t worry if the whites are streaky in the batter at this point.

Now add the rest of the egg whites and quickly fold in with the spatula. Stop once the batter looks uniformly mixed. If you continue to fold pass this point, you start to deflate the batter and are also on the road to a tough cake.

Working quickly to avoid losing the precious breath of your cake, pour it into the prepared cake pan (don’t forget to have buttered the sides) and level by just tilting the pan around instead of using the spatula to smooth the surface (the less touching, the better now). Here’s the cake just before going into the oven, and here’s my streusel I discover in the refrigerator just after that. Oh yeah, forgot to bake and cool the streusel, so it’s not going to happen this time.

Another altitude adjustment I made was to increase the oven temperature by 25°F for the first 10-15 minutes of baking, but again I forgot to turn the oven back down to the correct temperature. So it’s a little dark on top, but you see how level it is as the top sets before it can dome too much and then collapse. The final verdict after altitude adjustments and boo-boos? Pretty peaches, but the cake’s a little too wet (almost like pudding, if you like that) just underneath them. Beautiful yellow color, but actually a little too eggy in taste for chiffon to me. A little bit of a plain-jane, should’ve remembered the streusel layer and used the brown sugar with the peaches.

plum delicious!

Here’s last night’s dessert ~ backyard plum galette, vanilla ice cream (store bought) and plum sauce. Since our Baking with Julia recipe made a double batch of dough and I had enough plums, I went ahead and made two, and delivered the second one (still warm) to our good friends, Mo and Peter. It got a big thumbs up from everyone!

I started on this dessert in April; my hair just starting to sprout post-chemo, along with our fruit trees leafing out! I’m munching a yummy cookie from Lynn at Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat, one of a box she sent me when I supported her in “The Big Climb” for leukemia/lymphoma research and support for survivors. Back to plums, doesn’t everyone grow their own? Actually, this is the first year we had enough from our backyard to do more than just taste. Colorado’s Front Range climate is not kind to fruit trees, so most of ours comes from the slightly milder Western Slope, which grows the most delicious peaches (I have not tasted the famous Georgia peach, however). And since our local abundance is stone fruit and not berries, this is what went into Flo Braker’s Berry Galette recipe.

We had to pick plums (and some small peaches) a little under ripe. By late July, the robins and squirrels have figured out there is a daily buffet of fruit in my yard. While I think there is plenty to go around, they eat or damage so much fruit, that we have to pick it under ripe and barely get our share. Luckily the plums ripened up nicely off the tree, the peaches not so much so I ended up composting those. 😦

This was a small batch of a simply made dough, so I thought it best to do by hand rather than in the food processor. The food processor is so fast, that it’s more difficult to control cutting in the butter and avoid over mixing and/or warming the small amount of ingredients. Dry ingredients, including a beautiful multicolored cornmeal went into the bowl which I mixed to blend.

Remove the ice cubes from now well-chilled water and add the yogurt or sour cream. What a great idea! I often use a little lemon juice or even vinegar to pie dough (helps keep it tender), but this adds a little richness and flavor too. Now you have to work fast, especially in the summer, to avoid letting the butter get too soft which can lead to a greasy, too soft dough and then a tough crust after baking.

I went ahead and used the whole stick of butter (what’s the point of leaving 1 tablespoon out?), quickly cut it into small pieces with the bench knife and tossed it into the flour mixture. If the weather’s warm and you don’t have air conditioning, chilling the dry mix in the refrigerator first will help.

Use a pastry cutter, a pair of table knives or your fingers (only if they’re cool enough though), cut and toss the butter pieces until the largest pieces are pea-sized. Add the chilled liquid, and gently toss and mix to evenly distribute the moisture. Keep a little iced water on hand if you need a little more just to moisten most of the dry mix; you don’t want a too wet dough which tends towards a tough cracker-like crust (remember, water + mixing = gluten).

My dough was a little dry (better than too wet), so I just pressed and folded it on itself a couple of times to bring it together; again you don’t want to overwork here either. The hour or so rest in the refrigerator allows the moisture to distribute more evenly, re-chill the butter and relax the gluten; all of this will make rolling a lot easier. See the butter bits and the colorful flecks of the cornmeal?

I prepped the plums while the dough chilled. These plums were easy to split and pit with my fingers (a lot faster than with a paring knife) and they were small enough to leave halved. I tossed them with the sugar, and then drained, hoping they would give up some of their juice before baking.

If you roll out two portions of dough, place them on a chilled parchment-lined sheet pan. Put the first one back in the refrigerator if your kitchen is warm, or it’s taking a long time to roll out the dough. The oven should be hot by now, and let any calls go to voicemail. Place the fruit onto the dough leaving a 2″ border, gently fold up and pleat; pressing the edge slightly at the bottom of each pleat helps keep the galette from opening during baking.

I did not glaze or sugar the crust before baking, but the small amount of sugar in the dough gave the crust a nice golden brown color after a full 40 minutes at 400°F. Wow, those were juicy plums! After a short 5 minutes of cooling, I c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y moved them using two pancake turners directly to platters; I didn’t want to serve galettes-with-parchment later. That sticky goo was a bit tricky to recover from the parchment and pan, but it made a yummy sauce!

Oh, and I drizzled the honey over the fruit after baking, instead of before. The tart plums definitely needed more sweetness, but I wanted to avoid more oven goo.

Here’s my breakfast next morning, and here’s the squirrel’s. That red plum was gone by the time I got this posted.

quick and easy biscotti

What? An Alice Medrich recipe that doesn’t use chocolate! This Tuesday’s Baking with Julia recipe surprised (and pleased) me in another way too. I’ve never thought of biscotti (which means “twice cooked” in Italian) as being particularly easy or quick to make, but this recipe was both. Plus, it adapted well to a couple of changes I made, one being the addition of chocolate. After all, it is an Alice Medrich recipe.

Separately assemble the dry and wet ingredients. I substituted some whole grain flour for some of the white, and honey for the sugar. I reduced the amount of sweetener by almost half, since honey is both sweeter and denser than the same volume of sugar. There is a bit of baking soda in this recipe, which leavens the biscotti slightly giving it a less than rock hard texture that other butter-less biscotti have. If you need your biscotti to stand up to a dunk in your morning coffee, you can leave the baking soda out.

Add any variations you’d like to the appropriate wet or dry ingredient mix. I chose a very fragrant olive oil for both flavor and a little richness, and an orange liqueur to accompany the vanilla. Bittersweet chocolate chips went into the dry along with some whole already toasted hazelnuts I brought home from Portland OR (this also helped make the prep quick and easy)!

In classic dump-and-mix style, pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredient bowl. I used a bowl scraper to easily mix just until I got a fairly stiff but sticky dough.

Using well-floured hands, I shaped and patted the half portions of dough right onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Whoops! I goofed and had the oven at 350ºF for the first bake, instead of 300°.

It’s important to let the logs cool long enough to settle so they don’t crumble when you slice them, but not so long that they harden and then shatter under the knife. Alice has a good trick to place the slices on a cooling rack set over the baking sheet for the second bake. It only took 10 minutes to dry the biscotti slices, and I certainly didn’t want any more color on them. I like the look you get when you slice whole nuts in biscotti.

And that was it! If you need an unfussy cookie to enjoy with ice cream or coffee, you’ll find the original recipe here and here. To keep it easy, skip the blanching of the hazelnuts in baking soda water and just bake them for 10-15 minutes at 350ºF and then rub off their skins while still warm in an old towel (they’ll stain). Just don’t forget to turn down the oven.

the genoise that almost wasn’t

I was lucky enough to still be in Portland OR when I made Flo Braker’s French Strawberry Cake from Baking with Julia. Pastry chef Braker currently writes and has written “The Baker” column for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1989 and has also written a few pastry cookbooks, of which I own two. I considered myself lucky because

1. Strawberry season was just getting underway with farmers’ market stands displaying flats of varieties new to me. My favorite was called Hood which had a nice balance of sweetness and acidity; one that is a little harder to grow and probably only available at local markets as I don’t think their tender juicy flesh would stand up to much handling.
2. I also got a glass quart of local HEAVY cream from the PSU farmers’ market. Wow, was that a rich treat, worth every artery-clogging calorie.
3. I was able to easily get a copy of “The Book” from the Portland public library, since I didn’t pack my tome to take on the airplane.
4. And I got to bake a tricky cake recipe at sea level, instead of my mile-high home altitude.

That said, I had more trouble with Flo’s recipe than with my altitude-adjusted genoise that I’ve baked many times without a hitch. Should I blame it on the cold damp weather or baking in a foreign kitchen with an unfamiliar oven and the wrong size cake pans? Nah! Since I’m posting late today, I took a peek at some of your results already. Don’t feel bad if this recipe didn’t work for you either. It’s a little more delicate than some genoise with the use of cake flour (less gluten strength in the batter) and the generous dose of melted butter (I could hear the swoosh of air coming out of my egg foam when I made it the first time). If I try a third time, I might use all-purpose or even some whole wheat pastry flour like Lynn of Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat did. Here’s how it rolled for me in my daughter’s small duplex kitchen in Portland…

Here’s the quick, easy and accurate way I like to cut the parchment paper to fit in the bottom of any round cake pan. Fold the sheet in half, then in quarters, then into triangles twice making sure you keep the long pointy end oriented where the center of the pan would be. Place the folded paper on the bottom of the pan and note where the edge is, cut it straight across and unfold it to see if it fits the pan. Refold and trim if it’s a little too big because you want the paper round to lay flat so batter doesn’t get underneath. Don’t worry if it’s a little too small as long as you’ve greased the pan’s bottom (which will help the parchment stay in place) and sides; be sure to grease all around the bottom’s corner edge too.

I sifted the cake flour with the dry ingredients three times to aerate and ensure that there were no clumps. Since I used a 6 quart KitchenAid mixer, I doubled the recipe so the whisk attachment could efficiently aerate the larger volume of egg-sugar foam (baked genoise freezes well as long it’s wrapped airtight).

Even though Flo’s recipe didn’t call for this step (common to many genoise recipes), I gently heated the egg sugar mixture in a bain marie (Mary’s warm bath in French) while stirring just until it was barely warm to the touch. This starts to “relax” (denature) the egg proteins slightly so it will be easier to incorporate air into the egg foam by beating. Turns out this allowed my first batter to over-aerate during beating and it started to collapse when I folded the melted butter in at the end and barely rose in the oven.

For genoise (which is simply a sponge cake made with whole instead of separated eggs) the egg-sugar mixture is beaten until it “ribbons”. The first time I made the recipe I beat until I got a very noticeable ribbon which lasted for several seconds when I dropped the batter from the whisk.

Since the first batter deflated and didn’t rise much in the oven, I knew that the egg foam had collapsed. I’d seen this problem before baking cakes and even soufflés at altitude. The air bubbles get too big when they expand from the heat of the oven and pop. So the second time, I skipped heating the egg-sugar mixture and I didn’t beat it as long. This gave a softer ribbon indicating less air was incorporated into the egg foam, so it hopefully could still expand in the oven. Can you see the difference?

I sifted the sifted flour mixture (yes, this is not a typo) over the egg-sugar mixture in three or four parts and gently but quickly folded it in without leaving any small dry lumps of flour. (Notice that I transferred the batter to a large shallow bowl to make folding easier and more efficient. I think those narrow KitchenAid mixer bowls with the bump in the center make folding more difficult.) A small amount of the batter was “sacrificed” by mixing it with the melted butter. This made it easier to fold the butter into the rest of the batter, deflating it less. (Were you able to keep the batter and butter straight?)

Cakes out of the oven looked promising, nice and level and with sufficient height, even in the 9-inch pans. I let them cool, then wrapped in plastic to let the cakes “settle” overnight.

Onto some beautiful Albion strawberries, rinsed, hulled, sliced and sugared. The Albions are less sweet and firmer than the Hoods, so they keep some of their texture as the sugar draws out their moisture. After a couple of hours they have softened so I mashed them and refrigerated overnight as well.

The bottom of this Rubbermaid cake keeper easily rotates when placed upside down on the cover so it provided me with a convenient makeshift decorating stand. I split the cake into two layers, and initially all looked well, but I noticed a heaviness to the bottom of the cake.

Sacré bleu! There was a dense tough “door mat” in the center of the cake where the batter collapsed during baking (though not as much) again. I switched from “prepare” mode to “repair” mode, and surgically removed the door mat, leaving a very thin bottom layer. Luckily, I made two cakes! So I removed the door mat from the second one, and then split it into two more even but thin layers.

Onto more pleasant tasks of whipping that wonderful cream and getting the strawberry filling from the refrigerator.

Since there’s just three of us eating this cake, I decided to take the best and prettiest layers and made a four-layer half cake! The troublesome melted butter does make for a more tender and moister genoise, and the sugared juice from the mashed berries made a perfect soaking syrup for this cake.

From the “front” you can’t really tell that I had such a problem with that genoise.

And since I made just half of a cake, there’s plenty of the whipped cream frosting and berry filling to serve alongside.

Which is just what we did! There was a bit of “leaning tower of Pisa” effect from all the cake surgery, but it was pretty delicious, and I would say even better the next day when the strawberry filling settled into the cake and soaked the layers even more. Would I make this again? With a little more work on the genoise recipe and excellent strawberries and cream available, I would say “oui”!

apricot pecan cinna-buns

Published over 25 years ago, Baking with Julia is not shy about the butter. After all the cookbook is based on Julia Child’s PBS television series, and one of her famous lines is “If you are afraid of butter, use cream.” A young Nancy Silverton, known more for her artisanal sourdough breads than excessive use of butter, shows she can be right at home in Julia’s kitchen, with her brioche-based pecan sticky buns weighing in at over a pound of butter and 3/4 pound of sugar for a dozen or so buns. I reduced both ingredients by more than half, and we still enjoyed a rich and sweet breakfast treat. Although not as deliciously decadent as the originals, at least we lived to tell about it.

The recipe begins with an unusual method of proofing a sponge under half of its flour. When the flour “cracks”, you have a clear indicator that the sponge is ready to use. I’m in L.A. baking at sea level this month. My mom’s KitchenAid mixer is probably close to 50 years old, so I baby the old girl and skimp on the mixing time and keep the speed on low.

This is the softest stickiest brioche dough I’ve ever made (I only add 4 oz. instead of 6 oz. of very soft butter, but make it up with 1/4 cup of full fat yogurt). Since the sponge was really active, I decide to skip the room temperature rise and put it directly into the refrigerator for an overnight rise. It almost doubles overnight.

I decided to skip Nancy’s signature technique of laminating 6 more ounces of butter into the chilled dough. Instead I made a filling by beating 3 oz. of very soft butter with 2/3 cup brown sugar, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon and a generous pinch of salt.

I toast then chop 1 cup of pecans and chop 1/2 cup of California Bleinheim apricots. I line the bottom and sides of a 9×13-inch baking pan with parchment. Only when everything is ready do I take the dough out of the refrigerator. I’m going to roll out all of the dough instead of doing half at a time, so I need to work fast so it doesn’t warm up and get sticky. To save more time I also want to get the buns into the pan without having to re-chill the dough (think how late can I sleep and still have these in the morning).

The cinnamon butter sugar mixture doesn’t look like enough but easily covers the full batch of rolled out dough

Sprinkle your choice of goodies over the filling and then gently but quickly roll up towards the “naked” edge which will stick and hold everything inside. Brush off any excess flour with a pastry brush, and if the dough sticks to the board, free it with a knife or other metal edge.

It’s easiest to mark then cut the roll into halves, then quarters and then cut each quarter into 4 pieces. The ends are smaller, so I stuff them into the center of the pan, arranging the rest of the buns in a 3 x 5 pattern. In less than an hour, the buns have proofed to fill the pan and are ready to bake. (My lighting isn’t consistent, but yes, the dough was a beautiful golden yellow from the farm eggs I used.)

Since I’m using a bigger pan than the recipe specified, I reduce the baking temperature slightly to 325°F and bake until the tops are pretty evenly browned. This dough is so moist, tender and rich I don’t really miss the sticky topping, and using a buttery filling gives a similar effect to laminating, while saving a lot of time. The shortcuts also cut down on the messes and cleanup time, so I’ll probably stick to doing these cinna-buns instead of sticky buns. This is my new favorite brioche recipe though, and you can find links to the recipe, plus other bakers’ buns at Tuesdays with Dorie.

a last minute pizza rustica

I kept waffling about whether or not to participate in this TWD round with Nick Malgieri’s pizza rustica from Baking with Julia. Pro’s were I like Nick’s books and have several of them; his recipes work well and they give a good balance of sweet, savory, salt and richness in the results. Also, I like making pies or pie-type dishes, and am always interested in trying new crust recipes. Con’s were, I had just used up a batch of pasta frolla I had frozen to make an apple pie LAST week. And almost a month of very-warm-for-this-time-of-year weather wasn’t making me feel much like making a rich savory cheese pie for a meal! But today was cloudy and cold all day, which quickly got me into a pizza rustica mood in time for dinner. Picked up the ricotta and a small package of pre-sliced prosciutto and pinch hit with some cheeses I already had (cream cheese for the mozzarella, a parmesan for the pecorino and a few ounces of feta to bump up flavor and salt). I also added a splash of sauvignon blanc for some acidity and a generous grating of nutmeg; I think the sweet spice pairs well with dairy flavors. The already blooming and greening spring garden contributed some overwintered parsley. Making the rustica took just over an hour since blind baking wasn’t required. It baked in 45 minutes while I cleaned up the kitchen. I made a green salad with lemon and olive oil while I let it cool and settle. And we enjoyed a simple but rich dinner with the rest of the sauvignon blanc!

My 35 year old 4.5 quart KitchenAid mixer still does a great job on small batches of doughs or batters! Use the flat beater to cut in cold cut up butter until the dry mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. I used whole emmer flour for half of the all-purpose.

Stream in the beaten eggs on low speed and mix just until the dough roughly comes together (I added a little water to help). I portioned and wrapped the dough before chilling it briefly in the freezer while I made the filling.

Some of the filling ingredients, clockwise from top left: whole ricotta, prosciutto, farm eggs, garden-fresh parsley, grated grana padano.

I beat the cream cheese first, added the spices and a chunk of feta and beat again. Then the eggs, one at a time, followed by the other cheeses, white wine and “garnishes”.

The chilled dough had firmed enough that it was no longer sticky, but it wasn’t too hard and rolled out easily. It was still very tender and almost crumbly, so I rolled it loosely around the pin and brushed off the excess flour to move it to the pie dish. Then I rolled the smaller portion into a circle large enough to cover the top of the pie dish, and cut a dozen strips with a rolling cutter.

Use the strips from half of the circle, starting with the longest one in the center of the pie, and alternate on either side of that one while using strips from longer to shorter ones.

Rotate the pie slightly and place the remaining strips in a similar manner across the first layer. I like the look of a 45° angle, or you can place them at 90° if you like. Bake until both the bottom and top crusts are firm and both have browned somewhat. The filling should be set so that a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Try not to overcook the custard filling (it should still jiggle a little in the center) or it can “break” (the solids become grainy and the liquid starts to separate out). I bake all pies on the baking stone to help the bottom crust cook through. This one was a little underdone for me, but we didn’t blind bake the crust first as the pie had a top.

I’d like a little more color on both top and bottom crusts, but an overcooked custard would have been a worst crime! There was plenty of salt and flavor from the feta, nutmeg and black pepper. The leftovers will make a fine breakfast or lunch later this week! Buon appetito!

an apple dessert

If you have a few apples in the fruit drawer and some leftover pie or tart dough in the freezer, you have the makings of a quick, easy, delicious dessert. Just remember to move the dough from the freezer to the refrigerator the night before you need dessert. If you’re using pie dough (no sugar) preheat the oven to 425°F; if you’re using a sweet dough, only preheat the oven to 350°F. Almost easy as 1-2-3!

1. Roll the dough to fit your tart pan, shape, trim and chill
2. Peel, half, core and slice apples thinly parallel to their “equator”
3. Melt some butter and mix some sugar and cinnamon together

For individual tartlets, place a sliced half apple on top of the dough; press the top gently to fan the slices to fill the unbaked shell. Brush generously with butter and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Immediately place into the oven and bake until the crust has browned and the apples are cooked. The time will vary depending on type of crust and size of tart, but probably 20-30 minutes for individual tartlets and 30-45 minutes for a large tart. Lower the oven temperature if needed to prevent the crust edges from burning.

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a simple not-too-sweet finish to any meal!

rolling in dough

$$$ Well, I wish!

Actually this is what we’re talking about.

Essential tools for rolling dough – pastry brush, straight pin, bench scraper

Rolling a tart, pie or cookie dough to an even 1/8-inch thickness can be an intimidating task, but one that bakers need to become comfortable with. Here are the guidelines I give pastry students to help them roll doughs with more confidence. Of course, there’s no substitute for practice, practice and more practice!

1. Allow enough time to chill and rest the dough thoroughly after you make it. This firms up the butter, so the dough won’t be too soft or sticky. It also relaxes the gluten, which can cause the dough to shrink back while you’re rolling it out.
2. If the dough is too hard when chilled, either give it several minutes to warm back up slightly, or use your rolling pin to press or gently pound it to make it pliable while still cold. Doughs can become too breakable or sticky once you’ve rolled them thin, so its best to roll them out as cold as possible, but without being brittle and crumbly.
3. Get all your tools, dusting flour, pans (already prepared with parchment or greased) out before starting.
4. Try to evenly dust the surface with flour. I put a little flour into my hand, close my fist loosely and scatter the flour out between my fingers with short, quick tossing movements. Cover a little extra surface so you can quickly drag or invert the dough into more flour if needed to prevent sticking. Working quickly and efficiently is important when rolling out buttery doughs!
5. Put a little flour in your hand and run it over the rolling pin to coat it lightly with the flour. Repeat this as needed if you notice the dough starting to stick to the pin.
6. Try to roll with even pressure of your hands on the ends of the pin and in a direction straight away from your body.  Don’t roll off the edge of the dough (it gets too thin). That edge will get rolled as you rotate the dough around. If you want a circle, give the dough a slight turn of 45° or less, roll again away from your body. Keep repeating this, turning the dough over occasionally and dragging it through more flour if it starts to stick; use the bench scraper to free it if it does. It should only take you a couple of minutes to roll the dough out to the desired size. Check to make sure it’s large enough for your pan by placing the pan on top of the dough and eyeballing to see if there’s enough to go up the sides.
7. Use your pastry brush to remove excess flour from both surfaces of the rolled out dough (yes, you will have to flip it over). I find it’s better to use a little extra flour to prevent any sticking, rather than fighting with the dough because you’re only using a little flour. Quickly move the rolled dough into the pan, center it and finish shaping it to fit. If at any time the dough becomes too soft or sticky, move it onto a parchment-lined sheet pan and place in the freezer or refrigerator for a quick chill until it’s firm enough to handle again.
8. If you’re making something like cinnamon rolls (or spiral rugelach) you’ll want a rectangle. Simple rotate the dough 90° when you turn or invert it while rolling until you have the desired shape and size. If you’re going to fill and roll up the dough, you only need to brush off the flour on one side, as you can brush off the other side as you roll up the dough around the filling.
9. Here are some pictures using the chocolate sweet dough so you can see the flour before and after using the pastry brush on both sides. I worked quickly enough that the dough stayed together fine, even when rolled to less than 1/8-inch and flipped over.

Dough rolled to 1/8-inch with flour picked up from the board

Same side after brushing excess flour off

The other side after flipping over and brushing off the flour

I cut and baked 2″ cookies out of the dough. They reminded me of those chocolate wafers I can’t find at the grocery store anymore. I could use these instead for a chocolate cookie pie or cheesecake crust.

my home bakery

THE COOKBOOK – Do you skip reading the introductions of cookbooks and head right to a recipe you want to try?  I usually do, but baking with the TWD group seemed to demand a little more discipline from me.  So I did my reading homework before getting started (well, I cheated a little and made the White Loaves once) and read the first two chapters “Baking Basics” and “Batters and Doughs”. Baking Basics is worth a quick read before you get too far into the book. You’ll find all the terms, ingredients and basic techniques important to bakers in those first few pages. Leave Batters and Doughs for future reference. While these are the classic French baking components, it’s a bit intimidating to read instructions on how to make puff pastry, pâte a choux, croissants and three kinds of genoise all in one sitting!

THE OVEN – I have a single wall oven, so baking days and holiday dinners usually means a bit of hot juggling. I keep a rectangular baking stone and an oven thermometer in the oven all the time (except when baking sheets of cookies); they assure more even heating and accurate temperatures. I often place an old pie tin with some hot water on the lowest rack when I bake yeasted breads, to provide the steam for a good oven rise and well-browned crust.

My small oven with baking stone and pizza

ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT – Definitely your hands, a bowl scraper, a bench scraper or a bench knife (it’s sharp enough to divide many doughs and cold butter, but safer than a kitchen knife), and most of the items Julia listed in her Basics. One item that I consider essential, that she considered optional would be a digital kitchen scale, accurate to 1/4 ounce (or even 1/10th), with a capacity of at least 6 or 11 pounds (or even 13). It’s almost impossible to get consistent baking and pastry results when you measure by volume (cups) instead of weight, especially with a key ingredient such as flour which easily packs down despite your best intentions. You should be able to buy a reliable and durable scale for as little as $25. You’ll measure more accurately and quickly than when you filled and leveled cups, and get more beautiful and delicious results.

A thermometer is handy too

Of course, this means you need to commit a few conversions to memory, but they’re pretty easy to remember.  Here’s a few to start with…

• 1 cup of flour weighs 5 ounces
• 1 cup of sugar weighs 7 ounces
• 1 cup of butter or oil weighs 8 ounces
• 1 cup of water, milk and many liquids weighs 8 ounces (not liquid sweeteners though; they’re denser/heavier)

When you’re weighing a new ingredient, just measure it by volume and weight the first few times until you remember the conversion.