Culinary Agoge

As easy as 3-2-1; that’s how making pie dough goes when you forget about how difficult everyone says making it is and you focus on the ratio and method. I had one remaining disc from yesterday’s pie dough making to use and today seemed like a great day to use it. I have a work activity tomorrow that my team is sponsoring so in addition to using my remaining disc I also decided to create another batch, but this time of pâte sucrée or dough with the addition of sugar to make both a French Apple Tart and French Peach Tart.

Using the first disc, I created chocolate tarts which consisted of molded dough and chocolate ganache I made by using 2 parts chocolate and 1 part heavy cream (Ruhlman’s book has a ratio for this in the coming chapters so it will be interesting to compare my results). These proved to be harder to make than I anticipated. To create the “cups” for the chocolate, I rolled out the disc and then cut it into squares. Each square was then pinched together with corners touching and molded into a cup. In order to get this done, I split the disc into three equal sections and stored each “batch” in the refrigerator as I worked on the next.

Each time I pulled the tray out for the new cups, I noticed that the previous ones had hardened up in their cup form and were cool to the touch. A good sign.

Pie Dough: Tart Cups

My one mistake with these was to not firm up the last batch of cups in the fridge before I put them into the preheated oven at 325 degrees F. When I took them out after 15 minutes, the ones that were not cooled had flattened out, losing the desired cup shape. Others puffed up with steam, perhaps as a result of me not docking the bakes with a fork. This did not deter me as the final taste would not be affected.

As the cups were baking, I worked on the ganache, bringing 4 ounces of heavy cream to a simmer and then pouring it over a measured 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate pieces. After the warm cream had melted most of the chocolate, I used the mixer to combine the too into what can be described as pure chocolate decadence.

Using a spoon, the ganache was placed into the successful and not-so-successful cups alike and allowed to cool.

Pie Dough: Chocolate Ganache Tarts

I clearly had made too much of the chocolate ganache which can hardly be viewed as a bad thing unless one is considering diet. Thoughts like this make me wonder how the average amount of weight gained at culinary school can only be 10 pounds as indicated by Chef Roberta during the info session at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. My pants waistlines will have to be my mindful helpers in my desire not to gain weight as I learn the culinary arts.

With one batch of pie dough under my belt, the second batch of dough was a breeze to make in the stand mixer. I poured my ingredients in and in no time had my dough ready to rest and cool in the refrigerator.

Pie Dough: Mixing in my KitchenAid

As the dough cooled, I cut 3 apples and 3 peaches into slices and set them aside. I then rolled out the dough into two rectangles, a task not easy to do when the dough is cold. The peach and apple slices were placed on top as well as a half cup of sugar on top of each and squares of butter and set to bake for 30 minutes. This dough seemed to cook much faster than previous doughs I have made before and actually burned a bit to my disappointment. I wasn’t about to through everything out after all the time I had spent, especially with the rolling and shaping of the dough, and hoped that people wouldn’t mind tomorrow. As the tarts baked, I heated up a cup and a half of apricot jelly with 2tbs of spiced rum and poured this over the tarts as soon as they were pulled out of the oven and left everything to cool.

Pie Dough: Apple Tart

Pie Dough: Peach Tart

With any luck, everything will taste as amazing as it looks. I’ll have to admit, I did taste the chocolate tarts to ensure that they were suitable for consumption. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Pie Dough: Fresh Baked Fruit Pie

The next chapter in Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio is about pie dough. I’ve worked with this a few times before so I wasn’t worried about failing this challenge, although previous recipes did involve volume measures and I never considered the ratio. I doubted that the ratio for this basic dough would differ much, but was eager to test it out. Pie dough is another simple ratio known as the 3:2:1 ratio consisting of flour, fat and water respectively.

When cooking, you must think with the end in mind so as to setup your mise en place and improve your chances for success. Making pie dough alone is interesting, because unlike the bread or pasta I made previously, it by itself is not a complete food item. Since the pie dough was my focus, the filling was less important to me. I had some frozen strawberries and peaches in the freezer so I opted to use those for what I hoped to be a nice fruit pie with streusel on top.

Rulhman’s initial suggestion for the 3-2-1 ratio starts with 12oz. flour, 8oz. fat, and 2-4 oz of water depending on how much water is necessary and a three finger pinch of salt. The amount of water varies depending on the type of fat and environment conditions like humidity. The result is two 9 inch pie crusts or a crust and top. I opted for a pâte brisée, also known as a short pastry since it lacks sugar since I figured the filling and top would have enough sugar as it was and used butter as my fat. Since butter is about 20 percent water, I wasn’t sure if I would need all of the measured water.

Pie Dough Ratio From The Book:

12 oz all purpose flour
8 oz butter (2 sticks)
2-4 oz water

Filling:

10 oz strawberries
16 oz peaches
2 tbs brandy
1/2 cup sugar

Strawberry Crisp Streusel Topping:
Online Recipe Obtained From Here

3/4 cup  all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon – vanilla extract
Pinch – salt

The oven was preheated to 325 degrees F while I combined the butter and flour in my stand mixer and then added water slowly until everything became sticky, but not soupy. I then folded the dough into a disc and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes after which it was rolled out, and cut in two so I could create one pie tonight and one another night. Using a disposable pie tin, I filled it the first disc to create a nice pie shell.

Pie Dough: Pie Shell

I blind baked my pie crust for 20 minutes even though I didn’t have pie weights to ensure it would be firm enough for my filling. As anticipated, it began to bubble in the center although this mattered little to me as I planned on adding the fruit filling later.

Pie Dough: Fruit Filling

I then added my filling and covered it with the streusel topping, and placed it oven for an hour and fifteen minutes. The result was an amazing pie that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Pie Dough: Fresh Baked Fruit Pie

Creating pie dough is one of those scary culinary things that few people even consider attempting. Keeping the dough cold proved to be a challenge which I combated with regular placement of the dough in the refrigerator for a few minutes at a time to keep it cool. Overall with the use of my mixer it wasn’t as hard to work with as I anticipated, and while my pie may not be store quality in terms of taste or presentation, it was satisfying to make nonetheless. An added bonus of using the mixer besides the saved energy on my part was the fact that my body heat didn’t heat up the dough. This was a key lesson for future pie dough attempts. With one more disc waiting for me, more practice awaits and I eagerly embrace it.

The bread bug has bitten me.  After experiencing my first loaf of yeast bread, I’m totally hooked. I even made the sweltering trip to Whole Foods yesterday to pick up some extra yeast in a jar this time so that I would no run out anytime soon. After making a fresh baked baguette, I wanted to employ the ratio to make something a bit different. Michael Ruhlman gives a few suggestions and so I settled on what he describes as a sandwich bread recipe which I could make in my bread loaf tin as a variation.

15 ounces of flour and 9 ounces of water are just the right amount to fill a 9 inch loaf pan while keeping true to the 5 parts flour, 3 parts water ratio. This variation also calls for the addition of 2 tablespoons of butter. I made the dough last night but ran out of time to bake it so it was left to rest and rise in the in the refrigerator over night. Tonight I took it out and let it reach room temperature before forcing out the built up carbon dioxide and redistributing the yeast. It was left to rise again for an hour as I made pasta for dinner.

Just before I filled the bread pan with dough, I removed a small portion to use as a started for a second loaf. Ruhlman asserts that yeast is not a key component of the ratio and that is why it is left out. Given enough time and the right conditions, it will do it’s leavening job, which I intended on experimenting with to find out what my results would be like.

With the oven set at 350 degrees, the bread was put into a greased loaf pan and then put into the oven. What kind of sandwich bread would this make I wondered? As I would soon find out, the answer is the most amazing sandwich bread ever enjoyed by me! Crispy, firm and slightly sweet. Absolutely delicious. The dough variation also calls for applying a light egg wash half way through baking which produced “an appealing crust” as promised. The book is exceeding my expectations already.

Sandwich Bread Loaf

With my “starter” I worked on the sandwich bread variation again using all the same measurements and procedures. With a little extra coaxing and kneading the dough rose almost as much as the first batch. Not bad at all. For flavoring I opted to add a bit of cinnamon and sugar for a tasty breakfast bread.

After spending a few hours in the kitchen on this hot summer day, the heat was noticeable and yet strangely enjoyable. An hour after I put the second loaf it, it was ready with a crispy brown crust.

Cinnamon Bread Loaf

To my surprise, after baking, only the crust was darker with the inclusion of the cinnamon. The inside was unaffected and missing the swirls of cinnamon that I expected to see. Despite my visual disappointment, the taste was all there, not as pronounced as cinnamon loaves I have had in the past, but sweet, subtle and very yummy. I’m now suffering from carb overload. It’s a tough job, but someone must endure the pain.

As an aside, the recent pictures I have taken in my kitchen for this and previous posts are not dim for effect, they just are not working properly after the power company made some “repairs” which resulted in the baking in the dark experience on my birthday. My whole apartment now flickers like a ghetto rental in some old movie. Curse them should these electrical issues extend to affect my stove and/or oven.

Cooked Pasta

Continuing my my series, Cooking Through Ratio, I have moved on to the next topic under Doughs and Batters which brings me to pasta.  Pasta usually comes in a box doesn’t it? Most of the pasta Americans are used to eating certainly does. The first time I had eaten handmade pasta was in the Back to Basics sauce class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. It turned out great, although we used the a pasta cutting attachment, something I didn’t have which made me a bit nervous.

Pasta dough as it turns out is quite simple. 3 parts flour and 2 parts egg. Less variables are a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that there is less to think about and less to get wrong (perhaps this naive to think, experience will tell). The curse is that there is less to hide behind. Too much egg and my pasta probably would come out sticky. Too much flour and it would be dry and floury tasting and would not hold together. Reading over the basic ratio and instructions left me with these questions in mind. I also noted, that while the ratio was given, no indicators of “doneness” were provide nor was appropriate cooking time. Nevertheless, I charged forward with my dough.

According to the book, a large egg weighs about 2 ounces. I assumed that this was without the shell, and validated with my scaled. I used 2 eggs beaten lightly and then weighed out 6 ounces flour, all purpose this time and got to work. The flour was placed in a bowl as suggested for easy mixing and clean-up. I created a well in the flour and dumped the egg in the center and then combined it with the fork I used to beat the eggs. At this point, I became very aware experience is what determines success or failure. Unlike the bread dough I made previously, this dough required intimate tactile knowledge to know if enough flour had been incorporated. Experience through trial and error will have to be my teacher here especially since I don’t know anyone who makes their own dough. Once I incorporated all of the flour the egg would naturally absorb, I formed the dough into a disk and let it rest for 20 minutes as instructed.

While the dough was resting, I brought a heavily seasoned pot of water to a healthy boil. I had heard that freshly made pasta takes less time to cook than dry store bought pasta, so I figured less than 10 minutes would have to be my guide. Once the pasta had rested sufficiently, I rolled it out on wax paper then rolled it up and cut it ala the chiffonade method. Despite absorbing just about all of the weighed flour in the bowl, the I did experience problems with the dough sticking to the wax paper and rolling pin as I rolled it out even as I added more flour to the paper and dough.

Uncooked Pasta

I unraveled the dough and dumped it into the pot in what would become a cloudy mass of dough and boiling water. The water boiled on as I gently stirred the pasta with a wooden spoon to separate the strands. This stuff was not as easy to work with by any means; it was totally different than working with box pasta.

After about 5 minutes, the pasta was very limp and clumpy. I figured it would finish cooking through carry-over heat and dumped it out of the pot to strain in a colander. Not only did it look slimy, it was to the touch. It appeared that the outer coating of flour clumped up on the pasta immediately after I put it into the pot.

I plated the pasta and in a moment of purity I decided to only season it with salt and pepper so as to get an understanding of what it tastes like sans sauce. The taste overall was very good, different that what I was used to for sure, but that was to be expected.

Cooked Pasta Seasoned

This experience taught me that the method and experience are just as important as the ratio, and perhaps even more and the obvious knowledge that I did not make the best pasta in the world, I am left feeling accomplished by attempting something that so few people ever do. This ratio will require some more practice for sure.

Sliced Baked Baguette

It’s the method that I’m after and so as I mentioned previously, I will be embarking on a journey and cooking my way through Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking in a series entitled Cooking Through Ratio. This post is my first installment in the series.

Bread is one of those things that seems so hard to make. My mother was always “scared” of making bread. She’s a great cook and so making it seemed difficult to me. It’s one of those things that only bakers seem to know how to do. Ruhlman’s  Ratio opens up with bread dough, an interesting challenge for the bread making averse. “Everyone should be able to make bread when they want to, but rarely do we because of the perceived effort involved. When you know the ratio for bread, bread is easy.” (p. 5) I was up for the challenge.

A key component of ratio based cooking is the scale. The reason for this is that it helps produce consistent and repeatable results. It takes the inconsistency out of cooking when dealing with volume based measurements which can vary greatly due to simple changes in aeration or humidity in dry ingredients for example.

The basic ratio for bread dough is 5 parts flour, 3 parts water, some yeast and a bit of salt. This produces a versatile lean dough that can be modified based on the cook’s will to produce many variations.

I had never worked with yeast or bread flour as the basic ratio calls for, and combined with a stand mixer equipped with a dough hook, this was going to going to be a unique experience for me in more ways than one.

Last night, ingredients and hardware ready, I measured out the flour and water inside of the mixing bowl, added yeast and salt and set the mixer on the correct speed (2 in my case) for mixing dough. The mixer went to work and a little over 10 minutes later my dough was mixed and ready to rise. After about an hour, I tended to the dough which had doubled in size, needed it a few times to rework the gluten and redistribute the yeast all inside the mixing bowl. I then covered the bowl with plastic wrap and placed it in the fridge to rest over night.

Tonight I took my dough out and made sure my oven was pre-heated to 450 degrees which was easy and quick to do after just having made stuffed green peppers. I wanted to make a baguette for my first attempt, so I rolled it out on the non-stick cookie sheet I planned to bake it on which was generously floured. I covered the bread with a moist towel and let it rest for 10 minutes while I placed a cast iron skillet into the oven on the lower rack to warm up. This would be used in the next step to create steam.

After 10 minutes, I poured a cup of water into the skillet to create the steam which as the book instructed would help produce a nice crispy, crunchy crust. The sound and amount of steam created was much more than I expected. The kitchen always has its surprises.

For 10 minutes, the bread baked at 450 degrees before lowering the heat to 375 degrees for the remaining 50 minutes. I took the bread out of the oven and knocked on it a few times listening for a hollow sound. The bread delivered.

Baked Baguette

Set to cool on my counter a few minutes, I sliced it open and tasted it. This is heaven. The warm slice was so delicious I was actually upset that I did not make more dough for bread later on in the week. Overall I was surprised that something that seemed so hard was actually so simple to make. For a collective 15 minutes of actual work I was able to enjoy fresh bread at home, a pleasure all should experience.

Cooking through this series is going to be a fun endeavor, one which I am glad I took upon myself.