hansjoakim

Hi all, I'll be heading for Toulouse and Bordeaux for some time off in a little while, and I thought I would go looking for some equipment for my home kitchen while I'm there. I'm mainly thinking about tins and moulds for brioche, Madeleines, cannelés etc. I could order these online (they're hard to come by in my part of the world), but shipping is usually quite significant for such orders... Besides, I'd love to browse a well stocked boulangerie/patisserie store while in France. So, to my question: Does anyone here know any markets or shops in Toulouse and/or Bordeaux (or in the vicinity) where I could obtain such moulds? I've tried my hands with Google, but since my French is still... ehm... shaky, I didn't make much progress in the search... Any pointers and advice greatly appreciated

Very nice, Dan! What are you using to pipe the outer circle on the cute Diplomats? A paste of some kind?

Thanks Ptipois!! I first saw the inner tube here: La Cerise: Paris-Brest.

Do you mean a quiche lorraine? There's a recipe in Roux's "Pastry" that I tried yesterday - turned out pretty darn good (pâte brisée, bacon (I used mushrooms instead), shredded gryuére and a filling of egg yolk, cream and spices).

Sorry I'm so late to the party! How did your Paris-Brests turn out, gfron1? I've only made Paris-Brest once, but I was very happy with the taste... definitely something I'll have a go at sometime soon. I made pretty small choux wheels (approx. 10 cm in diameter), that I sprinkled with chopped almonds and sugar, and filled with a mix of pastry cream, praline paste and butter. Not sure about variations however - I've seen some that make a cute "inner tube" to their Paris-Brest. Just pipe a slightly smaller wheel with a smaller, plain tip, and place that inside the baked outer wheel just before you pipe cream. I think I would prefer a tubeless version as that comes with more cream

Thanks Kerry - I think I'll stop by and get some transparency sheets. I'm hopeful that it'll work out alright.

Hi all, It seems I'm living in a dark corner of the world where acetate sheets or plastic cake collars are hard to find... I've found several online stores that sell these, but the international UPS shipping costs rule out that option for me, I'm afraid. I would like to use such sheets to line the sides of a circular cake mold that I'll use to assemble a cake, and I'm thinking that perhaps simple transparency sheets would do the trick? I guess one could adjust the stiffness of the layer by adjusting the number of transparency sheets one uses? Has anyone tried this (or similar improvised methods) to replace the food acetate sheets? Do transparency sheets peel off easily afterwards? Cheers!

Thanks for your feedback, Mike! I would like to have another go at it, and I think cutting back on the porter is the best way forward. Maybe a lighter porter, and using 50/50 of porter/water in the final dough could be an option. After a few slices, the porter taste got pretty intense, so cutting back sounds good. I've never had any issues with the crumb in Hamelman's beer bread, and in that he calls for equal amounts of beer and water. Let's try to sober up the yeasts for the next iteration...

Thanks gfron1! Here here!

Yesterday I found some gorgeous strawberries at the market, and used some of them in a Fraisier. I had a genoise base in the freezer, so I only had to make the mousseline cream and roll out the marzipan: This was the first time I've made a Fraisier, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out! I think I should've trimmed off the sides of the genoise to get a prettier edge, but I'm the only one who's eating this, so... Last weekend I made a Charlotte: Just in time for summer!

Hi Mike, I baked the porter rye today, but a friend of mine is borrowing my camera for his hiking trip, so no photos today... Well, it didn't really turn out the way I expected it to, to say the least. I used my trustworthy 40% rye formula, and substituted porter for the water in the final dough formula; apart from water in my stiff levain, all liquid comes from the porter. What first struck me, was that the dough didn't rise as much as it usually does during bulk fermentation. I found this odd, because if anything, I thought the porter would bring in an increased level of sugars and speed up yeast activity? Anyway, I continued through preshape and final proof. Also during the final proof I noticed that it seemed more sluggish and tired than it usually does. When I put the loaf into the oven, it had reached approx. 70% of the volume I usually attain for these loaves. Still, when I poked it and studied it, the loaf looked fully proofed. Well... When loaded into the oven, I got a massive oven spring. The thing was really inflating during the first 10 mins., and had by that point reached more or less "normal" volume for these loaves. Some "rustic" tearing of the surface, but still... I was just happy the thing wasn't dead! The crumb looks a lot like yours, Mike; a lovely, almost wooden brown colour, and the scent of the thing is amazing. There's a strong porter aftertaste to each bite. What I didn't enjoy about my loaf, however, is that the crumb feels slightly gummy, or cakey, when I chew it... There's something about the texture to the crumb that I didn't expect and don't particularly enjoy. I'm not sure what kind of bizarre chemistry has taken place in that dough prior to the bake... I love the idea of combining porter and rye, but I had some serious issues with my trial run today at least. Mind you, I didn't cook off any alcohol prior to mixing the dough, but I was (as always) very careful with time and temperature before baking the loaf. If anyone has any idea about what might happen when a large amount of water is replaced by beer in doughs, please give me a wink

Thanks for your replies, guys! ejw50: Yes, I'm afraid that the chocolate solution might be to viscous to get through the spray bottle properly... I'm mainly looking for colour, so it might be a better option to use greenish marzipan... I wanted a very light, green colour on the top of a strawberry cake. Thanks again, I'll experiment a little bit and let you know how it turns out! Another option would be to simply use the marzipan as is; I think the slight off-white colour would work as well, as long as I put some other decorations on top. Anyways. Thanks, guys!

Hi all, I'm making a cake for a friend's birthday, and I would like to top it with a thin layer of marzipan sprayed with greenish chocolate. I don't think I'll be spraying chocolate on a very frequent basis, so I'm looking for a simple and cheap solution. The simplest I can think of, is using a manual spray bottle. This probably won't give me much of an even spray, but hopefully it will suffice to colour a 15cm disk of marzipan (somewhat evenly) green? I do have a recipe for the green chocolate solution for spraying, but I guess that is composed with a paint sprayer in mind? Do you think I will have to thin it out to get the solution through a manual spray bottle? Interestingly, there's a formula for a cocoa solution to be sprayed with a manual spray bottle in Friberg's pastry book; this recipe uses light corn syrup (60 ml), warm water (720 ml) and cocoa powder (55 gr). Is there a way to tweak that recipe to give me a green chocolate solution? Any thoughts or advice are greatly appreciated everyone

Thanks for sharing, Mike! I'll definitely make a stout rye loaf this week, and put up a photo of it here (if it works out reasonably well at least). I've made some variations on the beer bread in Hamelman's "Bread" book before (essentially a pain de campagne-style loaf with beer being half of the liquid), but I've never been blown away by that formula. A stronger porter, more of it and a healthy ration of rye sounds good to me. I adore the brown colour of your crust. Thanks again, and let us know how your malt variation works out!

Oh, Mike, that looks absolutely terrific! Did you sub all water for stout? How much rye did you use in this one? I'd love to have a crack at something similar to this one... Congrats on a most successful loaf

Yep, it's unbloomed weight, most definitely Well, no harm done...I'll get it right next time! Thanks again for the clarification all

Hi again! Yes, you guys are right, it must be the weight of unbloomed gelatin Well, thanks again! Live and learn... next time, right?

Thanks mjc! Are you sure? D*mn it... I was in a hurry, so guessed it referred to the weight of bloomed gelatin... I just measured my sheets, and it seems that the unbloomed ones weigh in at approx. 2 gr., while the bloomed ones are slightly less than 10 gr. That means I've used gelatin equal to 1/2 sheet while I should've used 2.5 sheets... Hmm... do you think the cream will get runny?

Hi all, I have a recipe for a cream that I'd like to try out, and it calls for "5 gr gelatin". I'm not very familiar with the use of gelatin, so I'm wondering if this refers to the weight of the gelatin sheets themselves, or the weight of bloomed, melted gelatin? I'm not sure, but I have the impression that bloomed, melted gelatin is heavier than the sheets before blooming; thus, if I use 5 gr bloomed, melted gelatin instead of 5 gr gelatin sheets, I would use too little gelatin? By the way, it's a recipe for diplomat cream, with 300 gr. each of whipped cream and pastry cream, and "5 gr. gelatin". Thanks in advance!

Hi chefpeon, and thanks so much for your reply, your words of advice and your compliments! It's great to know that the narrowing frame is to be expected for this shape, because I was starting to wonder if I had over-developed the gluten in the dough during lamination, or if I didn't allow enough time for the made-up diamonds to relax before baking. Thanks! I like the puff and the volume of these things, so I think it's better to bake them as they are, and not weigh them down. By the way, when you bake puff pastry sheets (for Napoleons for instance), do you weigh them down with baking paper and a second baking sheet, or is it sufficient to simply dock the sheet well before putting it into the oven?

Hi all, After reading the brilliant tutorial on puff pastry at this forum, I decided to have a go at making a puff dough from scratch. I've done croissants a couple of times before (using a total of three single folds), so I do have some experience in making laminated doughs. This was my first attempt at puff, however. I used the small-batch puff dough recipe from Friberg's book, and made five single folds. I think it went pretty well - at least I didn't get any butter oozing out of the edges, or breaking up in large, cold sheets! After completing the fifth turn, I chilled the dough briefly in the fridge, before rolling it out to a rectangle approx. 2-3 cm (1 in.) thick. I put this in the fridge for about six hours before I cut off a third of the dough that I rolled out to about 3 mm thickness, and made up as puff pastry diamonds, again following Friberg's directions. I photographed two of the diamonds: One thing that I noticed on the baked diamonds, is that the frame is "shrinking" as you move up along the frame wall (the opening gradually gets smaller). Now, I'm thinking that this is because the two twists at the opposite corners are puffing as well, so the top of the frame is gradually "pulled" tighter and tighter as the twists continue to expand. I would really like to make some of these diamonds with more "evenly rised" frames, if you know what I mean? I would like to have more even, vertical sides to them... I was thinking that I could blind bake some of them, and fill them with savory fillings later, and for that I'd like a more straight square... Is there something I could do to get a more vertical rise? For these ones, I let the egg washed, made up diamonds rest in the fridge for approx. 20 minutes before baking. Would a longer rest help? Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions!

Thanks so much for all the replies, everyone What should I've done without you... Great idea re: Italian cheesecake - I guess cottage cheese should behave similarly to ricotta cheese. I found a ricotta cheesecake recipe at joyofbaking (link) that looked quite solid. Draining ricotta/cottage cheese seems to be a great idea too, violetfox. By the way, doesn't ordinary German cheesecakes use something called quark in them? I don't think I've ever tasted quark... Is it any good?

Hi all, I have quite some leftover cottage cheese in the fridge that I would like to use in a cheesecake. I've browsed through Friberg's cheesecake recipes in the Professional Pastry Chef, but most of them call for ordinary cream cheese. Can I simply replace cottage cheese for cream cheese and leave the rest of the recipe as is, or should I also adjust other ingredients, like sour cream, eggs or milk? Thanks in advance

Could you be a bit more specific as to what went wrong? As mentioned already, you might have to adjust the hydration level considerably when you change the flours. Oftentimes, European flours do not absorb the same amount of liquid as the American counterparts.

I can warmly recommend the bran muffin from Suas' "Advanced Bread and Pastry"! Finish them with a sprinkling of wheat bran, and they look like perfect "morning muffins". The recipe is based on buttermilk and canola oil, with a healthy dose of wheat germ and bran, as well as currants. Friberg also has some healthy-ish muffins (oat-honey and honey-bran muffins), but I haven't tried those yet. How about a cheese & herb scone or a savoury Irish soda bread divided in scone-like pieces?