Patisserie Intermission: Baking Abroad

 It's kind of odd that, despite a monthlong trip in Europe while unemployed sounds like a relaxing time, it was actually one of the least relaxing trips I've taken here. Herein lies the trap of letting your hobbies become your responsibilities: it will follow you home through the goodness of your heart wanting to help you improve. I got the itch to bake and write, and so, funded by my parents' desire to stop hearing me threaten to go home because I couldn't cook in their kitchen, I purchased a few bare bones pieces of equipment and was able to make some decent pastry explorations while there. 

In total, I bought: 

• A kitchen scale
• A rubber spatula
• A pastry brush
• A single silicone mold
• Food coloring
• A set of circle cutters
• A piping bag (13")
  
• A piping tip (round, 10mm)
• An offset spatula
  

And with those, I was able to make...

Patisserie 10.5: Paris-Brest again

This is just a short post, but I made the Paris-Brest pastries again, incorporating the following changes that I wanted to improve on from last time: 

• Pipe the correct diameter circles (OD 70mm)
• Using 10mm piping tip for larger choux width
• Chilling the mousseline prior to piping for sharper results
• Filling the pastries more liberally
  
• Figuring out the correct piping pattern for the mousseline
  
• Making a large batch of praline from scratch to eliminate hazelnut chunks that might clog my piping tip

I did still end up using almost an entire extra egg (3.8) compared to the three that the recipe calls for. The larger piping tip resulted in fewer total pastries (14 total), but also had the unintended effect of needing longer to bake. I removed the first batch from the oven a little too early, and this resulted in a few of the rings sagging slightly, though none deflated entirely. Otherwise, though, these rose fairly well and were not overwhelmingly bagel-like.

The ring in the foreground is deflated slightly, while those in the back are round. Should have left them in the oven longer, especially since drying out isn't really a concern with milk in the mix and a filling on top of that.

Since I filled these pastries the same day as I baked them, the choux shells were crisper, but so were the almonds. This resulted in a lot of the almonds chipping off while I was cutting the shells in half. I'm beginning to see why so many modern Paris-Brest variations choose to use pearl sugar as a topping instead. 

I piped an initial ring of chilled mousseline into the bottom half of the choux this time, to fill in some of the space.

I piped an initial ring of mousseline to fill in the cavities in the choux, so the prettier piped ripples would not sink down

Then, I piped loop-de-loops of mousseline in a circle around the pastry, which is a technique I picked up after browsing Instagram to figure out how the heck I was supposed to pipe the mousseline to get those nice ripples when viewed from the side.

Mousseline piped using overlapping loops to achieve the scalloped edges when viewed from the side

The more liberal piping of the mousseline yielded only one dozen Paris-Brest completed, but my, were they picturesque!

Paris-Brest, attempt two! I think this is a faithful reproduction, but I admit I have never had one of these from a patissier before.

Even though I chilled the mousseline prior to piping, the shapes were not as sharp as pictured in The Book, but the mousseline was airier in general than last time. I think I'm ready to move on from choux/this recipe, though I may come back and visit eclairs soon because I've been seeing a lot of beautiful ones coming in lately with fruit flavors as the weather has warmed (and had a delicious strawberry one a few weeks ago). Now I just have this extra praline paste that I have to resist eating with a spoon. 

Quote of the day: 

Patisserie 10: Paris-Brest/ Praline buttercream choux pastry

 Since the previous recipe contained a fair amount of hazelnuts and originated the hazelnut praline in this recipe, I decided it would be reasonable to do this one immediately after to decrease making small batches of niche ingredients. 

The Paris-Brest is a circular choux ring that is covered in almonds and filled with praline cream of some sort. The pastry was commissioned to commemorate the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race, which is a long-distance race between the two cities and back, and the circular shape of the pastry is meant to evoke a bicycle wheel. Variations in the filling are common, ranging from diplomat cream (stabilized whipped cream) to pure buttercream and everything in between, though the praline (caramelized hazelnut) is a typical base flavor. The version in The Book uses a mousseline cream, which is what you call buttercream + pastry cream + a flavoring (in this case, praline). 

Patisserie 8: St Honore Cake/Gâteau St. Honoré

 So, I'm a little early on this because St. Honoré’s feast day is on May 16, but this seemed like a good recipe to try due to my previous logic that a lot of good fruit ingredients are not in season yet, I had a small amount of puff pastry still left from my first batch, and this "cake" is more like a composition of puff pastry, choux pastry, and caramelized sugar, filled with pastry cream, and thus a good bridge as I transition from making small pastries into the cakes. 

St Honore is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, who did some miracles in French lore, and this cake is apt because of its composition, which showcases several french pastry basics: puff pastry/lamination, choux pastry, pastry cream, caramel, and meringue. The presentation varies, but these components are always somewhere included, and there is an additional traditional component: The St Honore piping tip. This tip is used to create the elegant waves in the Chiboust (combination pastry and meringue) cream filling, and the shape is something like a quenelle with a mohawk. After reading reviews that most people liked the medium sized 882 tip from Ateco, but not wanting to make a web order for a single piping tip, I decided to use my 3D printer to print a piping tip. 

Patisserie 4.5: Choux Puff Tartlets, Revisited

 Despite my desire to simply move on in my life and avoid another scaling debacle, I decided it was for the best for me to revisit the choux puff tartlet recipe as promised, making most of the adjustments I mentioned at the bottom of recipe.

Patisserie 4: Pâte à choux/Choux Pastry/Cream puff tartlets

 You would think that my track record with The Book would have me a little more humble in my approach by now. A few months ago, while I was still reading up on how to begin my patisserie journey, I stumbled upon the blog Patisserie Makes Perfect, which was the final inspiration for my method. But very early on, the author has extreme difficulty with this recipe for Cream Puff Tartlets, and mentions that they have much difficulty with choux pastry in the past. Now, I've made choux pastry to varying success before, but as described in my very first post, I have no idea why or why not some of my attempts worked. So I assumed that, if I followed the recipe by The Book, everything would at least turn out on par to the blogger's attempt. 

I was half-right: I didn't have to really worry about the choux pastry itself. But everything else that could go wrong in this "intermediate" recipe went wrong in some way. 

According to Wikipedia, the name for pâte à choux is mistakenly attributed to its literal meaning and appearance (choux=cauliflower in french), when instead, it stems from pâte à chaud, or "hot pastry," due to its being cooked butter, flour, and water, to allow the flour to absorb more moisture. This moisture is in turn released during the baking process, creating steam which leavens the pastry dough, usually creating a hollow center and a browned but tender crust. This is the pastry dough that becomes both profiteroles (cream puffs) and eclairs (long cream puffs), as well as paris-brest and religieuses (which are just a profiterole with a smaller profiterole on top), and unfilled versions like chouquettes (small unfilled puffs) and gougeres (savory cheese puffs).