Strawberry Tart with Citrus Cognac Custard

June is starting off right. The sky is impossibly blue, the pollen count has finally gone down, and the summer fruits are starting to pour in. Eleta (of Bungalow Kitchen) and I took some time early Thursday morning to perform that great rite of Southern summer passage – strawberry picking.

I wasn’t kidding about that sky.

We made our way to Elliott Farms for a u-pick bonanza of Bibb County’s most glorious berries and each walked away with about 10lbs of fruit (priced at a steal of $2.50/lb). I’ve had a tart pan sitting unused in my kitchen for months now, so I immediately thought of a yummy strawberry tart. Because I trust the dear Contessa on her baked goods far more than, say, a certain blonde convicted federal offender whose recipes never turn out, I leaned heavily on Ina Garten for this tartventure. I wanted more flavor than simply a basic custard, though, and thought strawberries and grapefruit went quite nicely together. We will divide this into shell and filling, because they really are totally separate until the 5 minutes before serving.

Shell Ingredients (for one 8″ tart, but can also be divided to make 4 individual portions)

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 tbsp cold butter, cut into about a 1/4″ dice
• 2 tbsp shortening, chilled
• 1/4 cup ice water
• aluminum foil and dry rice or beans for weight

For this grand crusty adventure, I got to use both of my favorite mighty kitchen tools – the KitchenAid stand mixer and the ancient and all-powerful Cuisinart food processor. Both weigh about the same…

Muahaha!!!

First, the food processor. Sift your dry ingredients into a small bowl. Ina says to freeze this for 30 minutes, but I’m not quite sure why since the flour doesn’t really get all that cold… Maybe it’s to remove any excess moisture? *shrug* Fill up the food processor with the flour, diced butter, and shortening. Give it a good whirl until the butter and shortening are evenly distributed in small bits throughout, then sloooooooowly pour the cold water in until the dough looks almost pellet-like. It will be very sticky and should come together in a ball in your hand with little pressure. Do just that, and shape the ball into a disc about 1-2″ thick on a VERY well floured surface (this shit is super sticky). Wrap the disc in plastic wrap or parchment paper and chill it for 30 minutes minimum, but more if you’d like. You can make the cream filling while you wait or do it later while the shell is cooling. Totally up to you. Preheat thy oven to 375*.

Once you’ve chilled your disc of dough, roll it out (again, VERY well floured surface) to about a 1/4″ thickness.

Like so.

Carefully lift the dough and center it over your tart pan. Fit it in without stretching it too much – you want the crust to stay that thick so it holds itself up after baking. The easy way to trim off the edges at this point is simply to roll your rolling pin over the pan and take off the excess cookie cutter-style.

Et voila.

Carefully place a sheet of foil (buttered, buttery side down) into your shell and fill with dry rice, beans, or pie weights if you’re lucky enough to own some. This will keep the shell from rising up in the center and ruining your lovely flat surface or, perish the thought, cracking. The rice and beans will be fine to keep afterwards; just put them in a container and let them cool off.

Silly but necessary.

Bake it up for 10 minutes (I recommend putting it on a baking sheet for easier transfer), then carefully remove the foil (please don’t dump rice into your partially cooked tart shell…) and bake again for 20 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Take it out and let it cool completely. I tented my shell with foil after it was cool and kept it for a day before using it. It was still perfect.

Tender and buttery and perfect.

ONTO THE CUSTARD!!!

Citrus Cognac Custard Ingredients

• 5 egg yolks, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups, plus 1 tbsp kept separate, whole milk
• 1 tsp citrus zest (I used grapefruit because I still have a ton, but lemon might be easier for you)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp Cognac (please don’t cook with anything you wouldn’t drink)
• 1 tbsp butter

Here is where the KitchenAid comes in. Using the paddle attachment, mix the yolks and sugar on medium speed until it gets thick, fluffy, and pale yellow. It should take somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes. Slow it down and evenly sprinkle in the cornstarch.

This is what you’re going for.

In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk (minus the extra tablespoon) and the zest together until it’s hot but not burning or boiling. Strain out the zest and get the milk into a pour-friendly container. Painfully slowly, so as to avoid curdling, pour the milk into the fluffy egg party (speed still on low). It will turn out looking like pre-gelled pudding. Throw this into a pot and get ready to watch it like a hawk. Cook it over medium heat, whisking constantly. Seriously, I mean constantly. This custard will turn from liquid to solid pudding mass in the time it takes you to blink. I thought I ruined it when I stepped away to take a sip of water.

Here there be custard.

At this stage, remove it from the heat and quickly whisk in the vanilla, Cognac, butter, and reserved tablespoon of milk. Once the butter pat has melted in, push the custard through a strainer to get any chunky bits you may have missed with the whisk. It will ruin the consistency later if you don’t. Chill it up, with plastic wrap directly on the top to avoid getting a skin, until you’re ready to serve.

You can really put anything on top of this tart, but obviously I picked this specifically to use with my strawberries. So Slice up about a cup of berries any way you want – halves, thin slices, chunks, whatever! No more than an hour or two before serving, smooth the custard into the tart shell and artfully arrange your berries on top. Remove carefully from the tart pan (it should be very easy if your shell came out correctly) and slice with a very sharp knife. Enjoy with or without whipped cream (I’m looking at you, Ivy Cadle).

So many tart puns, so little time.

Crunchy Molasses Cookies: an “Oops, I Baked” installment

This afternoon, I fully embraced the summer sunshine and went on a glorious (though fairly monotonous) bike ride through Central City Park. As a logical reward for my mild exercise and Vitamin D intake, I of course came home, drank a beer on my porch, and baked a batch of cookies. Makes sense, right? Right.

Some friends and I got into a discussion of our favorite types of cookies, which is always a dangerous thing but especially so on an empty stomach, doubly so when you have the ingredients on hand to bake said cookies. I went for a tried and true favorite of mine – molasses cookies. Usually I’m a softer cookie kind of gal. I like my chocolate chip cookies crispy on the bottom but still soft enough to bend instead of break in half. Not so with molasses cookies, though. These babies I like extra crunchy, which is exactly what this recipe will give you. I find molasses to have an incredibly intoxicating smell, to the point where it raises the hairs on my arms. If you, like me, can manage to set the jar aside long enough to complete the recipe, these tasty morsels will be well worth your effort.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp. molasses
• 4 tbsp. butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp. ground almonds (optional, but adds an interesting texture)

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Try to ignore just how much sugar is used in proportion to everything else.

Not a low-calorie food…

Warm the molasses and butter in a small pan just until the butter has melted. Inhale the glorious molasses fumes.

Is it just me here?

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and insert egg yolk and molasses-butter concoction. With a spoon, vigorously mix your ingredients together. You’ll have to smoosh the spoon against the side of the bowl for a while to get a consistently blended mixture. The dough should be soft enough that it sticks together when you press it but still dry enough that it appears crumbly.

Like so.

Flour a large surface, form the dough into a rough ball with your hands, and roll it out to between 1/4″ and 1/2″ thick, depending on how crunchy you want your cookies to be in the end. Free-hand if you will, or use a cookie cutter to make amusing shapes. I used a 2″x1″ owl-shaped cookie cutter and ended up with 24 cookies. Line your cookies up on a greased baking sheet, prick them gently with a fork, and chill for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375*.

Once the cookies have chilled up, bake them for 12 minutes or until they’ve just set up, no more. Quickly transfer the still-warm cookies to a cooling rack, where they will harden up rapidly.

Crunch crunch. See those bits of almond?

Once they’re totally cool (it doesn’t take long), you can throw some glaze on them if you want. Mix 3/4 cup of powdered sugar with 2-3 tbsp. milk, half and half, heavy cream, whatever you have until smooth. Adjust the consistency so it drizzles slowly off the back of a spoon but doesn’t run straight off. Decorate at will. Savor as is or dunk quickly in coffee or tea for a real treat.

m”owl”asses cookies (stop me, please)

The Sourdough Saga Concludes: Bread for Daaaaaaays

You guys, I’m seriously never eating store-bought bread again. After many trials and tribulations, moments of panic and sparks of joy, we have come so far from Day 1 of this Sourdough Saga to this shining moment of truth. TODAY, WE BAKE! (Ok, I baked on Friday morning, but it’s been a long weekend of, well, eating.)

On Thursday evening, I fed my dear baby starter for the last time. Then I began to plan my morning. I’ve spent the past week researching different sourdough recipes. The first step was deciding between loaves and baguettes. For baguettes you really need either a very large linen to help them keep their shape while baking or one of those fancy-schmancy baguette pans. I had neither readily accessible, so I decided on two decently sized loaves – one for me and one for my sweet friend who gave me the cookbook that started it all.

Let’s get a little bit science-y before we dive straight into the baking. Specifically, what makes sourdough bread so sour? We’ve already talked about the science of yeast, carbohydrates, and the fermentation process here. When the starter is fermenting, the bacteria inside it (did I not mention bacteria breaking down the sugars last time? oh… well, don’t think about them either) produce two types of acids – lactic acid and acetic acid. Lactic acid is what lends a slightly sour taste to things like yogurt and cheeses, and is also used in some beers. Acetic acid is the acidic component of vinegar, and has a much stronger sour taste. The fermentation in sourdough naturally produces more lactic acid than acetic acid, so if you want that puckering tang in your loaf you have to get your dough to produce more acetic than lactic acid. Acetic acid has a much lower freezing point than lactic acid (let’s not go too far into that lest we get lost in chemistry), so this can be achieved by refrigerating the dough overnight before the real work begins, thus allowing the acetic acids to develop slowly and putting a hold on the lactic acids. SCIENCE!

Ok, back to baking. I wanted a not-too-sour, dense loaf for this first attempt. Save getting fancy for a later date. I settled on a variation of King Arthur Flour’s rustic sourdough recipe. Like I’ve said before said, I am ever loyal to the brand. AND HERE IS WHY! I may or may not have mentioned that my two starters together have consumed close to 8lbs of bread flour over the past week and a half. When I went to feed them for the last time on Thursday night, I opened my bag of flour and my eyes widened when I realized that there was a scant 1/3 cup left in the bottom. Oh. Shit. I immediately thought that I was about to kill my starter on the eve of its great debut. Then I turned over the flour bag and discovered a glorious thing: the King Arthur Flour Baking Hotline.

Baking. Hotline. OMG.

Yes, without shame I picked up my phone at 8:30pm and placed a call to Vermont. A lovely woman named Mary Ellen answered the phone after one ring and chatted me through the fact that I could use any flour I wanted in my starter and it would be fine. She also detailed how best to store it and the many different ways she had attempted to kill her own starter “just to see if I could do it!” Apparently it is significantly harder than I imagined. If you’re at all a West Wing aficionado, you have already guessed what video I’m about to post. Because this wonderful moment in my life was precisely like this:

Crisis averted! Thanks, Mary Ellen and all the wonderful folks in Norwich, VT!

After plotting out exactly how much time each step of the bread-making would require, I reverted to my trusty Google calendar to keep me straight.

No bueno…

After realizing that I needed to be awake enough to have reasonable amounts of coordination by 5:30am, I promptly dicked around on the internet for far too long before falling asleep. You know, the usual.

Fast-forward to the morning. Up before the sun, sleep blurring my eyes, I stumbled to the kitchen in my Eat More Kale tee (it seemed appropriate) and began to work. I uncovered my sourdough starter with trepidation (I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Mary Ellen) and found a beautifully bubbly mix ready to get to work!

Phew!

Ingredients

• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 4 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. dry yeast (yes, the starter will rise on its own, but not so quickly as if you add more yeast)
• 1 1/2 cups warm water

Cream the yeast in a bit of the warm water, then mix it in with the rest. Mix your dry ingredients thoroughly, then combine absolutely everything into a large bowl. Knead by hand or use the dough hook on your mixer until it is smooth. Cover with a clean kitchen cloth and let it rise for an hour and a half. Take a short nap during this step.

Poof!

Take your risen dough and divide it however many ways you’d like, remembering that you need to adjust baking time depending on the size of your loaves. As I said, I turned this into two oval loaves perfect for morning toast. Place your loaves on a parchment-covered baking sheet, re-cover with your clean kitchen towel, and let them rise again for another hour. Preheat your oven to 425* while you’re doing this, lest you forget later.

All grown up.

If you prefer a plain-topped loaf, simply mist them all over with warm water. If you want to add an embellishment like sesame seeds, make an egg wash and brush the top before sprinkling. Slash deeply and with a flourish, then pop in the oven for 30 minutes. Near the end of the baking time, check constantly for burning.

Someone please invent Smell-o-vision now.

I could have let mine go a bit longer for a crunchier crust, but I needed to let them cool during my 10am meeting before delivering the gift loaf. I also did not slash quite deeply enough to get that nice expansive bit in the middle. Lessons for next time. Because of its short rising time, you will get a nice dense crumb in this loaf instead of those big airy pockets that many people associate with traditional sourdough.

Oh mama!

I prefer a denser loaf for spreading liberally with jam and not getting it on one’s pants. Do just that. Or be like my friend and tear into the loaf with your hands before ransacking the work fridge for tiny packets of butter to glob on with reckless abandon. And really, nothing could have made me happier than to see that sight. Either way, enjoy!

*chomp*

Fennel Bread and The Sourdough Saga: Day 1

Baking bread is a new-found passion of mine. It always sounded so crazy that it seemed like something only old women in log cabins would attempt to achieve. I had no idea how wrong I was. Baking bread is delightful! I think Macon is absolutely missing out by not having a reliable source for freshly baked bread (Panera doesn’t count…). If I had the start-up funds, you bet your butts I’d be hanging out a bakery shingle downtown somewhere. But in the meantime, I’ll be satisfied with kneading away on my kitchen counter.

I haven’t had a lot of time lately for breads that require overnight rises and all-day prep. That’s why I was delighted to come across a delicious bread that can be completed, mix to mouth, in under 3 hours! Behold, fennel bread. This delightful loaf can be made into one large oval or six hearty buns for sharing or gifting to friends who invite you over for delicious Sunday brinner.

Ingredients

• 4 cups unbleached bread flour (I’m a King Arthur purist, having visited the factory in Vermont and been made a loyal convert)
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed or finely chopped, plus more whole seeds for sprinkling
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 3/4 oz. fresh yeast (or one packet/2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast, which is so much more convenient)
• 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
• 2 tbsp. melted butter
• 1 egg white
• pinch of salt

Grease up a baking sheet and set it aside. If you have a KitchenAid or the like with a dough hook (bless my mother for giving me hers when she had no counter space for it), just work right in the mixing bowl. Otherwise, get a big bowl and mix the flour, salt, crushed fennel seeds, and sugar very well. In a small bowl, mix the yeast with just enough of the water to cream it together, then add the rest of the water and stir. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the yeast-water in the center. Take your finger or a small spoon and mix in just enough flour to make a soupy sort of pancake batter. Sprinkle a little bit more of the flour on top of the liquid, cover the bowl with a clean cloth, and leave it for 30 minutes until the yeast-water turns to a sponge and begins to bubble.

Add the melted butter and mix it all together. If you’re using that holiest of dough hooks, turn it on and let it work its magic until the dough is smooth and elastic. Otherwise, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until it’s the same. You may need to add a bit more water while you’re kneading. That’s fine. Just add it in tiny amounts so it doesn’t turn to mush. Form the dough into a ball and stick it in a lightly oiled bowl covered with also-oiled plastic wrap for about an hour until it’s doubled.

Gently knock the dough back down, shape it into either an oval or your six biggie-large buns, and let it/them rise on the pre-oiled baking sheet for another 30 minutes until they’ve doubled again. Start preheating your oven to 425*.

Mix the egg white and the salt together and brush over the dough, then sprinkle with the whole fennel seeds as much as you’d like. Get yourself a sharp non-serrated knife and confidently slash the top once across.

For one oval loaf: bake 20 minutes at 425*, then turn the heat down to 350* and bake for 10 minutes more, until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

For six jumbo buns: instead of 20 minutes, give them about 15  at 425* but keep checking to make sure the tops don’t get too brown, then finish them up at 350* for 10 minutes just like the oval.

Cool on a wire rack, then enjoy with good butter, some prosciutto and mozzarella, or make a tasty sharp white cheddar sammich. Or, you know, just devour it greedily on its own.

Seedy joy.

 

Also in this post, the beginning of my adventure in making my own sourdough starter. This may be overly ambitious of me, but I like a challenge. My dear friend Keith gave me “Le Pain Quotidien: cook +book, memories and recipes” a month or so ago, and I have treasured reading it. It’s a combination of history, family, and sensory memories, interspersed with delightful recipes that read like stories. They detail the glorious sourdough starter that makes the bakery’s famous bread – an eleven day labor of love that involves adding approximately 2/3 cup flour and 1/3 cup water every morning and evening like clockwork, carefully dividing and nurturing the fermenting grains. I have finally started the process and, with any luck, will not forget to add each day. Here’s proof that I’ve begun! Now you get to hold me accountable.

Dun dun dunnnn…