“What is it you really want when you want those old things?” It took me a while. Then I thought. The time my Grandma Selma mixed up her canister of scouring powder with the one containing baking soda and served us all mandlebrot cookies that tasted like soap. The way the canisters seemed to float on the counter in the afternoon sun, casting saucer-like shadows as my grandmothers baked, a delicate apron bow tied at their waists. I painted them once, and now that painting is our logo for Antique Recipe Roadshow.

I don’t want to be back in the 1940’s. I know that life wasn’t better, or simpler, or more meaningful then.

What I really want when I want those old things, I realized, is my grandmothers back, alive again. I can’t have that of course. But I can run my fingers over the dents in my vintage ones where maybe someone’s fingers from back then also lingered. These days, my Rubbermaid containers do a better job of keeping my flour air-tight and fresh, but I organize my kitchen counters with an old canister that Laura bought me for my birthday one year, pictured above, by keeping unsightly junk drawer cords and coins in it.

If you’d like a cool old canister to keep your cell phone charger in too, here’s a link to an ebay page where they have some really great ones.

see also: To paint a canister

when I mentioned it to Laura, she said, “Can you believe I have that book too?” One day I found it by serendipity on a shelf at a local bookstore, and was lost in its pages within minutes. If you love poetry, it’s a great gift, and an engaging tea or coffee break companion. So far, every poetry lover I have shown it to has been touched by it and moved to order one of their own. Here are a few lines for you from “The New Wife” by a Chinese poet of the ancient world, Wang Chien (768 - 830)

On the third day she went down to the kitchen,
Washed her hands, prepared the broth.
Still unaware of her new mother’s likings,
She asks his sister to taste.

Translated from the Chinese by J.P. Seaton

“One of the great writers of the twentieth century and one of its great witnesses thought, in the ninth decade of his life, that he ought somehow to make a philosophical reckoning with the world and an aesthetic summing up — a book perhaps, of sober prose at the end of this violent century; instead he decided to gather together poems, to give the world a book of luminous things.”
Robert Hass quoted on the back cover of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz

that piqued my curiosity, so I went spelunking on the internet as I usually do when on the hunt for a certain food or its uses. I found them easily at Whole Foods, so maybe you can too.

I also found to my delight that our gardening zone in the Northeast supports the plants which gardeners report are easy to grow and have enormous yields. I have a teeny garden in my back yard, and Laura has one in her front yard, as some of our readers know from her previous posts. I’m looking forward to ordering some plants here when they ship this spring.

Incidentally the name Jerusalem artichokes may have nothing to do with the city of Jerusalem and more to do with the corruption of the word “girasole” which means “turning to the sun” in Italian. Apparently the small tubers, part of the Sunflower family of plants are also called sunchokes or sun roots in some cultures and have a history reaching back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, possibly having been cultivated first by Native Americans.

If you’re lucky enough to find them near you, here’s a simple recipe.

see also: Tomatoes at my Front Door

eating the biggest meal of the day at lunch and having something light for dinner. Ever since, I often eat cereal at night. It’s light. It’s crunchy. It’s got the icy-cold thirst-quenching splashy slurp of milk. And best of all, it’s fast and makes practically no mess. My son loves it too sometimes. Two bowls. Two spoons. One night off from shopping, shlepping, cooking and cleaning up for Mom. Good for body and soul. Cereal for dinner. I love it.

see also: Why I Love Olives and Oranges

Take off the plastic wrap and brush on the egg wash. I like to double my sheetpans so that the bottoms of the pastries are sure not to burn. Be sure that the croissants are about 2 inches apart.

Bake them until they are golden, 15 minutes. Transfer them to a serving platter with a metal spatula.

You did it!

So what did my son say about his Valentine’s gift of croissant? “Mom these are the most incredible things I’ve ever tasted.” How’s that for kudos?

I hope you had as much fun baking with me as I did posting these day-by-day lessons for you. Please comment using the link above under the title of this post to give me your feedback. What else would you like to learn to make? Think about it while you enjoy your homemade Petit Pains Au Chocolat. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Note: This copyrighted recipe must be printed as it appears. For my tips and detailed instructions, refer back to my three previous posts, links above, and today, Day 4.

Chocolate Croissant
copyright Nick Malgieri, 1985, All Rights Reserved, Revised 3/89, as it appears in my binder from the former Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now I.C.E.)

3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1 ounce yeast or 1 1/2 envelopes dry yeast
3 sticks of butter
3 tablespoons of flour

1. Sift dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
2. Heat milk until just warm and beat the crumbled yeast to dissolve yeast completely.
3. Add milk-yeast to flour mixture and mix with wooden spoon until just blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
4. Knead butter until soft, not oily. Knead in flour and set aside.
5. Roll dough into a rectangle about 1/4-inch thick. Spread butter on bottom 2/3 of dough. Fold top (unbuttered) portion of dough down, and bottom (buttered) portion of dough up. Turn dough until bottom is at right side.
6. Roll dough into a rectangle and fold both ends in toward center. Fold again at center to make 4 layers. Turn dough 90 degrees so the fold is at left and roll again. Fold both ends in toward center and fold again at center. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 4 hours.

Petit Pains au Chocolat

1. Cut rolled croissant dough into rectangles of approximately 4 x 5”.
2. Brush with egg wash and place a few slivers of semisweet chocolate down the center of each rectangle. Fold dough to cover chocolate and seal seam.
3. Invert les petits pains on an ungreased baking sheet to rise until double.
4. Brush with egg wash and bake at 375 - 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

For Plain Croissant

1. Roll dough 1/8-inch thick and cut into triangular shapes. Roll up beginning at base of triangle shapes and place on ungreased baking sheet to rise until double in bulk: 1 - 4 hours depending on temperature.
2. Brush with egg wash and bake at 375 - 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

see also: How To Make Chocolate Croissants Without Taking An Entire Day - Day 3

Place it on a floured surface and sprinkle a little flour onto it so it does not stick while rolling.

Roll it into a rectangle 15” x 20”. Use a ruler if you have one. You want to be able to cut out the croissant easily and evenly. Check to be sure as you roll that the dough is not sticking to the surface by lifting the edges and adding a little flour underneath it if needed.

The dough may resist rolling or spring back smaller as you roll since it is now risen from the yeast and quite elastic. Just gently roll it out again and again until it stretches to the desired size.

Cut five four-inch wide strips across the length of the dough that measures 20”.

Cut three five-inch wide strips across the width of the dough measuring 15”. You should have 15 rectangles.

Mix the egg with 1 teaspoon of water to make an egg wash. Brush the rectangles all over.

Cut up your semi-sweet chocolate into long flat bars. If you have thick chocolate, chop it into smaller pieces to add to the croissant. You can use chips too if you have them.

Place the desired amount of chocolate in the center of each rectangle. Here you see about 10 ounces of chocolate all together divided among the croissant.

Fold the top of the rectangle down about 2/3 of its length, as pictured.

Fold the bottom of the rectangle up to form the croissant. Pinch all edges to seal the dough, using more egg wash for a good seal as needed. Do this well; you do not want your croissant to leak while baking.

Place the croissant on a parchment-paper covered, greased, or nonstick pad-covered sheetpan, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate it again.

Now here’s the exception: If you have time to bake your croissant today, at this point in the recipe you can. Simply leave the croissant out of the fridge on sheetpans with about 2 inches space between them and let them rise until double in size, approximately 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen. Then you can egg wash them again before putting them in the oven and bake them at 375 degrees F. for 15 minutes until golden. Cool them on a rack and serve warm.

Note: Croissant are best eaten the same day, but you can store them in an airtight container. Day-old, they will not have the same texture.

You can also freeze some of the croissant to bake off whenever you wish by placing them, unbaked, on a pan in a single layer in the freezer. When they are frozen through, wrap them in aluminum foil and place them in zip-loc bags. Take them out about an hour or two before you want to bake them off to let them thaw and puff a bit. Then bake as directed above.

I have a small family, so I froze half a dozen of my fifteen, baked off two immediately (my son couldn’t wait!) and refrigerated the other seven. You can divide your unbaked croissant this way too if it suits your lifestyle to do so.

If you are going to wait to bake all your croissant on Valentine’s morning with me, however, then refrigerate them as directed above to let them have their last rise in the refrigerator overnight. See you tomorrow!

see also: How To Make Chocolate Croissants Without Taking An Entire Day - Day 2

to take your butter out about a half hour to an hour ago so that it is still cold but pliable, and not oily or greasy. It is very important that the butter still be cool to the touch, otherwise this next part of the recipe will be extremely difficult and present problems. The butter should be the consistency of cool clay or play-dough - able to be handled but not squishy or warm at all.

When it’s the right temperature, knead it or mix it with a dough hook or paddle attachment on low speed in the bowl of an electric mixer, or by hand with a wooden spoon, until it is still cool and soft but free of lumps.

Now take 3 T. flour and spread it on a wooden pastry board or the surface where you like to roll dough.

Transfer the lump-free, smooth, cool butter from the bowl to the floured surface. Coat the butter with the flour and gently knead it in. If at any point the butter becomes too soft to handle, refrigerate it and come back to work again. If you work quickly however, and your butter was not too warm to begin with, you should not have a problem. Set the butter aside, in the fridge if you think it might start getting too soft during the next step.

Now spread more flour on your work surface if needed. Remove the dough we made yesterday from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on the floured surface. Roll it into a rectangle 1/4 inch thick. It’s not so important what the dimensions of your rectangle are; it’s more important that it be rectangle shaped and 1/4 inch thick. Try to make it look somewhat like mine, above. Let the dough sit while you do the next step.

Place the lump-free, cool butter you prepared between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll it to approximately the size of 2/3 of your dough rectangle.

Take off the top sheet of plastic from the butter and flip the butter onto the dough so that it covers the bottom 2/3 of the dough. Then remove the other sheet of plastic wrap.

It should look like this now.

Fold the top of the dough down, as shown above, so that it comes to the center of the dough.

Fold the bottom of the dough up to meet the top, like this.

Now fold the dough again at center to make four layers. If at any point the dough gets too hot or soft to work with properly, refrigerate it until it is cooler.

Turn the dough so that the fold is at the left, like a book with the binding on the left.

Now repeat, rolling out this folded dough into a rectangle 1/4 inch thick, then folding the top down to the center, the bottom up to the center, and then folding in the center to make the four layers. Turn the dough once more so that the fold is on the left.

Repeat all the steps a third time, from rolling out 1/4 inch thick to turning the dough so that the fold is on the left. These are called, for obvious reasons, “turns” in pastry lingo, and it is these turns that make the yummy buttery layers in croissant dough.

When you have made all three turns of the dough, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it again overnight. Have questions or problems? Use the comments link under the title of this article to write to me.

See you tomorrow!

see also: How To Make Chocolate Croissants Without Taking An Entire Day - Day 1

on measuring flour: lift the flour with your free hand into the cup gently rather than scoop it. Do not shake the cup or you will fill it with too much flour. Level it off with a knife. Try it! You’ll see that you’ll have lighter baked goods if you’ve been a “measuring cup shaker” in the past.

Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and 4 T. of sugar. Whisk it in the same bowl or sift it into another bowl. We pastry chefs are fond of whisking our dry ingredients rather than sifting. Call us creative sifters. Anyway, let’s proceed.

In a separate little cup or bowl, place 1 1/2 one-quarter-ounce-packages dry yeast, (or 3 teaspoons plus 1/4 teaspoon plus 1/8 teaspoon yeast.)

In a liquid measuring cup like this one, pour 1 1/2 cups whole milk.

Pour the milk into a small soup pot and heat over medium-low heat until it is 105 degrees F, or about the temperature of milk for a baby’s bottle if you don’t have a thermometer.

Sprinkle the yeast evenly over the warm milk, off the heat. Let it sit about five minutes, and whisk gently until the yeast is completely dissolved.

Pour the yeast/milk mixture into the flour all at once and stir with a wooden spoon until you have a ragged looking dough. Mix until just incorporated; do not overmix.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight. Have questions or problems? Write to me using the comments link under the title of this post, above.

One last thing: Tomorrow you will need the next ingredient, three sticks of unsalted sweet butter, to be softened at room temperature until it’s pliable and still cool but not oily or greasy for the next part of the recipe. Make sure to take it out of the refrigerator about 1/2 hour to 1 hour before you want to start the next post. See you tomorrow!!

see also: How To Make Chocolate Croissants Without Taking An Entire Day

Nick was generous with his recipes and his support of us students, which continued after we were done with classes. He was always there to write a note of recommendation if needed, provide advice, and offer us employment if he could teaching classes at Kump’s. I taught several classes at the school. I think I learned as much as the students did.

I ultimately left professional baking to pursue my art career first and foremost, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

See you tomorrow for baking chocolate croissant, with a nod to Nick for his incredible recipe and inspiration.

see also: How To Make Chocolate Croissants Without Taking An Entire Day

One correction: Please have one egg available as well as the ingredients I listed for our recipe. You will not need the egg until the third day, Saturday so you have time to get it. It’s for egg wash to seal the croissant before baking. If you do not have an egg and can’t get one before Saturday, no worries. You can use milk or even water instead, just something to moisten the dough so it sticks together. Bakers like the richness and sticking power of egg but any liquid will do.

See you tomorrow!

He hardly needs any more publicity from me.  I’m only jumping on the bandwagon here out of my own sheer exuberance for this recipe.  It is a thrilling discovery.  Here’s how it works: 

You simply mix flour, yeast, salt, and water in an ordinary bowl, and cover it with plastic.  12 to 18 hours later you take it out and shape it.  Then two hours later you bake it in a heavy duty crock with a lid, which captures steam and emulates a brick oven.  Using this method, you can make bread every single day with little effort or cost.  Try it.  You’ll love it.

Here’s the link to the original New York Times article.

And here’s a link to a website that interprets the recipe step by step with photos and some helpful pointers (try to ignore the hideous ads about losing belly fat).

Here’s a link to Lahey’s book.

I exercise daily and don’t eat heavy sweets daily. I do eat my share of dark chocolate daily, but only a small amount and with the awareness that some dark chocolate is believed to be good for you (a development that when it was announced marked one of the happiest days of my life.)

I am also aware that Americans are generally overweight now and have many health problems from over-eating and from sweets in particular. So I would feel uncomfortable with having them too often since I really advocate them on special occasions, or as Michael Pollen, author of, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual says, “No snacks, no seconds, no sweets, except on days that begin with the letter S.”

Pollen is quoted in a very informative article about these issues by Jane Brody for the New York Times. Read the full text here.

Do I indulge when I’m not supposed to, when I have a bad day, when I’m just in the mood for something over-the-top and it’s not the weekend? Yes, I do. Maybe you do too. Nobody’s a saint. Besides, being rigid is boring. But the goal is moderation. So all that said, I hope you do join me in making chocolate croissant for Sunday, Valentine’s Day. I plan on eating a whole one myself. 

see also: Thing of the Day - Last Dance with HoneyBell (Oranges, that is)

with repeated observation and contemplation, much about the artist’s intentions, much about contemporary representational painting, and for jellypress readers, much about how domestic imagery such as a table setting is more than meets the eye.

Looking for images on the Web from the era of WWII and the Depression and the period following it for a new series of paintings in the early part of this decade, Tuymans’ came across a book for housewives from 1954 where he found a photograph supposedly illustrating the perfect table setting. For Tuymans, the image was linked to political, cultural and social issues at the time of being proper, and it echoed other proper forms of the past like ballroom dancing, another image in the series.

The table setting, composed and determined in the face of the darker side of life and in particular, the atrocities of war, is painted in muted tones and loose washes, suggesting with its departure from photographic realism, a more poetic and ambiguous reading than the photographic image would allow. Tuymans’ detractors think his use of hot-button current events is opportunistic. Steel asserts that Tuymans work “seduces visually as it intrigues intellectually” (page 76.) What do you think?

Other artists, such as Hanna von Goeler, have used the perfect table setting as imagery, in von Goeler’s case to contrast with the excesses of the OSS during wartime which she did in an installation of fine crystal and china interspersed with toy trains, photographs and other mementos lit to cast eerie shadows on the walls at Sloan Fine Art in January, 2009.

We’ve all stood over a table and tried to make it perfect at one time or another, yes? What were we hoping to communicate? A sense of calm in the midst of an imperfect world? An oasis of beauty to separate and elevate a special event from the humdrum of ordinary life?

Next time you’re laying out the good china, think about it.

see also: Thing of the Day - Cezanne