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

Bakers and cooks are always telling people, “Oh, you can do this recipe ahead, or in small steps over the course of a few days,” but they never really explain this. Few people know what this means. It’s overwhelming. So this is a bake-with-me post. It’s no mystery and it’s not that hard. All you need is a guide and a little gumption.

Here’s the plan:

Get your ingredients before next Wednesday, February 10th.

We’ll make the dough next Thursday, February 11th and refrigerate it.

We’ll add the butter and learn to fold it in on Friday, February 12th.

Then Saturday, February 13th, we’ll roll out and shape the croissant.

If all goes well, we have them for brunch on Sunday morning, February 14th, Valentine’s Day.

I’m giving you this heads-up to get your ingredients.
Are you game? Good. Here’s your ingredient list:

2 cups flour
4 T. sugar
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 envelopes of dry yeast
3 sticks sweet unsalted butter
extra flour for rolling
1 egg, for egg wash
your favorite semi-sweet chocolate - the amount depends on how stuffed with chocolate you like your croissant. For me, I buy at least 8 - 12 ounces.
You also may want to have a quick-read thermometer handy unless you are good at guessing the temperature of warm milk by description (in this case it will need to be warm like a baby’s bottle - 105 degrees F.)

See you next week!

To access all four posts showing How To Make Chocolate Croissant Without Taking An Entire Day, click the links here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

to order them before they sing their “swan song.” Then they won’t be available until next year for a few short weeks as always. Fresh. Bright. Full of vitamin C. We could use that in the middle of a north-eastern winter, no?

how little data seems to be available about what Americans actually spend on what they eat. Yet this is one area where the variance is enormous.

Instead of actual numbers, I found a prescriptive chart from the U.S.D.A. chart which offers guidelines for food costs ranging from “thrifty” and “low cost” to “moderate” and “liberal.” (Turns out my family is moderate, uh, mostly.)

Of course, the food evangelists’ big complaint about Americans is that they should spend more for better food, investing in fresh fruit and vegetables.  I don’t think they’d be happy with the menu items for the U.S.D.A.’s fictional $575-a-month “thrifty” family, which is the government’s baseline for minimally adequate nutrition.  For the same size family, a “liberal” food budget is $1140.  But consider why people chose (or must) save on food.  Food is the one area where people have some control.  Mortgage, car payments, etc. are fixed.  But food has a huge range in cost depending on where you shop, what you buy, and how much or how little you decide to invest in it. The thrifty family spends $565 less per month than the liberal one, and that adds up to a $33,000 difference over five years.  Wow. 

If you want to see where your food budget falls in the scheme of things.  Take a look here at the USDA food plans for November 2009.  Meanwhile, I’d like to find out what was in that $575 menu.

It wasn’t too hard, to be truthful as most shepherd’s pies are made basically the same way: meat, either lamb or beef, is seared, then vegetables and herbs are added followed by a spoonful of flour and deglazing with wine, broth, or worcestershire sauce (and sometimes all three) while potatoes are mashed with butter and milk which are then used to top the stew. The whole pot gets baked until the bottom is bubbly and the top is browned. All I had to do was cull the recipes until I grokked the basic pattern, then used the flavors I love in stews to concoct the one that I remembered from childhood. You can read the old recipes we dug up along the way. 

I did make one unorthodox addition. Want to know what it is? Here’s the recipe:

One Badass Shepherd’s Pie
Note: The optional addition of celery root, though not traditional, adds a bright flavor to the mashed potatoes and the stew. Try it!

1 T. olive oil
2 pounds of boneless lamb stew meat, cut into one-inch pieces
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 stalks celery, chopped
5 carrots, peeled and sliced on the diagonal
1 pint mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 large shallot
salt and pepper to taste
1//2 t. dried thyme or 1 t. fresh thyme, chopped
1 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup beef broth, and more if necessary
1 T. tomato paste
1 T. worcestershire sauce
1 large celery root, peeled and cut into matchsticks (cut the root into slices, then stack them and slice into sticks) optional but recommended
6 medium yukon gold, or yellow baking potatoes (or your favorite potato for mashing)
4 T. sweet unsalted butter
1/2 cup or more milk (lowfat is fine, even skim, depending on how much fat you like in your mashed potatoes)
1/2 cup or more chicken stock
1 T. or more olive oil, enough to flavor potatoes
frozen or fresh peas, optional

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot (preferably an ovenproof one) over medium-high heat. Add the meat and let it brown on all sides, stirring, about 5 - 6 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, mushrooms, shallot and salt and pepper to taste, and thyme. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the flour and stir to combine. Let the mixture cook until it thickens and reduces, and the flour and meat juices begin to brown on the bottom of the pot. Don’t let it burn, but do let the flour and juices brown, stirring and scraping the bottom as needed. This is where the dark color and flavor of the gravy will begin to develop. When the juices reduce until the bottom of the pot has brown bits of flour and reduced sauce clinging to it, deglaze the pot with the wine, broth, tomato paste and worcestershire sauce. Scrape the bottom of the pot once the liquids are in there to incorporate all the brown bits on the bottom of the pot. Cover the pot, turn the heat to low, and let the stew cook about 15 minutes more, adding more broth as necessary to keep the mixture moistened. It should be the consistency of stew - liquid but not thin and soupy. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
3. Meanwhile, steam the potatoes and the celery root in a covered double boiler or covered in the microwave oven until they are tender when pierced with a fork. Set aside about 1 cup of the celery root to add to the stew. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk or in a bowl with a masher, mash the potatoes and remaining celery root together, adding the butter, milk, chicken stock and olive oil until the potatoes are the consistency of buttercream frosting - able to hold their shape but not too thick and dry. The proportion of broth, oil, milk and butter in the potatoes is really up to you. For more healthful mash, add more broth and olive oil and use skim milk. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Press through a food mill if you have one and desire smooth mashed potatoes. Otherwise they will be chunky.
4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Transfer the stew to an ovenproof container, add the reserved celery root, and the peas if using, and top it with the mashed potatoes, spreading the potatoes evenly with a spatula. Bake for 20 minutes until the stew is bubbly and the potatoes are browned. Serve immediately.

I had the pleasure of standing before this painting recently when it was included in a show at a local museum. Here is the glowing light emanating like sunlit honey from the dabbed and layered surfaces of the fruit.

There are the planes of color, sometimes as many as four or five hues in every square inch, that speak of Cezanne’s revolutionary approach to defining form with color and his powerfully contemplative working method of taking over a hundred sittings to complete a painting. There is the poetic line, now ivory black, now deepest ultramarine, on its quest for unchartered territory, embedded in memory, mined from the subconscious. One line in particular held me captive: it is the one that strives to delineate the form of a peach but hovers slightly above it. In its empty arc I can feel Cezanne’s rebellion, his inclusion of the truth in all its contradictions — its ennobling beauty and leveling ugliness. Most of all I admire Cezanne’s refusal to color in this wayward line and take away even a fraction of the wide open space it fronts like a gateway constructed of the intimate body of small peachy flesh opening to its vast soul. A space that is most convincing of course, in its ability to allow for the truth of domestic space — it’s mess and drudgery as well as its beauty.

see also: Thing of the Day — Chardin

Nancy loved Shepherd’s Pie in her childhood and wants to retrieve it.  This weekend she’s going to test the first one, and soon she’ll share the results.

The origins of this rib-sticking dish go back to the great pie baking traditions of medieval England where meat was cooked with dried fruit spices
and fruit inside a “coffin” of pastry dough.  Pie was originally a form of food preservation before refrigeration. 

Enter the potato, brought back from the New World.  The possibilities were enormous for thickening stews and soups and adding heft.  In the following recipe, the great 18th century writer Hannah Glasse inches us toward Shepherd’s Pie by giving a recipe for a traditional spiced meat pie with pastry--plus potatoes. See it here:

“To Make a very fine Sweet lamb or Veal Pye.
Season your Lamb with Salt, Pepper, Cloves, Mace and Nutmeg, all beat fine, to your Palate. Cut your Lamb, or Veal, into little Pieces, make a good Puff-paste Crust, lay it into your Dish, then lay in your Meat, strew on it some stoned Raisins and Currans clean washed, and some Sugar; then lay on it some Forced-meat Balls made sweet, and in the Summer some Artichoke-bottoms boiled, and scalded Grapes in the Winter. Boil Spanish Potatoes cut in Pieces, candied Citron, candied Orange, and Lemon-peel, and three or four large Blades of Mace; put Butter on the Top, close up your Pye, and bake it. Have ready against it comes out of the Oven a Caudle [thick drink] made thus: Take a Pint of White Wine, and mix in the Yolks of three Eggs, stir it well together over the Fire, one way, all the time till it is thick; then take it off, stir in Sugar enough to sweeten it, and squeeze in the Juice of a Lemon; pour it hot into your Pye, and close it up again.Send it hot to table.” 
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse [London:1747]Chapter VIII, “Of Pies.”

Not long after we begin to see recipes that do away with the pastry crust entirely in favor of potatoes.  What a smart idea. Less work and a much simpler (and lighter . . . maybe) repast. 

Click here for Nancy’s final version of modern Shepherd’s Pie you can make with success. 

see also: Calling All Recipe Detectives — Shepherd’s Pie

Some of the shepherd’s pie recipes I’ve seen have potatoes on the bottom as well as the top, like a sweet pie with a filling, but the one I loved only had the potatoes on top. Cutting through the mashed potatoes was like slicing through perfect meringue. That was the trick of it; the mashed were light and rich but held their shape. The meat mixture beneath was somewhere between the reddish brown of burnt sienna and the cool darkness of burnt umber with dabs of orange carrots and green peas and celery mixed throughout. If you’ve got a lead, please use the comments link above to send it to me. In the meantime, you can find me trying to warm up by painting pictures lit with what I can capture of the elusive sun or wrapped up in a quilt looking up the history of this wonderful dish.

Want to see my favorite final recipe for Shepherd’s Pie right now? Click here.