Kouign Amann

My friend, Norma again inspired me to pursue more baking with yeast.  She showed me a video of Martha Stewart making Kouign Amann,  which is layered yeast dough.  It looked like a lot of fun, but a challenge.  This would be great to do on a cold snowy day.  You need to appreciate all the phases to get to the wonderful end result,  dense sweet rolls that are delicious and worth the effort.  You can also make other pastries from this dough such as poppy seed snails and cinnamon sugar knots.  We added a little apricot jam in the middle on the Kouign Amann—delicious!!

Rolling the dough with the sugar.

Pinching of the dough.  You can see all the layers!!!

These are a few that were done with the muffin pan.

We tried both the muffin pan and the rings.  

We used the recipe from Martha Stewart.  She has a great video on line that we thought was very helpful.  It was sometimes a bit challenging to find it but if we could locate it on youtube under layered yeast dough or Kouign Amann.

We thought it was successful but I think the next time I would try wet yeast instead of the powder just to see the difference.  I also thought the rings worked wonderfully for this because the dough could flatten out and got crispier than the muffin shape.  I also thought the apricot jam really added to the flavor.

We ended this post with the selected focus version because we liked it too.  We thought the all sharp version made the Kouign Amann look crispier. 

Summertime Peach Pie

Three delicious pies later Priscilla made this. Let’s shoot it!

Seeing Peaches at the farmers market triggered memories of my Mom's and Grandma's summertime peach pies. Priscilla had a peach tree in her backyard in California and loved to eat them fresh. Those triggers were all that Priscilla needed to recreate a delectable summer pie.

We set out to create the aesthetic for the pie… I drew a scene on a napkin (just like we used to get from art directors) and we proceeded to get props and ingredients. Priscilla did the baking …

Our dog Charlotte loves food!  Especially pie!

In the scene with real whip cream.

Behind the scenes...available light but always controlled.

Peach Pie Recipe

This peach pie recipe was given to me by a friend who likes to look at the food blog site called “Smitten Kitchen”.  It is a lovely recipe and I have played around with it through a few pies now.  I just made one adjustment because of personal preference. Instead of doing the boiling process to remove the skins from the peaches, I just peeled the skins.  I found that boiling the peaches make them too mushy by the time the pie is baked.  I guess if you have really firm peaches this process would balance out the firmness of the peaches. But I wanted a firmer peach in the pie. The recipe did say if you wanted a sweeter pie you could use 1/3 cup each of white and brown sugar.  I found that this amount of sugar was just right.  And in the making of the crust I added 1/4 cup of vegetable shortening. To finish I make a wash made of egg and cream and brush it on the crust and then sprinkle large coarse sugar on pie.

Crust—yields two 9 inch 

2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon of granulated sugar

1 Teaspoon of table salt

3/4 Cup of butter

1/4 Cup of vegetable shortening

4 Tablespoons to a 1/2 cup of ice water

Filling

Approximately 6 to 8 peaches

1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup of granulated white sugar

1/3 cup of brown sugar

1/8 Teaspoon of ground cinnamon

A sprinkle of nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon of table salt

And I used the 2 Tablespoon of minute tapioca ground in my coffee grinder (which the recipe suggests).

To finish

2 oz of cream

1 egg

Coarse granulated sugar