Oct 21 2008
New bread book, again with DVD
On Sunday I went out to hunt for a spice mixture and found nothing in the end. I did learn that the new Jenners food hall is a travesty of absurd proportions, which apparently only sells whisky and shortbread. And you know how hard they are to buy in Edinburgh. But no Ras el Hanout in the shops nearest the flat. Which is really annoying, because I saw some in Lupe Pintos on Saturday afternoon but thought we already had some…
On the way home after my failure of a shopping trip, I hid from the rain in Waterstones and picked up a copy of Crust, the sequel to Dough by Richard Bertinet. Bread porn!
Last night I sat down to watch the included DVD, which has a guide to making a sourdough ferment, a sourdough bread, and brioche. Brioche! Ah, how incredibly fat I could get eating brioche… there has got to be some reason I can invent for me to make a batch of brioche. They looked like a lot of work but were rather beautiful in the end, so I’ll have to come up with an excuse, however tenuous.
(In a related situation, I haven’t yet made the doughnuts from Dough. I need some hearty appetites to feed and a way to heat oil to the right temperature. We don’t have a chip fryer and when we made fried goujons and later calamari we were a bit hit-and-miss with the temperature of the oil. We don’t have a thermometer that would cope with that kind of heat.)
There are still many recipes from Dough that I want to try, so I certainly won’t be abandoning it. Crust instead has more unusual breads — like the afrementioned brioche, as well as bagels and pretzels — rather than the everyday stuff. There are also more tips that help to clarify a lot of what was written in the first book, and presumably teaching tips he’s learned since opening his school in Bath. Crust seems to be a very good complement to Dough in that regard: more focus on technique, theory and longer, more complicated recipes. You can feel free to learn what you can from the “difficult” book but apply that to the more straightforward recipes in the other.
The temperature this morning was colder than I would have wanted. At some point I think Christmas might happen. And there are a selection of heartier loaves that I’ve been leaving off until the weather begins to get this way. I even owe Nick a loaf of something that I can’t recall. It was brown with interesting things in it — shallots may have been one of the ingredients. (But then again he owes us about a million cooked meals by now so I probably shouldn’t feel too guilty.) Time to buy in another load of flour and crank up the oven…
Raises hand
I have a hearty appetite. I also have a candy thermometer…
Huzzah!
Thermometers are for the weak! I have made the doughnuts 4 times, each time without recourse to a thermometer for the oil temperature. The doughnut, when placed gently in the oil should sizzle and float immediately (puffing up quite a bit) rather than sinking and coming to the top. As he says, this takes about 15 mins of oil heating.
Be warned, 30 doughnuts seems like a lot: however it’s only 7 each between 4. You will want more.
One word of warning about Crust: I feel that the recipe for sourdough asks for too much water: I find the bread works best with 580 – 600 mls, rather than the 650 he specifies.
The bagels are also good.
only seven, between four? Blimey. Perhaps you are just preparing nick for the awful truth. Or giving him a subtle hint that if he doesn’t bring a friend he’ll get ten! a whole TEN doughnuts.
I’ve even acquired syringes for D to fill the damned things with. So we’ll just have to get cooking!
As far as syringes go, I found them rather messy (I got Rory to acquire some from engineering stores) although you can measure out your portions of crème patissière exactly. For the second batch I got a piping bag and just piped stuff in until the doughnuts noticeably expanded in size :).
Also, the quantity of crème patissière the recipe in the back of Dough makes is overly ample for 30 doughnuts. I found 1 1/2 times enough for 60 (or equivalently, 3/4 is enough for 30). This is unless you just want some left over to eat on its own: this is entirely justified.
I can handle ten (TEN!) doughnuts. Bring it on! I don’t know about this crème patissière business, though…
Yeah, you say that Nick, you say that … but can you really handle it? Or are you all talk and no stomach?
Crap. Took me a while to spot the follow up.
Yes. I totally can.
But I can also bring a friend if required, thus alleviating you of the need to watch me vomit all over your kitchen floor around doughnut 9.
Dude, if you’re going to vomit on doughnut nine and then come back for the tenth, I’m going to borrow a DV camera and make you a YouTube star! ;-)
Hi, I was hoping since you have both of Bertinet’s books, you could indicate the differences in the DVD’s.
Thanks in advance, Meryl
Meryl, as I said above the DVD for Crust concentrates on more complex and longer recipes, for sourdough breads and brioche. The Dough DVD has basic instructions and I would definitely recommend Dough for a beginner, much more than Crust which would be a bit daunting.