Pastry Chef School: Twice-Baked Croissants, Babka, Danish, Bread Cakes
“All you knead is bread”
This week in pastry school we baked Danishes, twice-baked croissants, twice-baked brioche, Japanese Milk Bread, Babka, Bee Sting cake, Tropezienne cake, Sugar tarts and more. I really appreciated the emphasis on using extra dough and stale product.
We started out our week by making Twice-Baked Croissants. The reason they’re twice-baked is because… they’re stale day old croissants that need to be refreshed. Letting croissants go stale means they lose moisture overnight which makes them easier to cut for the twice-baked appearance.
How to make twice-baked almond croissants? Take a day old croissant and cut length-wise. The cut isn’t meant to divide the croissant perfectly in half, but rather create a “hat”. Dip both parts of the croissants in a syrup (e.g. rum syrup, vanilla syrup) for 2–3 seconds and let excess syrup drip out. Fill the croissants with moist filling (e.g. frangipane, almond cream, etc) and add some almond slices. Put the croissant “hat” back on, add more frangipane on top and decorate with almond slices. Baked at 325°F until the right colour.
We also made Bostock (twice-baked brioche) this week. Bostock is made from stale brioche cut into 1/2" slices and refreshed. To make bostock cut old brioche, soak in liquid, cover in moist filling and decorate.
How to make this passion fruit bostock? make a 2:1 sugar:water syrup with 5% almond meal and enough passion fruit puree to make the passion fruit the main flavour. Soak the brioche until completely soaked but not soggy (2–4m) and let rest on rack dripping excess liquid. Pipe hazelnut-ginger cream made out of butter, sugar, hazelnut meal, praline and egg on top of the soaked brioche. Decorate with chopped hazelnuts and bake.
These Whole Wheat Croissants tasted great and looked great. The dough substitutes a third of the bread flour with whole wheat flour. The reason the layers aren’t as well-defined is because all that extra germ and bran weighs down the dough making the layers less distinct during baking. It’s worth it because the flavour is great.
The butter block for these weights about 30% of the total weight of the dough.
This week we also made Danish dough for the first time. I’ve made Danishes before from Puff pastry and the main difference being that puff pastry does’t have yeast. Puff pastry is leavened just by butter where Danish dough has yeast as-well. I’ve also made Danishes from Croissant dough and the main difference there being that Danishes have 40%+ total-weight butter in the butter block where croissants dough max out at 30%. Because of the high-percentage of butter in the dough we used Osmotolerant yeast.
How to proof a danish dough? With this being a direct laminted dough we shaped the dough first, added fillings, proofed at 80°F and then baked off. If we proofed at more than 80°F we risk the butter leaking from the dough.
This week we also made Japanese Milk Bread. It’s basically a simple pain au lait (milk bread) but with two important differences: shaping and using a Tangzhong. To shape cut the dough into 250g pieces, flatten out to a rectangle, roll up in a spiral and place three of those spirals spaced apart in a loaf pan. That’s how we get those three beautiful ridges.
What’s a Tangzhong? In french lingo it’s a “water rough” with just flour and milk whisked together to 149°F until the starches gelate. By doing that we denature that bit of gluten but more importantly let the starches swell and not have to compete with other ingredients for liquid. Using a Tangzhong in the main dough makes for a fluffy spongy bread.
This week we baked off this Cinnamon Babka. The dough itself is a simple enriched direct dough made with instant yeast and even a bit of baking powder. The dough is floor fermented for 45m and then refrigerated overnight. The filling is butter & sugar creamed together, eggs, almond flour, pastry flour, a ton of cinnamon and folded with pastry cream.
How to shape babka? Roll out dough to 2–3mm thick to a large rectangle, spread filling with offset, and roll up as a spiral. Cut the spiral length-wise in the center and braid both halves together. Place in a large oiled loaf pan on parchment paper and bake at 350°F until 185°F in the center.
This Tropezienne is so visually overwhelming. The “cake” is a brioche dough bouled up and placed in a 14" circular pan, left to proof, egg washed, sprinkled with pearl sugar and baked. It was then cut in half, soaked in citrus syrup and piped full with a white chocolate ganache.
What was in the citrus syrup? 1:1:1:3 ratio of orange juice, lime juice, grapefruit juice and simple syrup and then cold infused with scraped vanilla pods. We gently brushed the bottom cake with this citrus syrup.
Recipe here:
This Bee String is so pretty. The dough itself is brioche dough, with an almond topping and pastry cream filling. To make this cake we took 1.2kg of brioche, rolled it out to the size of a half sheet, and left to ferment in a half-sheet with parchment. We then gently spread the topping with an offset, baked off at 350°F, cut in half and piped full of pastry cream.
What’s in that beautiful Bee Sting topping? It’s a cooked mixture of 1:1:1:1:1/4 ratio of cream, butter, sugar, sliced almond and honey. The mixture is thick like honey so it has to be spread gently to avoid deflating the already proofed brioche dough.
These Sugar Tarts are a great example of what to do with scraps. They’re made from 150g of brioche scraps, bouled, flattened in the center like a pizza and pressed to create a 1.5" well in the center. It’s then filled with a 1:1 egg : sugar mixture, sprinkled with half that weight in butter, and aggressively covered with sugar all over. It’s then baked in a 350°F oven until lightly caramelized.
Read more about my adventure in pastry school by reading about last week’s adventures with Croissants:
