Hey world. So. I haven’t posted in a while.
I have a somewhat pressure-filled job as a competitive show choir director, and January and February are STRESSFUL for me. Usually, I use baking as an outlet for that. But. Sometimes everything doesn’t go to plan. So, this post is dedicated to that. I did make a beautiful lemon tart that tasted delicious, and I will share that later in the week, but right now, I am in a season of self-reflection, and it seems appropriate to share my failures.
First up: rye bread, AKA, the giant hockey puck.
About a month ago, I was stress-grocery-shopping at my local Meijer, and I did what I normally do to relax and started examining the various exotic flours. I know, my life is crazy and wild. I noticed a bag of rye flour, and decided to give it a go. I also knew that rye bread calls for molasses, a substance which has enjoyed residence in my cabinet for a looooong time for no legitimate reason.
I consulted Paul Hollywood, and mixed up my dough.
I probably just should have cut my losses right then and there, because I KNEW the dough didn’t feel right. It was….grainy? Gooey? Weird? I tasted it and it sort of tasted like yeasty glue. However, I knew that proving and baking can make all the difference, so I let it sit for several hours. I checked it. It looked… the same. Maybe more…icky. But it definitely hadn’t risen.
After checking back with Paul, I decide it just needed more time and went to bed.
I got up extra early the next day and baked it, after cutting the traditional deep scores into the bread.
Note: the before picture looks much like the after photo in this case. I did manage to eat a few slices of this bread, and I would say it had a good flavor, but had the consistency of eating wallpaper paste. Why didn’t the dough rise? Hard to say. Did I kill the yeast with too much salt? Was my yeast too old? Did I buy the wrong flour? Oh, who knows. That’s bread. Some days it just doesn’t work.
Now, for the real story.
A few weeks ago, all of my students came down with the flu. Now, I know what your’e thinking: so what? Kids get sick. Surely not allll of her students got sick.
Let me tell you. This was a big fricking deal. When you teach choir, you really need your students to NOT BE DIAGNOSED WITH INFLUENZA A in the middle of show choir season, and half of the kids in my show choirs were. I was not happy. To all of the students that I sprayed down with lysol and hand sanitizer that week: sorry, not sorry. I was not ok. I have some vague memories of demanding that the custodial staff germ-bomb my room, compulsively wiping down every inch of instructional space with disinfectant, and obsessively quarantining any student that dared to sneeze, although I’ve mostly blocked these memories. I had to pull out of our competition on Saturday and found myself with an entire day of free time and a lot of nervous energy. What to do? I know. MAKE PUFF PASTRY.
I have made similar pastries before: I have done croissants, which is basically the same thing but with yeast, and I have made Danish pastry dough, which is similar. However, this was a classic technique that I really wanted to be able to say I had mastered, so I bought the expensive butter at the store, chucked some flour in the fridge to chill, pulled out my Paul Hollywood cookbook, and set to it.
I decided to make mozzarella and bacon puffs because my man-friend loves bacon. First step: make the dough. The trick with puff pastry is to keep everything COLD to establish layers, and it is even advisable to start with cold ingredients, so I had taken the precaution of chilling my flour. I made a basic dough with flour and water and whatnot, and chilled it. I then did my favorite part and bashed several sticks together into a giant block. I placed it on the rolled out dough and did the first fold and turn.
Just look at all those delicious calories.
With any sort of laminated dough, you have to roll the dough out, fold it in half or in thirds, chill it, and repeat. This gives you nice defined layers of dough and butter. When you bake laminated dough, it turns into flaky layers of buttery deliciousness.
Theoretically.
After several turns, I rolled out the dough one more time and filled it with mozzarella cheese and cooked bacon. I rolled it up into little rolls, cut them into buns, and laid them out on a sheet.
Now, about this time, I was feeling PRETTY pleased with myself. I had made puff pastry. I had been bougie and bought the expensive butter. I was making a pastry that took three days, which somehow made me feel generally superior. However, I made a critical error here. Look at the picture. Do you see it? I sure didn’t.
Notice that the cookie sheet I used only has three raised sides. Three. Not four. One edge is open. So, imagine my laminated dough going into the oven. Imagine the butter slowly heating up and melting out of the pastry. Imagine that butter dripping down onto the element of my oven. And imagine me absently petting the cat and eating Sour Patch Kids upstairs.
I walked back into the kitchen to a scene that everyone dreams of: eye-stinging smoke billowing out of the oven in ominous waves, and blurry orange flames leaping sullenly around the curly lines of the element.
I opened all of the windows and doors, called for my man-friend, and panicked a little, which led to this lovely scene:
What’s that, you ask? Oh, that’s the pastry that took me three days to make sitting in the snow in my backyard.
Hey, it is what it is.
I was mad for a while, but you know what? The house didn’t burn down. I got to practice making puff pastry. I proved to myself that I can stay calm in a cooking-related emergency, and I still got to enjoy the process leading up to my fatal mistake. It was relaxing, I learned something, and that’s the point.
I thought about not sharing these failures with the judgement of the internet, but that’s not very honest. I talk to my students a lot about the pressure of social media: in our instagram world, it is easy to only make the choice to share the best parts of our lives, and that is unfortunate. For my students, it makes them believe that everyone else’s life is somehow more beautiful or fun than their own…. and adults suffer from that same phenomenon. So, here’s the truth: sometimes I bake delicious things. Sometimes I get overconfident and start fires.
Stay tuned: a nice lemon tart is coming your way soon!
