Pasteis de Nata adventures at home

After a wonderful class in nata making at Nat’elier in Lisbon a few weeks back, I was determined to make these popular Portuguese treats at home. I went through several rounds and definitely learned a few things in the process.

When I started drafting this post, I felt like I was getting carried away with too much info on steps and recipe variants (you know me!). Instead I offer you the recipe that I plan to use from here on out as well as what I discovered about making these gems. The recipe is an amalgamation of the one I received from Nat’elier and the one that came with the nata tins I purchased - very similar.

The puff dough is easier/quicker than traditional puff pastry. It can be made with butter or margarine, although I’m told that margarine is what the “big houses” in Portugal use to make these. Our instructor at Nate’lier explained that margarine is more plastic, rolls more easily and stands up to very high heat. Oven temps are generally anywhere from 480º to 550º for these tarts but the word is that some shops bake as hot as 800º! Obviously we home bakers won’t be doing that, although hmmmm . . . . how about some of the pizza ovens available these days that get super hot?

The folding steps are fewer and there are no chilling and resting times other than a short rest before rolling the dough into a log and a final fridge rest once the dough is completed (45 minutes up to 2 days). The final tight log rolling of the dough is what yields the many layers. Here’s the recipe again.

One of my tests involved a more complicated and more fussy way to make the puff pastry - I’ll show you a bit about that later.

Isn’t that so cool!

Below is my initial trial with the reverse puff I had in my freezer (I make it with spelt and all purpose flour) just to give you a visual of the log rolling process. The dough is brushed with water to make it sticky . . . . .

. . . . then rolled tightly from the bottom edge a couple of times to get things going . . . .

. . . . then finished off. The diameter of the log should be about the same as the diameter of the tart tin bottoms (3.5 cm). Wrap and chill at least 45 minutes up to 2 days. It can also be frozen.

The custard is straight forward with ingredients much like a classic crème pâtissière - milk/sugar/flour cooked to thicken; egg yolks added. Traditionally lemon rind and cinnamon stick are steeped in the milk mixture. I left the cinnamon out but am certainly not opposed to it. You can also sprinkle cinnamon and powdered sugar on top of the baked natas.

Nat’elier uses 2% milk, feeling that the lower fat content makes for a more creamy, less flan-like custard. I used both whole and 2% in my trials and didn’t see much difference. Some recipes I reviewed instruct that skim, 2% or whole are options.

Nat’elier also allows the cooked milk, sugar, flour mixture cool before whisking in the egg yolks, again feeling that gives a creamier end result. I also added a splash of vanilla extract at the end.

The following image is hazy (sorry - a fair amount of steam coming off the pan) but shows the amount of thickening to look for in the milk, flour, sugar mixture. A track should remain as you pull a spatula through it. It also thickens a bit more once cooled.

Here’s one more visual of the thickness as I was getting ready to whisk in egg yolks for one of my trials . . . .

Let’s take a look at my results.

My first round - As mentioned earlier, I used some of my reverse puff pastry from the freezer and made a half recipe of Nat’elier’s custard (a very close version to the one I’m sharing with you); I used a mini muffin tin and baked 10 pasteis. NOTE: I did not butter or oil the wells.

Slice the log, place a portion in each well and, with a thumb dipped in water, press directly down into the center of the dough. Using thumbs or index fingers push the dough up to the rim forming a lip at the top.

Have your oven heating for a good 30-40 minutes. I baked these at 480º, 5-10 minutes, rotate, then another 5-10 minutes. The custard shouldn’t jiggle - if it does give them another couple of minutes. You know my mantra - pay attention to what’s going on in that oven of yours!

The shape of the mini muffin tin is taller and narrower than the traditional pasteis tins and the end result looked more like a muffin with the custard puffed up above the rim. These popped out of the wells easily.

In my eagerness to taste one, I cut one in half while still quite warm. Note the bottom dough layer - doesn’t look fully baked. However after waiting until they fully cooled, I cut open another and the dough looked much better. And they tasted great!

General rule - they taste best when freshly baked with a hint of warmth or at room temperature. Warm in the oven gently the following day (if you still have some hanging around).

Just out of the oven

Moving on - being one who prefers doing things in a traditional fashion, of course I succumbed and ordered a set of 12 nata tins - made in Portugal and accompanied by a recipe which, by the way, is very much the same as the one I received from Nat’elier. Hmmmm.

The tins come in two sizes, one shallower than the other - I went for the shallower one. Made from galvanized steel, they arrive with a protective coating that requires the tins to be seasoned before use - 500º - 550º oven for 90 minutes! Whoa! Wipe clean with a cloth or paper towel once cooled. With continued use they are meant to be non-stick - a bit more on that next.

The tins arrive shiny but develop the darker patina once seasoned

My second round: Always one to poke around, I discovered David Leite’s nata recipe during an online search. He’s a Portuguese American foodie who has a great web presence with lots of recipes and more. Comparing his dough to that of Nat’elier’s, he uses a higher ratio of butter and water compared to the all purpose flour. It’s not so much the actual recipe that caught my eye but his method of creating the puff pastry (note he uses butter NOT margarine).

I’ll leave it that he rolls the dough much more thinly, spreads soft butter on portions of the dough then folds it to create the layers. The dough is very soft and has to be handled with a gentle touch.

The image below gives you a sense. Butter spread over two thirds, the left third gets folded over the middle then the right third over that for the first 3-fold. He completes that process one more time.

It’s thin! Ready for the first fold

The last step is rolling the dough into a rectangle and spreading butter over the entire surface of the dough before doing the final rolling into a log. Quite a process. Here’s the fully folded/buttered dough ready to log roll.

rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

Leite also uses a different approach to making the custard by cooking a sugar syrup to 220ºF/104ºC which is then whisked into a milk/flour mixture and cooked to thicken then cooled until warm.

Vanilla and egg yolks are whisked in and the mixture is then strained and allowed to cool to room temperature. As I’m learning, the addition of the yolks when the mixture is not piping hot yields a more creamy custard texture. The custard keeps in the fridge for a couple of days as well.

Remember - you can check out his recipe here.

Set up for custard - more pans required

Leite bakes his natas at 550º (I did 525º). I had seasoned my tins so I thought a light oiling or buttering wasn’t needed. I was wrong.

Here are the tins lined with dough; filling recommendation about 3/4 full. I went a little too full.

ready for the oven

General baking time is about 12-15 minutes, rotating the tray half way through the bake. Tops classically have browned spots and the custard shouldn’t be jiggly.

I admit (and regret!) that I forgot to take pictures of the tray just out of the oven. I was side tracked by the mess - custard spilled over the edges and onto the parchment. I had to carefully pry the tarts out with a paring knife and offset spatula and was left with stuck on crust particles in the tins. Whoa!

But the good news is they were delicious! Fortunately I was able to preserve the bulk of each one even after prying them out.

A little rough around the edges

Check out that crispy crust!

They had that shattering crispness with a lovely creamy filling.

I soaked the tins and was able to get them clean - popped them back into the hot oven to dry. No harm done.

My third round: OK. Take a deep breath. We’re almost there. Remember - I share all of this for your benefit, but also so I can remember what I did!

This time I made the dough with the recipe I’m sharing with you - one batch with butter and one with margarine. I lightly oiled (use a neutral oil) most of the tins but left two of them un-oiled (one for butter and one for margarine). So I shaped six of each, five of each going into oiled tins (let’s call it paranoia) and one of each into un-oiled.

The two center right are un-oiled

Fill just below the rim

Baked at 500º - convection this time. I’ll add here that the recipes I reviewed didn’t specify conventional or convection but our chef teacher at Nat’elier mentioned a more even bake with convection.

Six minutes, rotate, six more minutes then 2 minutes more to finish. Voila!

Oh yeah!

Notice the margarine versions (on the right in the image above) baked up more generously with more obvious layers of the puff.

Good news - they ALL released easily from the tins so I think the seasoning has reached the proper stage. It should only continue to improve with ongoing use. Hurray!

Here’s a cross section of a butter and a margarine version showing a more ample bake with the margarine one.

Do I have a scientific reason for that? It turns out that margarine has a higher melting point, is more stable and less likely to melt out of the layers during the bake, resulting in more consistent and dramatic layers. OK I get it!

I also discovered (had NO idea) that there exists a “puff or pastry margarine” that has a higher fat content. I used a basic Land O’Lakes margarine and found those results to yield a crisp, shattering crust. Wonder how much better the “puff margarine” might be?

They were both delicious yet I lean more toward the butter version for the flavor. It’s clear that one can reheat these the following day and they’re still pretty good, but I notice the pastry does become less tender and develops a hint of “toughness” or chew to it. That was the same with both butter and margarine.

Yum!

The final word? I’ll use the recipe I’m sharing with you and will most likely stick with butter as my fat of choice. I typically don’t keep margarine on hand but I do have 3 sticks left from the pound of Land O’Lakes I bought so . . . . why not use it up, eh?

Here’s to hints of spring (my tulips have started coming up!) and happy baking.

Along my walking route

Danish Kringle

More fun with laminated dough - an interesting project indeed!

As I was researching and reviewing the pastry known as Danish Kringle I learned that kringle is the word for pretzel and that Danish bakeries typically have a sign outside their shops shaped like a pretzel topped with a crown. A sure sign of good things inside.

Scandinavia is on Steve’s and my travel hit list, although it’s strange to contemplate when we might be able to travel again given our current times. We can only hope. In the meantime I’m reading and learning more about the types of baked goods that come from that corner of the planet. Cool stuff.

Made with the Danish version of laminated dough (wienerbrød in Scandi talk), this is a traditional almond filled pastry, popularly served in Denmark for occasions like birthdays, anniversaries and other festivities. Much like croissant dough in its preparation, the primary difference is the addition of egg to the dough. As is true when comparing a number of recipes for a particular pastry, the range of ingredient quantities can certainly vary, particularly the amount of butter used for the laminations.

Inspired by Brontë Aurell’s version in her book “Brontë at Home”, I compared her Danish dough base recipe with several others, most notably the one in my 2004 first edition of CIA’s book “Baking and Pastry - Mastering the Art and Craft” (there have since been two further editions in 2009 and 2015).

It was the first pastry tome I purchased upon our return to the USA after completing my stage at Pâtisserie Pascal Pinaud in Paris’ 5th arrondisement in March of 2007. I used it as my primary reference source (and still refer to it all these years later) during my first summer job that year at JM Gerrish Provisions in Winter Harbor Maine. My how time flies.

I ended up creating my dough recipe based on an amalgamation of Aurell’s and CIA’s - pretty similar actually, save for the lesser butter block quantity in CIA’s version. I tend to take a “less is more” approach in my croissant dough too.

The dough: remember if you’re going to mise out your ingredients ahead of time, keep the yeast separate from the salt until ready to actually start mixing since the salt can inhibit the yeast.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, mix 375 g / scant 3 cups bread flour, 43 g / 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, 6 g / 2 1/8 teaspoons instant yeast, 6 g / 1 teaspoon salt, 40 g / 3 tablespoons soft unsalted butter, 1 large egg, 1 large egg yolk and 175 g / 3/4 cup room temperature whole milk. Blend on low speed for 2 minutes then increase to medium speed for 4 minutes.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover and let rise for about 2 hours. Gently turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, fold it over and form a rectangle on a parchment lined sheet pan. Wrap tightly and refrigerate overnight.

Form 243 g / 2 sticks + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter into a ~8”x8” square by tapping/rolling it between plastic wrap. Keep it wrapped and refrigerated until you’re ready to perform the butter incorporation and the laminations.

Let’s review the steps of creating a laminated dough. Take the butter out of the fridge about 20 minutes before you’re ready to go, then tap it with your rolling pin to make it more malleable - you want it cool and bendable.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out to ~8”x 16” rectangle. Place the butter in the middle of the dough and fold one end over it to cover half of the butter as seen below. Do your best to keep the corners square.

Fold the other portion of dough over the remaining butter. You can stretch the dough a bit to square off the corners and pinch the edges and center seam together so as to completely envelope the dough. This is called the “lock-in” or le beurrage en Français.

Next you’ll roll the dough out to an ~8”x 24” rectangle, paying attention to the edges and center seam to keep things together and prevent any butter from sneaking out. I like to roll the dough with the sealed edges positioned at top and bottom and the center seam vertical to me. Feel free to flip the dough seam side down as you roll.

If your dough ever becomes too warm and butter starts breaking through, wrap and chill it for 15-20 minutes to firm things up again.

Typically croissant and Danish dough are put through three 3-folds (also called letter folds), but for this project I started with a 4-fold or book fold. Visualize the center of the dough, fold each end into the center to snuggle up to each other (leave a skosh of a space to allow for folding it) . . . . .

then fold it on itself like a book.

An important thing to remember when making laminated dough is that after each fold you turn your dough 90 degrees before you roll it out for the next fold. Think of it as the spine of a book on your left.

Now wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 30 minutes before doing the next fold. That keeps the dough/butter cool and stable and allows the dough to relax as well.

Roll it out again into a rectangle but this time visualize the dough in thirds and fold it like a business letter. One end up . . . .

the other end down.

Wrap and chill another 30 minutes. Making sure the “spine” is on your left, roll it out and repeat another 3-fold. Now the dough is complete. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes or up to overnight before rolling it out for its intended use. It can also be frozen up to a month.

Check out these layers!

Before rolling the finished dough out for the Kringle, make the almond filling (remonce) by blending together 100 g EACH of almond paste (Mandelin brand is great!), softened unsalted butter and confectioner’s sugar. This is enough filling for one full Danish Kringle. Many Kringle recipes also include raisins but I opted out on that one.

Side note: New word alert for me! Remonce is said to be a Danish word and creation and refers to a commonly used filling in many Nordic cakes and pastries. Almond is a common flavor but it can be made with other nut pastes like pistachio or hazelnut or flavored with cinnamon, cardamom and/or vanilla, depending on what you’re making. For cinnamon rolls the confectioner’s sugar is often replaced with dark brown sugar. Life is full of variations, eh?

For this my first Kringle attempt I followed Aurell’s instructions for rolling, filling and shaping the dough. Because her description of the process wasn’t terribly clear (there are no images in the book to help), I checked out a couple of YouTube videos and also went somewhat by instinct.

On a lightly floured surface roll the dough lengthwise to a rectangle about 7”x20” then split it right down the middle length wise. A pizza cutter is a great tool for this.

Then roll each piece again length wise to achieve a width of 4” and a length about 24”.

Working with one piece at a time, place half the remonce in a line down the center. Fold the top edge over the filling . . . . .

Then bring the bottom edge up and over to make a log.

Repeat with the second piece then place both pieces on a parchment lined sheet pan in horseshoe shapes with their ends touching each other.

Turns out there’s actually supposed to be a narrow gap down the centers exposing the filling (that’s what I get for not paying attention) but, once the dough had risen, a gap developed during baking so it all worked out okey-dokey.

Now grab one end of each horseshoe and bring them toward the other side, crossing each other to form a pretzel. This is one monster of a pastry! Reminds me of some kind of sea snake or something.

Egg wash and let proof in a closed space (I often use an overturned clear tote bin for my cover) for about an hour. About 20-25 minutes before the end of the rise heat the oven to 375ºF.

Repeat the egg wash then sprinkle with toasted, coarsely chopped hazelnuts or sliced almonds (or a combo!) and some raw or pearl sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 350º and bake an additional 15-20 minutes. Since the thickness at the crossover point is essentially double the rest of the pastry, I tried to be sure that it had baked through. Not necessarily an easy task. I reduced my oven temp by 25º and continued checking every 5 minutes or so, but it’s not really until you cut into something that you know for sure.

Wow - check this out!! Nice and golden, plus you can appreciate the layers and how the top opened up to reveal the filling. Actually quite a messy looking end result, eh? But after all, it’s about sharing the experience and learning from it!

Once it had cooled I started carving. While a bit gooey at some points the flavor and flakiness are definitely there, and our taste testing ended with a thumbs up.

Slice it up, dust it with some confectioners sugar and share it with all your friends (safely distancing of course). They’ll thank you for it.

Wait - I’m not finished yet! As if you haven’t had enough already, I made one more Kringle with a half batch of dough, hoping to make a more petite pretzel without the overlap.

The dough was a bit wider than I would have liked, but I proceeded with the filling and the folding over, leaving the gap in the center.

It was too thick and bulky to form the pretzel I was envisioning, so ultimately it became a circle. Hmmm . . . those ends don’t really want to stay together. Oh dear.

Once risen I topped it with sliced almonds and pearl sugar and baked ‘er up.

Even though the risen Kringle looked pretty good, my ends did not stay together in the oven. This baby baked into a shape not unlike those leather horse harness collar thingies that you might see on a team of Clydesdales.

Not to worry however. This one baked up beautifully with nice flaky layers, delicious flavor and came with the confirmation that I am now an official fan of remonce filling.

Quite a project all-in-all. I’m not giving up on this one folks. It’s so important to share the processes, especially the first time around. Remember, if at first you don’t succeed . . . . you know the rest.

More Kringle? You bet! Stay tuned.

Happy baking, stay safe and think of the good days yet to come.

Brioche feuilletée

I've been wanting to make this delectable version of brioche for some time now, and so it was that a recent online reference to Guy Savoy's new venture in Paris, Gout de Brioche, finally got me going. The shop offers individual as well as "grand" brioche feuilletée in a variety of flavors both savory and sweet. 

This particular dough is another in the family of laminated dough - puff pastry, croissant and Danish being the standards.  Here we have an egg enriched brioche dough which is put through similar laminating steps to create buttery, flaky layers of goodness.

It seems that every time I make brioche I look back at various recipes and compare ingredient amounts and ratios.  This time I reviewed the recipe from the Le Nôtre class that I attended in Paris during our recent September trip. Using it, as well as an online recipe attributed to Philippe Conticini of Pâtisserie des Rêves fame, I came up with my own version to launch my attempt at brioche feuilletée.

Brioche dough can be lean to rich and may contain amounts of butter that are anywhere from 20-80% of the quantity of flour in the recipe.  With the laminated approach one reduces the amount of butter in the basic dough but then uses a larger amount of butter for the butter block that becomes incorporated into the dough.

Here's the dough: 500 g flour (450 g all purpose and 50 g bread); 10 g salt; 50 g sugar; 8 g instant yeast; 90 ml whole milk; 250 g egg (about 5 large); 50 g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes.  

Place the flour, salt, sugar, yeast and milk in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix on low for a couple of minutes.  Add the eggs 1-2 at a time until each addition is incorporated.

Increase speed to medium and mix for 12-15 minutes until the dough is coming away from the sides of the bowl.  

Add the butter piece by piece until incorporated. The dough should be shiny, smooth and silky.

Turn the dough out into a lightly greased bowl, cover and let it rise for an hour.

Deflate the dough gently then cover snugly and put into the fridge for 4-5 hours or overnight.

Form a butter block with 340 g unsalted butter and hold it in the fridge overnight as well.

The following morning take the butter out to take the firm chill off and allow it to become more malleable for the beurrage et tourage.

At this point the process is the same as for croissant - envelope the butter and then put it through three single, or business letter, folds with 30 minute rests in between. Here's the first fold.

After the three folds give it a good hour rest in the fridge before rolling it out for its final use.

Take a look at my finished dough below - it felt great even though the butter isn't uniformly distributed in the dough. I pushed on nonetheless!  

Roll the dough out into an approximately 16"x13' rectangle.  At this point you can do any filling your little heart desires.  I opted for a simple mix of crushed raw sugar cubes with lemon zest which I sprinkled over the dough, leaving the upper edge clear.

Brush the upper edge with a little water, milk or egg wash to help seal the seam once you've rolled it up.

Now slice into twelve 1 1/4" slices.

You can tuck these, cut side up, into buttered standard muffin tins, but I decided to use lightly buttered panettone papers.

Let these rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours, depending on your ambient temperature.  They should look poufy with increased prominence of the laminations.

Heat the oven to 400ºF.  

Brush the tops with a bit of egg wash or milk and sprinkle with pearl sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes then decrease the temp to 350 for another 10-15 minutes until nicely browned.

Once cooled a bit I pulled them out of the baking papers and brushed the surface with lemon syrup.  I find that brioche often look a bit dry coming out of the oven and the syrup gives them a nice sheen.

They look a bit like a conch shell!  Or some kind of snail.  Some of them tried to rise up and escape from their houses, looking like a slinky going down the stairs.

Once a bit cooled it was definitely time for a taste test. In the photo below the smaller pieces in the background are a couple of end scraps that I baked separately, and the sliced brioche in the front is one that slink-ied out of its paper.

The thing that always strikes me about a good brioche is how LIGHT it is!  The eggs and the butter don't seem to weigh it down at all.  Although remember that an important part is making sure you give these babies a decent rise - if they don't rise long enough they'll end up heavy and dense.

The flavor and texture were just right and the lemon syrup gave these a nice little zing.  But next time I'd punch the lemon zest up even more.

I can't wait to try some other versions!  Yessiree!!

It's all about the journey.

Moulins à vent

This next recipe in La Pâtisserie des Rêves by Philippe Conticini brings home ever more clearly the importance of proper recipe testing and editing.

Remember, I'm using this book as a springboard for discussions regarding recipe interpretation, techniques and dos and don'ts.  It is NOT my intention to follow the recipe to a T!  Au contraire!  I use what I've learned over the years to adjust the recipe and its steps in a manner that makes sense to me.

Here's the page from the book: 

Here is the plan I developed based on my experience with similar doughs:

Rather than using a poolisch I made the dough as I would a détrempe for croissants, basically combining the ingredients for la poolisch and la pâte and reducing the total amount of yeast to 8 gm of instant.  I also had to add more water than the recipe indicated in order to moisten the obviously dry dough mixture.

I gave it a good overnight rest in the refrigerator (where it develops some of its structure and flavor.)

The butter block is ready:

The dough is rolled out into a diamond and the butter placed in the center.  I found this dough to be a bit stiff and dry, even with the additional water I added during mixing.  Ultimately it did hold together OK, but see how the edges are somewhat cracked?.

The butter is enveloped by the dough:

Then rolled out into a rectangle:

And the first three-fold and turn is done:

I found this dough to be similar to that in les croissants recipe - stiff, not easy to roll and the butter tending to break through. 

This dough gets two more turns and a final rest in the fridge before rolling it out for cutting and shaping.

Now, here's a major flaw with this recipe.  It states the yield is 15 moulins and instructs that each piece be cut into a 15x15cm square.  In order to roll this quantity of dough out to create that many pieces of that size, you would have to roll it far larger and thinner than the 1/2 cm the recipe instructs.  Plus 15x15 cm is HUGE for an individual pastry!

I opted for 10x10cm squares (just like when making Kouign-amann), a much more reasonable size for this quantity of dough, as well as for the finished pastries.  Here are a couple of paper templates to show you the difference in sizes.

The dough is rolled out, cut into 10x10cm squares, slits cut to the corners, leaving the center intact.

Every other corner is folded into the center to create the lovely moulin pattern.  It takes me back to my quilting days!

I used egg wash on the dough tips to stick them down.  As you'll see, it wasn't that successful!

Now for a 2-2.5 hour rise at room temp.  Notice how the tips have pulled away from the center, especially in the second picture - quite a mess!

Before I garnished these with a mixture of crème d'amande and apricot jam I had to gently push the tips back into the center - not an easy task with already risen dough.

Add a sprinkle of almonds et voila!

Next time I would roll my dough a bit thinner before cutting the squares since I ended up with 10 pieces  instead of 15.   I should have let it rest and relax a bit more before rolling it to my originally planned 30x50 cm rectangle.  Patience, patience Susan!

The baking time of 20-25 minutes was pretty consistent with the recipe.  Always watch how the browning is progressing and adjust your oven temp up if too pale and down if browning too fast.

And here they are!

I had hoped my windmill shape would have remained more distinct, but instead the tips kind of melded together during baking.  Perhaps rolling the dough thinner would help that.

The flavor was good, although Steve and I thought they needed a little something, so we added a schmear of apricot jam to liven things up.

All in all this was another good learning experience.  I am less and less enthralled with the book La Pâtisserie des Rêves due to the inconsistencies and poor editing I have encountered (leading me to believe that these recipes were authored by different people.)

For example, these moulins are made with laminated dough, the techniques for which should be consistent from recipe to recipe.  Yet, the instruction for the beurrage (the enveloping of the butter in the dough) for this recipe is completely different than in les croissants, which uses the same technique.  The author even forgets to tell you to fold the dough over the butter before you start rolling it out!

I'll put Philippe Conticini's book aside for awhile, although it continues to hold some allure with more enticing sections like goûters d'enfance, les classiques, et les tartes de saison, just to name a few!

In the meantime this coming week I'll be in Norwich, Vermont taking a 4 day artisan bread class at King Arthur Flour.  What a great getaway and perfect blogging opportunity!