But let me back up a little (now that I have your attention).
After what I would call an epic Thanksgiving I expected to find myself "baked-out." Not at all, so I was excited to fly to Pullman to visit my family and bake for them! Of course, given that its small town Washington State a lot of ingredients are surprisingly hard to come by. I guess I've been spoiled living in New York and LA, but I didn't realize just how much... I mean, having to drive across state lines to get decent butter (84% fat or more) seemed a bit silly, but, not one store in Pullman stocked it. Egg white powder was another such ingredient, though to be honest, I wasn't too hopeful on that front. Because of the extra effort involved in ingredient foraging and the less than desirable weather I didn't really think I would be baking much. And the first few days this was true, I ended up making bon-bons (flavors: orange-ginger, burnt caramel and black sea-salt, and nutella), having to buy less than amazing chocolate which proved exceptionally difficult to temper, now I know right?
The weather had eased up a bit, and in need of something to do, I casually asked my Mom and Sister if they wanted anything. Apparently, they did. Chocolate croissants, lemon tarts, and macaroons. Not too bad. Then Natalie suggests that since I won't be here on her birthday, I should make her a 16th birthday cake. I thought she was kidding. Nope. Well, I suppose, it's the least I can do! Did I mention this was two days ago? Maybe I was a bit overambitious (hardly possible)...
Started out easily enough! Mini lemon tarts. Press in shell, baked lemon curd. done. And tasted great!
Next, I taught Natalie how to make macaroons (Grapefruit-Vanilla Bean). She had tried to make them before, but like many home bakers found the task much more difficult than expected. Macaroons are generally one of those "not-at-home" baked goods. With good reason. They're pretty tough to get perfect! Deceptively simple there are several things that can go wrong and several factors to account for, mostly, how old your eggs are (important to have older egg whites for a more stable meringue). But with a little help, and a few sheet trays worth of piping practice, they ended up coming our beautifully!
The Birthday Cake. Shouldn't have been so hard! But due to a little mis-reading on my assistant's part, and mostly, my not double checking, we ended up re-doing the cake three times. Third time is the charm apparently! It was a simple scaling issue (usually is), but it was enough to throw the recipe. To be honest, I'm glad we figured it out! I was using a recipe from a blog I follow, and felt pretty ridiculous when I couldn't replicate the simple recipe myself! I'm supposed to be a trained professional right? So when the problem was pinpointed, I was mostly relieved. The rest of the decorating wasn't easy (makeshift turntable and tools), but not too terrible, and I, but most importantly Natalie, was very happy with the results!
Now, the croissants. By Alex's suggestion, I decided to try Tartine's recipe since they receive a fair bit of praise and have a completely different technique than my usual french variety (which I think are great!). While the ingredients are essentially the same (Tartine has the addition of milk), the process is very different. Essentially, in Tartine's you make the dough portion and treat it like a bread dough, fermenting, kneading, etc. In the FCI variety, you mix the dough, let it chill and go right into layering the butter. Tartine's process takes a bit longer, but if it results in a better product, I'm more than willing to add it to my "pastry-arsenal." Down-side, the dough was a bit more glutenous and hard to stretch, but other than that this recipe is easily superior. The result? the same buttery-goodness a croissant should have with the addition of more flakyness and depth of flavor. The extra fermentation allows for a stronger flavor that has a mild sour-note finish. Which I think is great! Maybe not everyone would agree, maybe I'll have to blind test them on a few people.
But that was NOT the exciting part. While baking Natalie and I noticed the oven steaming a bit. I thought, hmm, maybe there's a lot of moisture in these...But then the steam turned into more of a smoke and started filling the kitchen. I opened the oven door and a billow of smoke engulfed the kitchen, and then was gone. We frantically opened all the windows in attempt to avoid the ever obnoxious smoke alarm (success!). Very strange. A few minutes later, we look at the oven. And the entire bottom half is on fire. ON FIRE! And I'm not talking about a little flame, I mean like fire-place fire. Needless to say, we were a bit freaked out. I know what to do if there's a grease fire, but oven fire? If I open the door will the increased oxygen cause it to "blow up?" Does it matter that its a gas stove (turned off long ago of course)? My Mom had come out at this point, and despite all of us being quite unsure what to do, she grabbed baking soda (smart), opened the oven a bit and doused the fire. It was out! Relief...
Of course this was the result:
Lovely right? The great part though, was since the croissants were on a sheet tray, they weren't consumed in the fire, in fact by the time this was over, they were done! Granted, a bit dark on the bottom, but honestly, not bad at all! What was really lucky we realized was that they were not on parchment. The edges of the silpat had been discolored by direct flame contact, but not burnt-and fully re-usable! Hows that for product testing? But had it been parchment it would have easily caught on fire, fueling the fire (and engulfing the croissants-nooo!). Had it gotten to the top part of the stove it may have done significantly more damage (the oven is fine, after a good cleaning!). So I say it saved my life, probably not, but it did make it a lot easier. So, thank you silpat!
Easily, one of the most exciting two days of baking I've had.
