Wizard Recipes

Appearance and presentation are all-important in contemporary North American dining rooms. The truth is, we consider bread almost like a glass of water by our plates, a standard fare.

You can bake a wonderful bread that looks like a showpiece in a classy baker’s window, yet few of your guest stop dinner conversation to ooh and aah when you bring in the bread basket filled with a spectacular, warm Italian Tuscan bread you just pulled from the oven. Few even ask if the bread is your own.

But a perfectly arranged and color-coordinated dinner on a plate, an artistically composed salad or a simple decorated poppy seed-chocolate torte will stop the most heated discussion, even if only for a moment.

A major reward you do get from baking your own bread is satisfaction in performing this seemingly demanding task and, of course, savoring it.

As far as difficulty is concerned, if you are organized, you keep your basic staples on your shelf replenished, and have a basic kitchen experience, you can assemble a quick bread batter in 15 to 20 minutes.

By the time you pour the batter in the pan, the oven is hot, and in 40 minutes you have the loaf cooling on the counter. It is ready to cut, butter and eat in another 15 minutes. Actual work time is 25 minutes, including slicing and cleanup.

Yeast breads take a considerably longer time, but surprisingly not much more total work time once you are a regular bread baker.

To assemble the ingredients and knead the dough takes 15 to 20 minutes, less if you use a food processor or mixer. The first rise takes about 1 to 1½ hours.

It takes only a few minutes to punch down the dough, shape it and place it in a pan for the second rise, which takes some 40 to 50 minutes. A bread bakes in another 40 to 50 minutes, rolls 15 minutes.

Total time is over 3 hours, but your actual working time, including slicing and cleanup, is about 25 minutes when hand kneading or 15 minutes when using a machine. Is this realistic? Once your bread baking is routine, it is and you can prove it to yourself.

Is yeast bread worth the wait? You bet! Other culinary achievements that rival the satisfaction of baking a great bread is stirring up a wonderful, hearty soup or baking a spectacular cake.

There are two basic methods of making a pie dough-with hand or in a machine. In my kitchen tests I compared the results made with hand, in a food processor and with a food mixer. The food processor did a respectable job but the food mixer did not. Even with the food processor, you need to finish mixing by hand or you are likely to end up with an unfortunate overworked dough.

To make the dough with the processor, follow your manual’s instructions only until the ingredients begin to coalesce. Then dump the partly-formed dough on a pastry board and complete the last steps by hand.

Whether by machine or hand, the idea is to cut the hard, solid fat into the flour so it remains in discernible pieces. By hand you can do this with two knives working them parallel but in the opposite direction, or a pastry blender that meant for this purpose. Or simply quickly rub the fat into the flour with cold fingers.

A food mixer doesn’t mix the dough very well, leaving fairly large chunks of unworked fat in the dough. Longer mixing eventually gives a more homogenous mass but at the cost of overworking and warming the dough that bakes into dense, tough crust.

While we are on mixing, let’s distinguish the two types of American pie crusts-the flaky type in which you mix solid fat into the flour until still fairly coarse, around pea size, and the mealy crust in which you mix the fat thoroughly into the flour until very fine. Southerners prefer mealy crust while the rest of the pie-lovers like the flaky type.

For mealy crusts you can use food processors to form the crust a little longer-it is still good to finish the last few second by hand. Some cooks like to use a pastry cloth for rolling out pie dough. There is even a tube-shaped pastry cloth that fits over the rolling pin. A pastry cloth minimizes sticking and the need for additional flour.

For experienced bakers it is just an additional gadget to store and clean. Quick

work and correct dough consistency at the right temperature assures problem-free rolling without any help.

Cookbooks tell you to shape the finished dough into a ball before chilling. However, shape yours into a flat disk. First, a disk is thinner, cools faster in the refrigerator. Second, it warm up faster when you are ready to roll it out. And third, a disk is easier to roll into a circle than a ball- with a disk you are already half-way there.

Cover the disk with plastic wrap or place it in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator for at least one hour to chill and relax. After the dough had a nice long rest, bring it to about 50°F (10°C) for easy rolling. The secret of a good rolling technique is to work the dough from the center out with deliberate but not vigorous movements. Coax the dough to roll out thin-don’t force it.

The dough may refuse to obey you if there is not enough flour on the board and it sticks instead of thins out. If that happens, gently lift the dough and sprinkle a fine dusting of flour under it as well as on the rolling pin. This should give you the upper hand. Never gather the dough again and roll it out twice-it toughens the crust.

Once you start, you are committed. For the same reason, don’t work too much of the trimmings from the first pie crust into a second crust or a top crust. Make “orts” out of them, instead, by sprinkling each leftover piece with cinnamon and sugar, or cocoa and sugar, and spread them on a baking sheet. Put them in the oven with the pie, but remove in 10 minutes or less, depending on their thickness. Orts are great sweet tidbits to nibble on.

To transfer the finished dough circle from the work surface to the pie plate, roll it up on the rolling pin, hold it over the plate and unroll it over the pie plate. Avoid stretching it any more because it causes more shrinkage on baking. If you need to move it to center the dough on the plate, lift and move, don’t stretch. The gluten remembers its original shape. If you stretch it, it will spring back in the oven like a rubber band. Another method of transferring the rolled-out dough is to fold it in half and then again into quarter. Lift it onto the pie plate and unfold.

I also recommend to try this delicious pie recipes :

1. Apple Pie

2. Pumpkin Pie

3. Apple cranberry streusel

4. Banana cream pie

5. Buttermilk Pie

Pies are the third most popular American desserts following ice creams and cookies.

Considering the amount of work you put in, you get more mileage out of pies than from any other dessert, considering both taste and eye appeal. Attain the experience to make a good pie dough quickly, and you have the basis for making a very good dessert for any occasion.

Most fillings, whether simple or elaborate, are reasonably easy to make, even with meringue, whipped cream or any other topping. You can even prepare the dough (or baked crust) days in advance and finish it in no time on the day you plan to serve it fresh from the oven.

If you use a good recipe and good ingredients, preparing a delicious pie or tart has only one secret: you must make your own crust. Commercial food processors learned how to make quite acceptable cake mixes, frozen cakes and a number of other frozen pastries, but they haven’t managed to produce a good fresh or frozen pie dough or crust.

If pie crust is not yet on your list of skills, take a few hours and learn how to do it. The ingredients are inexpensive, even if you have to throw a dozen doughs or crusts out before your thirteenth attempt is a winner. Once you master the technique, making your own crust is a snap.

A simple way to learn is to watch someone who is good with pie dough. Or learn it by yourself from books or videos. It helps to understand what happens in the dough so don’t skip this article.

What goes into it?

Pie dough has only four ingredients: flour, salt, fat and water. Tart pastry has the same four ingredients plus sugar and maybe egg.

Commercial bakers use pastry flour specifically made for pies. Like cake flour, they mill it from low-protein and high-starch soft wheat to promote tenderness. Pastry flour is not as finely milled as cake flour. Don’t try to use cake flour for pie dough. It is too fine-grained, and tends to paste up when you add liquid.

Specialized pastry flour is not available to most home cooks, but you can mix cake flour with bread flour in a 7:3 ratio and come close to commercial pastry flour. But that is hardly necessary-all-purpose flour is quite suitable, too, and you always have it on your shelf.

Salt is an essential ingredient and does not vary in amount, without salt the crust tastes flat. Use ¼ teaspoon salt for every cup of flour.

The amount of water you need, however, varies with the humidity, your climate and the amount of moisture in your flour and fat. Recipes give an approximate amount, but start with smaller than called for, and add more little at a time to arrive at the correct, easily workable dough consistency.

Fat is also a variable. What fat you choose and how much you use makes a huge difference in the consistency, texture, flakiness and flavor of your pie crust.

The role of fat in the dough

The fat’s ability to interfere with the formation of gluten is called its shortening power. What happens is that the fat coats the protein grains in the flour and keep them from absorbing moisture.

Without moisture the proteins cannot convert into gluten, that elastic sheet-like substance so essential for good breads but a killer in pie dough. Lard, vegetable shortening and oil have high shortening power. Butter and margarine have less because they are not all fat-they contain about 16 percent water (while other fats have none).

Lard not only has high shortening power but also just the right physical properties (called plasticity and dispersability by food scientists) to produce the most flaky pastries. But you cannot use just any kind of lard.

Which part of the pig it comes from, or even from which part of a single

layer it is taken, determines the type. The ideal lard for pies is leaf lard, a layered fat located around the pig’s kidneys. It has a crystalline structure that readily forms tiny layers in the pastry, resulting in flakiness that a top pastry chef can be proud of.

When bakers, both commercial and at home used lard extensively for biscuits and pastries in the past, leaf lard was readily available. Concerns about fats and cholesterol in modern times has changed all that, and these days you would be hard put to get leaf lard even from a good butcher.

Slaughterhouses no longer separate fats from various parts of the pig; there is not enough demand for leaf lard. The lard that is available in retail markets is a rendered fat that may be from any part of the animal. It is a refined, emulsified, hydrogenated all-purpose product meant mostly for frying.

Though not ideal, this lard still makes good flaky pastry.