Category Archives: Pastry

Here’s what my field of vision has looked like for roughly the last ten days. A tight line, a clear northern lake, lots of trees, eagles overhead…ahhh. I’m pretty much in paradise wherever they have bait shops that look like this:

What did I catch? Crikey, a lot. The weather was cold but the fish were up in the shallows spawning. We stayed in a cabin on a small lake, right on the edge of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, up in Phelps, Wisconsin. There was a pier right out the front door where the girls could catch bluegill aplenty. I was reeling in a nice one when this bruiser here came out of nowhere and hit it like Kim Kardashian on a cinnabon. Boom!

I tried to bring in both the bass and the bluegill, but without a hook in its mouth I couldn’t keep the bass on the line. The bluegill popped out of its mouth and it swam away having literally lost its lunch. The girls reasoned that we needed a lure that looked like a bluegill, so off we went to the bait shop. A few casts later that sucker was ours.

Otherwise the walleye fishing was outstanding. My last day I caught over a dozen, not one of them under 17 inches. I caught a 22-inch northern as well, though I confess I don’t much care to deal with those slimy things.

I saw several muskie but none cared to jump on the line, which was probably just as well since I was using extremely light tackle. Overall it was a very successful week away. The little Pastrys got to see a part of the country they’d never seen before. We saw dozens of deer plus otters, beavers and about 20 different species of birds. We found wolf and bear tracks but never managed to glimpse any, much to our disappointment. The mosquitos were as big as light aircraft.

We’re a little blue to be back, but there’s plenty of summer left and I’m sure we will stage several other minor escapes before it’s over. This was a great start.

Holy moly. I take a week off to fish and pastry mania erupts. One day I’m on a walleye junket, the next I discover that a lust for deep fried croissant dough has encircled the globe. Cronuts are what they are. And if you haven’t heard of them, well, you must be living on a bass boat on Lake Escanaba.

Honestly I probably wouldn’t have heard much about them had I not received a score of emails this past week from readers wanting to attempt them. It seems that their inventor, one Dominique Ansel in Lower Manhattan, has stated that while they are made from croissant dough, the dough isn’t made with butter, since butter’s low melt point causes the layers to slide apart during frying.

It’s my feeling that the failure of Ansel’s butter versions had nothing to do with melt points, but rather with moisture content, as butter is about 17% water and the expanding steam probably blew the dough layers apart. My guess is he’s using margarine or some sort of no-moisture shortening-margarine combination in his dough. That would explain why knock-off homemade cronuts have succeeded with store-bought crescent roll dough, which is made with margarine.

If I were to try my hand at some (and I may have to do that before long since demand is growing) I’d use a slightly lean croissant dough (using maybe two-thirds of the butter that the standard croissant dough recipe on the site calls for), but using a decent quality margarine in place of the butter pat. Why a leaner dough? To keep the layers from really slipping apart when the dough hits the oil.

Anyway, those are my best ideas at the moment. Best of luck, cronutters, and report back with results, please!

It’s time for a little time off, ladies and gents. The pastry clan is taking vacation early this year, and none too soon. Between you and me, I’ve been working too hard at my day job. My tiny brain is as singed and crispy ’round the edges as that macaroon two posts down. So we’re heading to the north woods where, based on what I’ve been hearing, we’ll probably have to trade our swim suits in for ski gear. No matter, so long as I get to sleep ten hours a day. Back in two weeks with pavlova! – Joe

Though you might not think it, camping as a recreational activity had to be invented. We campers in the New World, especially in the States and Canada, tend to assume that modern camping is sort of a cultural hand-me-down, a continuation of the traditions of the Indians, the pioneers and the cowboys on the trail. It’s something we do because people here have pretty much always done it.

That’s all true to an extent, though camping as we know it today had to be invented. The man who did so was a English tailor by the name of Thomas Hirman Holding. Holding was born in 1844 and when he was nine his family attempted, unsuccessfully, to emigrate to America. Over the year or so the family spent in the States, they traveled by horse and cart (since there were no trains) from the Mississippi River to Salt Lake City and back. Over that period Holding camped, saw buffalo and antelope and got run over by a wagon. In time he would come to romanticize those experiences (except maybe the last one) and seek to replicate some of them back home.

At that time no one in Britain camped unless they were in the military. The thought of doing it for fun was, well…odd. Still, in 1877 Holding bought a canoe and began adventuring (when he wasn’t tailoring) around the British Isles, especially Scotland and Ireland, pitching camp wherever he went. A prolific author of short books on clothes-making (Ladies’ Cutting Made Easy, Coats: How to Cut and Try Them On, Trousers, Vests, Breeches and Gaiters and Cutting for Stout Men), Holding eventually began writing travelogues.

By the turn of the 20th century Holding had become something of a trend-setter. Britain was wealthy as a result of the Industrial Revolution. A large middle class had been created, many of whom, tired of the dirt and density of cities and inspired by pastoral and transcendentalist writings, wanted to get away from it all. Camping was just the ticket.

In 1908, prompted by friends who sought Holding’s advice on sleeping successfully out-of-doors, he wrote The Camper’s Handbook, the first-ever non-military camping manual. That same year, evidently fed up with canoes, he founded the Association of Cycle Campers, a club which would eventually evolve into the British Camping and Caravanning Club, which now boasts some half a million members. Holding, by virtue of his considerable skills as a tailor, also designed tents and other gear that could fold neatly and fit on a bicycler’s back.

Holding died in 1930 at the age of 86, having spent much of his life outdoors. It clearly did him good.

Reader Sal (love that name) wants to know what sort of camping I’m talking about here. Backpacking? Car camping? RV camping? That’s a fair question, Sal, as the equipment kit and larder capacity is different for each of them. I’m going to pick the middle road and say car camping, since that’s what Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts do, and it’s what I do with the family when I simply can’t resist their pleas any longer. We’ll assume everyone will have access to cooking gear and will have a cooler of the usual store-bought foods with them.

On which note I feel I have to ask why most camping trips are also junk food pig-outs? I’m not complaining mind you, I like it for the most part, but I’m always amazed at the degree to which the nature-loving indulge in the sort of eating they decry under normal circumstances. I know Mrs. Pastry does. She won’t touch, say, a box of Bisquick unless it’s under a starry sky by a camp fire. Clearly the reason is because foods that are full of preservatives (and I include very salty and/or sugary foods in that category) last longer and are generally safer when kept in a cooler for several days. I just make fun is all.

Here I’ll insert that I’m going to go the open fire route with the pastry this week at least. I’m going to have the brick oven going this Thursday and a Dutch oven won’t work in it. It’ll still leave me plenty to do!

Reader Zoe writes:

I’ve been interested to read some of the comments on the subject of iodine and salt. I’ve always noticed that salt is “iodized” but have wondered why that’s important. Can you go into the subject a little? I’d be interested to read more.

Zoe, you never have to prod me too much to delve into a topic like this. Since we’ve been flirting with various subjects related to diet and health this past week, it only makes sense. Commercially made table salt is iodized by law in the US. It’s natural to wonder why.

Iodine is an element that’s essential to human health. It’s used by the thyroid gland to manufacture two very important hormones by the names of thyroxine and triiodothyronine. Together these hormones help regulate our metabolism. The thyroid gland in the neck is the organ responsible for trapping the miniscule amount of iodine that the human body needs. As long as iodine intake remains more or less constant, the thyroid hums along, quietly doing its job.

The trouble starts when the amount of iodine we take in decreases. In response the cells in the thyroid gland increase in size in an attempt to capture more of what they need. Critically low levels of iodine in the diet thus lead to a dramatic swelling of the thyroid gland. This neck swelling is the condition known as “goiter”. And while it’s mostly just unsightly, the condition also causes profound fatigue, coldness in the body and in extreme cases brain damage.

The main source of iodine on planet Earth is the sea. Thus, eating a steady diet of salt water fish is all it really takes to give your body the iodine it needs. Remarkably the body needs so little iodine to function it’s possible — provided you live right near the ocean — to breathe in enough iodine to sustain your metabolism.

Of course most people don’t live right near an ocean, and as a result are at risk for goiter. In the United States prior to the discovery of the link between iodine and goiter, there was a so-called “goiter belt” that extended from the Pacific Northwest all through the Great Lakes. In the early 20th century, up to 40 percent of the people who lived in that region suffered from goiter in some form. Thus is was a great relief when state and federal governments teamed up with salt companies in 1924 to deliver iodine to the American people via table salt. It was the world’s first “functional food.”

The fact that so many people these days — notably foodies — are opting for non-iodized specialty salts is a bit alarming. For people who are aware that fleur-de-sel and other high-end salts lack iodine, and can remember to take regular iodine supplements, it’s not an issue. However most of us alive today don’t remember iodine-related health issues like goiter and so don’t appreciate the boon that is iodization.

The bright note here is that commercial food packagers use standard iodized salt in their products. That being the case, if foodies can remember to eat a fair amount of cheese or the odd bag of Doritos, they’ll probably get all the iodine they need.