These came out significantly better than I thought they would, so I’m newly emboldened to make pastry. The real killer for making these things is the time spent waiting for the dough to chill between roll-outs. I found a recipe that keeps it to the bare minimum, though I imagine some flakiness is sacrificed.

Ingredients:

1 pound all-purpose flour
4 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 ounce fresh yeast (or 1 Tbsp dry)
1-1/4 cups milk
12 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg, lightly beaten, for egg wash

Instructions:

Using the dough hook of an electric mixer, combine flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl.

Dissolve the yeast in 1 cup lukewarm milk. Add to the flour mixture, together with the remaining milk, and mix until dough forms a ball.

Remove dough hook. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow dough to rest for 1 or 1-1/2 hours, until double in bulk. Punch down the dough and refrigerate it, covered, for 30 minutes.

Mold the butter into a block. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Cut a deep cross in the dough. Spread out the sections of dough so that the center is the thickest part. Roll it in opposite directions to form a four-leaf clover, keeping the center thicker. Place the block of butter diagonally in the center of the cloverleaf and bring the edges of the dough to the center, enclosing the butter completely. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.

To make the turns, place the chilled dough on a lightly floured surface. Pound lightly and evenly with your rolling pin to make the dough malleable. Roll out into a rectangle approximately 9 by 16 inches. With the 9-inch side in front of you, fold into thirds, starting with the bottom third and folding over the top third. You have now completed the first turn. Turn the dough so that the narrow end faces you, keeping the seam on your right (a quarter turn). Again, roll out the dough into a rectangle approximately 9 by 16 inches, and again fold into thirds. You have now completed two turns. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Pound the dough evenly and again roll out into a 9-by-16-inch rectangle. Complete two more turns to make four turns. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 50 to 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C) .

Roll out dough into two rectangles 1/6 inch thick. Cut into triangles and shape into crescents. Put them on a baking sheet and allow to rise for 20 minutes.

Brush each croissant with egg wash and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Yield: Makes 24 croissants

I decided to start a loaf last night, so I took turned my starter into a sponge by adding the total volume of my PYNK starter to a bowl with one cup each of flour and warm water. When that had ‘proofed’–it took about an hour and a half to get frothy and bubbly–I took two cups of it and added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, two teaspoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt, plus as much flour as it could absorb. It worked out to about 2.5 cups. Here’s what it looked like before kneading:

After kneading the dough for about 10 minutes and adding flour in as I went, I put the dough back in this bowl (after cleaning it out) covered it with a towel and set it back in the oven with the light on. I saw almost no rise in it for the next couple of hours, so I decided to let it go overnight. By morning, it had doubled in volume, but the dough had also developed a ’skin’, so when I punched it down and kneaded it a little more, there were a bunch of shards of dough-skin shifting around in the dough. We’ll see what happens to them during baking. Here’s what the dough looked like after the second kneading. I formed it into a loaf and placed it on a pizza stone sprinkled with corn meal and then cut the top.

The dough then went back in a warm oven to complete the second rise. Here’s what it looked like afterwards:

I’m not sure it’s quite doubled in volume, and it’s not going to look pretty, but it might just be a decent loaf! We’ll see in 30-45 minutes…

The idea for this cupcake, which I took to Thanksgiving dinner, was to try and replicate something of the flavor of a caramel apple. I made a fairly conventional cupcake batter but replaced some of the liquid with apple cider and grated a couple of Stayman-Winesaps in as well. The cake had a convincing apple flavor, but the icing was a failure. I don’t think I allowed the sugar to caramelize deeply enough. Plus, I think to truly replicate the caramel apple experience, I might have been better served with a glaze rather than an icing. My food photography needs work.