Greenstein's Bakery - BB - Gingersnaps

ב''ה

These are fairly decent cookies. I used fresh ginger which, I think, toned down the ginger flavor a bit (unintentionally). The regular ginger powder spice may have left a stronger ginger flavor. It had a very nice ginger aftertaste at any rate.

Mis en place (ignore the raisins, they are for next week...)

The 'Ez-man' was me for moral support.

Freshly ground ginger in my coffee grinder. I ended up using about 5 teaspoons since I could tell the flavor was not going to be too strong. I don't mind ginger flavor in my coffee beans since it is anyways a regular part of Yeminite coffee Hawajj (although I prefer mine light on the ginger and heavy on the cardamom...)

Butter and Corn syrup. I wonder how much this would have been better with beurre noisette?

'Crumbly'. I used a combo of superfine and brown sugar. 

Final batter. 

It was a bit sticky. I'm not sure why my cookies did not get cracks in them. Maybe the extra liquid from the fresh ginger caused this.

Toaster shot. It took a batches to finish all the batter. Meanwhile, it was in the fridge.

I think using the cornsyrup gave the cookie some kind of smooth texture. I wonder what Rose had in mind with that? (The 'Stoly' was there ready to toast if I had another toaster explosion. No such luck...)

Greenstein's Bakery - BB - Golden Orange Panettone with Chocolate Sauce

ב''ה

This is the first time I've tried panettone. It tastes like brioche with fruit.

This recipe was a bit piecemeal over a few days so no mis en place.

'Omi-girl' was with me for moral support.

Don't ask me to tell you difference between three day biga and one day biga. I don't know. I can not tell the difference.

This is 'three-day' biga in water.

This is the soaker. I made it the day of. I'll admit the recipe seemed a bit drawn out. I snipped out an hour here and there.

Final dough recipe. I don't think I could find where it says to put in the salt.

Monica mentioned that she thought the bread was not sweet enough. I added an extra tablespoon of corn-syrup. 

I simply left the dough to rise and mixed in the raisins and home-made candied orange peel.

The brioche mold seemed appropriate. I skipped all the waiting in the fridge parts. 'Three days in the fridge to 'harden and mature' before baking.' Say what? I did give it a second rise though, once in the brioche mold. Also, this dough was also way too wet to knead and fold which is how I remember the dough from Rose's brioche recipe from Heavenly Cakes.

Here is the candied orang-peel process. Thanks to Vicki for letting us know about this recipe from 'Kate'.

Scrape the pith.

Simmer and drain thrice.

Julienne

Watch carefully and simmer with the sugar and water until your wife calls you down stairs.

 When you come back upstairs, it has duly started to burn. We will call it 'caramelized.'

My wife redeemed herself by teaching me how if you put the bottom of the pot in cold water, much of the burnt part sticks to the bottom and separates from the rest.

I did not have time to wait for the raisins to soak for hours so, after I poured off the liquid to use in the final dough, I soaked the raisins again in hot water for 15 minutes so they would be soft.

I ended up soaking the candied-orange peel in hot water as well since I did not want  to bite into hard-candy when I bit into the bread.

  I added some of the sweet-water left over from the candied-orange soak into the dough mixture in hopes of making it just a tad sweeter.

Toaster shot.

Toaster explosion shot. 

Divide and conquer.

The top of the big one was a bit funky.

Looks great from this angle though. :)

Crumb the mini.

Crumb the large. These were cut open while still warm. I would have enjoyed more raisins.

It was definitely better with chocolate. It might be nice to fold chocolate chips into the dough.

Greenstein's Bakery - BB - Blackberry Blueberry Pie

ב''ה

Blackberries and blueberries together is really an unexpectedly neo-classic flavor. Really delicious and unique!

Mis en place. Wait! Not so fast. There is a bit of backstory. 

The lovely pie plate and server were Channakah gifts from my lovely wife. (Maybe I can convince her to guest-blog again. Hint, hint.)

I'm not sure if I'm more pleased with those items or this giant container of Muscovado she got me.

Being a kosher kitchen, we had to 'tovel' the new items in a (rain-water) mikvah.

In fact, any thing new we buy gets put away (and sometimes forgotten) until we 'tovel' it. 

Needless to say, these gifts spurred me to get our act together.

Lulu was with me to learn the trade.

Some of the other 'lost' items. Feels like we went shopping and bought these again, now that we can finally use them!

Coarse-meal? Um, maybe.

The 'bag-method'. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing here as this is about the second real 'pie' I have attempted.

Rolling it.

These exact amounts of dough in the recipe did not leave a lot of room for error...

…and of error, there was a good amount.

I should have titled this post -'A patchwork-pie'.

The blueberries were frozen but I could only find fresh blackberries. Lets just say it was an expensive pie.

Here you can see how the top pie crust rolled out. Again, I sort of wished there was just a bit 'more' dough so that you could have a bit more f'ray around the edges' with out affecting the inner circle.

Toaster shot.

I mixed up some more sugar-cornstarch etc and made some pie-lets with the left over blueberries.

Definitely 'flakey'. The crust was 'flaking' as I took of the  tinfoil rim-sheild. It really is a delicious crust.

The Blueberry pie-lets were good too.

What a great flavor.