The Epiphany That Turned Me into a Good Baker
BY KATHY GUNST
From the Washington Post
Author of fourteen cookbooks (including Notes from a Maine Kitchen and Soup Swap) and resident chef of the NPR radio show Here and Now, Kathy Gunst certainly knows her own way around a kitchen. Baking was never her natural forte, though—until she gleaned wisdom from other writer’s recipes.
When I attended the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery in London in the late 1970s, I learned the foundations of French cuisine. But even as Ms. Cadbury was teaching us the proper way to fold butter into puff pastry and the technique for making silky béarnaise sauce, I made a silent vow to myself: I would follow the rules, and then I would break them. I would be a jazz musician, riffing on the classics, creating my own dissonant, experimental compositions in the kitchen. And for years, that has been my approach to cooking.
For the most part, it has worked. Except for when I bake.
I’ve always believed that great bakers are good at following rules. And so, for someone who prides herself on being a bit of a rebel—in the kitchen and out—baking has been a challenge. Being a really good baker requires understanding what makes bread dough rise and why some cakes are light and fluffy, and that is a matter of working within the lines. Isn’t it?
Then, a few years ago, I was asked to judge a prestigious cookbook competition—in the baking category. I tried to decline, explaining what an honor it was but telling the organizers that they had picked the wrong person for the job. I lobbied to switch categories. “Why would you want someone who isn’t proficient in a subject to judge the experts?” I asked.
“Think of it as a challenge,” the head judge said. “Call me if you get into trouble.”
Within a week, I had three enormous boxes of books: close to 50 devoted to cakes, cookies, pies, French pastry, ice cream sandwiches and more. I tucked myself into bed each night with a dozen or so titles and made my way through the pile. Eventually, as instructed, I narrowed the field to the five that made me believe I could become a better baker.
Then came the scary step. I needed to test two or three recipes from my top choices. Because this was baking, I would have to follow the recipes to the letter. And that was going to be tough.
I spent 10 days testing recipes: baking pies and fancy pastry, icing cakes and generally feeling bad about myself. Honestly, who likes spending time doing something they’re not good at? I started having nightmares about my tyrannical fifth-grade math teacher, who insisted we write all our math equations in ink.
Instead of calling my therapist, I dug in deeper. I started weighing everything, and I learned there was a big difference between what I called 1½ packed cups of brown sugar and the generally accepted 330 grams that 1½ cups of packed brown sugar is supposed to weigh. Expert bakers could have predicted that: My eyeball-it approach was a big part of the problem. When I scooped out 1 cup of flour that should have weighed 128 grams, my scale showed close to a 20-gram discrepancy. When I actually measured the spices called for in a gingerbread cake, I was amazed: My practice of filling the spice cap up to what I’d assumed was ½ teaspoon was way off.
I had a major aha! moment. From then on, when a recipe told me to take the eggs or butter out of the refrigerator an hour before I used them, I did what I was told. If a recipe called for a 9-inch cake pan, that’s what I used. If it said to whip eggs and sugar at high speed in a mixer for a full 10 minutes, until light and fluffy, I didn’t call it quits after five. I was a soldier, following the commands of my superior. I didn’t cut a single corner or question the requirements.
My first (typically rushed) attempt to make French tuilles (delicate, buttery cookies that resemble the roof tiles on French houses) resulted in cookies too fragile to hold their shape. But when I retested them, measuring the ingredients and nailing every detail, they came out perfectly. Every failure led to deeper inquiry. I looked through each book for answers. The books that made the cut answered my questions about what to do if the dough fell apart when you rolled it out, or if the cake didn’t rise properly, or if the crème anglaise separated.
When my three-layer chocolate cake with mocha-chocolate butter-cream came out looking like it could be sold in a real bakery (or at least would be the first thing to go at a bake sale), I felt victorious. I’d gone into the experiment kicking and screaming, and many cakes, cookies, puddings and pastries later, I’d emerged a much better baker.
Then, one fall, several months after I judged the competition, a friend brought me a basket of apples from her orchard. Time to make a pie. I didn’t want to follow someone else’s recipe. I wanted to try something different, something I could call my own. I also didn’t want to slip back into my old sloppy baking behavior. For the crust, I decided to substitute nut flour for half of the wheat flour.
I whirled the flours with butter and ice water, and it became a wet, sticky mess. But something told me to forge ahead: I placed the dough in plastic wrap and chilled it for several hours. It was way moister than what I was used to, and when I tried to roll it out, it was almost impossible to work with. So I draped it into a French tart pan with a removable bottom, pressing it together like a kid molding Play Doh.
I peeled the apples and tossed them with brown sugar, ground ginger and cinnamon, then overlapped the fruit slices. It was pretty, but it looked dry. So I boiled down apple cider with ground ginger and a touch of cinnamon. I waited until it was almost thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I poured that glaze over the apples and placed it in the hot oven, and soon the kitchen smelled like some kind of autumnal fantasy. The tart was a perfect balance of nutty crust, juicy, sweet apples and fragrant spices.
At Thanksgiving, when my youngest daughter asked for pumpkin cheesecake, I went a little off-script again. I studied several recipes and made a plan: Rather than blend pumpkin puree into a cream-cheese base, I swirled it in by the tablespoon. I was patient in the baking, nestling the cake in a water bath for its oven time and letting it rest and cool before refrigerating. The rewards were huge: a perfectly creamy, smooth-topped cheesecake with a stunning marbled effect.
Another revelation came this past Valentine’s Day, when I planned to serve my husband a chocolate dessert. I used the same nut pastry I had discovered when baking the apple tart and filled it with a simple dark chocolate batter. Feeling the need to be creative without veering offcourse too wildly, I sprinkled coarse sea salt and toasted unsweetened coconut on top of the still-warm tart. The white flakes set against the dark chocolate tart looked, and tasted, pretty impressive.
This spring, when I visited San Francisco, the season’s first locally grown strawberries appeared at the farmers market. I wanted to bake fluffy biscuits that would showcase them, and I kept fantasizing that Mary Berry of “The Great British Baking Show,” in her clipped British voice, would taste them and say: “Nice bake! Very nice bake, indeed.” In the past, my biscuits have fallen . . . short. I didn’t have my baking books with me at the time, but I remembered that one had advised folding finished dough over itself several times to create layers. That’s what I did, without overworking it, and the results were light, layered and truly spectacular. (A ginger butter took them right over the top.)
The winning baking books from the competition now line my shelves. When I pull them out to bake, I feel a weird sense of pride, as if I wrote them myself. During my two weeks as a full-time “baker,” I gained a few pounds and got jazzed up on sugar. But I also learned that if you follow the rules and understand why they are there, you can go ahead and start to break them, a little at a time. My crash course in baking taught me plenty of techniques, and it taught me a few things about myself: namely, that I needn’t fight my urge to experiment. I just needed to learn how to do it right.
Even a rebel, it turns out, is capable of restraint.
Chocolate Tart with Sea Salt and Toasted Coconut
You might say this tart combines several popular flavors. The pastry is made from almond flour and all-purpose flour and is very buttery and crisp. The filling is like a chocolate mousse: good bittersweet chocolate, cream, eggs, vanilla and sea salt. It’s topped with toasted coconut flakes and more sea salt. The tart filling has no sugar; it’s all about honoring the chocolate and the balance of the salt.
If you serve the tart the day you bake it, it’s like chocolate pie. But if you refrigerate it overnight, the filling becomes dense and almost fudgy. It’s delicious either way.
You will need an 8-inch round tart pan with a removable bottom.
Make Ahead: The pastry dough needs to rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Plan on letting the tart cool for at least 1 hour, or cover and refrigerate it for up to 12 hours.
For the crust and topping
1 cup (120 grams) all-purpose flour
½ cup (60 grams) almond flour
Pinch sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
2 tablespoons (28 grams) sugar
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, well chilled, cut into small pieces
About ¼ cup ice-cold water, or as needed
⅓ cup (20 grams) unsweetened flaked coconut
For the filling
1½ cups heavy cream
9 ounces (255 grams) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (may substitute 5 ounces 65 percent bittersweet chocolate plus 4 ounces milk chocolate)
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon (3 grams) good sea salt
Directions
For the crust and topping: Whisk together the all-purpose and almond flours, the salt and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter; use your hands and a light touch, work the butter into the flours until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Add a few tablespoons of water and mix, using a soft spatula or wooden spoon, until the mixture just comes together. Add more water as needed, using only enough to keep the dough together.
(Alternatively, pulse the flours, salt and sugar in a food processor just until blended. Add the butter and pulse about 15 times, until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Add only enough water so that the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.)
Place the dough in a sheet of plastic wrap and form it into a ball. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to overnight.
Unwrap the dough and roll it out on a clean work surface into a 10-inch round. Drape the dough into the tart pan, covering the bottom and up the sides of the pan; trim the edges (you’ll have scraps left over), but make sure there’s enough to fit just over the rim. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the tart shell from the refrigerator; use a fork to dock the pastry in several spots. (This will keep the pastry from puffing up.) Place the tart pan on a baking sheet; bake (middle rack) for 10 minutes, then let it cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Keep the oven on; spread the coconut on the baking sheet and bake for about 5 minutes, watching closely, until the coconut begins to turn golden brown. Let cool; keep the oven on.
For the filling: Heat the cream in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until it is gently bubbling at the edges.
Place the chocolate in a large mixing bowl. Pour the hot cream on top and stir steadily until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth.
Whisk together the eggs, vanilla extract and ½ teaspoon of sea salt in a separate mixing bowl until frothy. Add the egg mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir until fully incorporated and smooth. Pour the filling into the cooled crust and bake (middle rack) for 25 to 28 minutes. To test for doneness, gently shake the tart; if the middle wobbles just a little (and still appears undercooked) but the sides seem solid, it is done. The tart will continue to cook once it’s removed from the oven, and it will firm up when cooling.
While the tart is still warm, sprinkle it with the coconut and about ½ teaspoon of the coarse sea salt; press the salt and coconut very gently into the tart to make sure they adhere. Let the tart cool for 1 hour before serving, or refrigerate (see headnote).