baking and books
Mar. 28th, 2016 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitYesterday I took the risk of improvising a bit with my baking, and made dried cherry and blood orange rolls with cardamom. They turned out rather nice, so here's what I did.
For the dough, I used this recipe for cream cheese cinnamon roll dough, adding the zest of one smallish blood orange. This is a lovely, moist, rich dough and I highly recommend it. It was a little on the wet side right after mixing, but I kneaded it briefly on a generously floured surface and it came nicely together. That was all the kneading I did, because I wanted to keep the dough soft rather than chewy and bready. I did do two sets of stretch-and-folds in the first half hour of the rise.
(Stretch and fold, if you haven't encountered this technique before, is what it sounds like. Reach into the bowl, grab an edge of the dough, stretch it as far as it'll go without breaking, and then fold the stretched bit over the top. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and repeat. One set goes all the way around the dough, or even twice around if the dough is very slack. When you've done a set, you usually want to turn the dough upside down in the bowl, so that the folded-over bits are on the bottom. This helps the dough keep the surface tension on the top, which structures the gluten and help it rise better. Just two or three sets of stretches and folds can replace kneading in most doughs, and it's both easier to perform--especially with wet doughs--and easier on the dough. By the way, if you've got a very wet or sticky dough, wet your hands lightly before stretching and folding. However, I didn't find that this dough required wet hands.)
While the dough rose, I soaked a good quantity of dried cherries (a cup and a half, or maybe more) in the juice of the blood orange, stirring them every once in a while to make sure that all the cherries got a chance to soak.
I also ground about 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of cardamom seeds (not pods, just the seeds), roughly the same amount of Tellicherry peppercorns, and 4 or 5 whole cloves along with maybe half a cup of white sugar. You don't have to grind the sugar, but I thought the sugar would help catch and distribute the spice flavors better.
Once the dough was ready (including folding in the cream cheese layer), I spread it with a tablespoon or two of melted butter, sprinkled over the spiced sugar and a few tablespoons of brown sugar as well, then the drained soaked cherries. I left a margin of bare dough at the top so that everything would hold together once rolled.
I cut the roll into pieces and baked as the recipe directs. However when I checked the rolls after only 30 minutes they were already a touch overbaked, so keep an eye on them.
Once the rolls were cool I made a glaze of the zest and juice of another blood orange, a little lemon juice for additional tartness, and powdered sugar and spooned it over the top. I had my doubts about the glaze because it didn't taste all that nice in the bowl, but it turned out to work beautifully on the rolls. Its sweet, orangey, slightly berry-ish flavor makes a nice contrast to the cherries and spices. The raspberry-ish color of it is less than ideal, though, so if you want the prettiest dish, maybe use a regular orange or just lemon. A cream cheese icing would also be great, but I didn't want to have to refrigerate the rolls.
I spent much of the weekend binge-reading books by British journalist Jon Ronson. I started with The Psychopath Test, in which Ronson explores psychopathy, other mental illnesses, and what he calls "the madness industry." He's especially interested in the flattening of nuance, whether that's the way the ever-expanding DSM labels more and more human characteristics as illnesses, or the way media such as reality TV shows focus on the more extreme, "madder" ends of people's personalities. Ronson has a healthy but not excessive skepticism; he's critical of the DSM, for example, without claiming that it's worthless or that psychiatry is nonsense, and he beautifully exposes the lies within Scientology's anti-psychiatry rhetoric.
Ronson is sometimes called a "gonzo" journalist, a label I thought was unfair after reading The Psychopath Test. His earlier Them: Adventures with Extremists deserves the label more, but it's not gonzo in the way I dislike. Ronson isn't putting on a show of machismo--the opposite, I'd say--and his approach is rooted in an interest in truth, not in thrill-seeking. The book is, again, surprisingly nuanced, though that doesn't stop Ian Paisley from coming across as a wretched bully in ways that aren't even directly related to his politics.
I also read Lost at Sea, a collection of standalone pieces mostly written for the Guardian. I liked it, and I'd especially recommend "Who Killed Richard Cullen," a terrifyingly prescient story about predatory consumer lending written way back in 2005, and "Amber Waves of Green," from I think 2012, in which Ronson interviews people (mostly Americans) at five different income levels, from a dishwasher making less than $200 a week to a multi-billionaire. (Guess who's the most angry and bitter? Hint: it's not the dishwasher.)
I'm now reading Men Who Stare At Goats, but I've only just started it.
For the dough, I used this recipe for cream cheese cinnamon roll dough, adding the zest of one smallish blood orange. This is a lovely, moist, rich dough and I highly recommend it. It was a little on the wet side right after mixing, but I kneaded it briefly on a generously floured surface and it came nicely together. That was all the kneading I did, because I wanted to keep the dough soft rather than chewy and bready. I did do two sets of stretch-and-folds in the first half hour of the rise.
(Stretch and fold, if you haven't encountered this technique before, is what it sounds like. Reach into the bowl, grab an edge of the dough, stretch it as far as it'll go without breaking, and then fold the stretched bit over the top. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and repeat. One set goes all the way around the dough, or even twice around if the dough is very slack. When you've done a set, you usually want to turn the dough upside down in the bowl, so that the folded-over bits are on the bottom. This helps the dough keep the surface tension on the top, which structures the gluten and help it rise better. Just two or three sets of stretches and folds can replace kneading in most doughs, and it's both easier to perform--especially with wet doughs--and easier on the dough. By the way, if you've got a very wet or sticky dough, wet your hands lightly before stretching and folding. However, I didn't find that this dough required wet hands.)
While the dough rose, I soaked a good quantity of dried cherries (a cup and a half, or maybe more) in the juice of the blood orange, stirring them every once in a while to make sure that all the cherries got a chance to soak.
I also ground about 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of cardamom seeds (not pods, just the seeds), roughly the same amount of Tellicherry peppercorns, and 4 or 5 whole cloves along with maybe half a cup of white sugar. You don't have to grind the sugar, but I thought the sugar would help catch and distribute the spice flavors better.
Once the dough was ready (including folding in the cream cheese layer), I spread it with a tablespoon or two of melted butter, sprinkled over the spiced sugar and a few tablespoons of brown sugar as well, then the drained soaked cherries. I left a margin of bare dough at the top so that everything would hold together once rolled.
I cut the roll into pieces and baked as the recipe directs. However when I checked the rolls after only 30 minutes they were already a touch overbaked, so keep an eye on them.
Once the rolls were cool I made a glaze of the zest and juice of another blood orange, a little lemon juice for additional tartness, and powdered sugar and spooned it over the top. I had my doubts about the glaze because it didn't taste all that nice in the bowl, but it turned out to work beautifully on the rolls. Its sweet, orangey, slightly berry-ish flavor makes a nice contrast to the cherries and spices. The raspberry-ish color of it is less than ideal, though, so if you want the prettiest dish, maybe use a regular orange or just lemon. A cream cheese icing would also be great, but I didn't want to have to refrigerate the rolls.
I spent much of the weekend binge-reading books by British journalist Jon Ronson. I started with The Psychopath Test, in which Ronson explores psychopathy, other mental illnesses, and what he calls "the madness industry." He's especially interested in the flattening of nuance, whether that's the way the ever-expanding DSM labels more and more human characteristics as illnesses, or the way media such as reality TV shows focus on the more extreme, "madder" ends of people's personalities. Ronson has a healthy but not excessive skepticism; he's critical of the DSM, for example, without claiming that it's worthless or that psychiatry is nonsense, and he beautifully exposes the lies within Scientology's anti-psychiatry rhetoric.
Ronson is sometimes called a "gonzo" journalist, a label I thought was unfair after reading The Psychopath Test. His earlier Them: Adventures with Extremists deserves the label more, but it's not gonzo in the way I dislike. Ronson isn't putting on a show of machismo--the opposite, I'd say--and his approach is rooted in an interest in truth, not in thrill-seeking. The book is, again, surprisingly nuanced, though that doesn't stop Ian Paisley from coming across as a wretched bully in ways that aren't even directly related to his politics.
I also read Lost at Sea, a collection of standalone pieces mostly written for the Guardian. I liked it, and I'd especially recommend "Who Killed Richard Cullen," a terrifyingly prescient story about predatory consumer lending written way back in 2005, and "Amber Waves of Green," from I think 2012, in which Ronson interviews people (mostly Americans) at five different income levels, from a dishwasher making less than $200 a week to a multi-billionaire. (Guess who's the most angry and bitter? Hint: it's not the dishwasher.)
I'm now reading Men Who Stare At Goats, but I've only just started it.
