BakerAunt
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Today I tried a new recipe: Peach and Ginger Turnovers, from KAF's Whole Grain Baking (pp513-514). It did not go well.
The recipe uses a "blitz puff pastry" dough using whole wheat pastry flour and bread flour. This technique is somewhat new for me, so perhaps I just did not do it right. However, I think this is pastry recipe is similar to the KAF blueberry turnover recipe I tried a few years back with similar frustration. I threw the KAF recipe over for Ken Haedrich's blueberry hand-pie cruss. (Thank you to Dachshundlady for bringing Ken's recipe to our attention on the Baking Circle.) His hand-pie crust is a lot easier and gives nicer results. If I get more peaches, I'll try this filling with his pastry recipe.
The peach and ginger filling is wonderful, although I do think that the recipe should tell you to make it the day before and refrigerate it, as that improves its texture and makes it easier to enclose in the dough. As for the blitz puff pastry, if I am ever crazy enough to try it again, I would cut the dough into four pieces before refrigerating it. That way, the baker only has to roll out an 8x8-inch piece each time and cut it into four squares, then fill the turnovers and seal closed. The cookbook specifies rolling it into a 16x16-inch square, and as I was doing so, I realized that my parchment (used Reynolds) has a maximum width of 15inches. (Oh, why did I trust KAF?! Well, because usually their recipes work.) Rolling out that much dough at once also makes it more likely that it will be overworked. The directions should have taken that into consideration.
My dough stuck, in spite of flouring the parchment. I ended up cutting the parchment in half, and putting each half onto a cookie sheet (I did not have a cookie sheet wide enough to handle a 16-inch square) and putting it back in the refrigerator to let it chill again before shaping, and it was still hard to handle. I did get some triangles, but I got more blobs and a lot of spilled filling. It was so frustrating that if I'd not used such expensive ingredients, I might have just thrown it all away. I ended up baking it in two batches. At least the taste is good but very few are the nice little turnover triangles, and most are blobs of various shapes.
On Thursday, I tried a new recipe: Chocolate Chip-Toffee Scones, a recipe from the Fresh Cream Cafe in Ann Arbor, MI, which appeared in the RSVP recipe request section of Bon Appetit (September 1997). It is unusual in that it does not use butter but calls for whipping cream until stiff peaks form. I used heavy cream (and may have slightly overwhipped it). The only ingredient change I made was to substitute in 1 cup of barley flour. For the other 2 1/4 cups of flour, I used Gold Medal. Also, it called for 1/2 cup chocolate-covered English toffee bits. I used Heath toffee bits, which are not covered with chocolate, but since the recipe also uses 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, I felt that was not an issue. The recipe called for making a 12-inch circle and cutting into twelve triangles that are baked separately. I found it more prudent to make two 6-inch circles and cut each into six. I baked them an extra three minutes, since I use very heavy baking sheets. The scones have a very light texture when warm. (I had one with coffee.) My first impression is that the 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli) overpowers the rest of the ingredients. I might consider using only half a cup. I like warm scones, but I also like ones that are good at room temperature, since I usually bake for only two people. I will report on how these are tomorrow.
Addendum: The scones are delicious at room temperature. When I mentioned to my husband that the chocolate chips seemed to overwhelm them, he said, "Well, yes," which means he does not see it as a problem. Given how unusual this recipe is, I'm going to post it with my changes.
