Have you ever had one of those days where you think everything is going so well? Then BAM everything goes to pot?! This weekends baking was a whole lot of that.
Strange surroundings
Unlike most weekends I was not baking in my native kitchen, but a garden. We were visiting my parents to help decorate, what is to be their new kitchen diner, which meant there was now oven, work surface or stove. But I’m forever the optimist with an over active imagination that I wasn’t going to let the little things stop me. So instead of the giving up I decided the best idea would be to utilise the garden in what my dad decided to call al fresco baking. I dug out my mums scales from the numerous boxes of kitchen equipment being stored in the shed, grabbed the camping stove and set to work on the patio table!
First things first and this week that means pastry. For this challenge we’re talking rough puff. The bakers on the show used various techniques to make this, from Kates all in one to Nancy dabbing the fats on the surface of the flour and egg dough. So I’ve decided to go with a mixture here, so I mixed half in with the flour mix and the rest dabbed on the dough. The main thing was keeping the fats relatively cool, easier said than done when you’re workng outside and the sun is heating up! Working on a well floured surface, you have to start the first part of the rolling and folding. Rolling it into a long rectangle, then folding the top third down over the middle third and folding the bottom third over the top of that. Next turn the pastry 90o and do the same again. Then wrap it and fridge it so that the fats can harden up again. This process has to be done about 4 times all together.
What a lovely pear!
While the pastry was doing its thing in the fridge it was onto the pear poaching. This bit was pretty simple. Peel the pears leaving the stork and poach I a liquor of water, cinnamon, orange zest, auger and white wine…yum! This all went well enough, albeit I had forgotten the orange and had to use a lemon instead. After the pears had been simmering I the liquor for a good 15 mins it was time to take them out and reduce the delicious smelling liquor to a syrup. It smelt a bit like Christmas but with an aroma that only wine can give!
Half way through the reducing there seemed to be little change I the consistency. It wasn’t until I heard a little burst of air I realised why. The gas in my camping stove had had run out! Luckily there was a spare and with this quickly changed the reduction was a lot quicker, and I had to be careful it didn’t boil over or burn.
Due to the baking restrictions this weekend, I decided that there was no way that I was going to be able to do all the baking in one day let alone 2 hours, so I split this recipe over the two days. Other than the pastry rolling/folding and the poaching the rest of this bake was going to take place on Sunday.
The next day
After a morning of painting a ceiling and looking like a paint speckled student I washed off what I could and started to prep for the next stage of the bake. This time as the sun was still shining I decided to tackle this step inside, but not in the house but my parents caravan instead!. This caravan is fancy, It even has an oven! It was cooler, building dust free and was going to be my saviour, hopefully. Armed which the pastry, pears, rolling pin and knife it was time to tackle the tricky part of dressing the pears.
Rolling, stripping and wrapping!
The recipe says to roll out 60cm x20cm, and not more than 5mm thick. if you roll this pastry out to that length the thickness is going to be considerably larger than it needs to be. I just kept rolling it to a thickness I was happy with. Next the strips needed to be cut, apparently you need 18-20 and at a width of 8mm. Have you ever tried cutting pastry to a specific mm? Trust me it’s not easy, even with a ruler, I found its best to just do it by eye.
PrePEARation
The pear prep did not stop with the poaching. Now that they were cool, the core at the bottom needed to be removed with a melon baller. Simple but tricky because the fruit is soft and you don’t want to bruise it, or break the stork off.
Strips cut and pears prepped, it was time to start wrapping the bad boys. Starting at the bottom and turning the pear like rather than the pastry it was all starting to come together. Once the pastry wrapping had gotten over the ‘bum’ of the pears I starting to wrap the rest while sitting it on a plate. This was when it started to get tricky. Wrapping the ribbon of pastry round the pear in a circular motion meant that the ribbon started to get twisted. I had to keep untwisting it, hoping it didn’t break, which it inevitably did at times. Other difficulties were making sure that the layers were slightly overlapping so that the pie case was secure all the way around the pear. It wasn’t until the pastry wrapping was complete that I found that in some places this was what had happened, but it was too late to fix.
Once all the pears were wrapped and placed on the baking sheet they were decorated with a pastry leaf, brushed with beaten egg and then sprinkled with the granulated sugar.
Heating up and melting down
During the pear prep the caravan oven was eating up to 180oC. It been a long time since I have used a gas oven, so I have forgotten some of the heating traits. The baking of the pears helped to show all these in the end. The top of the oven is hotter than bottom, which meant that they all cooked from the top down. Panic! The tops started to brown nicely but the pastry bottoms were still raw and melting slightly. Thinking on my feet, I made some little tin foil hats to sit on the top, in the hope that it would save the top from burning. These hats soon turned into jackets as the cooking continued, leading to them taking a lot longer to cook than the alloted time.
With a mood well and truly deflated I removed the over tanned pies from the oven and left them to cool, while I heated the syrup up to a pouring consistency. I know presentation is paramount but there is only so much you can do with burnt topped pies, where the pastry has slipped and created a pastry puddle at the bottom.
Afterthoughts:
- Once the the pears are wrapped with the pastry, put them back in the fridge for the pastry to harden up again, otherwise it the fats will melt too quickly in the oven causing the pastry to slip down.
- Make sure the layers overlap
- Make sure the syrup doesn’t burn, and maybe add some butter at the end to it loosen up and make it more like a caramel sauce.
Overall the pears tasted great, they were poached well and the flavour was good. The pastry, albeit burnt in places, had good colour and flaky layers. But the best bit in my opinion was the winey mulled syrup…now that was lovely and made the pears more pallatable, for me the pear hater!
