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Lunettes with Fig Filling

gcook17's picture
gcook17

Lunettes with Fig Filling

These pastries are made of croissant dough and filled with a fig filling.  Apparently lunettes are, among other things, eyeglasses in French.  You could use any croissant dough you liked, but the dough I used for these was whole wheat with a sponge from ABAP, by Suas.  2 lbs. of detrempe (dough before adding the roll-in butter) made 12 lunettes.  I rolled out the dough to about 18" x 12".  After spreading the filling on the whole surface I rolled the dough up from each end lengthwise.  The resulting roll was 12" long and I cut it into 12 1" slices with a serrated knife.  It was necessary to clean off the knife after every two cuts because the fig filling stuck to it.

 

This amount of filling is plenty (or maybe too much) for a dozen lunettes.  Suas warns against using too much filling because it will make the makeup difficult.  I used about 1/2 to 2/3 of the filling described below.  The taste of the filling is subtle--next time I will try using a bit more.  I used the almond meal from Trader Joe's which comes in 1 pound bags.  It is made from unblanched almonds (peel and all) so it's not good for things that need a light colored almond paste.

The fig filling formula in ABAP called for almond paste which I took to mean marzipan so I approximated it with the following.


Fig filling
Part 1 - Almond paste
Mix together the following:
6 oz. Ground almonds or almond flour (don't need to be blanched because the filling will be dark anyway due to the figs)
6.5 oz. Powdered sugar
1 egg white
¼ t. vanilla extract
½ t. almond extract
½ t. lemon or lime juice


Part 2 - Fig filling (somewhat based on ABAP)
5.5 oz. Dried figs that were chopped very fine in a food processor
¼ t. orange extract (or equivalent amount of orange zest)
2 egg whites
2 t. brandy
Combine these ingredients with the almond paste and after several hours, when dried figs have had time to hydrate, add enough water to make the filling spreadable. It should be like fairly thick jam, but without chunks of fruit. The amount of water needed depends on how dry the figs are--the amount of water needed depends on how dry the figs are.

Comments

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

I don't think I have ever seen a pastry using just the detrempe recipe.  I would love to see a crumb shot of your pastry!  Is it crispy outside and tender creamy inside ?  Lovely pastry!

Sylvia

gcook17's picture
gcook17

Thank you, Sylvia.

I'm sorry that my description was confusing.  The dough was just basic croissant dough and it was laminated.  The roll-in butter weight was 25% of the detrempe weight. When I decide how much dough to make I always calculate the weight of the detrempe.  Then I make the butter block 25% of that.

Here's a picture of the crumb:

-greg

inlovewbread's picture
inlovewbread

Nicely done. Very nice job shaping those too. Perfect time of year for the fig filling :-) 

 

gcook17's picture
gcook17

Thank you.  We have a fig tree that produces so many figs it's hard to use them all.  My wife dries most of them and friends and neighbors snap up the excess..  I've always got my eyes peeled for something tasty to make with them.

-greg

ques2008's picture
ques2008

and i love figs so i might try them.  they would also make nice Christmas giveaways!

xaipete's picture
xaipete

I'm definitely going to try making almond paste with unblanched almonds. What a great idea. I don't care about the color. Do you think there is any effect on the taste when you don't blanch them?

--Pamela

gcook17's picture
gcook17

Pamela, I don't think there is any taste difference.  I used this Trader Joe's Almond meal to make frangipane for a pear tart and I didn't notice any difference in taste.  The color was a lot darker than it is when I use blanched almonds.  I don't think the almonds themselves have that much flavor and most of the almond flavor in the frangipane I make comes from the almond extract.

-greg

calliekoch's picture
calliekoch

Those look great!

Wish I had a fig tree. These make me want to attempt laminating some dough at home.

gcook17's picture
gcook17

Thanks, Callie.

I used the things I learned from Mark Sinclair about how to get the butter and dough to be about the same consistency and also ideas on resting the dough between turns that I got from hanjoakim and DonD on this forum and come up with my own schedule for managing to roll it out by hand.  Before I did this the butter would usually crack because it was too cold and the dough would be too soft at the beginning of the process and far too elastic at the end of the process.  It was almost impossible to roll it out into a big sheet after 3 turns.

Also one of the big things I found in hand rolling out the final sheet for cutting into croissants is to lift the dough after each pass of the roller so it isn't sticking to the table while rolling the next time.  But it is good for the dough to stick enough after each rolling so it doesn't want to spring back.  It is good for the dough to move freely ahead of the roller but lightly stick to the table after the roller has gone over it.  I can't explain this very well--I thought about how the dough sheeter work: it allows the dough to easily stretch out and stay streched after it goes through the rollers.

The following process works for me when I use only bread flour but it works better if I use about 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 AP flour.

Also, I found the less flour on the work surface the better (like the way Mark  does).

More or less this is what I do to keep the dough from getting too elastic for hand-rolling:

(Day 1)

Make butter block the night before and store in fridge (34-40F)

Make the preferment the night before

(Day 2)

Mix the dough but don't develop the gluten too much.  (Just barely "improved" according to the ABAP terminology)

Ferment dough 1 hr. @ room temp.

Ferment dough 1 hr in Fridge

Remove butter from fridge and rest @ room temp for about 15 min until it feels about the same consistency as the cold dough.

Laminate butter and do turn #1

Wrap in plastic wrap and put dough in freezer for 1 hour

Move dough to fridge and leave for 1 hr.

Remove dough rest @ room temp for about 10-20 min until it feels rollable

Do turn #2

Wrap in plastic wrap and put dough in freezer for 1 hour

Move dough to fridge and leave for 3+ hrs.

Remove dough rest @ room temp for about 10-20 min until it feels rollable

Do turn #3

Wrap in plastic wrap and put dough in freezer for 1-2 hours

Move dough to fridge and leave overnight.

(Day 3)

Remove dough rest @ room temp for about 10-20 min until it feels rollable

Make up croissants....

This sounds like a lot of work because it's spread out over 3 days but it is just short tasks with quite a bit of time to do other stuff in between.

calliekoch's picture
calliekoch

Thanks for all the details, Greg. I am definitely going to keep those in mind if I can muster up the motivation to do it!

Paddyscake's picture
Paddyscake

and the thought of making those wonderful lunettes is absolutely intimidating.

Betty