apricot

Fagottini d'Albicocca(Jam Pockets)

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Today, I baked one of my favorite cookies, Fagottini d'Albicocca, jam pockets with apricot jam in them. The dough for the cookies is a delicate pasta frolla with lemon and vanilla extracts. The recipe is from Franco Galli's cookbook - The Il Fornaio Baking Book, lots of good Italian recipes here.

June 3, 2011 - 3:29pm

RonRay

Apricot Yeast Water Pullman Loaf

Apricot Yeast Water Pullman Loaf

Previously, I posted a short Pullman loaf leavened with Potato Yeast Water (PYW). Link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23793/potato-yeast-water-pullman-loaf-shorty

In that post, I concluded that “Although, I found PYW worked well, and made a good loaf, I decided that the making of the levain, and creating another YW seems unjustified just to introduce potato flakes and sugar into a loaf.” In this post, I simplified the process by introducing the sugar and potato flakes in the Final Dough, and used a strong Apricot Yeast Water (AYW) culture as very nearly the total water used in the loaf. The only other water was the approximate 3.8g contained in the unsalted butter used.

The formula above provides the Baker's Percentages of the ingredients, as well as the weight of ingredients actually used for the reduced sized Pullman pan, which only required 482g of dough. The percent hydration level was about 62.2%HL.

A fuller account of the formula, Apricot YW (AYW) 2-stage levain builds, method, and observations can also be found in a PDF of my baking log at this link:

D-b_110529_Apricot YW Pullman 482g_[Photos]_110602-1635 .pdf - https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_MScoZfDZkwMWFjMWNiMzktYjNjMy00MzU1LTkxNjQtOTAyZjM5ODQzMThm&hl=en_US

Actually, a 3-Build Levain had been planned, but in a hectic kitchen moment, I started the Final Dough with only the first two levain builds. Fortunately, I caught my error in time to simply add the remaining 100g of AYW and 100g of AP flour into the Final Dough mix and all worked well.

The short Pullman loaf measured (5-5/8” x 4” x 4”)/(14.3 cm x 10.2 cm) and the 482g batch size managed to fill the pan with a 9 hour rise at 82ºF ( 27.8º C) . For additional details, see the notes in the above mentioned PDF.

The crumb texture was soft, but firm, moist and quite flavorful, with a very pleasant fragrance, however, there was no discernible taste of apricot that I could detect.

It worked very well as both a sandwich bread and for excellent toast.

It has survived three and one half days, as of this writing (I had a loaf in front of it to eat, too). I just had another sandwich made from it and it seems as moist and fresh as it did when first cut. The flavor enhancement resulting from the Apricot YW, rather than just the Potato YW used in some previous loaves, is a fine improvement of the formula. I do think, however, that I will do the Build-#3 as a levain build on the next loaf, rather than mixing the 100g of AYW and AP flour in the final dough. On the other hand, this accident demonstrated that a great loaf can be made this way, as well.

Ron

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May 29, 2011 - 6:48pm

RonRay

Apricot Yeast Water Test Loaf

Apricot Yeast Water Test Loaf [Update:110530-1000]

If you are unfamilar with Yeast Waters, and wild yeast, you may wish to view

Yeast Water & Other Wee Beastie Bubbles (No Math)

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23441/yeast-water-amp-other-wee-beastie-bubbles-no-math

This was my first chance to test Apricot Yeast Water. I have intend to for a while, but wanted to wait for fresh fruit to be available. I did find some this week and started a culture with 3 of the small fresh apricots, jump-started the culture with a bit of my Apple YW.

I have heard that the dark dried apricots make a very strong levain – the more common dried fruit that are a yellowish orange have been treated with sulfur-containing compounds to keep their color (and kill the WBBs). So, the only dried apricots to use are the dark brown unsulfured fruit. Not wishing to waste time and effort, I wanted fresh, organic apricots, which start being available May through August in the northern hemisphere.

I was impressed with how fast the culture became active, and equally surprised how fast the activity ended. I tasted the YW to see if, somehow , it had gotten too alcoholic so fast. All I detected was no noticeable sweetness, and decided it must be a lack of sugar. I dropped in a sugar cube and within a very short time it became very active – so much so, that I feared the foamy head might fill the remaining air space in the glass container. It did not take long before the activity decreased nearly as fast as it had restarted.

It only took a few trials to conclude the apricot WBBs have a real thing about sugars. So, I decided to do a test of the leavening strength of the new culture. I took a small quantity of just the water, about 20g and mixed it with an equal amount of AP flour. I set this up with a clock beside it, and in front of a time lapse digital video recorded. You can see the results on YouTube, Link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23719/time-lapse-video-apricot-yw-levain

The result was a doubling in about 2 hours. Certainly a good showing for a brand new YW culture. So, a test loaf seemed quite justified.

I started the Apricot Yeast Water Levain (AYWL) builds. Details of my standard test loaf can be found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23694/standard-kiss-loaf-or-keep-it-simple-smiley

Details of this loaf are in the table below:

A copy of my personal test log can be found at Google Doc Link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_MScoZfDZkwMTIyM2E1ZjQtYWFlMi00Y2I5LWFiYTktMWI5ZGMzYTgzMzgw&hl=en_US

I had some surprises in store, however. I generally, hold each of my chosen 3-build levain developments to a 24 hour period. Instead, a late afternoon to early evening completed Builds-#1, and #2 with #3 started and placed in retard at 40ºF/4.4ºC for an overnight. Details can be found in the log.

The next morning, I did the shaping that basically matches the pan bread version detailed by txframer here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20669/sourdough-pan-de-mie-how-make-quotshreddablyquot-soft-bread

The dough pan was covered with food cap and place in the proof box at 82ºF/27.8ºC. Most loaves that I do, which are similar to these conditions, will need a 6 hour final proof. I was rather shocked when at 4½ hours I found it was as high as any “normal” fully proofed dough. I did a rapid catch-up and dough was in the DO, with the cup of boiling water, and into the oven, within a 5 minute period. Again, details can be found in the PDF log.

From a cold oven start and oven set to max (450ºF/232ºC) in the DO it was steamed for 20 minutes. Lid removed at 20 minutes and the temperature dropped to 400ºF/204ºC with a total of 45 minutes for the baking.

The finished loaf had an internal 207.7ºF/97.6ºC and a hot weight of 437g – down 8% during the baking. The loaf was cooled on wire for over an hour, before cutting.

The loaf had a very nice aroma, but neither taste, nor smell indicated the apricot components in the loaf. The crumb color was softly off-white in the orange-brown range, but only in a small degree. Texture was moist and softer than my general SD loaves. A pleasantly fruity, slightly sweetish flavor. The top crust portion was chewier than I would have expected, but quite acceptable.

I should, also mention, I could detect no tang at all. I had expected a bit from the apricot flavor itself. But, any tang vanished along with any apricot specific flavor.

The crumb was exactly as expected, given the 60% HL (hydration level) and the highly developed windowpane test it was kneaded to.

Based upon this single test loaf, apricot WBBs develop much stronger levain than any I have seen before. The Apricot YW rise times are somewhere between 25% faster, or if you are one of the half empty glass types, the other Yeast Waters are 33% slower ;-)

Update:110530-1000I have just had a couple additional slices of this Apricot YW loaf. In the 23 hours since baking, there has been a flavor change. It is still quite pleasant, but definitely less sweetness. The change is hard to describe, but while it is NOT "astringent", that is the closest word I can think of to describe the very slight difference in flavor. My initial reaction was 'use a bit less than 2% salt, next time'.

Ron

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July 2, 2010 - 11:07am

gcook17

Danish for Lunch

Every summer we're faced with the pleasant task of trying to figure out how to use all the fruit from our trees. Most of the fruit gets ripe at the same time and it's not possible to eat it all fresh. Right now the apricots, apriums (cross between apricot and plum), plums, and sour cherries are almost all ripe. The fig tree, which usually has 2-3 crops per year, is also beginning to have some ripe fruit. Carol doesn't like jams or jellies so that rules out one method of preserving them. I like jam but I rarely eat toast, so I don't go through the jam very fast. Besides, my brother keeps sending us his homemade blackberry jam that's better than anything I ever make. The obvious solution then, is to make lots of pastry with fresh fruit. Yesterday it was puff pastry tarts, today it's apricot and plum danish. And they're just in time for lunch.

The Danish dough is the Danish with Biga from ABAP. I left the fully laminated dough in the refrigerator an extra day because I was too busy to use it yesterday. In addition to the fruit, they are filled with pastry cream (also from ABAP) flavored with li-hing powder (1/2 teaspoon of li-hing powder to 2 pounds of pastry cream). This dough had a mind of its own. They were supposed to be shaped like the one in the left front in the photo but most of them unfolded themselves while proofing.

February 28, 2010 - 8:09am

jennyloh

Pain Aux Raisin & Apricot

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/painauxraisins

Followed the recipe above from Floyd, I had a lot of fun doing this, especially the shaping of the dough. Somehow the 1st method of shaping caused the middle to rise more than it should, perhaps I shaped it too tightly.

The 2nd with raisins, I think I put too much raisins, all the raisins started to spill out.

Interestingly, the dough didn't turn out as sweet as i thought it would be. The dough had a good oven spring. It was so nice to watch it "grew" in the oven. And I learnt about sugar glaze and egg glaze from this experience. It was nice to see the shine, just that the hands get sticky handling the bread after that.

Thanks Floyd - for the great recipe.

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July 6, 2008 - 5:27am

Mini Oven

Apricot Dumplings, Marillenknödel

pitted and stuffed with a sugar cube before wrapping tightly with potato dough, a true Austrian delight!

Apricot dumplings: A true Austrian delight! Just in time for Apricot season (northern hemisphere)

A few things to remember before getting started: The dough is 2/3 cooked potatoes combined with 1/3 other ingredients by weight. Potatoes should be the flaky type or bake type potatoes and boil one or two extra to make sure there are enough. Apricots can be fresh, frozen and even slightly on the firm side. One can carefully remove the pits and place a sugar cube inside larger fruits, this works esp. well for freezing. Apricots, peaches or cherries are all posible. Crumbs may include grated nuts as well.

You will need:

potatoes 700g, AP flour, one egg, salt, butter, a large fry pan, a large pot for boiling, work surface, & about 750g fruit or 12 apricots, a slotted spoon, sugar.

APRICOT DUMPLINGS makes 12

Potato Dough:

500g potato; boiled, hot or one day old, peeled and put through ricer, grated or fork mashed very fine.
165g flour
5g salt
1 egg
15g unsalted butter

Crumbs:

100g unsalted butter
70g bread crumbs

Grate fine or put potatoes thru a ricer. Combine loosely and evenly with flour and salt and make a hole in the middle. Add egg and bits of butter. Now pinch and quickly knead into a nice firm dough, no added flour, remove or squish any lumps. Roll out into a log and divide into 60g lumps for apricots and 40g for cherries.

Set a large pot of salt water to boil, you will want to cover the dumplings and they should just swim and not touch the bottom, about 1/3 to 1/2 full of water with about a teaspoon of salt.

Roll each lump into a ball and then into a disk with the middle slightly thinner than edges. Now you can use just a little flour in the palm of one hand to help shape lump and keep it from sticking while you place each fruit into dough. Press & stretch the dough tightly around each fruit trying to prevent any air pockets. Seal opening and roll slightly in hands to make round. Set aside and repeat for next fruit until all are prepared. (They can be frozen or refrigerated at this point. If using frozen fruit, it is recommended to boil right away to retain shape.)

When water is boiling, give it a good stir so it is moving and slip dumplings in on a wet spoon. Set timer for 15 minutes. Turn or jar pot often to prevent sticking. After water has returned to boiling reduce heat to softly roll the dumplings as they boil. Meanwhile, heat up a large fry pan and brown crumbs in melting butter. The trick here is not to let them burn so stir often and turn off heat before they're done, the heat in the pan will continue to brown them. Set the pan aside or nearby.

When the dumplings have boiled 15 min, gently transfer with a slotted spoon into the crumbly pan. Pick up the pan and with a rotating motion rolling the balls into the crumbs coating them as you play. Remove onto a serving plate or smaller plates and serve warm with fine sugar. Variations may include serving with Vanilla sauce or Vanilla ice cream. Three make a meal, one a dessert. I made 8 Apricot and 8 cherry.

it's antique but works great!