This started with my love for good 'ol fashioned sugar cookies.  I get curious about the origins of foods, so a few weeks ago I started reading up on sugar cookies.  A few food historians agree that the modern sugar cookie is a descendant of jambals, or jumbles, so I set out to find a good a recipe for the primitive cookie.  Lo and behold Martha Washington has a recipe in her big cook book of colonial cooking.  Her original recipe calls for rosewater and this got me thinking.  From what I've read jambals were typically used as medium for whatever fodder and spice one had lying around, so I wanted to make my own modest modifications.  What I ended up with was a very Mid-East/Indian jambal, and man is it good.  To complicate it a little more Robert May's recipe from The Accomplist Cook (1685) instructs that these cookies be boiled before baking "Thus you may use them, and keep them all year."  So that's what I did, and this step puts these over the top.  They fall right between chewy and crunchy, a very satisfying bite.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees 

Ingredients:

341g chappati flour (Wholemeal should be fine)

227g granulated sugar

3 egg yolks

1 1/2 egg whites

45g heavy whipping cream (or light cream)

15g butter

1tsp saffron*

Rosewater to taste (I end up using about a tablespoon)

4tbsp raw honey

*Most good saffron comes dried whole so you have to grind it yourself; this is an approximation so you'll need to use your nose and tastebuds to make sure you have a suitable amount.  The strength of saffron flavor should be greater than the rosewater.

Mixing:

Mix sugar, butter, cream and eggs to a smooth consistency.

Add saffron and rosewater.

Slowly mix in flour until uniform dough forms.

Shaping:

Grab about 2tbsp of the dough and roll into a slender rope.

Tie into knot of your choice (I chose a figure-eight knot).

Set aside on parchment or countertop (The dough is very forgiving and easy to move about).

Boiling:

In a medium saucepan combine water and honey so that is about 3/4 full and bring to a boil (feel free to toss in a little ground saffron).

Submerge cookies with a slotted spoon in boiling mixture so that each get a 1 minute dip.

When removing shake dry and place on parchment lined baking sheet; 1 inch apart is plenty of room as these do very little rising.

Sprinkle with turbinado sugar while still wet (the sugar does partially melt making a nice glaze during bake).

Baking:

Give one more sprinkling of turbinado sugar and place in oven.

Bake at 375 degrees for 14-16 minutes.

Move straight to cooling rack and let rest for half an hour.

So, I finally made those saffron buns that I mentioned in my intro post a few weeks ago.  (Ok, so I made the buns a couple weeks ago, but hadn't gotten around to posting the pics!)  But here they are.  I should mention that I deviated somewhat from the Saffron Bun recipe that I initially saw here on TFL.  Mine ended up more like a Saffron poor man's brioche.  So I guess you could say I took the TFL recipe as an inspiration, mainly.

The formula I ended up with went like this (with %'s approximated...)

Saffron Infusion:

255g Whole Milk, heated, 37%

30g Melted Butter, 5%

1 heaped tsp Saffron Threads (A friend of mine donated saffron to the cause, so I figured I'd be generous and use the whole lot)

(I saw the discussion on here about saffron infusion methods, and I had read that many of saffron's pigment compounds are fat soluble, hence the bit of butter.  It may not have really made a difference, but either way)

Sponge:

175g Whole Wheat Flour, 25%

Infused milk mixture

10g Instant Yest

Final Dough:

520g Bread Flour, 75%

15g salt, 2%

210g Eggs, 30% (I ended up using mostly yolks, 7 yolks and 2 whites to get the 210g)

3g Ground Cardamom

175g Butter, 25%

85g Sugar, 12%

Handful of currants (probably 2/3 cup)

I've got a couple of questions, if any of the more experienced folks have some insight.  Here's the basic process I went through:

I do my kneading by hand, because I'm not fortunate enough to have a fancy stand mixer.  I tried to go for full gluten development before adding the final butter and sugar, but this was more difficult than I'm used to.  I kneaded for at least twenty minutes, after which the dough did get pretty elastic, but I couldn't get a nice windowpane or anything.  I knew I still had a job ahead of me getting the butter in there, so I called it good for that stage of kneading. 

Again, once the butter and sugar was all in, the dough just didn't seem to want to achieve good development.  We make a 42% fat brioche dough at work (in a mixer), and so I was aiming for the look of that dough, where you can pull it gently and really get it to stretch out.  I could pull a pinch off of mine and get it to stretch a few inches, but not much more.  This had taken another twenty minutes, so again, I just called it good.

Scaled the dough to 120g portions (in retrospect, 90g would have been better; I baked these in a muffin tin and the bottoms burned before the buns were fully baked.  But I take this as a simple trial and error lesson).  The crumb was not terribly dense, but I feel like they could have been lighter in texture.  Possibly a result of underdevelopment?  I did bake them slightly underproofed.

So here are my questions:

1) Regarding the difficulty in developing the gluten, could this have been because of the fat present in the initial dough stage, from the infused butter or all the egg yolks?  Could the milk have prevented good development (I read something here about glutathione, but I'm not sure if that reaction happens only over an extended period of time.)

2) Regarding the butter, I understand why high fat breads benefit from an initial development period before getting the butter in there, but is there some "cutoff point"?  In other words, I've heard that anything over 20% fat needs to be added later.  Any thoughts on this number?  And am I crazy for doing this by hand?  I did a 25% fat bread for Christmas, which was noticeably easier to work with than this bread, so I'm working my way up :]

Thanks for any thoughts / comments!

-Scott

Oh, and there are larger versions of the pictures here.  Also, I saw this after I made mine.  After!

This tart made a delicious dinner. The tart was lighter than a traditional quiche because of the yeasted crust. We really enjoyed the Chard and saffron filling. (Hans: I’m thinking this is right up your alley and that you will come up with some magnificent variation!) I used crème fraîche in the dough but will use butter next time. Although the crème fraîche made the dough very tender, I think butter would have made the dough easier to work with and given the finished product a more flavorful crust. In other words, I thought the crust was a bit on the bland side.

The tart, dough and recipe, were adapted from The Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison.

Yeasted Tart Dough

1 teaspoon instant yeast

¼ cup warm water

1 large egg, room temperature

150 to 200 grams flour (I used Guisto’s Baker’s Choice)

½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons crème fraîche or soft unsalted butter

Dissolve the yeast in water. Combine 150 grams of the flour and salt in a medium bowl, and make a well. Break the egg into the middle of the well and add the crème fraîche or soft unsalted butter (I used crème fraîche, and an extra large egg, so had to add additional flour), and dissolved yeast.

Mix everything together with a flexible spatula, shape into a loose ball, cover and let rise until double, about 1 hour.

Chard and Saffron Tart

1 large bunch of chard, enough to make 8 cups of leaves roughly chopped

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, medium diced (about ¼” dice)

2 cloves garlic, finely diced or pressed

¾ teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1 ½ cups milk or cream or a combination of both (I used regular cream-topped milk)

Large pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1 tablespoon of hot water

½ teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest

6 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 1 1/2 ounces)

Nutmeg

2 tablespoons parsley, chopped

pepper

3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted in a dry pan

Prepare the yeasted tart dough and set aside to rise in a warm place.

Cut the chard leaves away from the steams and chop the leaves into pieces about 1 inch square, wash well, and drain in a colander.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and soak the saffron threads.

Heat the butter and oil in a large 12-inch skillet. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until soft and translucent (do not brown), about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, chard leaves and salt. Turn the leaves over repeatedly with tongs until they are tender, about 5 minutes. Set pan aside.

Prepare the tart shell: Flatten out the dough and place in a quiche pan (I used a 10” x 2” deep tin quiche pan with a removable bottom sprayed lightly with pan-spray)*. Press the dough out to the edge using your finger tips and up the sides. You can let the dough relax for 20 minutes if it starts shrinking back on you. I was only able to coax the dough about half-way up the side of the pan which was just high enough to hold the filling. The dough should be thicker on the sides and thinner on the bottom. I was pleased to see that as the tart baked both the dough and its filling rose up to the top of the pan.

Make the custard: beat the eggs, stir in the milk or cream, infused saffron thread liquid, orange zest, Parmesan, a few shaving of nutmeg, and the parsley. Stir in the chard and onion mixture, taste, and season with more salt if needed, and pepper.

Pour the filling into the tart shell and scatter the toasted pine nuts on top.

Bake until the crust is nicely browned and the custard is set, about 50 minutes. (I placed the quiche pan on a baking tray. If I had placed it directly on the rack, the baking time might have been shorter.)

Unmold and serve with a salad (I made a salad of butter lettuce and fresh navel orange slices tossed with a herb shallot walnut oil vinaigrette).

Serves 4 to 6

--Pamela

*If you don't own this type of deep quiche pan, I think you might be able to use an 8" inch spring-form cake pan. You don't have to worry about the filling leaking out because the tart dough is like bread dough.

Even though Santa Lucia Day is 13 December, I made Lucia cats so we could have them for breakfast on Christmas morning.