Viennoiserie trial #6: "Jay's citrusy carnival" (pandan bicolor pain Suisse ribbons, lemon, keffir lime leaves, lime-basil leaves, lemongrass, turmeric)

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WanyeKest on 23 May 2025 at 10:08
a

Well hello, bee-cheese!!! Welcome to this season's finale of my viennoiserie trials!🔥🔥

Oh my god. This was the most labor intensive viennoiserie makeup I've ever done. The lamination and make up were 5 hours process, and I rolled once every 20 minutes! hahah! Worth it!

This time I didn't take inspiration from traditional bakes or dishes. I just wanted to showcase local herbs and spice. Funny thing, if not for English translations, I will never associate lemongrass and lime-basil with lemon lol.

The dough was bicolor dough, the green one I used pandan water-extract (water sediment, to be precise). The sediment is commercially available here, so I just bought it.

The filling is cornstarch thickened lemon curd. I always think regular lemon curd is too rich to be pastry filling, it's like filling butter with more butter. Doesn't make any sense. It's basically pastry cream, but I substituted the liquid with lemon juice, the sugar with condensed milk. I used whole eggs and a bit of butter. I pureed everything (except the butter) in blender along with lemongrass, fresh turmeric root, and keffir lime leaves, strained the liquid, and cook it on wok. Wok is perfect for pastry cream, I don't even need to do egg tempering. Because wok has no edge, there is no risk of curdling, and no need for straining again.

I glazed the pastries with homemade lemon syrup, heavily infused with lime-basil leaves, or as we call it, kemangi.

Ilustration, kemangi

 

Verdict

I love everything about it. 'Refreshing' is a weird word to describe pastries, but these are really refreshing. The turmeric root also adds subtle orangy flavor. The syrup glaze is really fragrant. We are so obsessed over here with the outcomes. They really make perfect finale to our viennoiserie trials.

Next, I will do interesting take on babka! No commercial yeast involved! Happy baking!

Jay

It's Mardi Gras in May and the viennoiserie are insane!!!!

Your patisserie absolutely delivers, Jay. I can't wait for the totally bananas babka. 

Rob

Thanks Rob, appreciate it! I have no clue about Mardi Gras, but I'm sure it's fun!

And neither do I, Rob! 😆 No literal bananas next time, and hopefully plenty of metaphorical bananas!

Jay

Thanks, sparkfan! Appreciate your kind words

Fun fact: turmeric water made with fresh turmeric roots, a squeeze of lime juice, and a touch of sugar, taste a bit like orange juice!

Jay

Hello!

Congratulations on taking these pastries into these uncharted flavors! I love the idea of packaging the Asian, in particular the SE Asian, flavors about the beautiful pastry you've been mastering. I am going to try your curd for sure. Have just got into reading all your past blog ideas and so am still studying!!  I just ordered some kemangi seeds!

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Here is my Fun Fact [for men and women-especially us of the aging class : )]

Boil10 keffir lime leaves, 2 smashed lemongrass stalks, 1 thumb size knob of fresh galangal I(sliced) in 3 c water for 10-15 min. Cool and drink. You can drink it all in 2-3 times.  Do this again in 2 weeks (3X). Report the results on overall skin  texture. If you like the result  let me know!  -email preferred since tfl is a bread blog after all!

PS any pictures of outlets selling your works?

Hi, jo_en! Thanks for those kind words, appreciate it!

Kemangi is low maintenance, no worry! I would suggest to plant pandan too, they taste like vanilla (if not better!), and they are also low maintenance :)

I'm in the middle of career pivot process, and still doing my day job which is not baking-related 😆. I took a step back and am focusing on product design at the moment, since I took a major idea-pivot to only do true-sourdough fermentation for yeasted dough (except viennoiserie, too labor intensive. But gradually will get there as my workflow becomes more efficient over time)

Jay

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JonJ on 26 May 2025 at 01:05

Wow Jay, lovely flavours that I'd love to taste in person one day.

I hope that the starter-with-many-names is up for the babka, looking forward to reading about it as babka is one of my favourites!

-Jon

Thanks for your kind words, Jon. Appreciate it as always!

She feels like a French hooker at the moment, and ask to be called Kristel lol

I'm building a babka formula, with the roll-and-twist makeup. So it will be a bit more like Chelsea loaf, and not so much like Kuglhopf

I'll put a really interesting ingredient, an idea that came up at the cost of restless bed time (lol). I'm ordering it right now!

Jay

Jon, I swear to God, everything was on point. The fermentation was on point, all components were on point, until it got underbaked! haha! It hurts! 🤣

It was 6 components bake, 36 hours room temperature fermentation. And not sour at all! Now I have to redo all components lol. And it was 4 days process! haha!

I hate myself so frickin' much! Lesson learned... Portioning was too big...

The roll and twist above look so delicious! 

I have been wondering what you adhered to the outside that would match your filling!

-ok if it is still a trade secret!

Would love to see how you closed the twist. Is this a 1 portion size?

The outside reminds me of my mom's water and oil pastries.

The brown things surrounding it were candied bamboo shoots. I had to scrap that idea just to simplify the end product 😆

It was practically babka miche. I had this idea to bake it in a cheesecake pan, then slice it into wedges like cakes (but I forgot the fact that it wasn't a cake!).

I have yet to keep the main flavors secret for my next post! But if you feel like trying candied bamboo shoots, I think orange is the perfect flavoring. They remind me of canned apricot in a way, so orange seems like perfect match.

Jay

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ll433 on 26 May 2025 at 05:55

Beautiful, flavourful pastries, but for me the winner is:

Wok is perfect for pastry cream, I don't even need to do egg tempering. Because wok has no edge, there is no risk of curdling

What! All the time I've wasted...🤦‍♀️

Your filling just sounds incredible and the colour and texture look perfect. Using whole eggs, lemon juice and condensed milk together is very clever. 

I have no clue that anyone would read it in the first place😆

I thought the post wasn't polished enough, and I might have overshared too much lol. I had to delete it so it won't clutter the feed from me posting too many repeat bakes!

I'm working on a cloche-like setup for my baguettes. Hopefully will figure the setup soon, otherwise I'll be forever restless by the fact water-spraying suspiciously seems to work better 😆

Jay

Graniteware roasting pans are the best material for a cloche but it’s hard to find the right size for batons. The right oven though is ultimate solution. I have mostly quit making baguettes because my convection oven does such an inadequate job of it. 
Don

Prepare me ahead of time, Jay. I need to be prepared. Will savour some laksa while reading your post to make it more manageable. 

I read your comment on that post, Don. I appreciate your kind words! I had to delete it to avoid cluttering the feed from me posting too many repeat bakes 😆

Thanks for your concerns!

Jay

Is it possible to completely delete a thread? Or, did you have to ask Floyd to do it?

Not sure about posts / threads in the forum, but blog entries can be deleted by the blog owner. There is a delete button above the blog entry. I assume, if you delete a blog entry, all comments linked to this entry are also deleted.