BY JULIA CHILD, SIMONE BECK, AND LOUISETTE BERTHOLLE

Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961)

VOLUME ONE

BY JULIA CHILD

The French Chef Cookbook (1968)

From Julia Child’s Kitchen (1975)

Julia Child & Company (1978)

Julia Child & More Company (1979)

The Way to Cook (1989)

Cooking with Master Chefs (1993)

In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs (1995)

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom (2000)

My Life in France, with Alex Prud’homme (2006)

BY JULIA CHILD AND JACQUES PÉPIN

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999)

BY SIMONE BECK

Simca’s Cuisine (1972)

These are Borzoi Books, published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf

Foreword

MASTERING ANY ART is a continuing process, and that explains Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume II, which came about in the following way. When the idea of our first book was forming in the early 1950’s, we were so naïve as to propose not only to ourselves but also to an indulgent publisher, who invested two hundred and fifty dollars in the project, a complete one-volume treatise covering the whole of la cuisine française. After laboring for six years it was clear that our detailed method of approach called for a multivolume study; we therefore sent our publisher eight hundred pages of manuscript on French sauces and French poultry. This early outpouring was quickly rejected as unpublishable, although it covered every conceivable sauce and every imaginable poultry detail, including such marginal esoterica as advice on what to do if you have a bloodless canard for the duck press—we shall not reveal the solution other than to say it involved a quick trip to the slaughterhouse. That first publishing rebuff, cruel as it was, shook us into a more rational and realistic approach. Meanwhile, we had opened our cooking school in Paris, L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, first located in a rooftop kitchen on the rue de l’Université and later in the comfortable apartment of Louisette, the third member of our team. Now married to Henri de Nalèche, and living in the beautiful hunting country near Bourges, La Sologne, Louisette did not collaborate with us on Volume II. It was through her inspiration, however, that we three started both the first book and the school together.

The cooking school catapulted us into almost all areas of French cooking, because you cannot teach the subject and not include the standard dishes that everyone has heard about—quiche lorraine, onion soup, boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, sole bonne femme, mousse au chocolat, and soufflé Grand Marnier—to name a very familiar handful. Thus Volume I in its final form was the natural result of our teaching. It also goes into the fundamental techniques of la cuisine bourgeoise, meaning expert French home-style cooking—how to make the flour and butter roux for the sauce velouté, how to beat egg whites and fold them into the soufflé to get the maximum puff, how to sauté the meat so that it will brown, and the mushrooms so they will not exude their juice, how to peel and seed the tomato, boil the beans, peel the asparagus, and fold the omelette. Volume I is, in fact, a long introduction to French cooking, and anyone who has mastered it has covered most of the primary methods and recipes.

Volume II is a continuation. But rather than continuing on every front, we have selected seven subjects, and having so long ago rejected complete treatises, we have pursued each only in the directions that we felt were most useful or interesting. We wanted to add to the repertoire of informal vegetable soups, for example, and these take up a large part of the first chapter. We felt the need for a fine lobster bisque; this gave rise to a study of lobster cutting, and in turn led us to crabs, which are not adequately explored in most recipes (the whole matter of crab tomalley is almost never mentioned, yet it is every bit as precious as lobster tomalley). Then, although we adore bouillabaisse (which is in Volume I), there are other French fish stews that make marvelous one-dish meals, so we have added a marmite, a matelote, and a bourride. Thus the soup chapter is an enlargement in breadth.

Meat, poultry, and vegetables we have attacked in depth, following the same system of theme and variations used in Volume I, but taking it perhaps even further. Poulet poché au vin blanc, is a prime example. Ordinary pieces of frying chicken are poached in white wine and aromatic vegetables, making a deliciously non-fattening dish that you can serve informally as is, with boiled rice and a green vegetable. Nothing could be simpler, yet you can take this same chicken out of the peasant kitchen, as it were, and serve it at the château. You can transform it into an elegant aspic or chaud-froid, or turn its poaching liquid into a creamy velouté and create a gratin of chicken Mornay, a splendid dish for a buffet supper. With egg yolks and cream the original chicken dish becomes a Belgian waterzooi, with garlic mayonnaise it is a chicken bourride, and with slightly different vegetable flavors but the same cooking methods it is a bouillabaisse of chicken. Thus, starting with one master technique, you are putting your cooking vocabulary to use the way it should be used, and if you are just beginning to cook, this is an exercise in recognition. You will begin to relate the sauce you used for the casserole of chicken to the velouté you made for the coquilles Saint-Jacques in another recipe, as well as to the velouté base you made for a cream of crab soup; the flavors are different, the proportions are not identical, especially for the soup, but the basic method is the same. You will recognize that sauce when you run into it again in some other guise. Again, if you are new to it, and have finally conquered your fear of scrambling the egg yolks as you stir them over the burner for that lovely custard sauce, crème anglaise, you will be nonchalant about heating egg yolks in the sauce for a bourride—or vice versa: you know what to expect, you have been there before, and, in effect, you are beginning to feel like a cook. For the experienced, we hope these ideas will start you off on further ventures in other categories.

Beef stews, veal chops and steaks, and veal stews take the same type of tour, our object being to show what you can do with reasonably priced meats for family meals as well as for entertaining. On the other hand, the luxurious tenderloin of beef also has its series of transformations. It is roasted whole, baked in a cloak of mushrooms duxelles and wine, as well as being, in another recipe, cut into slices and stuffed before roasting. Finally, in an original version of Beef Wellington, it is sliced, stuffed, and baked in a special type of brioche crust. An expensive roast of veal undergoes a group of variations, as does a whole roasting chicken, which finally appears with a boned breast and a corseting of pastry.

We hope you will enjoy the vegetable chapter as much as we do, because we have had fun with these recipes. Although there are a few of the classics, like pommes Anna and pommes duchesse, most of the recipes are originals that we have been working on for a number of years until we felt they were ripe for you and this volume. The chapter starts with broccoli, which we have treated freely à la française although it is almost unknown in France; we love its color, its flavor, and its year-round availability. We also love eggplant, not only for its beauty as a vegetable object, but also for its adaptability and versatility; we have broiled it, sautéed it in persillade, creamed it, souffléed it, served it hot, cold, stuffed, and wished we had room to do more. A lovely recipe for pumpkin-in-pumpkin introduces a group of unusual zucchini dishes stemming from sautéed chunks of it to an original clutch of grated zucchini treatments. Spinach, chard, and turnips all have representation, as do several versions of sautéed potatoes. There are stuffed onions, stuffed cabbage, stuffed zucchini, and cold stuffed artichoke hearts. Again, most of the vegetable chapter is built on themes and variations, and is designed to engender the flow of your creative juices.

Two entirely new categories are the chapters on breads and pastry doughs and on charcuterie. One is not really dining à la française without proper French bread to mop up the sauce on one’s plate, without a fine terrine or pâté to start the meal, without boudins blancs for New Year’s Eve or for the turkey stuffing. One needs also a symmetrically baked, beautifully textured sandwich bread for hors d’oeuvre, and brioches and croissants for breakfast. These everyday staples in France were once considered luxury items here and, in fact, when you buy them now in gourmet shops they are luxuries. But you can make them yourself with pride and pleasure and at a fraction of the cost.

Until our editor, in her gentle but compelling way, suggested that we really owed it to our readers to include a recipe for French bread, we had no plans at all to tackle it. Two years and some 284 pounds of flour later, we had tried out all the home-style recipes for French bread we could find, we had two professional French textbooks on baking, we had learned many things about yeasts and doughs, yet our best effort, which was a type of peasant sourdough loaf, still had little to do with real French bread. Then we met Professor Calvel of the Ecole Française de Meunerie in Paris, and it was like the sun in all his glory suddenly breaking through the shades of gloom. Fortunately those two years on the wrong road had been useful, because as soon as Professor Calvel started in, we knew what he was talking about, even though every step in the bread-making process was entirely different from anything we had heard of, read of, or seen. His dough was soft and sticky; he let it rise slowly twice, to triple its original volume—the dough must ripen to develop its natural flavor and proper texture. Forming the dough into its long-loaf or round-loaf shapes was a fascinating process, and so logical; slashing the top of the risen loaves before sliding them into the oven was another special procedure.

This was a tremendously exciting day for us, as you can imagine. We now knew we could succeed, because we had seen and felt with our own hands so clearly where we had failed. We rushed home and went to work again while Professor Calvel’s teaching was vividly with us. There remained the problem of working out the formula with American all-purpose bleached flour instead of the softer French unbleached flour. There was also the matter of adapting the home oven by some simple means into a simulated baker’s oven, with a hot surface for the bread to bake on, and some kind of effective steam contraption. Although you can produce a presentable loaf without these two professional oven requirements, you will not get quite the high rise or quite the crust. Paul Child and his usual Yankee ingenuity solved the hot baking surface by lining the oven rack with red quarry tiles, which he heated up with the oven; he created a great burst of steam by placing a pan of water in the bottom of the oven, and dropping a red-hot brick into it. The flour problem solved itself; although our maître loathes bleached flours, we found, thank heaven, that the familiar brands of all-purpose bleached flour work remarkably well. We are thus delighted to report that you can make marvelous French bread in your own kitchen with ordinary American ingredients and equipment.

Pastry doughs, pâte brisée and pâte feuilletée, also go hand in hand with cooking and eating traditions in France. While packaged dough mixes and frozen adaptations can certainly serve in emergencies, it is part of your training as a cook that you be able to turn out at least the dough for a pastry shell as a matter of course. It is actually, we think, when you have made the dough for your first quiche or tart, and have been complimented enthusiastically and specifically on the crust, that you begin to feel you are stepping out of the kindergarten and into a more advanced class of cooking. If you have had troubles or qualms, therefore, about handmade dough, try the recipe here; the electric mixer or food processor works quickly and beautifully. And if you have hesitated to tackle the traditional flan ring lined with dough and weighted down with foil and beans, try the upside-down cake-pan method, which is an easy way to make pastry shells. Furthermore, the egg formula in the recipe makes a deliciously crisp, tender, buttery crust.

As soon as you feel confident with pie-crust dough, we urge you to take on the larger and more fascinating challenge of pâte feuilletée. This is the French puffing dough, which consists of hundreds of very thin layers of flour paste separated by hundreds of layers of butter; it rises in the oven to several times its original height, to form vol-au-vent and patty shells, puffed entrées like the cheese tart, as well as the cookies, and the tarts and desserts. Properly made, it is flakily tender, and a delight to both tongue and palate. Although few French home cooks make puff pastry, since they can buy freshly baked feuilletées at their local pâtisseries, it is something that you, as a cook, will find tremendously useful all the rest of your kitchen life. We have spent years on puff pastry ourselves, wanting to make sure that the recipe in this book would be as good with American flour as it is with French flour—the trouble with American all-purpose flour being that it has a higher gluten content than French flour, and that makes differences all along the line. We worked out combinations of unbleached pastry flour and all-purpose flour, we have tried instant-blending flour, and we have finally settled on a mixture of regular all-purpose flour and cake flour as being the most sensible. Although it takes a little longer to work with, it produces a beautifully tender, high-rising dough that is even more impressive, we think, than its French counterpart. The illustrated recipe for simple puff pastry is easy to follow, and we suggest your first creation be a handsome puff pastry tart, the cheese, or the jam. Both of them are quick to form, yet give a very handsome effect to start you off in a whirl of success.

Our forefathers did the kind of cooking in Chapter V, Charcuterie, if they lived on a farm and made their own sausages and cured their own pork. Few French householders, again, attempt any of this today, because they can buy all kinds of sausages chez le charcutier, as well as salted pork, preserved goose, sausage in brioche, molds of parslied ham, fresh liver pâté, terrines, and all the other marvelous concoctions that embellish French gastronomical life. The particularly wonderful taste of these creations is derived from the fact that they are freshly made, on the premises. We, who want to partake of the same pleasures, must make our own. And for anyone who enjoys cooking, producing charcuterie, like making bread and pastry, is a deeply satisfying occupation. You will be amazed, if you have never tried your own before, how rewarding just a homemade sausage patty can be; it is only freshly ground pork mixed with salt and spices, but it tastes the way one dreams sausage meat should taste. The large saucissons à cuire, will make you think of France, as will the jambon persillé. When you want a real cassoulet, you can make the real confit d’oie, and have enough preserved goose left in the crock for many more meals. The difficult Christmas present or the gifts to hostesses need bother you no more—bring along one of your own pâtés en croûte.

The final chapter contains favorite desserts and cakes that we have been testing out on our guinea pigs—our students and families—for a number of years. The frozen desserts, so useful for all of us who need attractive finales that we may complete well in advance, are made without benefit of the ice-cream freezer; they vary in complexity from quickly made fruit sherbets to an elegant chocolate mousse dressed in meringues, and a flaming French baked Alaska, la surprise du Vésuve. We also give you a group of original fruit desserts, custards, and a liqueur-soaked French shortcake, a number of handsome desserts made with puff pastry, and a selection of petits fours. Among the eight cakes at the end of the chapter are a fine French honey bread, pain d’épices, a walnut cake, a beautiful meringue-nut layer cake called variously Le Succès, Le Progrès, or La Dacquoise, and two chocolate cakes. It will be for you to judge whether we have achieved the ultimate in chocolate with La Charlotte Africaine or with Le Glorieux, or whether that perennial cake winner made of chocolate and almonds, La Reine de Saba, in Volume I, still retains the title.

In all of our recipes, and especially in those for desserts and cakes, we have taken full advantage of modern mechanical aids wherever we have found them effective. While Volume I reflects France in the 1950’s and the old traditions of French cooking, Volume II, like France herself, has stepped into contemporary life. We must admit, in Volume I, to a rather holy and Victorian feeling about the virtues of sweat and elbow grease—that only paths of thorns lead to glory, il faut souffrir pour être belle and all that. However, we are teachers; we want people to learn. And if we make it hard to cook through snobbish insistence on always beating egg whites by hand in a copper bowl, for instance, or always mixing pastries by hand (il faut mettre la main dans la pâte), when it is the hot hand that makes all the trouble, we know we have already lost a great part of our audience. We have therefore developed our own methods for machine-beaten egg whites, for machine-made cakes, and there are directions for doing all the pastries and doughs by machine as well as by hand. Because machines make cooking so much easier, and because recipes that take tedious effort by hand—like quenelles, mousses, and meringues—can be done in minutes by machine, we urge you to provide yourself with the best you can afford, and refer you to the illustrated suggestions.

We have so far said hardly a word about the illustrations, which are, to our mind, the glory of Volume II. We can speak of them without a hint of modesty because they are the result of a remarkable feat of teamwork between Paul Child, our action photographer, and Sidonie Coryn, our illustrator. Because of their tireless expertise we have been able to picture step-by-step operations that to our knowledge have never been adequately illustrated before; we now feel confident that this combined visual and verbal presentation makes absolutely clear the most complicated sounding process. For French bread alone there are 34 drawings, showing the procedure from the start: mixing the dough, kneading it, how it looks when risen, how to deflate it, and the intricacies of forming the dough into various loaf shapes. Tenderloin of beef is pictured in such detail that you can buy a whole one and trim it yourself. With an illustrated guide before you, you can bone out the breast of a chicken, trim and tie a saddle of lamb, or cut up a lobster. Puff pastry and croissants are illustrated every step of the way, as are brioches and bouchées. You can see how to form upside-down pastry shells, how to stuff a whole cabbage leaf by leaf, and if you have never done or even seen a pâté en croûte in your life, you can be assured of success, because you have 12 drawings to show you every necessary move.

Without the team of Child and Coryn such coverage would have been impossible. Paul Child, ready at a moment’s notice, was there to make careful, detailed, perfect photographs of any step of any recipe at any time during the day or night. Occasionally, when on-the-spot drawings served better than photographs, he contributed his talents to such techniques as the art of cutting up lobsters and crabs, carving a saddle of lamb, or depicting the bone structure of a breast of veal, and he was happy to draw the tricky arrangement of an eggplant dish that our words alone had confused. The major load of illustrating fell, of course, to Sidonie Coryn—her 458 drawings for this book are an incredible achievement. From grapefruit knives and cake pans to the step-by-step illustrations for a Pithiviers and Dacquoise, from electric mixers and garlic presses to the intricacies of a poularde en soutien-gorge, she has skillfully and stylishly drawn the essence of Paul Child’s photographs, eliminating nonessentials and putting the right emphasis on the points of crucial interest.

Words and pictures must be arranged carefully on a page if they are to communicate all that they intend. Again we authors may speak with gratitude of the loving attention that has gone into the layout and typography of this book. Now, when you have a long sequence of illustrated events to follow, like cutting and forming croissants or stuffing sausages, the whole operation of one particular step will be open before you, and you will not have to stop to turn the pages with a sticky finger nearly so often. This is a tighter setup than that for Volume I; although the type is the same size, the illustrations are more closely integrated with the text so that words and pictures can be absorbed more easily, and once you have mastered a technique, a glance at the illustrations will serve as sufficient reminder. The art work and production in this book contribute greatly to the understanding of cookery, we think, and we are pleased that our publisher has been willing to take the time and space, as well as the expense, to present recipes with such intelligent elegance.

We have little else to add to this leisurely meander. Words of advice, such as “Do read the recipe before you start in to cook,” “Be sure your oven thermostat is accurate,” and other sage admonitions are in the foreword to Volume I. We shall therefore only repeat the hope that you will keep your knives sharp and that, above all, you will have a good time.

Best wishes and bon appétit!

S. B. and J. C.

Paris and Cambridge
June 1971

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

Volume II has needed only a few changes in this new edition. We’ve brought in the food processor for dough making, added a little more butter to the croissants, a little more sugar on top of the puff pastry cookies, and changed the weight of a leg of lamb to conform with the modern mode. Otherwise it is as before, the classic cuisine of France, continued.

S. B. and J. C.

Bramafam and Santa Barbara
February 1983

Acknowledgments

OUR FRIENDS, students, families, and husbands have continued to act graciously and courageously as guinea pigs throughout the accumulation of years since Volume I began and Volume II came to its fruition; we owe them very special thanks. Again the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been a wonderful source of assistance, as has the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, especially its Boston Branch. We are also grateful to the National Livestock and Meat Board for technical advice on many occasions, and we are deeply indebted to R. A. Seelig of the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, whose bulletins and letters have taught us so many things we never knew before. Gladys Christopherson has been our faithful and cheerful manuscript typer, putting neatly onto paper the scrawls and spots of working copy; we thank her every finger. Avis DeVoto, still acting as foster mother, wet nurse, guide, and mentor, has also taken on the copy editing for our side, as well as the position of indexer-in-chief; our admiration and gratitude can only be expressed by her weight in fresh truffles. Paul Child, tireless photographer at a moment’s notice, pinch-hitting illustrator, clever turner of phrases when the well is dry—we can only continue to love him and to feed him well. We have also our peerless editor, Judith Jones, to thank most sincerely and affectionately; her conception of the book has produced what you now hold in your hands.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Illustrations

APPENDICES

Stuffings

Kitchen Equipment

Cumulative Index for Volumes One and Two

About the Authors

Illustrations

Illustrations by Sidonie Coryn

Technical Drawings by Paul Child

CHAPTER ONE
Soups from the Garden—Bisques and Chowders from the Sea

THERE IS HARDLY A MAN ALIVE who does not adore soup, particularly when it is homemade. Hot soup on a cold day, cold soup on a hot day, and the smell of soup simmering in the kitchen are fundamental, undoubtedly even atavistic, pleasures and solaces that give a special kind of satisfaction.

Although many of us think immediately of French onion soup when we put France and soups together in our minds, informal vegetable combinations are far more typical of that best of all cuisines—the cooking one finds in French homes and small family-style restaurants. Leek and Potato Soup, the potage Parmentier, and its numerous variations in Volume I, is the most typical of all, but there are many other vegetable combinations, including spinach, cucumbers, green peppers, celery, peas and pea pods, even eggplant, that are interesting, unusual, easy to make, and delicious to serve. In many of these soups the vegetables are simmered in water rather than meat or poultry stock because water does not disguise the natural taste of a subtle vegetable like asparagus, for example. We shall begin with a group of these, follow with an opulent series of bisques and other shellfish soups, and end with three hearty fish stews, each one a meal in itself.

A NOTE ON PURÉEING

Most soups need puréeing at some point in the cooking, and we think the best puréeing instrument is the imported vegetable mill that has interchangeable disks illustrated in the appendix. It is very efficient even with somewhat tough items like asparagus stems; it also performs the important function of holding back stringy fibers that you would otherwise have to sieve out. To use the vegetable mill, set it over a large bowl and pour the soup from saucepan through the mill, to strain liquid from solids; pour the liquid back into the saucepan. Purée the solid ingredients, adding some of the liquid now and then to ease their passage; scrape any adhering purée off the bottom of the machine and into the bowl, then pour contents of bowl into saucepan. (Some electric mixers come with puréeing attachments that work very well.)

If you prefer an electric blender or processor, pour liquid off solids and into a bowl; ladle a cup or so of the solids and a cup of the liquid into the container. Purée by turning the machine on and off every second or two to avoid that too-smooth effect of baby food, since you will usually want the soup to have some texture. Then, if you are doing a fibrous vegetable like asparagus butts or pea pods, strain all of the soup through a sieve just fine enough to hold back the fibers. A little experimentation and always an analytical sampling of the soup yourself will tell you what you need to do.

SOUP THICKENERS—LIAISONS

Puréed soups need a binder or liaison, which thickens the soup liquid enough so that the puréed ingredients remain in suspension rather than sinking to the bottom of the bowl. The simplest liaison is a starch of some sort, like grated potatoes, puréed rice, farina, or tapioca. Other soups, usually called veloutés, are thickened with a flour-and-butter roux. A more elegant liaison is raw egg yolks, which, when beaten into and heated with the soup, thicken it lightly. All of these liaisons are more or less interchangeable, and which one to use depends on what effect and taste you want to achieve.

ENRICHMENTS

Butter, cream, and, again, egg yolks, alone or in combination, are stirred into many soups just before serving. They give a final smoothness and delicacy of taste. You can omit them if you wish, or use just a small amount.

Sour cream, if you prefer less butter fat, may often be substituted for heavy cream. But crème fraîche is the perfect soup enrichment: mix 2 parts heavy cream with 1 part sour cream, let thicken at room temperature (5–6 hours), and refrigerate (keeps 10 days).

LEFTOVERS, CANNED SOUPS, AND IMPROVISATIONS

When you are the cook in the family, plan your vegetables ahead so that you will have leftovers for soup; it will save you a great deal of time, and make you feel remarkably clever besides. Extra rice, pasta, and creamed or mashed potatoes are always needed as thickeners, while onions and mushrooms can always be added for flavor. Leftover cauliflower, for instance, can be combined with watercress to make a delicious soup; spinach is the main ingredient for the velouté Florentine; white beans or eggplant go into the soupe à la Victorine. Save also any extra bits of sauce or meat juices; these often provide that extra depth of taste and personality you are searching for. For example, a few tablespoons of leftover sauce from a chicken fricassee would be delicious in the Cream of Celery Soup; you could certainly stir hollandaise instead of butter into the potage aux champignons; and some juices saved from the roast would enhance any onion soup. Finally, save any leftover soup; you can add it to a new one, or use it to give a homemade touch to canned soups.

GREEN SOUPS FROM GREEN VEGETABLES

POTAGE, CRÉME D’ASPERGES VERTES

[Cream of Fresh Green Asparagus Soup]

At the peak of the asparagus season, when you can bear not to eat it whole, here is a marvelous soup to catch all the essence of that beautiful vegetable.

For 7 to 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

Cold Asparagus Soup

Omit the final butter enrichment and oversalt slightly. Stir several times as the soup cools, then cover and chill. Blend in more cream, if you wish, just before serving.

Using frozen asparagus

Frozen asparagus can never achieve the magic of fresh asparagus, but you can still turn out an excellent soup. Follow the Master Recipe, making the changes in each step as indicated.

Fresh white European asparagus

European asparagus is either all white or tinged with mauve or green near the tip, depending on the variety. Since the peel is often slightly bitter as well as being much tougher than that of all-green asparagus, peeling is essential. Peel each spear 1⁄16 of an inch deep up to the tender part near the tip. After boiling the stalks, taste the cooking liquid; if it is bitter, discard it and use fresh boiling water for cooking the tops. Although the soup would normally be a pale cream color, you may turn it green by puréeing into it a cup of blanched chard or spinach leaves.

SOUPE BELLE POTAGÈRE

[Pea-pod Soup]

You can make an excellent green pea soup using both pods and peas. Next time you are shelling them, and have crackling fresh pods, keep out the greenest and best of the lot, wrap them in a plastic bag, and refrigerate for a soup the next day. A cup of shelled peas would be nice, too, but frozen ones will do for the garnish.

For 7 to 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

Cold Pea-pod Soup

Omit the final butter enrichment, and oversalt slightly. Stir several times as the soup cools, then cover and chill. Blend in more cream, if you wish, just before serving.

  POTAGE À LA FLORENTINE

[Cream of Spinach Soup]

Fresh and frozen spinach do almost equally well in this elegant soup of spinach simmered with rice and enriched with cream and egg yolks. Since it is good hot or cold, you may use the same system for a soup of green herbs, as you will see in the variations following.

For 7 to 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

Cold Spinach Soup

Omit the final butter enrichment, and oversalt slightly. Stir several times as the soup cools, then cover and chill. Blend in more cream, if you wish, just before serving, or top each serving with a spoonful of sour cream.

VARIATION

Potage aux Herbes Panachées

[Green Herb Soup]

For those green-thumbed wonders who grow their own herbs, here is a way to show off your tarragon, chervil, flat-leaved, pungent Italian parsley, shallots, spring onions or scallions, and chives. For those of us who wish to simulate the possession of an herb garden, the supermarket combination is leeks or onions, watercress, parsley, and dried tarragon.

Cold Green Herb Soup

See directions for the preceding Spinach Soup.

VEGETABLE VELOUTÉS

  POTAGE AUX CHAMPIGNONS, ÎLE DE FRANCE

[Cream of Mushroom Soup II]

Cream of Mushroom Soup appeals to almost everyone, even to those who claim they hate mushrooms. This is a very simple version compared with the full-dress recipe in Volume I, page 40. Here puréed raw mushrooms simmer in an onion-flavored soup base, and if you have only a handful of stems rather than the 2 to 4 cups of fresh mushrooms specified, you will still have a delicious soup.

For 6 to 7 cups, serving 4 to 6

A more elaborate garnish

Omit all or most of the cream and butter enrichments if you wish. Ladle the hot soup into bowls, drop a spoonful of sour cream in each and top with minced herbs, or with sliced or fluted mushroom caps previously simmered in water, butter, and lemon juice (Volume I, page 510).

Cold Mushroom Soup

Omit the final butter enrichment, and oversalt slightly. Stir several times as the soup cools, then cover and chill. Blend in more cream, if you wish, just before serving.

VARIATIONS

The following recipes are all for 6 to 7 cups of soup, serving 4 to 6. All may be served either hot or cold, as for the mushroom soup.

Potage de la Fontaine Dureau

[Cream of Cauliflower and Watercress Soup]

This is a delicious and unusual, as well as a pretty, soup.

Potage Crème aux Oignons, Soubise

[Cream of Onion Soup]

This is a soup for onion lovers, and a pleasant change from the usual brown onion soup. The little touch of curry and a bit of wine give it special flavor, while the addition of rice turns it into a soubise.

A POTATO-BASED SOUP

POTAGE CÉLESTINE

[Celery Soup with Potatoes, Leeks, and Rice]

This is leek and potato soup with a celery twist, and is equally good hot or cold.

For about 8 cups, serving 6 people

Cold Celery Soup

Omit the butter enrichment and the croûtons; oversalt soup slightly. Mash the herbs with ¼ cup heavy cream or sour cream, stir into the soup, and chill. Stir in more chilled cream, if you wish, before serving, and decorate with fresh minced herbs or parsley.

Croûtons

[Small Cubes of Bread Sautéed in Butter]

SOUPS WITH A FARINA THICKENING

Rather than thickening soups with flour, rice, or potatoes, you may use semoule de blé, semolina, also known as farina or cream of wheat. This makes a pleasant change and also imparts its own subtle taste and texture.

  POTAGE AUX CONCOMBRES

[Cream of Cucumber Soup]

The only thing to say about this soup is that it is perfectly delicious; it is especially good cold, but then it is also especially good hot.

For 6 to 7 cups, serving 4 to 6

Cold Cucumber Soup

After stirring in the ½ cup sour cream, oversalt slightly and let cool uncovered, stirring occasionally. Then cover and chill. Ladle into chilled soup cups, adding a big spoonful of sour cream to each cup; float cucumber slices on top of the cream and decorate with herbs.

VARIATION

Potage aux Courgettes

[Cream of Zucchini Soup]

You may substitute zucchini for cucumbers in the preceding soup, but do not peel them. Cut off stem and tip, scrub with a vegetable brush, and proceed exactly as for the cucumber soup. Decorate with herbs, however, rather than with zucchini slices.

POTAGE UNTEL

[Green Turnip Soup]

This is one of those soups with a marvelous and unusual flavor that is difficult to decipher unless you are told the combination. Then the tastes of turnip and greens disclose themselves. You may not find any green leaves attached to your turnips unless they grow nearby and it is turnip season, which is winter or early spring. Spinach leaves do nicely, however.

Alternate enrichments, cold soup

You may wish to enrich the soup with sour cream instead of butter, as for the preceding Cucumber Soup, or with cream and egg yolks as in the Spinach Soup. In any case, you may also serve it cold as suggested in both recipes.

THREE PEASANT SOUPS

POTAGE MAGALI

[Mediterranean Tomato Soup with Rice]

Typically Mediterranean, with its onions, tomatoes, garlic, saffron, and native herbs, this fragrant soup is even named after the Provençal heroine of many an operetta. It is best when tomatoes are at the season’s peak, but the hothouse type can be pepped up with a bit of tomato paste.

For 7 to 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

SOUPE CATALANE AUX POIVRONS

[Catalonian Pepper and Leek Soup]

Another Mediterranean soup uses the same principles as the preceding potage Magali, and the same general ingredients. Here the character comes from sweet peppers rather than tomatoes, a touch of ham or salt pork, and a typically regional final liaison of egg yolks and olive oil.

For 7 to 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

  SOUPE À LA VICTORINE

[Purée of White Bean Soup, Eggplant and Tomato Garnish]

This meal-in-itself will fill up the family on a cold day, especially if you include pork or sausage with the beans. The eggplant and tomato garnish makes a lively and unusual touch to an otherwise traditional bean purée.

For about 8 cups, serving 4 to 6

VARIATION

Fennel and Tomato Garnish

Sliced fresh fennel cooked until just tender and then simmered for a moment with diced tomatoes and herbs makes an attractive alternate to the eggplant. Soak the beans and simmer the soup base as described in the preceding recipe; prepare the garnish as follows.

LE POTIRON TOUT ROND

[Pumpkin Soup Baked in a Pumpkin]

This amusing presentation may be prepared either as a soup or a vegetable; the recipe is among the squashes in the Vegetables Chapter.

SHELLFISH SOUPS

Bisques

A bisque is a rich, thick, highly seasoned soup of puréed shellfish. Undoubtedly the bisque came into being because it is an easy as well as elegant way to eat small crustaceans with complicated constructions like crayfish and crabs, and it is a wonderful solution for the chests and legs of lobsters.

This is the kind of recipe to pick for a group of friends who enjoy cooking together, since a bisque is not tricky to make—it just takes a long time. To get the true flavor, the raw shellfish are cut up and sautéed in their shells before being simmered with wine and aromatic ingredients. The meat is then removed from the shells; some of it is saved for a garnish while the rest is puréed. Finally, to extract every remaining bit of flavor and color from the shells, they are puréed with butter, and everything is combined into a splendid soup.

We shall begin with illustrated directions on how to cut up lobsters and crabs, and follow with lobster bisque and its other shellfish variations.

BUYING LOBSTERS

A live lobster should be lively: it spreads its claws, arches its back, and flaps its tail noisily against the underside of its chest when you pick it up. To do so you must grab it with your thumb and index finger at its shoulder just behind the claw joints. You can keep live lobsters in the refrigerator at around 37 degrees for a day or two in a heavy paper bag pierced with air holes, but you should cook them as soon as possible.

When you are picking store-bought boiled lobsters, look closely at their tails, which should curl up against the underside of the chests and spring back into place when straightened. A limp tail indicates that the lobster was moribund before cooking. Be sure also, in buying boiled lobster, that it smells absolutely sweet and fresh. Freshly boiled, cooled, and wrapped lobsters will keep for 2 to 3 days in the refrigerator at around 37 degrees. You may even wrap airtight and freeze a boiled lobster in its shell for several weeks.

To tell the sex of a lobster, look at the last pair of swimmerets on the underside, where chest meets tail. If they are soft and hairy, the lobster is female; if they are hard, pointed, and hairless, the lobster is male.

ON DEALING WITH LIVE LOBSTERS

A number of the best French lobster recipes, including homard à l’américaine and bisque de homard, call for the sautéing of cut-up raw lobster. This means you must buy live lobster and either have it cut up for you and cook it immediately, or do the cutting yourself. The serious cook really must face up to the task personally. While professionals simply cut up the lobsters with never a qualm nor a preliminary, you may find this difficult. If so, we suggest that you plunge them two at a time, head first and upside down, into boiling water; leave for about a minute, until lobsters are limp, and immediately remove them. Because the nervous and circulatory systems of the lobster center in the head area, a head-first plunge into boiling liquid not only kills the lobster almost instantly, but also eliminates muscle spasms. There is a misguided notion that lobsters suffer less if set to boil in cold water; far from being a humane procedure, this is slow death by drowning!

HOW TO CUT UP RAW LOBSTER

Furnish yourself with sharp-pointed lobster scissors or kitchen scissors, a large knife, a cutting board with groove to catch juices or a board set on a tray, a bowl to pour juices into, and another bowl for the lobster tomalley. You now want to split the lobster in two, lengthwise, as follows. Turn the lobster top side up. With scissors, cut through center of shell from end of tail up to but not through eyes in center of head. Turn lobster over and again with scissors cut through shell from end of tail to within ½ inch of tip of head. Then with your knife cut completely through the under side of the lobster lengthwise, following scissor cuts, from ½ inch below tip of head down through tail, thus splitting lobster neatly in two except at the head. Finally grasp lobster in both hands where claw joints meet chest, and break the shell apart at the head to open it up.

Nestled in the head on one side of the lobster or the other is a pouch an inch long and ¾ inch in diameter which is the stomach sack. Locate the sack with your fingers, twist it out, and discard it. (If you have cut sack in two while splitting the lobster, no harm is done; remove the 2 halves.) Pull out and discard the intestinal vein, a thin, flexible translucent or blackish tube that runs from the area of the stomach sack down through the tail meat. The greenish, and sometimes almost blackish, soft matter lying in the chest cavity is the tomalley; scoop it out into a small bowl. If your lobster is female, there will usually be some orange-red roe as well; add this to the tomalley.

With a knife or scissors, separate the two tail sections from the chests. Cut the legs and the claw joints from the chests, and cut claws from end of joints. Crack claws in one or two places with a sharp whack of the knife. Drain juices into a bowl and reserve them, along with the tomalley. The lobster is now ready for sautéing.

HOW TO REMOVE THE MEAT FROM COOKED LOBSTERS

Split and open boiled lobster exactly as described in the preceding directions for raw lobster. Discard stomach sack and intestinal vein. Scoop tomalley from inside the chest sections into a bowl. After lifting meat out of tail sections, you want to remove meat from claws, claw joints, chest sections, and legs. With scissors, cut the claw joints from the chests, and separate each claw from its joint. Cut through shell on each side of joints, lift off shell, and remove meat.

The first step in removing the meat from the claws is to bend the small, hinged half rather slowly but firmly back on itself, toward the bottom of the claw; this will withdraw its cartilage from inside the meat of the main half of the claw. Dig the point of meat out of this small shell with a nut pick or the point of your scissors.

Again with scissors, cut a window out of the main claw shell and remove the whole piece of claw meat with your fingers.

Pull chest section from its outside shell. Note that there are spongy, hairy strips attached to outside side of chest at leg joints; these are gills. Pull off and discard them. Scrape out and add to the tomalley any coagulated white matter clinging to the inside of the shell.

Cut or twist off legs where they join the chest. Dig out meat from inside side of chest, going in between cartilaginous interstices with the point of a knife. This is never a fast operation, but the small amount of meat you extract is the sweetest and tenderest of all.

To remove the meat from the legs, sever them at each of their joints. Place on a board and squeeze the meat out of each piece by rolling a pin (pestle or broom handle) over it. You will not get much, but again the meat is sweet, tender, and worth the time spent on extraction.

CRABS

HOW TO CLEAN AND CUT UP RAW CRABS FOR CRAB BISQUE

Stone crabs, rock crabs, sand crabs, blue crabs, and their ilk and size are especially good for bisques because they are otherwise somewhat complicated to eat. If you are at the seashore you can gather them yourself, or ask lobstermen please not to throw them out, as they often do, but to save all crabs for you. However you obtain them, they must be alive. Just before you are ready to clean and cut them, place them upside down in a large bowl or stoppered sink and cover with very hot water. As soon as air bubbles cease to rise, in a minute or two, the crabs will be limp and ready to work on. Your object in cleaning and cutting is to remove the main body, or chest-leg-claw portions of each crab, from the hard shell, called the carapace, and to collect the tomalley, which is the creamy substance in the chest cavity and carapace.

Turn crabs upside down. Note that female crabs have a wider tail flap than male crabs and the female’s is usually edged with hair.

Lift point of flap away from chest, then grasp flap close to the body of the crab and with a rather slow twisting movement, pull it horizontally free from the end of the crab. The intestinal vein should draw out of the body at the same time.

Break off claw-joint sections where they join the body. To remove the leg-chest section, hold carapace firmly in your left hand and grasp all the legs close to the body in your right hand. Rock leg-chest portion back and forth and it will come loose from the carapace; pull it free. Both chest and interior of carapace should smell fresh and appetizing; your nose is the best judge.

On either side of the chest, where it fitted into the shell, are feathery, spongy strips, which are the gills; pull off and discard them. Scrape the creamy tomalley out of the chest with your fingers and a spoon handle; place in a sieve set over a bowl.

With a vegetable brush, scrub shell on underside of chest and around the legs under a stream of cold water; scrub the claw-joint pieces also. Finally cut the chest in half lengthwise as shown. (Trim off any mossy bits of shell with a knife or scissors.)

You now have prepared for cooking the chest-leg sections, which are cut in two, and the claw-joint sections. The other edible portion of the crab is the rest of the tomalley, which is in the carapace.

Crab tomalley

The greenish, brownish, and sometimes orange creamy matter left in the carapace is also called tomalley. It, along with the juices in the shell, constitutes some of the best parts of the crab.* Pour the juices through the sieve containing the chest tomalley; scoop soft matter out of the shell with your fingers, and into the sieve. When all the crabs are done, pour accumulated liquid into a separate container and reserve. Rub the tomalley through the sieve with a wooden spoon, scrape it off bottom of sieve into a bowl; reserve for Step 7, where it will simmer with the crab-meat garnish. (After puréeing, the raw tomalley will become a rather dark green, which then becomes dark red when cooked.)

* When a whole crab is boiled, the tomalley turns greenish and orange while the liquid usually becomes white.

HOW TO REMOVE THE MEAT FROM COOKED CRABS

Provide yourself with a board and wooden mallet or wooden object of some sort for cracking the shells, and a grapefruit knife for extracting the meat. For a bisque made from small crabs, do not bother to delve too thoroughly because it will take all day; remove only what meat you easily can, and the shell debris will be simmered again anyway to extract all remaining flavor. Begin by twisting the legs from the chest sections, then break each leg off at the knee by bending it back upon itself at the joint, thus drawing the cartilage out of the upper leg meat. For a bisque, chop lower legs into quarter-inch pieces, and reserve for shellfish butter; otherwise discard them. To remove meat from upper legs, as well as from claws and joints, crack shell sharply but lightly with mallet, being careful not to shatter the shell into the meat. Then dig out what meat you easily can with the point of your grapefruit knife. To remove meat from chests, dig out what you can from the holes left by the legs, then from the other side, being careful not to include bits of shell or cartilage. You will get about 1 solid cup of meat from 6 to 8 crabs measuring 3 to 4 inches across the back of the shell.

  BISQUE DE HOMARD À L’AMÉRICAINE

[Lobster Bisque]

Considering the price of lobsters and the puréed nature of a bisque, we think it is a waste to use whole lobster here. We therefore suggest only the chests and the legs for the bisque, and the tails, claws, and tomalley for a splendid main dish, such as the homard à l’Américaine described in Volume I on page 223. In fact, you could well combine the two, starting them out together, since both follow much the same pattern. Serve the main dish one night, and the bisque a day or two later. That is up to you, however, and we shall content ourselves with the chests and legs from 3 or 4 lobsters for the following recipe. As in most dishes of this type, you can expand or contract the ingredients to a certain extent without upsetting the balance of tastes, and you need not be disturbed if you have a little more or a little less of anything that is called for.

A NOTE ON TECHNIQUES AND EQUIPMENT

In the old days you would have needed an 8-quart marble mortar, a large wooden pestle, a 12-inch tamis sieve, a tortoise-shell scraper, and either a flock of kitchen minions or the strength of a Japanese wrestler to produce a proper bisque. Today’s electric blender eliminates these colorful requirements, but there are still multiple simmerings, strainings, and puréeings, as well as numerous bowls, sieves, and spoons that you will need. Do not wash anything off until the soup is done because you will be using the same utensils repeatedly and you don’t want any marvelous tidbits of flavor losing themselves down the drain.

For about 2 quarts, serving 6 to 8

VARIATIONS

Because all of the other shellfish bisques follow almost the same pattern as lobster bisque, you can really substitute shrimp, crab, or crayfish for lobster in the Master Recipe every time you see the word “lobster.” To account for the very slight differences in method, here is a paragraph of special instructions for each.

Bisque de Crevettes

[Shrimp Bisque]

You must have shrimp in the shell for this recipe because the shells give the bisque its characteristic color and flavor. It is of prime importance, therefore, that you use only the freshest smelling and finest quality of shrimp, whether they are live and whole or frozen, raw, and headless. If the shrimp are whole, meaning with head and shell, simply wash and drain before sautéing them; if frozen, thaw in cold water until you can separate them, then sauté. Since they need only 5 minutes of simmering, cook the tomatoes and other ingredients called for in Step 3 for 10 minutes before adding the shrimp; after their simmer, let them cool 10 minutes in the cooking sauce before draining and peeling them. Use the shells and several whole, cooked shrimp for the shellfish butter in Step 6, and if the shrimp are very large, slice in half lengthwise those you are reserving for the garnish in Step 7. You will need 1¼ to 1½ pounds of raw shrimp for 2 quarts of bisque.

Bisque de Crabes

[Crab Bisque]

Crab bisque is even more one of love’s labors than lobster bisque, but it is so marvelously rich and deeply flavored that if you pick the right guests your reward will be in watching their pleasure, as well as relishing your own. Clean and cut the crabs as illustrated, then substitute crab for lobster in the Master Recipe, with the following slight modifications. Because crab pieces will bulk larger than lobster chests, you will need 2 big casseroles for the sautéing in Step 2, but may combine all together for the simmering in Step 3. You will not have enough liquid to cover all of the crab pieces in this step, and should toss the pieces several times during the 20 minutes of cooking; do not forget to add the liquid from the carapaces and the tomalley to simmer here, along with everything else. Note that it is only the chopped-up lower legs that go into the shellfish butter in Step 6, but add as well all the debris from the chests, claws, and upper legs to simmer at the end of the step, allowing a good 10 minutes of cooking to extract every bit of flavor. For 2 quarts of wonderful soup, you will need 6 to 8 live crabs measuring 3 to 4 inches across the top of the shell.

Bisque d’Écrevisses

[Crayfish Bisque]

Fresh-water crayfish, crawfish, or écrevisses, as they are variously called, are miniature lobsterlike crustaceans 4 to 5 inches long. They are considered a supreme delicacy in Europe as well as in the southern Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Midwestern states where they are gathered. With the few minor differences noted here, substitute the word “crayfish” for the word “lobster” in the Master Recipe. To clean live crayfish, drop them headfirst in a basin of very hot water and leave for 2 to 3 minutes or until bubbles cease to rise. After draining them, pull out the central flap at the base of the tail to draw out along with it the intestinal tube. (This action of removing the intestine is called châtter in French recipes.) Sauté and simmer the crayfish whole, as directed in the Master Recipe, but they need only 10 minutes of cooking in Step 3. To shell them, remove the tail meat only, and use all of it for the garnish in Step 7; the chests and shell debris go into the butter, Step 6. If you wish to be very haute cuisine, have a dozen extra crayfish and make a small amount of a simple fish mousse, using the raw tail meat. Then remove chest-leg sections (but not claws and feelers) from covering shell, and fill the shells with the mousse. Poach 5 minutes in stock or bouillon before floating them in the bisque at serving time. You should have 24 to 30 live crayfish for 2 quarts of soup, plus 12 or so extra if you are doing the mousse.

TWO SCALLOP SOUPS WITH A CRAB OR LOBSTER VARIATION

Scallops are so easy to come by, fresh or frozen, that we feel they should have their place in the soup repertoire. Although scallops are rarely so used in France, they are delicious as the unique fish in a bouillabaisse or bourride, and they make a marvelous velouté or cream soup.

LES SAINT-JACQUES EN BOUILLABAISSE

[Bouillabaisse of Scallops]

This heady Mediterranean brew of leeks, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and herbs plus scallops can be a complete meal when served with plenty of fresh French bread and followed by fruit and cheese.

Serving 4 as a main course, 6 as a soup course

Other ideas

For a more nourishing soup, you can add 2 cups of diced “boiling” potatoes or a handful of pasta to the soup base 10 minutes before the end of its simmering. You could enrich the soup with an egg yolk and oil liaison, as for the soupe aux poivrons, or with a rouille, as for the bouillabaisse in Volume I, page 52. See also the recipe for bourride with its aïoli enrichment.

  VELOUTÉ DE SAINT-JACQUES

[Cream of Scallop Soup—hot or cold]

This deliciously creamy soup is a cousin of the Breton mouclades, mussel soup, and you may serve it either hot or cold.

For 6 to 7 cups, serving 4 to 6

To serve cold

Omit the final butter enrichment, and oversalt slightly. Clean off sides of pan with a rubber spatula and float a spoonful of cream on the surface. When cool, cover and refrigerate. Blend in more cream, if you wish, just before serving.

VARIATION

Velouté de Crustacés

[Cream of Shellfish Soup—for canned crab, and cooked or frozen crab or lobster meat]

Although the best shellfish soups are made, like the bisques, from fresh, raw shellfish in the shell, because every bit of the flavor goes into the soup, you can produce an excellent result with the cooked meat alone, plus either a fish stock or clam juice. This is a useful type of recipe for those times when you want something special on the spur of the moment. The technique here is almost the same as for the preceding scallop soup, but there is no court bouillon. (NOTE: this recipe works especially well with freshly cooked crab or lobster meat, as well as with the frozen meat or with canned crab. We have not found canned lobster to be at all successful.)

For about 6 cups, serving 4 people

FRENCH FISH STEWS AND CHOWDERS

Bouillabaisse is not the only French fish chowder. From that same Mediterranean coast comes the bourride—thick, rich, and reeking of garlic, while from the opposite corner of France comes the marmite dieppoise, with its mussels, sole, cream, and eggs. Inland France has its own special chowders too, called matelotes, meurettes, and pauchouses, made from fresh-water fish. These are all hearty dishes with big chunks of fish, and easily suffice as the main course of an informal lunch or supper.

FISH TO USE

For this type of recipe the fish should be fairly firm-fleshed so that it will keep its shape while it cooks. Whether fresh or frozen, it must smell as fresh as a breeze from the open sea or the primeval forest. You cannot, of course, duplicate a fresh-water chowder from Burgundy with ocean fish from the New Jersey or Oregon coast, but we do not think the fish itself is all that important: it is the rest of the ingredients and the general method that give each dish its special character. Here are some suggestions for both ocean fish and fresh-water fish with their French translations or equivalents.

Ocean fish

Cod (cabillaud, morue fraîche)

Conger eel (congre, fiélas)

Cusk (brosme, rare in France)

Goosefish, monkfish (lotte de mer, baudroie)

Haddock (églefin)

Halibut (flétan, rare in France)

Ocean whitefish, wolf fish, catfish (loup anarrhique, rare in France)

Pollack, green cod, coalfish (lieu jaune is a near equivalent)

Sea bass (bar, loup)

Whiting, silver hake (merlu or colin is the European cousin; merlan is no relation but a good choice)

Various rockfish, if you are a fisherman (the American sculpin is a cousin of the Mediterranean rascasse)

Fresh-water fish

Bass and perch (perche)

Carp (carpe)

Catfish (lotte de rivière)

Eel (anguille)

Pike (brochet)

Trout (truite)

Small carplike fishes (tanche, barbeau, barbillon are typical, and frequently mentioned in French recipes)

Scallops

Though rarely used for soups and chowders in France, scallops are delicious used in any of the following recipes, alone or in combination with other fish.

PREPARING FISH FOR COOKING

Small fish (6 to 8 inches) for stews and chowders are cleaned and scaled, and left whole. Larger fish, after cleaning and scaling, are cut into slices ¾ to 1 inch thick. Very large fish are cut into thick fillets or steaks, and then into serving pieces about 3 by 4 inches in diameter. Bones and skin are usually not removed, but you may do so if you wish. As soon as you have prepared the fish, wrap and refrigerate it until you are ready to cook. Make fish stock out of scraps, heads, skin, and so forth (Volume I, page 114).

MATELOTES, MEURETTES, PAUCHOUSES

[Burgundy Fish Stew with Wine, Onions, Lardons, and Mushrooms]

You might call this dish the fisherman’s coq au vin, fish simmered in wine with onions, pork bits, and mushrooms, and the wine becomes the sauce. Even those who are not enthusiastic fish eaters usually love this recipe, and although it is supposed to be made with fresh-water fish or eels alone, we have used ocean fish like halibut, haddock, or scallops with complete success. As usual with French regional recipes, you can have endless arguments as to whether a matelote is cooked with red wine or white, or if it is only the pauchouse (spelled pôchouse by some) that simmers in white wine, and only the meurette that has lardons of pork, or vice versa, including a garnish of poached eggs and truffles for some versions. We shall not enter into the argument at all except to say that either a fish-stock or clam-juice base to the sauce is essential, or your matelote/meurette/pauchouse will lack the savor and character it must have.

If this is a main course, you may wish to add a side dish of boiled potatoes to eat with the stew, as well as plenty of French bread. Serve either a strong dry white wine or a red, preferably Burgundy, to match whichever wine cooked with the fish. A green salad or cold vegetables vinaigrette could follow the stew, and then cheese and fruit or a dessert.

For 4 to 6 people

MARMITE AUX FRUITS DE MER—MARMITE DIEPPOISE—CHAUDRÉE NORMANDE

[Normandy-style Fish Stew with Sole, Shellfish, and White-wine Sauce]

When you order marmite dieppoise in Dieppe on the Normandy coast or at Prunier’s in Paris, you are served an elegant combination of channel sole, turbot, red mullet, mussels, shrimps, scallops, and langoustines, those small, European, lobsterlike prawns, all steaming together in an abundant, deliciously winey-smelling, ivory-colored sauce. It will cost you quite a number of francs, since marmite dieppoise is definitely in the luxury category. This is another dish we cannot fully duplicate in America because channel soles, turbots, mullets, and langoustines do not live here, but other soles, halibuts, and lobsters do, as do shrimp, scallops, and mussels. The following recipe, therefore, is an overseas version of the original. You may serve the marmite as a first course, although we suggest it as the main attraction of the meal. You could start with a pâté or a saucisson en brioche, follow with asparagus or artichokes vinaigrette, and it would be fully in the Normandy tradition to end with an apple dessert such as the individual soufflés, or the tarte aux pommes. With the marmite itself, serve a fine white Burgundy, Graves, or Gewürtztraminer.

FISH TALK

Although you may use any of the fish listed, you will have a combination more like the original with the equivalent of a fillet of sole, two 2-inch pieces of halibut, 4 to 6 shrimp, scallops, and/or mussels, and ⅓ of a lobster per person, for the first serving, and half the amount for seconds. Whatever you have chosen, be sure each piece of fish smells absolutely fresh; pay particular attention to the shrimp if frozen, because they can overpower everything else unless of unquestionable quality. A well-flavored fish stock is essential here; if you cannot get bones and trimmings from fresh sole, buy an extra pound or so of fish.

For 6 people as a main course, 10 to 12 as a soup course

BOURRIDE

[Provençal Fish Stew with Aïoli—Garlic Mayonnaise]

This marvelous fish dinner from Provence is for garlic lovers only, as the big chunks of fish are cooked in a broth that is then enriched with egg yolks and a mayonnaise into which at least 1 large clove of garlic per person has been puréed. Like bouillabaisse, the fish is served on a platter and the enriched broth in a tureen, but both are eaten together in soup plates. This is such a rich dish we suggest you serve it for lunch, and you will want nothing else but perhaps a bit of green salad and fresh fruit. You will need a strong, dry white wine, such as a Côtes-du-Rhône or Pinot Blanc.

For 6 to 8 people as a main course

CHAPTER TWO
Baking: Breads, Brioches, Croissants, and Pastries

YEAST DOUGHS

Les Pâtes Levées

THE AVERAGE FRENCH HOUSEHOLD does no yeast baking at all except for babas, savarins, and an occasional brioche. It certainly does no bread making, and there is no need to because every neighborhood has its own boulangerie serving freshly baked bread every day of the week but one, usually Monday, when the boulanger takes his day off. Thus you cannot even find a bread pan in a French household supply store, and there are no French recipes for homemade bread. All of the recipes here, therefore, are those used by professionals whose techniques we have worked out for the home baker, using standard ingredients and household equipment.

Whether you are a home or a professional baker, you will find that time is really the key to successful bread making. Just as it takes time for cheese to ripen and wine to age, it takes time for yeast to do its full work in a dough. The function of yeast is not only to push the dough up but, equally important, to develop its flavor and its texture. Yeast feeds and multiplies on the starch in the flour. Flour also contains gluten, and it is the gluten that allows the dough to rise and stay risen in the oven because gluten molecules become gluey when moistened and join together in an elastic web throughout the dough. Then, while the yeast cells are feeding and multiplying on the starch, their voracious activity forms tiny pockets of gas that push up the surrounding mesh of gluten, making the dough rise. At the same time the gluten itself, if given time, goes through a slow ripening process that gives the dough flavor, cohesion, and elasticity. These important developments in the gluten must take place if a very simple dough, such as that for plain French bread, is to turn into something splendidly satisfying to eat. Thus, rather than trying to speed things up by using lots of yeast and a warm rising temperature, you want to provide time for ripening by slowing everything down with a minimum of yeast, a tepid temperature, and several risings.

Many reasons are given for the doleful state of much contemporary bread both here and in France: it is not baked in wood-fired ovens; both the flour and water are full of chemicals; it is machine-kneaded; and so forth. The villain in the bread basket is speed: the yeast has not been given the time it needs to accomplish its triple function of developing flavor and texture as well as volume.

YEAST

Yeast is a living organism, but it is inactive or dormant when you buy it, either as a fresh cake wrapped in silver paper or as dry yeast in a sealed envelope. Fresh cake yeast must be a uniformly creamy gray with no spots of discoloration, and is perishable; it will keep only about a week under refrigeration but for several weeks when wrapped airtight and frozen. Dry-active yeast should be stored in a cool, dry place, or in the refrigerator or freezer; use it before the expiration date stamped on the envelope. Either type of yeast may be used, but both must be completely liquefied before the yeast is ready to become active. Although you can mix it, as is, into the dry ingredients and blend in warm water, we prefer the almost as rapid but visually positive method of liquefying it separately.

Proving yeast

When you know your yeast is fresh, you need have no doubts about its capacities. If you think it may be stale do not hesitate to make it prove itself by dissolving it in the warm water called for in your recipe; stir in also a tablespoon of flour and a pinch of sugar. It is active and ready to use if it begins to foam and to increase in volume in about 8 minutes: the yeast cells, spurred on by the sugar, are feeding on the flour.

DOUGH TEXTURE, VOLUME OF RISE, TEMPERATURE

Anyone used to American bread making will be surprised to find that the doughs for all of the following recipes are light, soft, and sticky when first made because the dough is to triple rather than double in volume during its first and usually its second rise: this is the period during which it develops its flavor and texture. Rather than rising in a warm place of around 85 degrees, which would cause it to ferment and acquire an unpleasant yeasty-sour taste, it must rise in the low 70’s if you can possibly manage it, or at an even lower temperature if you wish to delay the process.

THE WEATHER

We therefore suggest that you do not attempt your first bread-making spree in a hot kitchen. When you are used to doughs and know how they should look, smell, and feel, you can adjust your procedures to the weather, letting the dough rise part of the time in the refrigerator, for instance, or deflating it when partially risen and letting it push itself up several times. Rainy or humid weather and steamy rooms also have their adverse affect, making dough unduly sticky, even sweaty; pick a dry day and a dry room, then, for your first venture. In other words, make everything as easy as possible for yourself.

TIMING AND DELAYED ACTION

Although it will take you a minimum of 7 hours from start to finish for most of these recipes, that does not mean that you are hovering over your dough for 7 straight hours. During almost all of this time the dough is sitting quietly by itself, rising in one form or another. Because you can slow down the rise by lowering the temperature, you may set it in the refrigerator or the freezer when you have to go out, and continue when you return. Thus, although you cannot successfully speed things up, you can otherwise fit bread making into almost any pattern that suits your schedule. Each of the recipes indicates various stopping points, and there is a delayed-action chart at the end of the French bread recipe.

MACHINE VERSUS HAND MIXING

A heavy-duty table-model electric beater with a dough hook works very well for mixing and kneading dough, and can be adapted nicely to the French processes. Notes are at the end of each Master Recipe.

PLAIN FRENCH BREAD

Pain Français

A fine loaf of plain French bread, the long crackly kind a Frenchman tucks under his arm as he hurries home to the family lunch, has a very special quality. Its inside is patterned with holes almost like Swiss cheese, and when you tear off a piece it wants to come sideways; it has body, chewability, and tastes and smells of the grain. Plain French bread contains only flour, water, salt, and yeast, because that is the law in France. The method, however, is up to each individual baker. Until the 1800’s and before commercial yeast was known, all bread was made with a levain, meaning dough left over from the previous batch; the procedure involved numerous risings and mixings to develop sufficient yeast cells for the day’s quota of bread. Later a brewer’s-yeast-and-flour batter was developed that simplified the process, but it was not until the 1870’s that the kind of yeast we use today was manufactured in France. Since then the making of French bread has undergone many changes, some of which, notably the accelerated mechanical kneading and fast rising systems used by some bakers, have had a disastrous affect on quality. Again, this is a question of trying to save time at the expense of taste and texture, because excellent bread may be made using modern ingredients, equipment, and methods.

We have had the great good fortune of being able to work with Professor R. Calvel, of the École Professionelle de Meunerie, a trade school established in Paris to teach the profession of milling and baking to students and bakers from all over France. The science of bread making and the teaching of its art are the life work of Professor Calvel, and thanks to his enthusiastic help, which set us on the right track, we think we have developed as professional a system for the home baker as anyone could hope for. You will be amazed at how very different the process is from anything you have done before, from the mixing and rising to the very special method of forming the dough into loaves.

FLOUR

French bakers make plain French bread out of unbleached flour that has a gluten strength of 8 to 9 per cent. Most American all-purpose flour is bleached and has a slightly higher gluten content as well as being slightly finer in texture. It is easier to make bread with French flour than with American all-purpose flour, and the taste and texture of the bread are naturally more authentic. (The so-called bread flour available in some mail-order houses usually has an even higher gluten content than all-purpose flour, so do not use it for plain French bread.) You will undoubtedly wish to experiment with flours if you become a serious bread maker, but because we find that any of the familiar brands of all-purpose flour works very well, we shall not complicate the recipe by suggesting an obscure or special brand. If you do experiment, however, simply substitute your other flour for the amount called for in the recipe; you may need a little bit more water or a little bit less, but the other ingredients and the method will not change.

BAKERS’ OVENS VERSUS HOME OVENS

Bakers’ ovens are so constructed that one slides the formed bread dough from a wooden paddle right onto the hot, fire-brick oven floor, and a steam-injection system humidifies the oven for the first few minutes of baking. Steam allows the yeast to work a little longer in the dough and this, combined with a hot baking surface, produces an extra push of volume. In addition, steam coagulating the starch on the surface of the dough gives the crust its characteristic brown color. Although you can produce a good loaf of French bread without steam or a hot baking surface, you will get a larger and handsomer loaf when you simulate professional conditions. We give both systems—the Master Recipe, which requires no special equipment, and the simulated baker’s oven system.

SOUR DOUGH

Sour dough is an American invention, not French, and you will not find anything like American sour dough in France. But you can adapt your sour dough recipe to the method described here for plain French bread. We think you will find that our recipe will give you an excellent result.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR MAKING FRENCH BREAD

Unless you plan to go into the more elaborate simulation of a baker’s oven, you need no unusual equipment for the following recipe. Here are the requirements, some of which may sound odd but will explain themselves when you read the recipe.

A 4- to 5-quart mixing bowl with fairly vertical rather than outward-slanting sides

A kneading surface of some sort, 1½ to 2 square feet

A rubber spatula and either a metal scraper or a stiff wide metal spatula

1 or 2 unwrinkled canvas pastry cloths or stiff linen towels upon which the dough may rise

A stiff piece of cardboard or plywood 18 to 20 inches long and 6 to 8 inches wide, for unmolding dough from canvas to baking sheet

Finely ground cornmeal, or pasta pulverized in an electric blender, to sprinkle on unmolding board so as to prevent dough from sticking

The largest baking sheet that will fit into your oven

A razor blade for slashing the top of the dough

A soft pastry brush or fine-spray atomizer for moistening dough before and during baking

A room thermometer to verify rising-temperature

  PAIN FRANÇAIS

[Plain French Bread]

Count on a minimum of 6½ to 7 hours from the time you start the dough to the time it is ready for the oven, and half an hour for baking. While you cannot take less time, you may take as much more time as you wish by using the delayed-action techniques described at the end of the recipe.

For 1 pound of flour, making 3 cups of dough, producing:

3 long loaves, baguettes, 24 by 2 inches, or bâtards, 16 by 3 inches

Or 6 short loaves, ficelles, 12 to 16 by 2 inches

Or 3 round loaves, boules, 7 to 8 inches in diameter

Or 12 round or oval rolls, petits pains

Or 1 large round or oval loaf, pain de ménage or miche; pain boulot

NOTE: List of equipment needed is in paragraph preceding this recipe.

Stir and cut the liquids into the flour with a rubber spatula, pressing firmly to form a dough, and making sure that all bits of flour and unmassed pieces are gathered in. Turn dough out onto kneading surface, scraping bowl clean. Dough will be soft and sticky. Let it rest for 2 to 3 minutes while you wash and dry the bowl.

The flour will have absorbed the liquid during this short rest, and the dough will have a little more cohesion for the kneading that is about to begin. Use one hand only for kneading and keep the other clean to hold a pastry scraper, to dip out extra flour, to answer the telephone, and so forth. Your object in kneading is to render the dough perfectly smooth and to work it sufficiently so that all the gluten molecules are moistened and joined together into an interlocking web. You cannot see this happen, of course, but you can feel it because the dough will become elastic and will retract into shape when you push it out.

Start kneading by lifting the near edge of the dough, using a pastry scraper or stiff wide spatula to help you if necessary, and flipping dough over onto itself. Scrape the dough off the surface and slap it down; lift edge and flip it over again, repeating the movement rapidly.

In 2 to 3 minutes the dough should have enough body so that you can give it a quick forward push with the heel of your hand as you flip it over. Continue to knead rapidly and vigorously in this way. If it remains too sticky, knead in a sprinkling of flour. (Whole kneading process will take 5 to 10 minutes, depending on how vigorous and expert you become.)

Shortly after this point, the dough should have developed enough elasticity so that it draws back into shape when pushed, indicating that the gluten molecules have united and are under tension like a thin web of rubber; the dough should also begin to clean itself off the kneading surface, although it will stick to your fingers if you hold a pinch for more than a second or two. Let it rest for 3 to 4 minutes. Knead again for a minute: the surface should now look smooth; the dough will be less sticky but it will still remain soft. It is now ready for its first rise.

You now have approximately 3 cups of dough that is to rise 3½ times its original volume, or to about 10½ cups. Fill the mixing bowl with 10½ cups of tepid water and make a mark to indicate that level on the outside of the bowl (note that the bowl should have fairly upright sides; if they are too outward slanting, the dough will have difficulty rising). Pour out the water, dry the bowl, and place the dough in it; slip bowl into a large plastic bag or cover with plastic, and top with a folded bath towel. Set on a wooden surface (marble or stone are too cold) or on a folded towel or pillow, and let rise free from drafts anyplace where the temperature is around 70 degrees; if the room is too hot, set bowl in water and keep renewing water to maintain it at around 70 degrees. Dough should take at least 3 hours to rise to 10½ cups; if the temperature is lower, it will simply take longer.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: See chart at end of recipe.

When fully risen, the dough will be humped into a slight dome, showing that the yeast is still active; it will be light and spongy when pressed. There will usually be some big bubbly blisters on the surface, and if you are using a glass bowl you will see bubbles through the glass.

The dough is now ready to be deflated, which will release the yeast-engendered gases and redistribute the yeast cells so that the dough will rise again and continue the fermentation process.

With a rubber spatula dislodge dough from inside of bowl and turn out onto a lightly floured surface, scraping the bowl clean. If dough seems damp and sweaty, sprinkle with a tablespoon of flour.

Lightly flour the palms of your hands and flatten the dough firmly but not too roughly into a circle, deflating any gas bubbles by pinching them.

Lift a corner of the near side and flip it down onto the far side. Do the same with the left side, then the right side. Finally lift the near side and tuck it just under the edge of the far side. The mass of dough will look like a rounded cushion.

Slip the sides of your hands under the dough and return it to the bowl. Cover and let rise again, this time to not quite triple, but again until it is dome-shaped and light and spongy when touched.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: See chart at end of recipe.

Loosen dough all around inside of bowl and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Because of its two long rises, the dough will have much more body. If it seems damp and sweaty, sprinkle lightly with flour.

Making clean, sure cuts with a large knife or a scraper, divide dough into 3 equal pieces for long loaves, or whatever is specified for other shapes and sizes.

After you have cut each piece, lift one end and flip it over onto the opposite end to fold the dough in two; place dough at far side of kneading surface. Cover loosely with a sheet of plastic and let rest for 5 minutes before forming. This relaxes the gluten enough for shaping, but not long enough for the dough to begin rising again.

While the dough is resting, prepare the rising surface: smooth the canvas or linen toweling on a large tray or baking sheet, and rub flour thoroughly into the entire surface of the cloth to prevent the dough from sticking.

Because French bread stands free in the oven and is not baked in a pan, it has to be formed in such a way that the tension of the coagulated gluten cloak on the surface will hold the dough in shape. Following are illustrated directions for the familiar long loaf—the bâtards (baked size 16 by 3 inches); other shapes are described and illustrated at the end of the recipe. Baguettes are much too long for home ovens.

After the 3 pieces of dough have rested 5 minutes, form one piece at a time, keeping the remaining ones covered.

Working rapidly, turn the dough upside down on a lightly floured kneading surface and pat it firmly but not too roughly into an 8- to 10-inch oval with the lightly floured palms of your hands. Deflate any gas bubbles in the dough by pinching them.

Fold the dough in half lengthwise by bringing the far edge down over the near edge.

Being sure that the working surface is always very lightly floured so the dough will not stick and tear, which would break the lightly coagulated gluten cloak that is being formed, seal the edges of the dough together, your hands extended, thumbs out at right angles and touching.

Roll the dough a quarter turn forward so the seal is on top.

Flatten the dough again into an oval with the palms of your hands.

Press a trench along the central length of the oval with the side of one hand.

Fold in half again lengthwise.

This time seal the edges together with the heel of one hand, and roll the dough a quarter turn toward you so the seal is on the bottom.

Now, by rolling the dough back and forth with the palms of your hands, you will lengthen it into a sausage shape. Start in the middle, placing your right palm on the dough, and your left palm on top of your right hand.

Roll dough forward and backward rapidly, gradually sliding your hands toward the two ends as the dough lengthens.

Deflate any gas blisters on the surface by pinching them. Repeat the rolling movement rapidly several times until the dough is 16 inches long, or whatever length will fit on your baking sheet. During the extension rolls, keep circumference of dough as even as possible and try to start each roll with sealed side of dough down, twisting the rope of dough to straighten the line of seal as necessary. If seal disappears, as it sometimes does with all-purpose flour, do not worry.

Place the shaped piece of dough, sealed side up, at one side of the flour-rubbed canvas, leaving a free end of canvas 3 to 4 inches wide. (The top will crust slightly as the dough rises; it is turned over for baking so the soft, smooth underside will be uppermost.)

Pinch a ridge 2½ to 3 inches high in the canvas to make a trough, and a place for the next piece. Cover dough with plastic while you are forming the rest of the loaves.

After all the pieces of dough are in place, brace the two sides of the canvas with long rolling pins, baking pans, or books, if the dough seems very soft and wants to spread out. Cover the dough loosely with a flour-rubbed dish towel or canvas, and a sheet of plastic. Proceed immediately to the final rising, next step.

The covered dough is now to rise to almost triple in volume; look carefully at its pre-risen size so that you will be able to judge correctly. It will be light and swollen when risen, but will feel still a little springy when pressed.

It is important that the final rise take place where it is dry; if your kitchen is damp, hot, and steamy, let the bread rise in another room or dough will stick to canvas and you will have difficulty getting it off and onto the baking sheet. It will turn into bread in the oven whatever happens, but you will have an easier time and a better loaf if you aim for ideal conditions.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees 30 minutes before estimated baking time.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: See chart at end of recipe.

The 3 pieces of risen dough are now to be unmolded from the canvas and arranged upside down on the baking sheet. The reason for this reversal is that the present top of the dough has crusted over during its rise; the smooth, soft underside should be uppermost in the oven so that the dough can expand and allow the loaf its final puff of volume. For the unmolding you will need a non-sticking intermediate surface such as a stiff piece of cardboard or plywood sprinkled with cornmeal or pulverized pasta.

Remove rolling pins or braces. Place the long side of the board at one side of the dough; pull the edge of the canvas to flatten it; then raise and flip the dough softly upside down onto the board.

Dough is now lying along one edge of the unmolding board: rest this edge on the right side of a lightly buttered baking sheet. Gently dislodge dough onto baking sheet, keeping same side of dough uppermost: this is the soft smooth side, which was underneath while dough rose on canvas. If necessary, run sides of hands lightly down the length of the dough to straighten it. Unmold the next piece of dough the same way, placing it to the left of the first, leaving a 3-inch space. Unmold the final piece near the left side of the sheet.

The top of each piece of dough is now to be slashed in several places. This opens the covering cloak of gluten and allows a bulge of dough underneath to swell up through the cuts during the first 10 minutes of baking, making decorative patterns in the crust. These are done with a blade that cuts almost horizontally into the dough to a depth of less than half an inch. Start the cut at the middle of the blade, drawing toward you in a swift, clean sweep. This is not quite as easy as it sounds, and you will probably make ragged cuts at first; never mind, you will improve with practice. Use an ordinary razor blade and slide one side of it into a cork for safety; or buy a barber’s straight razor at a cutlery store.

For a 16- to 18-inch loaf make 3 slashes. Note that those at the 2 ends go straight down the loaf but are slightly off center, while the middle slash is at a slight angle between the two. Make the first cut at the far end, then the middle cut, and finally the third. Remember that the blade should lie almost parallel to the surface of the dough.

As soon as the dough has been slashed, moisten the surface either by painting with a soft brush dipped in cold water, or with a fine-spray atomizer, and slide baking sheet onto rack in upper third of preheated oven. Rapidly paint or spray dough with cold water after 3 minutes, again in 3 minutes, and a final time 3 minutes later. Moistening the dough at this point helps the crust to brown and allows the yeast action to continue in the dough a little longer. The bread should be done in about 25 minutes; the crust will be crisp, and the bread will make a hollow sound when thumped.

If you want the crust to shine, paint lightly with a brush dipped in cold water as soon as you slide baking sheet out of oven.

Cool the bread on a rack or set it upright in a basket or large bowl so that air can circulate freely around each piece. Although bread is always exciting to eat fresh from the oven, it will have a much better taste when the inside is thoroughly cool and has composed itself.

Because it contains no fats or preservatives of any kind, French bread is at its best when eaten the day it is baked. It will keep for a day or two longer, wrapped airtight and refrigerated, but it will keep best if you freeze it—let the loaves cool first, then wrap airtight. To thaw, unwrap and place on a baking sheet in a cold oven; heat the oven to 400 degrees. In about 20 minutes the crust will be hot and crisp, and the bread thawed. The French, of course, never heat French bread except possibly on Monday, the baker’s holiday, when the bread is a day old.

After each bread session, if you have used canvas, brush it thoroughly to remove all traces of flour and hang it out to dry before putting away. Otherwise the canvas could become moldy and ruin your next batch of dough.

DELAYED ACTION

Starting and stopping the dough process

As noted in the Master Recipe, there are numerous points at which you can slow down the action or stop it altogether, by setting the dough in a colder place, or refrigerating or freezing it. Exact timings for any of these delaying procedures are impossible to give because so much depends on what has taken place during the slow-down, how cold the dough is when it starts to rise again, and so forth. All you need to remember is that you are in complete control: you can always push down a partially risen dough; you can slow the action with cold; you can speed it with warmth. You will work out your own systems and the following chart will help you:

VARIATIONS

Other Forms for French Bread

Long thin loaves (ficelles, baked size: 12 to 16 by 1½ inches)

Cut the original dough, Step 5, into 5 or 6 pieces and form as illustrated in the recipe, but making thinner sausage shapes about ½ inch in diameter. When they have risen, slash as illustrated, Step 9.

Oval rolls (petits pains, tire-bouchons)

Cut the dough into 10 or 12 pieces and form like bâtards, but you will probably not have to lengthen them at all after the two foldings and sealings. When they have risen, make either 2 parallel slashes, or a single slash going from one end to the other.

Round loaves (pain de ménage, miches, boules)

When you want bread for big sandwiches or for toast, a big round loaf is attractive. The object here is to force the cloak of coagulated gluten to hold the ball of dough in shape: the first movement will make a cushion; the second will seal and round the ball, establishing surface tension. To begin the process, after the risen dough has been cut and has rested 5 minutes, Step 5, place it on a lightly floured surface.

Lift the left side of the dough with the side of your left hand and bring it down almost to the other side.

Scoop up that side and push it back almost to the left side. Revolve dough a quarter turn clockwise and repeat the movement eight to ten times. This movement gradually smooths the bottom of the dough and establishes the necessary surface tension; think of the surface of the dough as if it were a fine sheet of rubber you were stretching in every direction.

Then turn the dough smooth side up and begin rotating it between the palms of your hands, tucking a bit of the dough under the ball as you rotate it. In a dozen turns you should have a neatly shaped ball with a little pucker of dough, la clé, underneath where the edges have all joined together.

Place the dough pucker side up on flour-rubbed canvas; seal the pucker by pinching with your fingers. Flour lightly, cover loosely, and let rise to almost triple its size. After unmolding upside down on the baking sheet, slash it as follows:

Large loaves are usually slashed in a cross: make one vertical slash and complete the horizontal cuts as illustrated. Medium loaves may have a cross, a single central slash, or a semicircular slash around half the circumference.

Round rolls (petits pains, champignons)

Cut the original dough, Step 5, into 10 to 12 pieces. After they have rested 5 minutes, form them one at a time, leaving the rest of the dough covered. The principles are the same here as for the preceding round loaves, but make the preliminary cushion shape with your fingers rather than the palms of your hands.

For the second stage, during which the ball of dough is rotated smooth side up, roll it under the palm of one hand, using your thumb and little finger to push the edges of the dough underneath and to form the pucker, where the edges join together.

Place the formed ball of dough pucker side up on the flour-rubbed canvas and cover loosely while forming the rest. Space the balls 2 inches apart. When risen to almost triple its size, lift gently with lightly floured fingers and place pucker side down on baking sheet. Rolls are usually too small for a cross; make either one central slash or the semicircular cut.

THE SIMULATED BAKER’S OVEN

Baking in the ordinary way, as described in the preceding recipe, produces an acceptable loaf of bread, but does not nearly approach the glory you can achieve when you turn your home oven into a baker’s oven. Merely providing yourself with the proper amount of steam, if you do nothing else, will vastly improve the crust, the color, the slash patterns, and the volume of your bread; steam is only a matter of plopping a heated brick or stone into a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. The second provision is a hot surface upon which the naked dough can bake; this gives that added push of volume that improves both the appearance and the slash patterns. When you have the hot baking surface, you will then also need a paddle or board upon which you can transfer dough from canvas to hot baking surface. For the complete setup, here is what you should have, and any building-supply store stocks these items.

For the hot baking surface

Metal will not do as a hot baking surface because it burns the bottom of the dough. The most practical and easily obtainable substance is ordinary red floor tiles ¼ inch thick. They come in various sizes such as 6 by 6 inches, 6 by 3 inches, and you need only enough to line the surface of an oven rack. Look them up under Tiles in your directory, and ask for “quarry tiles,” their official name.

For unmolding the risen dough from its canvas

A piece of 3⁄16-inch plywood about 20 inches long and 8 inches wide.

For sliding the dough onto the hot asbestos

When you are doing 3 long loaves, you must slide them together onto the hot asbestos; to do so you unmold them one at a time from the canvas with one board and arrange them side by side on the second board, which takes the place of the baker’s wooden paddle, la pelle. Buy a piece of 3⁄16-inch plywood slightly longer but 2 inches narrower than your oven rack.

To prevent dough from sticking to unmolding and sliding boards

White cornmeal or small pasta pulverized in the electric blender until it is the consistency of table salt. This is called fleurage.

The steam contraption

Something that you can heat to sizzling hot on top of the stove and then slide into a pan of water in the oven to make a great burst of steam: a brick, a solid 10-lb. rock, piece of cast iron or other metal. A 9 × 12-inch roasting pan 2 inches deep to hold an inch of water and the hot brick.

Nonessential professional equipment

Instead of letting the formed dough rise on canvas, sur couche, many French bakers place each piece in a canvas-lined wicker or plastic form called a banneton; from this you turn the risen dough upside down directly onto a board and then slide it into the oven. Various sizes and shapes are available in French bakery-supply houses.

These are bakers’s blades, lames, for slashing dough; they are about 4 inches long and ¼ inch wide, with very sharp, curved ends.

USING THE SIMULATED BAKER’S OVEN

At least 30 to 40 minutes before the end of the final rise, Step 7 in the Master Recipe, line the rack of your oven with quarry tiles, slide onto upper-third level, and preheat oven to 450 degrees. At the same time set the brick or metal over very high heat on top of the stove so that it will get sizzling hot, the hotter the better.

Provide yourself with 2 stiff spoons or spatulas, or with fire tongs for lifting brick from stove top into pan of water in bottom of oven when the time comes, and test lifting the brick to be sure you have the instruments to do the job. NOTE: You may use a spray bottle rather than a brick; it works reasonably well though less dramatically.

When the final rise is complete, sprinkle pulverized cornmeal or pasta on the long side of the unmolding board and on the surface of the sliding board. Your object now is to unmold the loaves one at a time from the canvas to the sliding board, then to slide the 3 of them together onto the hot tiles in the oven. Place the long side of board at one side of the dough, then raise and flip the dough softly upside down onto board.

Slip the dough, still upside down, from the unmolding board onto the right side of the sliding board. Line up the rest of the dough side by side in the same manner.

Slash the dough as described in Step 9.

Place pan of cold water on the lowest rack of an electric oven, or on the floor of a gas oven, add sizzling hot brick, and close oven door.

The 3 pieces of dough are now to be slid together off the sliding board onto the hot tiles in the oven: the movement is one quick, smooth jerk like that old magician’s trick of pulling the cloth from under a tableful of dishes. Open the oven and, holding the sliding board at the two ends nearest you, rapidly extend your arms so the far end of the board rests on the far end of the asbestos at the back of the oven. Then with one quick jerk, pull the board toward you and the three loaves will slide off onto the tiles. This must be a fast and confident action because if you pause midway, the dough will rumple off the board and once it touches the hot tiles you cannot move or reshape it, although it will come loose after 5 to 6 minutes of baking. You may muff this every once in a while, and produce some queerly deformed shapes, but they will all bake into bread.

Remove the brick and pan of water after 5 to 8 minutes of baking; the crust will have started to brown lightly. The oven should be dry for the rest of the baking. Total baking time will be about 25 minutes for bâtards; the bread is done when it makes a hollow thump if tapped, and when the crust is crisp and, hopefully, nicely browned.

SELF-CRITICISM—OR HOW TO IMPROVE THE PRODUCT

Certainly one of the fascinating aspects of cooking is that you can almost endlessly improve upon what you have done, and when you realize that professional bakers have spent years learning their trade it would be surprising indeed if your first loaves were perfect in every respect. If they seem below standard in any of the following points, here are some possible explanations.

Crust did not brown

If you have not used the hot brick and pan of water steam-contraption, you will not get a very brown crust. Or if you have used the brick, perhaps it was not really sizzling hot; heat it 15 minutes longer the next time, or use 2 bricks. On the other hand, your oven thermostat might be inaccurate, and the oven was not really at the required 450 degrees. A third possibility is that your dough might have been under-salted; check your measurements carefully in Step 1 the next time.

Crust was too brown or too red

If you were using the brick system, you might have had too much steam in the oven; next time use a smaller brick, or heat it a little less, or take it out several minutes sooner. Another possibility is that the dough mixture in Step 1 got an overdose of salt, and salt affects color; next time be sure your teaspoons are level.

Crust was tough

A tough crust is usually due to humidity: the day was damp and sticky, or your kitchen was steamy, and the starch has coagulated and hardened on the surface of the dough.

Slashes did not bulge open in the crust

Go over the instructions in Step 9 to check on whether you cut them as directed. On the other hand, it might be that the bread had over-risen in Step 7, just before baking, and the yeast had no strength left for its final push in the oven. Conversely, you might not have let it rise enough in this step and the dough was too heavy to bulge out the way it should.

Bread seems heavy; no holes inside

This is always due to insufficient rising, particularly during the pre-bake rise in Step 7. Next time be sure it feels light and springy, and looks swollen, and that it has risen to almost triple its original size before it goes into the oven.

Flavor is uninteresting

Again, the only reason for this is insufficient time taken for rising: the yeast has not had an opportunity to produce the slow aging and maturing that develops flavor. For your next batch, follow the timing and temperature requirements particularly in Step 3, for the first rise.

Flavor is unpleasantly yeasty or sour

A yeasty over-fermented smell and taste are due more often to the dough having risen at too high a temperature than to its having over-risen. Next time, watch the room temperature at which it is rising, and if you are making bread in hot weather, you will have to take a longer time and let it rise in the refrigerator.

MACHINE MIXING AND KNEADING OF FRENCH BREAD DOUGH

French bread dough is too soft to work in the electric food processor, but the heavy-duty mixer with dough hook, illustrated in the equipment section at the end of the book, works perfectly. The dough-hook attachment that comes with some hand-held electric mixers and the hand-cranking bread pails are slower and less efficient, to our mind, than hand kneading. In any case, when you are using electricity, follow the steps in the recipe as outlined, including the rests; do not over-knead, and for the heavy-duty mixer, do not go over a moderate speed of number 3 or 4, or you risk breaking down the gluten in the dough. When the kneading is finished, take the dough out of the bowl and give it a minute or so of hand kneading, just to be sure it is smooth and elastic throughout. Then proceed with the recipe as usual, from Step 3 on.

  PAIN DE MIE

[White Sandwich Bread—for sandwiches, canapés, toast, and croûtons]

It is almost impossible in present-day America to find the firm, close-grained, evenly rectangular, unsliced type of white bread that is essential for professional-looking canapés, appetizers, and fancy sandwiches. In French this is pain de mie, meaning that the mie, the crumb or inside, is more important than the crust; in fact the crust exists merely as a thin and easily sliced covering. French boulangeries form and bake the bread in special covered molds; the bread rises during baking so that it fills the mold completely and emerges absolutely symmetrical. The form can be round or cylindrical, but it is usually rectangular. You can easily achieve the round or the rectangular shapes by baking in any straight-sided bread pan or baking dish, covering the pan with foil and a baking sheet, and topping that with some kind of weight to keep the bread from pushing up out of shape while it is in the oven.

For about 1 pound of flour, making 3 cups of dough, to fill one 8-cup covered pan or two 4-cup covered pans

2) Kneading—pétrissage Start kneading by lifting the near side of the dough, using a scraper or spatula to help you, and flipping it over onto the other side. Scrape dough off surface and slap down again; lift, flip over and slap down again, repeating the movement rapidly.

In 2 to 3 minutes dough should have enough body so that you can give it a quick forward push with the heel of your hand as you flip it over. If it remains too sticky for this, knead in a sprinkling of flour. When it begins to clean itself off the working surface and draw back into shape, it is ready for the next step—kneading in the butter.

Soften the butter by beating it with a rolling pin. Then smear it out with a scraper, spatula, or the heel of your hand until it is soft and malleable but still cold.

By tablespoon bits, start rapidly folding and smearing the butter into the dough with the heel (not the palm) of your hand, then gather the dough into a mass with your scraper and smear again. Keep working in more bits of butter as each previous addition is partially absorbed.

Dough will be ropy, very messy, and even stickier until it begins to absorb the butter. Work fast to prevent the butter from turning oily, always using the heel of your hand, and also cutting the dough with scraper or spatula. In a few minutes dough will again become smooth and elastic. Proceed to Step 4.

Or make the preliminary dough in the food processor (steel blade):

Using the same proportions as for hand-made dough, dissolve the yeast and add it to the salted milk. Place the 3½ cups of flour in the container of the food processor (unless you have a small machine, in which case divide all ingredients by half and do it in two batches). Cut the butter into pieces, and add to the flour, along with the salt. Process for several seconds until butter is broken into flour, then with the processor going, pour in 1¼ cups of yeast-milk; continue pouring by driblets, watching carefully, until dough balls up on top of steel blade. Process, with dough riding on blade, for 15 seconds—this constitutes the preliminary kneading. Turn the dough out onto your work surface and proceed to Step 4, below.

NOTE: If you happen to add too much liquid and the machine clogs, sprinkle in more flour and the machine will often start up again. If not, remove dough and continue by hand.

4) Then let the dough rest 2 to 3 minutes. Knead again briefly with the heel of your hand until dough begins to clean the butter off the kneading surface and off your hand. It is now sufficiently kneaded, although it will remain quite soft and somewhat sticky.

Dough should take a minimum of 3 hours to rise for the yeast to do its best work. When dough has risen to the 10½-cup mark, or to 3½ times its original volume, it will feel light and springy when pressed, and is ready for its second rise.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: See chart.

The dough is now to be thoroughly deflated and folded to expel accumulated gas, and to redistribute the yeast into an even finer network of gluten that will result in a close-grained texture when the bread is baked.

With a rubber spatula or the slightly cupped fingers of one hand, dislodge dough from inside of bowl and turn out onto a lightly floured surface, scraping the bowl clean. If dough seems damp and sweaty, sprinkle with a tablespoon of flour.

With the lightly floured palms of your hands, pat and push the dough out onto a roughly shaped rectangle 10 to 12 inches long.

With the help of a scraper or spatula, fold the right side over toward the center, then fold the left side over to cover it, as though folding a business letter. Pat the dough out again into a rectangle, fold again in three, and put the dough back in the bowl. Cover with plastic and towel and let rise a second time, to not quite triple in volume, or to slightly below the 10½-cup mark on the bowl. (*) DELAYED ACTION: See chart. If you want to freeze the dough, however, you can do it after the next step.

Following are illustrated directions for forming rectangular loaves. For cylindrical and circular forms, use the French bread system.

With the lightly floured palms of your hands, pat and push the dough out into a roughly shaped rectangle slightly longer than your bread pan.

Fold the dough in half lengthwise.

Seal edges of dough together with your thumbs as illustrated, or with the heel of one hand. Roll dough a quarter turn forward, so seal is on top.

Flatten the dough again into a rectangle.

Press a trench along the central length of the dough with the side of your hand.

Fold again in two lengthwise and seal the edges together with the heel of your hand. Roll dough a quarter turn toward you, so seal is underneath.

Place the dough smooth side up in the prepared pan, pressing it down snugly into the corners with your knuckles. Pan should be no more than ⅓ to ⅖ full.

(*) You can freeze the dough at this point, wrapping pan airtight. To continue with the recipe, let thaw for several hours in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

For the final rising, set pan uncovered at a temperature of 75 to 80 degrees until dough has risen to slightly more than double, or to fill the pan by no more than ¾. It is important when you are to bake in a covered pan that you do not let the dough rise more than this, as it must have room to finish swelling and to fill the pan while it is in the oven. When dough has risen, bake at once.

(*) You can delay the rising action by setting the pan in the refrigerator, or even by weighting it down under refrigeration. In either case, the pan should be covered airtight, then set uncovered at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes before baking. If dough has over-risen, bake it uncovered or deflate by pressing it down and letting it rise again to the correct height.

Bake undisturbed for 35 to 40 minutes (30 for small loaves), then slide rack to front of oven. Standing well enough aside in case bread should burst out of pan (which could occur only if you had let it over-rise before baking), see if bread is done. The bread should have shrunk slightly from sides of pan so it will unmold easily, and the crust should be lightly browned. When thumped, the loaf should make a hollow sound. If not quite done, return to pan, cover with foil and baking sheet, and bake 5 to 10 minutes more. Unmold and cool on a rack.

When thoroughly cool, in 1½ to 2 hours, wrap airtight and refrigerate. Flavor and texture improve after 12 to 24 hours, and you should probably wait 36 hours if you want very thin slices for sandwiches or Melba toast.

This bread freezes perfectly; thaw it in its wrapper either in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

VARIATIONS

Baking in an uncovered pan—the conventional loaf

If you want a loaf that swells up in the oven, bake the dough in an open pan, one that holds twice the volume of the unrisen dough, in this case a 6-cup pan. During its final rise, Step 6, let the dough come up almost to the edge of the pan. Just before baking, glaze the top of the dough by painting it with a tablespoon of milk in which you have dissolved ⅛ teaspoon of sugar. Oven temperature and timing are the same as in the preceding Master Recipe; if the top of the bread seems to be coloring too much, cover loosely with heavy brown paper or a sheet of aluminum foil.

Omitting the butter

You may omit the butter in the Master Recipe if you wish. This will give you a lighter and whiter loaf; you may prefer it this way for Melba toast.

Melba toast—to serve with consommé, foie gras, caviar

Use 2-day-old pain de mie. Cut off the crusts at the two ends. With a very sharp long knife, such as a ham slicer, cut the bread into even slices less than 1⁄16-inch thick. Arrange the slices, overlapping them by no more than a third of their length, on 1 or 2 large baking sheets and set in upper- and lower-middle levels of a 275-degree oven for about an hour, turning bread over once or twice and switching baking sheets from one rack to the other. Toast is done when bread is crisp, slightly curly, and a very pale brown. When cold and wrapped airtight, Melba toast freezes perfectly; thaw and re-crisp for a few minutes in a 350-degree oven.

Pain de Mie aux Raisins

[Raisin Bread—to serve with tea, or for toast. See also Pain Brioché aux Raisins]

For 4 cups of risen dough, filling two 5-cup covered pans or one 8-cup open pan

Pain Brioché—Brioche Commune—Pain Louis XV

[Egg Bread—to serve with butter and jam, for fancy sandwiches such as mousse of foie gras, for toast; an alternate to brioche dough for Koulibiac, sausage in brioche, and their like]

This is a lovely light-textured yellow bread. With another egg and three times the butter it would be a true brioche. Although you will find this dough quite a bit stickier and softer to handle than pain de mie, the technique for making it is the same.

For about 1 pound of flour, making 4 cups of unrisen dough, to fill two 6-cup covered pans, two 4-cup open pans, or for 2 dozen individual rolls formed in small molds or muffin tins

Follow Steps 5, 6, and 7 in the Master Recipe for the first and second risings in a covered bowl and the final rise in the bread pan. Follow Step 8 for baking, except preheated oven should be at 400 degrees and baking time will be about 35 minutes. The surrounding crust will be a little darker than for pain de mie. Pain brioché may be eaten warm or cold, although it will slice more easily after 24 hours. It freezes perfectly.

Pain Brioché aux Raisins

[Egg Bread with Raisins]

Pain brioché makes heavenly raisin bread, eaten plain with butter, or toasted. Follow directions for pain de mie aux raisins.

BRIOCHES

Although the wonderfully buttery, light, and thoroughly delectable texture of fresh brioches may persuade you they are manna from another planet, brioche dough differs from pain de mie dough only in that eggs are used rather than milk, and a very much larger proportion of butter is incorporated. Actually, you can use equal amounts of butter and flour, but we think the proportions of 3 parts butter to 4 parts flour make a much more manageable dough with a delicious texture and taste.

In France, brioches are served for breakfast with butter and jam, or for tea, or with the coffee break. Stale brioche may be sliced and toasted, or hollowed out and used as a container for sauced foods or appetizers.

NOTE: The following recipe is for the classic hand-made brioche dough. For making it in the electric food processor, follow the general directions for pain de mie, first dissolving the yeast, then mixing it with the eggs, before blending the butter and flour in the processor with the salt and sugar. Blend in ¾ of the liquid, then add the rest by dribbles until the dough balls up on the blade. Finish kneading briefly by hand, as described at the end of Step 4.

  PÂTE À BRIOCHE FINE

[Brioche Dough—for all sizes and shapes of brioches, and for Koulibiac, sausage in brioche, and their like]

You must allow a minimum 8½ hours from the time you start brioche dough to the time it is ready for the oven. Five hours are needed for the first rise, 2 for the second, half an hour for chilling, and 1 to 1½ hours for the final pre-bake rise. You may find it convenient to start the first rise in the late afternoon and complete the second one overnight in the refrigerator; you can then form and bake the brioche in the morning. However, as you will see from the delayed-action notes in the recipe, you can pretty well make it suit whatever schedule you wish.

For about ½ pound of flour, making 2⅔ cups of unrisen dough, enough to fill one 6-cup mold or nine to ten ½-cup molds

2) Preparing the butter 6 ounces (1½ sticks) chilled unsalted butter A rolling pin

Smear it out with a scraper, spatula, or the heel of your hand until it is soft and malleable but still cold. Place at one corner of kneading surface until you are ready to use it, Step 4 (refrigerate in hot weather).

This will be a very soft and sticky dough that now contains the minimum amount of flour; you will probably knead in more if dough remains too soft. Knead with one hand, keeping the other clean for emergencies.

Using scraper or spatula, start flipping the near side of the dough over onto the far side, the right side onto the left, and so forth, rapidly and vigorously a dozen times or more until dough begins to have body and elasticity.

When dough has enough body, lift and slap it down roughly on the kneading surface repeatedly, using scraper to help you. Sprinkle on more flour by tablespoons (up to 3 or 4 in all if necessary) if dough remains too soft and sticky.

It should be a soft dough that will stick to your fingers if you hold a pinch of it for more than 2 to 3 seconds. Knead until it has enough elasticity to draw back into shape when pushed out, probably 4 to 5 minutes, then let it rest for 2 to 3 minutes. Knead again for a moment and it is ready for the butter.

4) Kneading in the butter By 2-tablespoon bits, start folding, kneading, and smearing the butter into the dough with the heel of your hand; then gather the dough into a mass, chopping it into small pieces with your scraper and smearing again. Keep working in more bits of butter as each previous addition is partially absorbed.

Dough will be ropy, sticky, and very messy indeed until it begins to absorb the butter. Work rapidly, especially if the kitchen is warm, and be sure you are using the heel, not the palm, of your hand.

You may finish kneading with a scraper or spatula, which will prevent the butter from becoming too warm and turning oily. Do not hesitate to chill the dough for 20 minutes or so if this happens, and then continue.

When all the butter is absorbed, the dough will look rather fluffy. Let it rest for 2 to 3 minutes, and knead briefly again. Kneading is finished when dough draws back into shape after being pushed out.

NOTE: In hot weather you will probably have to set bowl in refrigerator from time to time to prevent butter from melting and oozing out of dough.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: Set bowl in refrigerator for a short delay; for a longer one, cover with waxed paper, a plate, and a 10-lb. weight to slow or even prevent its rising.

6) Deflating—rupture With a rubber spatula or the slightly cupped fingers of one hand, dislodge dough from inside of bowl and turn out onto a lightly floured surface, scraping bowl clean. Sprinkle surface of dough with a teaspoon or so of flour.

With the lightly floured palms of your hands, pat and push dough out into a roughly shaped rectangle about 10 inches long.

With the help of a scraper or spatula, flip the right side of the dough over toward the center, then flip the left side over to cover it, as though folding a business letter. Pat the dough out again into a rectangle, fold again in three, and replace the dough in the bowl. Cover again with plastic and a towel.

(*) If you want to freeze brioche dough, this is the best time to do so, but see notes on freezing.

Brioche dough is usually chilled before it is formed so that it can be shaped easily; chilling may be done either during or after the second rise, whichever works out best for your cooking schedule.

Let dough rise to 2 times its original volume, or to about 5½ cups, at a temperature of around 70 degrees. This should take 1½ to 2 hours. Then dislodge from bowl with a rubber spatula or the slightly cupped fingers of one hand, and refrigerate on a large plate or platter covered with waxed paper, another plate, and a weight. Dough should be ready to form in 30 to 40 minutes.

Let dough start to rise at around 70 degrees for an hour, then refrigerate. Dough will continue to rise for an hour or more until the butter congeals. If you wish to leave it overnight, cover with a plate and a weight when you refrigerate it.

Brioches are usually baked in fluted molds with slightly outward-slanting sides. However, you can use anything you have available, from a baking dish or ovenproof bowl for large brioches to pyrex cups or muffin tins for small ones.

Notes on final rise

The final rise before baking is to almost double in volume, until the dough feels light and softly springy when touched. The ideal rising temperature is around 75 degrees, and you have to watch the dough carefully on a hot day because higher temperatures melt the butter so that it oozes out of the dough. If this starts to happen, refrigerate the dough from time to time. It is difficult to predict how long the final rise will take; if the dough was thoroughly chilled before forming, it will take longer to rise. You must usually count on at least an hour, and it must really rise and soften or it will bake into a rather firm and dense brioche. Following are directions for forming and baking large, small, and ring brioches.

  GROSSE BRIOCHE À TÊTE

[Large Brioche with Ball-shaped Head]

Make a funnel-shaped hole in the center of the dough 2½ inches wide at the top diameter and about 2 inches deep, using your first 3 fingers. Roll the remaining dough between the lightly floured palms of your hands to make a ball, then a tear-drop shape. Insert pointed end of tear drop into hole.

Set uncovered and free from drafts at a temperature of around 75 degrees until dough has almost doubled in volume, and feels light and softly springy when touched. Be sure your oven has been preheated to 475 degrees by the time the brioche is ready to bake.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: You can set mold in refrigerator, covering it with a bowl to prevent dough from crusting; you can cover the formed dough airtight and freeze, but see notes.

To help head in shaping up during baking, make 4 to 5 scissor clips in the large ball close under the head and slanting inward about half the width of the head.

Place the mold with the risen, glazed, and clipped brioche on a baking sheet in the middle or lower-middle level of the preheated 475-degree oven. In 15 to 20 minutes, when the brioche has risen and started to brown lightly, turn thermostat down to 350 degrees. Total baking time will be 40 to 50 minutes; brioche is done when it has begun to show a very faint line of shrinkage from the mold, or when a knife or straw plunged down through the center comes out clean. If, during baking, brioche seems to be browning too much, cover loosely with heavy brown paper or foil.

Cool on a rack for 15 to 20 minutes before serving. Brioches may be eaten slightly warm or cool; cold brioches may be warmed for 10 to 15 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

(*) Brioches dry out and become stale almost within 12 hours of baking. To preserve their freshness, wrap airtight and freeze; large frozen brioches take about half an hour to thaw in a 350-degree oven.

VARIATIONS

Petites Brioches à Tête

[Small Individual Brioches with Ball-shaped Heads]

Choose either ½-cup, slant-sided fluted molds for small brioches, or baking cups or muffin tins. Form in the same way as large brioches, filling the molds half full and letting dough rise to almost double. Paint twice with egg glaze and clip under the heads in several places just before baking. Bake about 15 minutes at 475 degrees in middle level of oven.

Brioche en Couronne [Ring-shaped Brioche]

Make a hole in the center with your finger, twirling dough around your finger to enlarge the hole and inserting more fingers as the hole gets bigger.

When hole is large enough to do so, insert both hands and gently stretch dough while twirling it on floured surface. The object is to make a doughnut shape 10 to 12 inches in diameter.

Place shaped dough on a lightly buttered baking sheet and let rest 10 minutes to relax gluten, then widen the circle a little more.

To keep center of dough from closing in during rising and baking, insert a lightly buttered ovenproof bowl or cup in hole.

Let dough rise, uncovered, to almost double at a temperature of around 75 degrees, until dough is light and springy to the touch. Paint with a double coating of egg glaze (1 egg beaten with 1 tsp of water) just before baking.

Then clip top of dough at 1-inch intervals, making cuts about 1 inch deep, pointing scissors toward outside of ring at a 45-degree angle.

Bake 20 to 30 minutes in the middle level of a preheated 475-degree oven until nicely puffed and browned. A knife or straw plunged into the center of one side should come out clean. If brioche browns too much during baking, cover loosely with heavy brown paper or aluminum foil.

Kougloff

[Brioche with Raisins]

Whether or not this molded ring-shaped raisin brioche originated with Viennese bakers, it is usually considered by the French to be an Alsatian raisin cake of uncertain orthography, as you will see it spelled also Kugelhopf, Kougelhof, Gougelhop, and even Gugelhupf. Bakers frequently make Kougloff out of leftover brioche dough, softening it with a little milk or additional butter as they knead in the raisins just before dropping the dough into its mold.

For a 6-cup Kougloff

Bake at 475 degrees in middle or lower-middle level of preheated oven for about 15 minutes, or until dough has risen and started to color. Then lower thermostat to 350 degrees for rest of baking. Kougloff is done when it shows a faint line of shrinkage from sides of mold and when the sides are nicely browned. Serve slightly warm or cool, with butter.

The processor can work wonderfully with some doughs. The trick is to process the dry ingredients and butter first, then—with the machine running—to pour in ¾ of the liquid called for. Never stop the machine; add the rest of the liquid by dribbles until the dough masses on top of the blade and rolls around under the cover for 15 to 20 seconds, for the preliminary kneading. If dough is too damp, it will not mass; sprinkle in a little flour, which may help. If not, knead by hand. By experimenting, you will find the way that works best for you.

Freezing brioche dough

The best time to freeze brioche dough is after the second rise, but you may also do so after it has been formed and before the final rise. However, and probably because of the high butter and egg content, its life in the freezer is not long: a week to 10 days is all we would suggest.

CROISSANTS

The most delicious of French croissants, to our mind, are those called croissants de boulanger, which are made of risen yeast-milk-and-flour dough that is flattened out, slathered with butter, folded in three, and rolled and folded again three times as though you were making French puff pastry. There are other formulas for croissants, including some which are really puff pastry or brioche dough rolled into crescent shapes. And in some of the quick methods the yeast dough has only a short single rise, resulting in a semi-puff pastry. None of these, to our mind, produces the tenderly layered, puffy, deliciously buttery croissant one dreams of. The old classic method does just this—and why go to all the trouble of making croissants otherwise?

CROISSANTS

The minimum time required for making croissants is 11 to 12 hours. Included are 3 hours and 1½ hours for the rising of the initial dough, two rest periods of 1½ to 2 hours each, and a final pre-baking rise of about an hour. Therefore, if you want freshly baked croissants for breakfast you will have to stay up all night as the bakers do. However, they will taste just as fresh if you make them ahead and freeze them either fully baked or ready to bake, as indicated in the recipe.

For one dozen 5½-inch rolls

Start kneading by lifting near edge, using scraper or spatula to help you, and flipping it over onto the other side. Rapidly repeat the movement from one side to the other and end over end 8 to 10 times until dough feels smooth and begins to draw back into shape when pushed out. This is all the kneading it should have; you want just enough body so dough will hold together when eventually rolled, but you do not want to over-activate the gluten and make dough difficult to handle.

Cover with plastic and bath towel, and place at a temperature of between 70 and 72 degrees. In 3 or 4 hours dough should have risen to the 7-cup mark, and will be light and springy when touched.

Deflate by loosening dough from edges of bowl with a rubber spatula or the cupped fingers of one hand, and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. With the lightly floured palms of your hands, pat and push the dough out into a rectangle about 8 by 12 inches. Fold in three as though folding a business letter. Return dough to bowl; cover again with plastic and bath towel.

Let rise a second time, but only to double the original volume. Then loosen dough from edges of bowl and turn out onto a lightly floured plate. Cover airtight and refrigerate for 20 minutes, which will make the next step easier.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: Set dough in a colder place to rise, or let it rise the second time overnight in the refrigerator. After second rise, when dough has been turned out of bowl onto plate, you may freeze it for a week.

Butter must now be worked into a smooth but still cold paste that can be spread evenly on the dough and then rolled with it. Beat butter with rolling pin to soften it.

Then smear it out with the heel of your hand or a scraper or spatula until it is of very easy spreading consistency but still cold; it must not become soft and oily—refrigerate if necessary.

Place chilled dough on a lightly floured pastry marble or board. With the lightly floured palms of your hands push and pat it out into a rectangle about 14 by 8 inches.

Spread butter as evenly as possible over the upper two thirds of the dough rectangle, leaving a ¼-inch unbuttered border all around.

Dough is now to be folded into three layers, just as though you were folding a business letter. Fold the bottom (unbuttered) third up to the middle.

Fold the top (buttered third down to cover it, making three even layers of dough separated by 2 layers of butter. This is called Turn Number 1.

For Turn Number 2, lightly flour the top of the dough and your rolling surface, turn the dough so the edge of the top flap is to your right, as though it were a book you were going to open. Roll the dough into a rectangle about 14 inches by 6 inches. Roll rapidly, starting an inch from the near end and going to within an inch of the far end.

Fold again in three. You now have 7 layers of dough separated by 6 layers of butter; at the end of the fourth roll there will be 55 layers of dough.

Sprinkle dough lightly with flour, wrap in waxed paper or plastic, place in a plastic bag and refrigerate. Dough must now rest for 1 to 1½ hours to deactivate the gluten so that you can make the two final rolls without difficulty.

Unwrap dough, sprinkle lightly with flour, and deflate by tapping lightly several times with rolling pin. Cover and let rest for 8 to 10 minutes, again to relax gluten. Being sure that the top and bottom of dough are always lightly floured, start rolling dough into a rectangle 14 by 6 inches. If you notice that butter has congealed into hard flakes, beat dough with light firm taps for a minute or so, going from one side to the other until butter has softened: it must be able to extend the length and width of the rectangle inside the dough as you roll it out. Fold rectangle in three, roll again into a rectangle, and fold in three to complete the final turn. Wrap and chill for 2 hours before forming dough into croissants, or leave overnight covered with a board and a 5-lb. weight.

The dough is now ready to be rolled out into the usual rectangle and then cut into triangles that are rolled up and twisted into crescent shapes. Professionals use either the ingenious triangle-cutting roller illustrated, or do all the cutting by hand. To make everything as easy as possible for yourself, refrigerate all pieces of dough you are not actually working on.

Unwrap chilled dough, place on a lightly floured surface, and deflate by tapping several times gently with rolling pin. Cover with plastic and let rest 10 minutes, to relax gluten.

TURNING TRIANGLES INTO CRESCENTS OR CROISSANTS Holding one of the triangles of dough by its large end, roll it out toward the point to make the triangle about 7 inches long.

Then, to extend the large end slightly, stretch the 2 top angles of the triangle lightly between your thumbs and forefingers, enlarging end about an inch in all.

Start rolling up the croissant first by folding the large end forward onto itself. Then, holding the point with the fingers of your left hand, finish the roll under the fingers and palm of your right hand.

Bend the 2 ends down to form a crescent shape and place on a lightly buttered baking sheet, with point resting inside curve and against surface of baking sheet. Form the rest of the triangles into croissants in the same manner.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: Formed croissants may be wrapped airtight and frozen for a week, if dough was not frozen before.

Cover croissants loosely with a large sheet of plastic and set at a temperature of around 75 degrees for their final pre-baking rise. Dough should almost triple in size and feel light and springy when touched; if it does not rise and feel light, the baked croissants will be heavy and hard rather than tender, puffy, and light. In hot weather you may have to set dough in refrigerator from time to time to prevent butter from softening and oozing out.

(*) DELAYED ACTION: For a slower rise, set dough in a colder place or refrigerate; if thoroughly chilled, leave at room temperature 20 to 30 minutes before baking. Risen croissants may be frozen for a few days and baked in their frozen state.

Just before baking, paint the croissants with egg glaze, then set in middle level of preheated oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until croissants are nicely puffed and brown. Cool on a rack for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

Croissants are at their best when freshly baked; even refrigerated in an airtight container, they are never as good the next day. Freezing is the best preservation: wrap airtight when croissants are thoroughly cool and freeze. To thaw and serve, set frozen croissants on a lightly buttered baking sheet and place in a preheated 400-degree oven for 5 minutes.

PASTRY DOUGHS

Pastry doughs, both tart and pie doughs and puff pastry, play an immensely important part in every phase of French cooking from little hot appetizers to quiches, and from pâtés en croûte to strawberry tarts, mille-feuilles, and Pithiviers. If pie dough has always been your culinary bugaboo, remember that no one is born a pastry chef, everyone has had to learn, and that the first big step is to make the decision that you are now, today, going to learn to make a decent pie crust. Then make pie dough every day or two for a week or more; serve everything you can think of in pastry. You will be surprised how quickly you develop the technique, and you will then be in the masterful position of having an endless number of delicious concoctions at your fingertips. All the recipes here are for at least 1 pound of flour. Our feeling is that if you are going to make dough at all you might as well make a lot, because it keeps beautifully in the freezer.

TART AND PIE DOUGHS

Pâtes Brisées—Pâtes à Croustades

DOUGH TALK

French pastry dough is flour and butter worked together and then moistened with liquid. Liquid forces the gluten molecules in the flour to join into a continuous web so that the dough will keep its shape when rolled out; the dough must have its stated amount of liquid for this effect to take place. Butter gives the pastry its flavor and texture; as always, we suggest that about ¼ of the butter proportions be given over to vegetable shortening, which has a tenderizing effect that almost all American flours seem to need.

It is in the first step, working the butter and flour together, that many people have difficulty. Trying to do everything just right, they work too slowly and carefully, lingering over each squeeze of butter and flour until their hot fingers melt the butter; thus the liquid cannot mix in properly, and the dough is a wet, oily mess that, even after chilling, bakes into a miserable piece of cardboard. An electric food processor or mixer eliminates the problems.

ELECTRIC MIXER PIE DOUGH

PÂTE BRISÉE À L’OEUF—PÂTE À CROUSTADE

[Egg Pastry Dough for Free-standing Shells and Cases, and for Turnovers]

The following dough formula is designed especially for pastry shells formed on upside-down tins, an informal and wonderfully easy way to make quiche and pie shells. Whatever your dough formula, you can use exactly the same system outlined here.

For about 1 pound of flour, enough for three 10-inch shells

Once dough has been mixed, it must be well rested and chilled before you roll it out. The rest relaxes the gluten in the flour, so the dough will roll easily; chilling firms the butter, giving the dough enough body for rolling. In all of the following procedures, keep the dough chilled—it is impossible to work with otherwise; refrigerate it even in the midst of rolling.

(*) Dough may remain in refrigerator several days, or may be frozen for several months.

UPSIDE-DOWN PASTRY SHELLS AND CASES

The classic free-standing French pastry shell is formed by rolling out the dough and pressing it inside a flan ring or mold. The dough is then braced in place with another mold or with buttered foil and dried beans so that it will not collapse during baking. This method is illustrated in Volume I, pages 141–6, and produces the most professional result.

A more informal and simpler method is to bake the shell on an upside-down cake pan, or on any upside-down fireproof object whose shape appeals to you, such as a pie tin, bread pan, ring mold, saucepan, baking dish, or even muffin tin. For this type of shell you must have a pastry that is light and buttery but will hold its shape when molded and baked upside down. The preceding egg pastry dough was designed especially for upside-down shells.

UPSIDE-DOWN PASTRY SHELLS

For a 10- by 1-inch round shell, or any shell formed on any 6- to 8-cup mold

Roll dough up on pin and unroll over upturned bottom of mold, then run pin lightly over dough to smooth it in place. With lightly floured fingers, press dough snugly against sides of mold, being very careful not to pull or stretch dough; it must retain its uniform thickness of ⅛ inch.

Even off the edges around the sides of the mold with a ravioli wheel or knife, making shell about 1 inch deep.

To prevent shell from puffing out of shape during baking, prick all over at ⅛-inch intervals with a table fork.

To even the sides all around press flat of fork against pastry, being careful not to reduce thickness. In case any section of sides seems too thin, paint lightly with cold water and patch with raw dough.

So that dough will bake properly and not draw up or out of shape, it should now be refrigerated for at least an hour before it goes into the oven; this relaxes the gluten in the flour. Press raw leftover dough into a ball, wrap and refrigerate; you may need a little later on, after baking.

(*) Shell may be frozen at this point. Set as is in freezer for an hour or so until hardened, then wrap airtight. Bake shell while still frozen.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. You will need to weight down the top of the dough after it has baked for 4 to 5 minutes, otherwise the top will puff and draw the sides up: choose a saucepan or baking dish weighing about 2 pounds, or a pie plate filled with dried beans, and butter the bottom of the pan, dish, or plate.

Place chilled dough-covered mold, still upside down, on a baking sheet and set in middle level of oven. In 4 to 5 minutes, place the buttered weight on top, remove 2 to 3 minutes before shell is done.

A partially baked shell, the type used for quiches and oven-baked tarts and pies, needs 6 to 10 minutes in all depending on the thickness of the dough. It is sufficiently baked when it has started to color and can be raised gently from the mold. Fully baked shells usually need 10 to 15 minutes in all, until the shell is nicely browned and crisp. When done, remove from oven and let cool on mold for 8 to 10 minutes, then, being very careful not to crack shell, unmold on a rack.

First aid for cracked shells

If a partially baked shell develops a small split or crack, paint the area with beaten egg and patch with raw dough just before filling and baking. If sides seem thin or weak, you may paint with beaten egg and patch or strengthen them with a strip of raw dough, or you may fill the shell by no more than ⅓ so sides will not be under any strain during baking.

Freezing and leftovers

Baked shells may be wrapped airtight and frozen; it is wise to put them in a protective container of some sort. Leftover dough may be frozen and used again or combined with more of the same dough when you make another batch.

REFERENCE CHART FOR PASTRY DOUGH FORMULAS

Flour: Measure by scooping dry-measure cups into flour and sweeping off excess with straight edge of knife. Sift only after measuring.

Butter: Regular unsalted butter (not whipped butter) usually has a firmer texture and less water content than salted butter; we recommend it.

Liquid: Always start with the minimum amount of liquid called for, and add more by droplets as needed. The warmer and softer the butter, the less water the mixture will absorb. Hand-made dough, therefore, absorbs less liquid than machine-made.

DESCRIPTION	USES	FORMULA
ENTRÉE PASTRIES
1) Pâte Brisée Ordinaire
Regular pastry dough with less butter than the following, therefore easier to roll and form	For general pie crusts, plain quiches, turnovers, meat mixtures	3½ cups (1 lb.) flour 9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter 2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening 2 tsp salt ¼ tsp sugar ¾–1 cup iced water
2) Pâte Brisée Fine
Finest pastry dough—delicate texture, fine flavor, fragile (Volume I, page 139)	For fancy appetizers and tartlets, rich quiches, and the best quality of pre-baked shells	3½ cups (1 lb.) flour 11 ounces (2¾ sticks) butter 3 ounces (6 Tb) shortening 2 tsp salt ¼ tsp sugar ¾–1 cup iced water
3) Pâte Brisée à l’Oeuf
A light, crisp dough	Especially for shells and cases molded and baked on upside-down forms, and for turnovers	3½ cups (1 lb.) flour 9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter 2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening 2 tsp salt ¼ tsp sugar ¾–1 cup liquid (1 egg plus necessary iced water)
SWEET PASTRIES
Pâtes Sucrées
Any of the previous dough formulas	For the same uses	Same formulas except for salt and sugar proportions, which should be changed to: ⅛ tsp salt 5 Tb sugar
4) Pâte Sucrée aux Jaunes d’Oeuf
Less rich than #2, finer texture than #1 and #3	For baked tarts and tartlets, and pre-baked shells	3½ cups (1 lb.) flour 9 ounces (2½ sticks) butter 2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening ⅛ tsp salt 5 Tb sugar ¾–1 cup liquid (2 egg yolks plus necessary iced water)
5) Pâte Sablée—Pâte Sèche
Sweet cookie dough, crisp and buttery; the more sugar you add the more difficult the dough is to handle	For cookies, sweet tarts and tartlets, and especially for pre-baked shells	4⅓ cups (20 ounces) flour 9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter 2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening 8 to 18 Tb sugar ¼ tsp baking powder 3 eggs 1½ tsp vanilla extract ⅛ tsp salt
PÂTÉ DOUGHS
6) Pâte à Croustade—Pâte à Pâté
An excellent pâté dough that is also good to eat	For pâtés and meat pies that are molded in raw dough either in the spring-form pâté mold, or in a baking dish	3½ cups (1 lb.) flour 5½ ounces (11 Tb) butter 3 ounces (6 Tb) lard 2 tsp salt ¾–1 cup liquid (4 egg yolks plus necessary iced water)
7) Pâte à Croustade à l’Envers
A pâté dough that will hold its shape and is also good to eat	For pâté cases that are partially baked on upside-down forms before being filled with meat mixtures and baked; also for free-form pâtés en croûte	4⅓ cups (20 ounces) flour 7 ounces (1¾ sticks) butter 3½ ounces (7 Tb) lard 2½ tsp salt 1–1¼ cups liquid (2 eggs plus necessary iced water)

FRENCH PUFF PASTRY

Pâte Feuilletée

French puff pastry, pâte feuilletée, is literally what the French title implies: hundreds of leaves or layers of dough separated by hundreds of layers of butter. A piece half an inch thick puffs up 4 to 5 inches in the oven and is unbelievably light and tender to bite into. With almost as many uses as it has layers, puff pastry is the dough for vol-au-vent and Napoleons, for coqs en pâte, gigots en croûte, and all kinds of turnovers, tarts, pie toppings, first-course pastries, and luxurious cocktail tidbits. It dresses up the simplest store-bought cheese mixture, can add the final flourish to the grandest platter, and since it freezes perfectly for several months, puff pastry is tremendously useful to have available on those occasions when you need something fast to assemble that looks impressive.

If you enjoy working with your hands you will find it is the most fascinating of doughs to make, and if you want to acquire a facility in pastry, pâte feuilletée will teach you all the tricks. It most definitely takes practice to perfect, but when you have mastered puff pastry you will find it such a satisfying and splendid accomplishment you will bless yourself for every moment you spent learning its techniques.

THE TWO KINDS OF PUFF PASTRY

The classical, best-quality puff pastry, pâte feuilletée fine, contains equal parts of butter and flour, is made in a rigidly traditional manner, and you must count on 6 to 7 hours from the time you start it to the time you can form and bake it. This is what you use for vol-au-vent, patty shells, and fine desserts such as that most wonderful of almond tarts called the Pithiviers. However, it is not at all necessary to be so grand for cocktail appetizers, cheese-filled cases, leg of lamb baked in a crust, Beef Wellington, and a host of other delicious items. For these, and in fact for most of your puff pastry needs, simple puff pastry, demi-feuilletée, is very good indeed and can be made in half the time. Because it is so much easier to make, we suggest that you start your career on demi-feuilletée, and when you get around to the classic method it will then seem like only a variation on a familiar theme.

EQUIPMENT

Although you can mix pastry on a wooden table and roll it out with a broom handle, you will find it easier to make when you have a pastry marble and a good rolling pin. This is particularly true for puff pastry.

A pastry marble

The smooth, cool surface of marble is ideal to roll dough upon and scrapes clean easily while you work. A piece that can slide in and out of your refrigerator will be a miraculous help to pastry making in hot weather. You can usually find ready-cut polished marble in furniture stores; you can sometimes pick up an old marble table- or bureau-top in a junk shop; or look up marble suppliers in the telephone directory. The minimum size to consider is ¾ inch thick and the size of your refrigerator shelf, which is around 14 by 28 inches for the standard home-size model.

Rolling pins

You should have a heavy pin with a rolling surface at least 14 inches long; 16 to 18 inches is preferable. You will probably have to try a restaurant supply house to find a decent pin, because a broom handle is certainly far more efficient than the ridiculous toy (A) that passes for a rolling pin in many household supply departments. The French pastry chef’s pin (B) is of polished boxwood, 18 inches long and 2 inches in diameter; stores selling Italian cooking equipment often have a similar model of lighter wood.

The French Tutove pin (C) is sometimes available in import stores; its cannellated surface is designed especially for distributing the butter evenly throughout the dough when you roll puff pastry or croissants. The American-made pastry-chef’s pin (D) is of polished hardwood and has ball-bearing handles; this fine, heavy pin is usually available only in restaurant supply houses.

FLOUR NOTE

The following recipes call for a mixture of all-purpose and cake flour, a combination always available and one that is used by many pastry chefs in this country. The nearest American approximation of French household pastry flour, “type 55,” that we have discovered is a mixture of ⅔ unbleached pastry flour (not to be confused with cake flour) and ⅓ unbleached all-purpose flour. This combination has a lower gluten strength than the all-purpose and cake mixture, and it is easier and faster to handle because it needs shorter rest periods. However, unbleached flours, and especially unbleached pastry flour, are not to be found in most retail markets. Actually the cake and all-purpose combination, though slower to work with than either French flour or its American approximation, produces the lightest and puffiest pastry. (You may substitute French household flour or the ⅓–⅔ pastry flour and all-purpose flour combination in the following recipe.)

KEEPING COOL AND RELAXED

You will have very little trouble with puff pastry when you remember that you must keep the dough cold and that you must let it have the rest periods it needs.

Because of its high butter content, puff-pastry dough begins to soften as soon as you remove it from the refrigerator, just as butter softens. When you leave it too long at room temperature it becomes limp, sticky, and utterly impossible to work with until you refrigerate it again. Thus, if at any point your dough becomes limp and soft, stop where you are, refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes, then continue. Do the same if the dough retracts after rolling, or if it turns rubbery and refuses to extend itself; this means that the gluten in the dough is over-activated from having been rolled out, and the way to calm it down is to stop rolling and let the dough relax in the refrigerator for an hour or two. Most of the troubles most people have with puff pastry spring from unchilled dough and over-activated gluten.

  PÂTE DEMI-FEUILLETÉE

[Simple Puff Pastry—Flaky Pastry—Mock Puff Pastry]

For the many recipes like turnovers, toppings for meat pies, meats baked in a crust, appetizers, and so forth where you want a flaky, light dough, demi-feuilletée can be ready for baking in 3 to 4 hours. The pastry consists of an initial dough made of flour, water, salt, and a little oil, which acts as a tenderizer; this is pushed out into a 16-inch rectangle that is spread with softened butter. Then the rectangle is folded into 3, making a sandwich that has 3 dough layers and 2 butter layers. Rolled out and folded again 3 more times, as sketched in the recipe, the layers build up in geometric progression to make 72 layers of butter after the fourth fold. When the pastry finally goes into the oven, each of the many layers of dough puffs up between the layers of butter and the pastry bakes into a light, airy delight to both eye and tongue.

For about 1 pound of flour, making 2½ pounds of dough, enough for 2 of the 6- by 16-inch covered entrée pastries, or about 3 dozen of the cornets, or horns

Press dough firmly and rapidly into a cushion shape. Do not try to make a smooth surface; it will smooth out later. Consistency should be pliable, though not at all damp or sticky.

If you are in a terrible rush you can complete the next 2 steps now, but the dough will be easier to handle if you sprinkle it lightly with flour, wrap in waxed paper, slip it into a plastic bag, and refrigerate it for 40 minutes to an hour.

12 ounces (3 sticks) chilled unsalted butter A pastry scraper or stiff broad spatula The ½ cup flour reserved from Step 1

When you are ready to roll out the dough, beat the butter with a rolling pin to soften it.

Smear out with scraper or the heel, not the palm, of your hand. When partially softened, work in the flour and continue until butter is perfectly smooth and of easy spreading consistency but still cold. If butter is not supple enough, you cannot spread it over the dough; if it is too soft it will ooze out as the dough is rolled. Chill briefly if you have softened it too much.

Lightly flour the dough and your hands. Push and pat the dough out, in front of you, into a rectangle 16 to 18 inches long and about 8 inches wide. Dough is being pushed rather than rolled so that you will activate the gluten as little as possible for this first operation. (Dough will be very soft and sticky if you have not chilled it.)

Using a scraper or stiff spatula, spread the softened butter over the upper two thirds of the dough leaving a ⅛-inch unbuttered border all around. The lower third is unbuttered.

Fold the dough into three as follows: fold the bottom (unbuttered) third up to the middle.

Fold the top (buttered) third down to cover it, just as though you were folding a business letter. You have made 2 layers of butter and 3 of dough.

Rotate the dough a quarter turn counter-clockwise so the top flap of dough is to your right, as though it were a book you were about to open. Dough will still look rather rough and the spotty damp patches are oil; all will smooth out by the final turn.

In the second turn, you will roll out the dough and fold it so that it makes 4 layers. During the roll, be sure top and bottom of dough are always lightly floured and that your rolling surface is always scraped clean, to prevent dough from sticking; lift dough and slide it about between rolls to make sure.

Starting about an inch in from the near edge of the dough, roll your pin rapidly to within an inch of the far end, extending the dough as you roll. The rolling movement is a firm, even push away from you at a 45-degree angle. You are aiming for as even a rectangle of dough as possible; after several rolls you wish it to be 16 to 18 inches long and about 8 inches wide.

Even the sides of the rectangle with the side of your pin when necessary and occasionally roll across the rectangle to widen it. Sprinkle any breaks in the dough with flour. (If you did not chill the initial dough it will look messy and soft at this point; do not worry.)

Fold the top and the bottom edges of the rectangle so that they meet at the center of the dough.

Fold them together again, as though you were closing a book. Now you have completed the second turn, and have 8 layers of butter sandwiched in between 9 layers of dough.

So that you will remember that you have now made 2 turns—you may decide to freeze the dough at this point—press 2 depressions in the top of the dough with the ball-ends, not the nails, of your fingers.

Wrap the dough in waxed paper, slip it into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 40 to 60 minutes (or overnight if you wish) until dough is much firmer and the gluten has relaxed; it will then be easy to roll out for the final 2 turns.

Unwrap the chilled dough and flour it sparingly top and bottom. If it is cold and hard, beat it evenly and firmly but not too heavily with your rolling pin to start it moving: beat crosswise and lengthwise, and keep the even rectangular shape.

Then roll dough rapidly out into a rectangle 16 to 18 inches long. (Again, if dough is very cold and you have not beaten it sufficiently to soften the butter, the sides may split when you roll out the dough. Do not worry if this happens; remember to beat it a little longer the next time.) Fold rectangle of dough into three, again as though folding a business letter and as diagramed in Turn 1. Rotate dough so top flap is to your right, book-opening fashion; roll again into a rectangle and fold into three. You now have completed the fourth turn, and have 72 layers of butter. With the ball-ends of your fingers, make 4 depression marks in the surface of the dough. Wrap and chill for at least 2 hours to firm the butter and to relax the gluten. It is then ready for forming and baking in any way your recipe directs. (You may, of course, give the dough 2 more turns after it has chilled, tripling the layer count twice again to a total of 648; this is called for only rarely, however.)

Storage, ahead-of-time notes, and freezing

You may wrap and store puff pastry dough in the refrigerator at any step during its manufacture; however, remember that if you have not completed 4 turns the butter will be distributed in rather thick layers. Thus if the pastry is very cold, the congealed butter will break into lumps and flakes unless you give it a careful and thorough beating with your rolling pin before you attempt to roll it out. Puff-pastry dough may be frozen for as much as a year, when wrapped airtight and kept at zero degrees or less; thaw at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.

Forming and baking the dough—after a rest of 2 hours

A complete listing of recipes using puff pastry is in the index.

Use of leftover dough

See illustrated directions.

VARIATION

Pâte Feuilletée Fine

[Classic French Puff Pastry—for vol-au-vent, patty shells, fine desserts, and petits fours]

Classic French puff pastry has equal amounts of butter and flour, 6 rollings out and foldings, and develops 729 layers of butter sandwiched between 730 layers of dough. You may use it for any recipe requiring puff pastry, but its particular role lies in the realm of the patty shell, the fine dessert, and the elegant tea pastry. As you will see, the dough mixture contains butter rather than oil, and is made like pie dough; rather than being spread on, the main part of the butter is enclosed in the dough. Otherwise the technique for classic puff pastry does not differ too much from simple puff pastry. You must allow, however, a minimum of 6 to 7 hours from the time you start it to the time you can form and bake it. As usual, most of this time is taken up with rest periods; the actual work involved is probably not more than 30 minutes, and this can be spread over a period of several days.

For about 1 pound of flour, making 2½ pounds of dough, enough for one 8-inch vol-au-vent 5 inches high or 8 to 10 patty shells, plus leftovers which will make a 6- by 16-inch covered pastry, or 2 dozen of the cheese appetizers

2¾ cups all-purpose flour and ¾ cup plain bleached cake flour, measured by scooping dry-measure cups into flour and leveling off with a straight-edged knife A 4-quart mixing bowl, or the large bowl of an electric mixer A rubber spatula A ½-cup dry-measure cup (to reserve flour for Step 2) 3 ounces (¾ stick) chilled unsalted butter A 2-foot length of waxed paper

Measure the 2 flours into the mixing bowl and stir thoroughly with rubber spatula to blend. Scoop out ½ cup and reserve for Step 2. Place chilled butter on waxed paper and cut into quarters lengthwise; rapidly cut quarters into ¼-inch pieces and add to the flour in the bowl. The butter is now to be cut into the flour and the liquid then added, just as though you were making pie dough. You may use an electric mixer as described in the pâte brisée recipe,

or rub the flour and butter rapidly together between the tips of your fingers until the butter is the size of small oatmeal flakes, or chop with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. OR make the entire détrempe in the food processor, including next step.

Press dough firmly and rapidly into a rough cushion shape; consistency should be pliable, though not at all damp and sticky. Sprinkle lightly with flour, wrap in waxed paper, and slide into a plastic bag. Refrigerate for 40 minutes to relax gluten and firm the dough.

Roll the chilled dough into a circle 12 to 13 inches in diameter; it will still look rough. Place the butter in the center.

Bring the edges of the dough over the butter to enclose it completely, being very careful not to stretch dough because you want it to have a uniform thickness at the sides of the square.

Press dough well together on top of package and seal edges with your fingers. Dough will still look rough and uneven, which is as it should be.

You now have a package with a layer of dough on the top and the bottom, and a layer of butter in between. Your object is to roll the package out into a rectangle, extending the butter the whole length and width of the rectangle between the 2 layers of dough: beat the package lightly but firmly its length and width with your rolling pin to get the butter moving, dust flour on the bottom and top of the dough, and rapidly roll it out into a rectangle 16 inches long and 8 inches wide. It is now to be folded in three, as though folding a business letter.

Fold the bottom third up over the center of the dough.

Fold the top third down to cover it, making 3 even layers. By folding the dough in 3, you have made 3 layers of butter but only 4 of dough, because the middle layers, which touch, join to form a single layer.

Place dough in front of you so that top flap is to your right, as though it were a book.

Roll again into a 16-inch rectangle and again fold in three, making 9 layers of butter. Press 2 depressions in the top of the dough with the ball-ends, not the nails, of your fingers so that you will remember you have made 2 turns.

Wrap dough in waxed paper and slip it into a plastic bag. Refrigerate for 40 to 60 minutes to relax the gluten and to firm butter for next turns, which it is best to complete within an hour if you can so that layers of butter do not become too firm and congealed.

If dough is hard and cold, beat with firm even strokes to soften butter. Complete Turns 3 and 4 in the same way as the previous turns. You may find during the rolling out that the bottom layer of dough does not stretch out to meet the top and middle layers at each end: turn dough over and roll upside down to even the layers. Make 4 depression marks in the dough to indicate the 4 turns; wrap and chill again for at least an hour before starting Turns 5 and 6.

(*) DELAYED-ACTION NOTE: This is the best point to refrigerate the dough for several days, or to freeze it for several months.

Complete Turns 5 and 6 in the same manner. (It is here that if you have given the dough only its minimum rest period you may find it hard to roll out and inclined to retract rather severely when extended. If this happens, stop immediately; forcing it will only make the gluten more tenacious and the dough more balky. Wrap and refrigerate the dough for an hour more before continuing.) Make 3 pairs of depression marks in the top of the dough to indicate the 6 turns. Wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours before forming and baking.

(*) DELAYED-ACTION NOTES: When you are making the dough for a vol-au-vent, you will usually get the highest rise when you form and bake the dough about 2 hours after the final turn. For all other purposes, dough may be refrigerated for several days, or frozen for several months.

Except for the vol-au-vent and patty shells, which follow here, all other recipes using puff pastry will be found in their appropriate chapters, and there is a complete listing of recipes under puff pastry in the index.

See illustrated directions.

Patty Shells
Bouchées et Vol-au-Vent

That beautifully sauced combination of sweetbreads, quenelles, truffles, mushrooms, and olives known as ris de veau financière has nowhere else to go but into a patty shell so light and airy it can fly with the wind, as the French title, vol-au-vent, suggests. Our litany ever seems to be “your own are so much better,” and how true it is when your own puff pastry makes shells so light, buttery, and flaky you can hardly believe they are real even while the pastry is melting in your mouth. Whether you wish to serve individual shells or one dramatic large one for the whole table, small and large shells are constructed in similar fashion.

You are aiming for a hollow cylinder of pastry. To achieve it, you make 2 layers: a ring of dough that is set on a disk of dough. The ring forms the sides of the cylinder, and the disk, its bottom. Both ring and disk puff up in the oven, and when the pastry is done, you cut an opening in the top, as you will see, fork out the small amount of uncooked pastry inside, and you have a case ready for filling with creamed lobster, shrimp, mushrooms, or whatever delectable mixture you may have concocted. We shall start with individual pastry shells.

DOUGH TALK

Both large and small shells require an extravagant amount of dough, and you will have as much left over as you have in the shells. However, the leftover dough is converted into puff pastry again as described and illustrated at the end of this section.

BOUCHÉES

[Patty Shells for Individual Servings]

For 9 shells 3½ inches in diameter

With the 3½-inch round cutter, cut 6 disks in the pastry, spacing them half an inch from the edges of the pastry and from each other. With the 2-inch cutter, cut circles from the center of three of the disks to make 3 rings. (Carefully arrange all leftover dough in one layer and refrigerate; see instructions.)

Rinse pastry sheet in cold water, shake off excess water, and place the 3 disks upside down on the sheet, spacing them ½ inch from edge of sheet and from each other. Paint tops of disks lightly with cold water and press a ring of dough on each disk.

Seal each ring to each disk by making slanting indentations ⅛ inch apart with the back of a knife, going all around the circumference, and pressing the 2 layers of dough together with the balls of your fingers as you go.

Prick all over exposed center of bottom disks with the tines of a table fork. Plunge a skewer down through the pastry at 3 points in the center of the pastry and 4 around the ring; this, hopefully, will ensure a vertical, even rise in the oven.

With a 2-inch round cutter or a knife, press a circle outline 1⁄16 inch deep in each disk, where the inside edge of the ring meets it; this will then be cut out after baking and serve as a cover.

Pastry will probably have softened; refrigerate baking sheet for 10 minutes, or at least while you are rolling out and cutting the next 2 pieces of dough. When all 9 bouchées are assembled on the sheet, cover with waxed paper and refrigerate for at least 40 minutes before baking, so that dough can relax and bouchées will not shrink or bake out of shape.

(*) DELAYED-ACTION NOTE: The formed pastry may be frozen at this point, and taken right from freezer to oven.

Just before baking, paint top surfaces of bouchées, not the sides, with a double coating of egg glaze (1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water), and decorate with cross-hatch knife or fork marks. (See vol-au-vent, step 2.) Bake in the middle level of preheated oven about 25 minutes. They are done when risen and brown, and when the sides are brown and crisp. Remove to a rack.

With a sharp small knife held vertically, cut out covers with an up-and-down sawing motion. Delicately scrape out any uncooked pastry from inside with the back of a teaspoon or the tines of a small table fork. Cool on a rack.

The sooner you can fill and serve patty shells, the fresher, lighter, and more delicious they will be. If you are serving the same day, keep in a warming oven or the turned-off oven. Otherwise arrange in a covered pan and freeze them. To reheat and crisp shells, either frozen or not, preheat oven to 425 degrees, place shells on a lightly buttered baking sheet and set in middle level of oven. Turn oven off and shells will be crisp in 5 to 8 minutes.

VOL-AU-VENT

[Large Patty Shell]

A large patty shell is somewhat reminiscent of the oldtime haute cuisine; it is wonderfully dramatic to serve and always greatly enjoyed by your guests just because it is an unusual treat. The decorative cover, which is formed and baked separately, is optional and depends on how your table serving works out. If you have a cover, the filled vol-au-vent with cover poised on top of the food is presented for all to admire, then the cover must be removed to a separate dish for cutting and serving.

For an 8-inch shell about 5 inches deep, serving 6 people

Work as rapidly as possible from now on so that dough will not soften and become difficult to handle; if it does soften, immediately stop whatever you are doing and refrigerate everything for 15 to 20 minutes, then continue.

Cut two 8-inch disks out of pastry, spacing them at least ½ inch from edges of dough and from each other. Lift surrounding dough off the disks and arrange in one layer on baking sheet or tray and refrigerate; see directions for re-forming it into puff pastry.

Roll one of the disks up on the pin and unroll upside down on damp baking sheet. (Damp surface makes pastry stick to sheet, giving it a grip so it can rise in the oven.) Paint a 1½-inch border around the top of the circle with cold water.

Using a round cutter or guide 5 inches in diameter, center it in the second disk of dough and cut around it to make the 8-inch ring for the second layer of the vol-au-vent.

So that you will not stretch the ring of dough as you remove it from the circle, brush lightly with flour and fold it in half, then in quarters. Unfold it on the dampened circumference of the first disk, pressing it in place with the balls of your fingers. (Refrigerate disk of leftover dough.)

Seal the 2 layers of dough with the back of a small knife, by pressing slanting lines ⅛ inch deep and about ¾ inch apart all around the circumference, also pressing top of circle with the balls of your fingers as you go. (It is now wise to cover and refrigerate vol-au-vent for an hour before baking; this will relax dough so that it will bake evenly.)

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: Unbaked vol-au-vent may be refrigerated for a day or so, or frozen, but you will usually get a higher rise if you bake it within an hour of forming.

With a small knife, cut lines ⅛ inch deep and 1½ inches apart (at outside edge) in top of ring, pointing knife always to center of vol-au-vent so the marks will be evenly spaced, like the spokes of a wheel.

Cut a line ¼ inch deep in the bottom disk, where inner edge of circle meets it; this marks the cover, which is removed after baking so that interior of vol-au-vent may be cleaned out.

Make decorative, shallow cross-hatch marks in the top of the dough through the glaze with the point of a knife or the tines of a table fork.

Finally, plunge skewer or needle down through the top of the pastry sheet at 4 to 5 places around the circumference and 3 places in the center. The purpose of this operation is presumably to hold the puff pastry layers in place and help the vol-au-vent rise evenly.

Immediately place vol-au-vent in lower middle level of preheated oven and bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the pastry has tripled in height and is beginning to brown. Lower thermostat to 350 degrees and bake 30 to 40 minutes longer, until sides are brown and crisp. If pastry is coloring too much, lay a sheet of aluminum foil or heavy brown paper loosely over the top.

As soon as you remove the vol-au-vent from the oven and while it is still hot, cut around the inside edge of the ring to remove the cover you marked in the bottom disk; this has now risen, along with the rest of the dough. (Cover will probably break and should be eaten by the cook, who must sample the pastry anyway.)

Being very careful not to pierce sides or bottom of crust, scrape uncooked pastry out of vol-au-vent with the tines of a table fork or the handle of a spoon. (You may turn this into a cheese ramequin, but you should use it while still fresh; see following recipe.)

Set vol-au-vent again on its pastry sheet and put in the oven for 5 minutes, to dry out, then let cool on a rack. If bottom of pastry burned or darkened unduly during baking, shave off the discolored part with a sharp knife.

Storing and reheating

If you have a warming oven, set it at around 100 degrees where pastry will keep for a day or two, drying and crisping to a delicious texture. Otherwise, the sooner you can eat the vol-au-vent the better, unless you are going to wrap it airtight and freeze, where it will keep for several weeks. To reheat cold or frozen vol-au-vent, set on a lightly buttered pastry sheet in a preheated 425-degree oven for 5 minutes, then turn oven off and leave a few minutes more, until crisp.

FOR THE UNCOOKED INSIDES OF THE VOL-AU-VENT

Ramequin du Juste Milieu

[A Hot Puffed Cheese Dish to Serve as an Entrée or in Place of Potatoes]

For 4 to 6 servings

Half an hour before serving, bake in the middle level of a preheated 375-degree oven until nicely puffed and browned. Serve immediately.

MAKING A VOL-AU-VENT COVER

When you want a cover for the vol-au-vent, form it separately, and bake the 2 together on the same pastry sheet.

Use the circle of leftover dough you cut from the second disk of pastry that made the vol-au-vent ring. After it has rested in the refrigerator while you were making the vol-au-vent itself, roll it out into a disk about 9½ inches in diameter; loosen it from the rolling surface to let it shrink if it will. Roll it up on your pin and unroll upside down on a lightly buttered pastry sheet. Then trim it into a neat circle using an 8½-inch cutter or plate as a guide.

Place a slightly smaller cutter, cover, or other round object on top and draw the back of a knife from edge of pastry to edge of cutter at ¾-inch intervals all around to make a scalloped edging.

To discourage dough from rising more than a little in the oven, prick all over (except on scalloped edges) at ⅛-inch intervals with the tines of a table fork, going right down through the pastry to the pastry sheet. Cover and chill the dough for about an hour, so that gluten will relax and dough will bake evenly without shrinking.

Using scraps of dough left over from the vol-au-vent, make decorative cutouts ⅛-inch thick and of any shape and design you wish. After painting top of dough with egg glaze, affix the designs and paint them also. Then make shallow, all-over cross-hatch marks through the glaze and into the dough with a small knife or the tines of a fork.

The design illustrated is a very simple one of circular cutouts, which puff up in an amusing manner; you may use ovals, leaves, strips of dough, or anything you wish, but remember that everything rises, and if you cut your shapes too thick and narrow, they may topple off in the oven.

Baking

Whether baked separately or along with the vol-au-vent, put the cover in a preheated 425-degree oven for about 20 minutes, until nicely browned, then turn thermostat down to 350. Pastry is done when it feels crisp and light, which should be 30 minutes or so in all. Let cool on a rack.

FLEURONS

[Puff-pastry Puffs, for Decorations and Garnitures]

When you are not making a cover for the vol-au-vent, you may wish some extra bits of puff pastry to decorate the edge of the platter around the shell. These are called fleurons, or flowered shapes, because they are small and decorative, usually fluted ovals or crescents. Classic French recipes often suggest fleurons as a garnish to some of the beautiful filet of sole or scallop dishes, where pastry elegantly takes the place of a mundane starchy vegetable. You may make fleurons either out of the carefully preserved trimmings from your vol-au-vent or bouchée cuttings, or from the re-formed and reconstituted dough described after the next recipe.

Roll dough ¼ to ⅜ inch thick and make disks with a round, 3-inch, fluted cutter. With one stroke through the center, cut each disk into an oval and a crescent.

Place ½ inch apart on a dampened pastry sheet and chill for at least half an hour to relax the dough—an hour or more would be better. Glaze with beaten egg, decorate with cross-hatching, and bake in middle level of a preheated 450-degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until nicely puffed, brown, and crisp.

PETITES BOUCHÉES

[Cocktail Shells of Puff Pastry]

Cocktail-size patty shells, petites bouchées or little mouthfuls 2 inches in diameter, are made in 1 layer. Use the leftover circles cut from the second layer, or rings, of larger patty shells, or cut circles from the leftover and reconstituted puff pastry dough in the following recipe.

Roll the dough ¼ to ⅜ inch thick, cut with a 2-inch fluted cutter, and arrange on a dampened baking sheet. With a 1-inch cutter or a small knife, press a cover outline in the top of the dough, going ⅛ inch deep. Glaze and bake, following the preceding directions for fleurons. When baked and still warm, delicately cut out the cover and remove any uncooked pastry from interiors.

These small shells may then be filled and reheated for serving, or you may freeze them until needed.

UTILIZATION DES ROGNURES

[Reconstituting Leftover Dough into Puff Pastry Again]

You will have as much dough left over from cutting a vol-au-vent as you have in the vol-au-vent itself, and almost as much from bouchées. You can even make another vol-au-vent from these scraps, or half a dozen bouchées, or anything else calling for puff pastry. Demifeuilletée, the simpler puff pastry, is treated the same way. Puff pastry leftovers are called rognures, meaning trimmings or scraps.

Your object is to join the scraps into one piece of dough in such a way that the layers of butter and flour in each scrap are horizontal, as they were when the dough was first made. Cut the scraps as necessary.

Arrange them so that they will form a rectangle. Then paint an edge of each with cold water, overlap it slightly upon its neighbor, and seal the seam with the balls of your fingers.

If you are very skillful, you can manage to make a few careful rolls with your pastry pin and join the seams of dough so perfectly that you can cut it out for patty shells or the 2 large disks needed for a Pithiviers. The surest system, however, is to flour dough lightly, roll into a rectangle, spread the top two thirds with a tablespoon of softened butter and fold in three. Wrap, chill an hour or two, and finish off with 2 more turns. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight, or freeze, so that dough will relax thoroughly before you use it again.

Re-use of leftovers

You can still get puffing and flakiness out of the leftover of leftovers, using the preceding system. The pastry will not be as tender when baked as it was at first, and it may well offer a bit of resistance when you roll it out. However, it works very well for most appetizers, as well as for cookies and for the fleurons and the petites bouchées in the 2 preceding recipes.

Puff Pastry Entrées
Cornets, Rouleaux, Cheese Napoleons, and Cheese Tarts

Just a few of the many delicious pastries you can make with pâte feuilletée are described and illustrated in the following pages; see also dessert pastries and cookies. One could easily write a book on puff pastry alone, and we find it hard to limit ourselves to a sensible few. We hope, however, that these recipes will give you a feel for how to use it so that you can go off on your own and be confident with other recipes you find elsewhere.

CORNETS

[Puff Pastry Horns—Cream Horns]

Strips of puff pastry are rolled around cone-shaped forms, baked until the pastry has browned and set, and baked again with a creamy cheese filling to make a most attractive first-course fantasy. (Encrusted with sugar, they come out of the oven with a caramel coating for dessert creams.)

For 18 to 20 horns about 5 inches long, serving 8 to 10 people

Cut strips of pastry ¾ to 1 inch wide and 13 to 14 inches long, using cutting guide and pastry wheel as shown.

Paint a half-inch band of cold water along top length of a strip of dough. Hold mold by its large end; slip tip of mold under right end of dough strip, then pinch dough all around the tip of the mold to seal it.

Holding tip of mold with your left hand, with your right hand rotate its large end clockwise—to your right—winding the dough onto the mold in a spiral from tip to large end, and letting dough overlap ⅛ inch upon itself as you go. Be careful not to stretch the dough, which should remain an even ⅛ inch thick. When dough is cold and firm, you will find it easy to work with.

Seal end of dough at large end of mold, pressing with your fingers. Place horn on baking sheet, sealed-side of dough against sheet; press lightly to hold the horn in place. Proceed with the rest of the horns in the same manner.

Chill at least 30 minutes, but an hour is preferable, to relax dough before baking. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 425 degrees and set rack in middle level. Just before baking, paint tops and sides of horns with egg glaze (1 egg beaten in a small bowl with 1 tsp water), and make cross-hatching on surface with the point of a knife or the tines of a fork. Bake immediately; horns are done in 15 to 20 minutes, when molds slip easily out of them. For recipes where you are to fill the horns and bake them again, remove from oven when a pale brown so they will not darken too much during their second baking; otherwise leave them in a few minutes longer, to brown nicely.

(*) Pastries are at their best when eaten within a few hours of baking; you may keep them, however, in a warming oven at around 100 degrees for a day or so; otherwise wrap airtight and freeze them. To thaw, place on a lightly buttered baking sheet in a 400-degree oven; turn oven off, and leave about 10 minutes.

FONDUE DE FROMAGE POUR CORNETS, ROULEAUX, MILLE-FEUILLES, ET CROQUETTES

[Cheese Filling for Cream Horns, Mille-Feuilles, and Croquettes]

This is a very thick sauce that will not run or flow out of shape when heated in pastries, or when coated with beaten eggs and bread crumbs and deep-fried. Rather than cooking it in the usual way, with a flour and butter roux that is moistened with hot milk, you beat the milk into the flour and then add the butter, making what is technically known as a bouilli.

For about 2½ cups

Additions

Use half the amount of cheese called for in the preceding filling, and fold in ⅓ to ½ cup of either diced ham or mushroom duxelles (diced fresh mushrooms sautéed in butter, Volume I, page 515).

CORNETS À LA FONDUE DE FROMAGE

[Cream Horns Baked with Cheese Filling]

The preceding cheese filling A pastry bag with round tube opening Puff pastry cream horns, baked but barely browned Rather soft Swiss cheese A grater (small holes) A lightly buttered baking sheet

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pack the cheese filling into the pastry bag and squeeze it into each pastry horn. Grate cheese so that you have rather long whiskery wisps, and pack a large pinch into opening of each horn.

Bake in upper third of preheated oven 10 to 12 minutes, to melt cheese and heat filling to bubbling hot. Serve as soon as possible.

ROULEAUX

[Puff Pastry Cream Rolls]

If you cannot find molds for cream horns, you may find metal molds suitable for pastry rolls; or use pieces of well-oiled unvarnished wood 5 to 6 inches long, such as a cut-up broom handle. Form, bake, and fill puff pastry rolls in the same general manner described and illustrated for horns. When baked with the preceding cheese filling, stuff whiskers of cheese into both ends to prevent filling from oozing out.

MILLE-FEUILLES À LA FONDUE DE FROMAGE

[Cheese Napoleons]

You will probably find far more use for cheese Napoleons than for pastry-cream dessert Napoleons. They make an elegant first course or luncheon dish and are practically as easy to assemble as the count of one-two-three—when you have ready-made puff pastry on hand. A thin sheet of baked puff pastry is cut into squares or rectangles that are sandwiched together with the cheese fondue filling and baked until the filling is bubbling hot.

For 6 to 8 servings

Bake for about 15 minutes in preheated oven, upper-middle level, until cheese topping has colored lightly and cheese filling is bubbling hot—be careful not to bake too long and burn the pastry. Serve immediately.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: You may form the mille-feuilles for baking an hour or so in advance.

FEUILLETÉE AU FROMAGE—JALOUSIE AU FROMAGE

[Peekaboo Cheese Tart of French Puff Pastry]

Another delicious puff pastry for first courses, luncheons, or for slicing and serving with cocktails is the feuilletée. Quick to assemble, when you have puff pastry dough on hand, it is done exactly like the jam tart.

For a 6- by 16-inch, tart, serving 6 people

Either spread the fondue filling on the pastry, leaving a ¾-inch border all around; or cut cheese into thin slices and spread over pastry, leaving border.

Turn borders of pastry up over filling at sides; wet corners, and turn ends over, sealing corners with fingers. If you are using Roquefort or blue cheese, spoon the egg and cream over it, tilting pastry in all directions, allowing liquid to flow all over enclosed area.

Roll out second piece of pastry into a 7- by 17-inch rectangle ⅛ inch thick. Flour surface lightly, and fold in half lengthwise. Measure opening of filled pastry and mark folded pastry to guide you. Cut slits in dough from folded edge as shown, making them ⅜ inch apart and half as long as width of opening in tart.

Wet edges of filled bottom layer of pastry with cold water. Unfold top layer over it; brush off accumulated flour, and press pastry in place with fingers. Then with back tines of a fork, press a decorative vertical edging all around sides of tart. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes before baking.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: When chilled and firm, may be wrapped airtight and frozen for several months. Remove from freezer, glaze, and bake as in Step 2.

Garnitures for Bouchées and Vol-au-Vent

  RIS DE VEAU À LA FINANCIÈRE

[Braised Sweetbreads Garnished with Quenelles, Truffles, Mushrooms, and Olives]

This is certainly one of the great classic fillings for bouchées and large vol-au-vent, and delicious when properly done. Unfortunately, like Beef Wellington in the hands of the profane and cynical, gummy sauces, clumsy flavoring, and bad pastry have ruined its reputation. We urge you to give it another try, and you will understand why it has long been so popular with great chefs. You may not want to add all of the items listed, but you will have a delicious creamed sweetbread filling even if you do not do the full financière, which could also include cockscombs and white kidneys (crêtes et rognons de coq), although we have not listed them in the ingredients.

MANUFACTURING NOTE

This is the kind of filling that you can prepare the day before serving. We shall not give proportions of how much filling is to go into each pastry, because there is no way of knowing what size and how many you are to make; leftover filling will be just as good the next day, with scrambled eggs or as the filling for an omelette.

For about 1½ quarts, serving 6 to 8

Return over moderately high heat, and stir with wire whip as sauce thickens and comes to the boil. It will be quite thick. Thin out, still simmering, with spoonfuls of cream; sauce should coat spoon fairly heavily.

VARIATIONS

Garniture Dieppoise—Garniture aux Fruits de Mer

[Creamed Seafood Filling]

Adapt the marmite dieppoise, with its sole, halibut, shrimp, scallops, mussels, and lobsters, to the preceding recipe. Follow the marmite recipe, Steps 1 and 2, then boil the cooking liquid down to 2½ to 3 cups, and proceed with the sauce in the preceding recipe, Steps 1 and 2. Use sliced truffles or fluted mushrooms to garnish each serving.

Garniture de Volaille, Financière

[Diced Chicken in White-wine Sauce with Quenelles, Truffles, Mushrooms, and Olives]

Poach chicken pieces in white wine and aromatic vegetables, following the recipe for poulet poché au vin blanc, Steps 1 and 2. Peel and dice the chicken, and then proceed as for the sweetbreads, simply substituting chicken and chicken stock for fish and fish stock.

CHAPTER THREE
Meats: From Country Kitchen to Haute Cuisine

BRAISED BEEF

Boeuf Braisé, Paupiettes, and Daubes

WHETHER IT IS ONE LARGE PIECE or a dozen small ones, whether you use red wine or white, whether or not you marinate it, lard it, flour it, thicken its juices at the beginning or at the end, all beef that is braised undergoes much the same process, and if you have done one you can do all. This is comforting to remember when you run into a new pot roast or stew: it is only the small differences in method, garnishing, or flavor that distinguish one recipe from another. For example, the fine boeuf en daube à la provençale sounds as though it were quite a different dish from the boeuf à la mode in Volume I on page 309, but you will see they are very much related: while the beef for the daube is larded with ham, and is put into a thickened sauce from the beginning of its braise, the sauce for the boeuf à la mode is thickened at the end of the cooking. Again, in a comparison of beef stews you find the boeuf bourguignon in Volume I braising in a flour-thickened sauce, while the boeuf aux oignons follows the simpler pattern of having its sauce thickened at the end with beurre manié (flour-butter paste). The methods are actually interchangeable, and you can conduct any braise exactly as you wish; the more techniques you have absorbed, the more you are master of la cuisine.

MARINATING THE BEEF BEFORE COOKING

An aromatic wine marinade adds its own special flavor to beef, and is always an effective tenderizer for the tougher cuts. Marinate or not, as you wish, for any of the following recipes, using the formula for the daube, and dry white wine rather than red, if you wish. For the marinade to be effective, stew meat or meat for paupiettes needs at least 6 hours, and a roast, 12 hours. Several days of marination in the refrigerator will be even more penetrating, and the marinade will also preserve the meat a little longer. In other words, rather than freezing it, if you are a once-a-week shopper, marinate it. Drain and dry the beef thoroughly before proceeding with any recipe. Substitute the marinade vegetables and wine for whatever is called for in the recipe, and if carrots are not one of the ingredients listed, for instance, add the marinade carrots anyway, since such details are of small importance.

LARDONS, PORK FAT, BACON, AND SUET

Lardons, those stick-shaped bits of fat-and-lean pork 1½ inches long and ¼ inch thick, are typical of French stews. Their rendered fat browns the beef, and their flavor adds a subtle touch to its sauce. Fresh, unsalted, and unsmoked pork belly is the cut to use if you can find it, otherwise substitute chunk bacon, cut, and blanched (simmered) 10 minutes in a quart of water to remove its salty, smoky taste. (Fat-and-lean salt pork, if very fresh and fine, is another alternative, but it must also be blanched.) Pork fat for larding and for draping over the meat is discussed in the charcuterie chapter. If you prefer suet, although it tends to shrink up, use fat from the outside of a rib or a loin of beef.

BEEF CUTS FOR STEWS

Most markets have ready-cut stew meat all packaged by the pound, and there is no telling what it is. If you want to order your own, the following are some recommended cuts.

Cuts from the round (hind leg)—la cuisse

TOP ROUND, tende de tranche. This is rather expensive, but furnishes solid pieces of meat with no muscle separations.

BOTTOM ROUND, gîte à la noix. This also furnishes solid pieces, but the cooked meat will tend to be somewhat grainy; be sure not to overcook it, to avoid an accentuation of this quality. The eye of the round, part of this cut, rond de gîte à la noix, is not at all recommended for stewing because of its excessive graininess.

SIRLOIN TIP (also called KNUCKLE), tranche grasse. Lower parts and outside of this cut, when clear of gristle, can be used for stewing.

HEEL OF ROUND, nerveux gîte à la noix. The hind shank when boned and de-gristled makes excellent, gelatinous stew meat, but benefits from a marinade and longer cooking.

Cuts from the chuck (shoulder end)

SHOULDER BLADE, paleron; SHOULDER ARM, macreuse and jumeau; CHUCK RIBS, basses côtes or côtes découvertes; NECK, collier. There are numerous fine stewing cuts from this section, but usually only Jewish or European butchers know them. Especially recommended are the chuck tender, a conical muscle lying along one side of the shoulder blade; flunken or flanken, the top of the chuck short ribs; arm pot roast.

Cuts from the underside and short ribs—caparaçon et plat de côtes

These include the brisket, poitrine, which is really too grainy for stewing but fine for braising whole; the plate, tendron, with its mixture of fat and lean and its cartilaginous bones, which make for good sauce consistency; and the flank, flanchet, which is not for stewing in pieces but may be stuffed and braised whole if it is not scored and broiled for steak. The short ribs, plat de côtes couvert (ribs 7 to 9), are excellent in a stew but take up a lot of room in your casserole because the bones are left in; however, they have excellent flavor and the meat with bones makes a delicious sauce.

  BOEUF AUX OIGNONS

[Beef Stew with Onions and Red Wine]

This is the most elemental of beef stews, with its lardons of pork that render the fat that browns the beef that simmers in wine, along with onions, herbs, garlic, and a hint of tomato. Delicious just as it is, the inclusion of other elements changes its character as well as its name, making it, in fact, the perfect stew for our game of theme and variations. Buttered noodles, buttered peas, and little tomatoes go beautifully with this stew, but if you wish to branch into more exotic preparations you might choose one of the eggplant recipes, such as the sauté en persillade, or the broiled eggplant slices, accompanied, perhaps, with individual servings of potatoes in the form of pommes duchesse. A full and hearty red wine like Beaujolais, Côtes-du-Rhône, or Mountain Red is called for here.

For 6 people

Bring stew to simmer on top of stove, cover casserole, and either maintain at slow simmer on top of stove or place in lower-middle level of preheated 350-degree oven; regulate heat so that stew simmers slowly throughout cooking. Turn and baste the meat occasionally. Stew is done when you can pierce the beef quite easily with a knife; slice into it and sample several pieces if you have any doubts.

TIMING: Note that aged, prime beef will cook faster than other grades, regardless of cut.

Sirloin tip, rump, top round, flunken—1½ to 2½ hours.

Bottom round, shoulder arm, chuck tender, short ribs—2 to 3 hours.

Heel of round, and other gelatinous cuts with muscle separation and gristle—3 to 4 hours.

Taste carefully for strength and seasoning; if weak, boil down rapidly to concentrate flavor, adding, if you think it necessary, a little tomato paste, another clove of mashed garlic, more herbs, salt, and pepper. When you are satisfied, remove from heat; you should have about 3 cups of rich and delicious liquid that must now be thickened into a sauce with beurre manié. To do so, blend flour and butter to a smooth paste with rubber spatula; beat vigorously into hot liquid with wire whip. When perfectly smooth, bring liquid to the simmer, stirring with wire whip, and simmer 2 minutes. Sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon, meaning it will coat the meat nicely. If too thin, add half again as much beurre manié; if too thick, stir in stock or bouillon. Fold the sauce into the meat in the casserole.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If you are not serving immediately, set cover askew and keep warm in a 120-degree oven, over simmering water, or on a hot-tray. For serving several hours or several days later, let cool; lay plastic wrap over surface, cover, and refrigerate (or wrap airtight and freeze for several weeks).

VARIATIONS

Boeuf au Pistou

[Beef Stew with an Herb, Cheese, and Garlic Finish]

This delicious enrichment comes at the very end, after the sauce has been thickened and just before you are ready to serve the beef. The fresh garlic, herbs, cheese, and a bit of tomato will pep up any stew, and is particularly useful for leftovers and canned or frozen mixtures.

Boeuf à la Provençale

[Beef Stew with Garlic and Anchovy Finish]

The mixture of anchovies, capers, garlic, and parsley described in Volume I, page 324, is an alternate enrichment. Add it as directed for the pistou in the preceding recipe.

Boeuf en Pipérade

[Beef Stew with a Garnish of Peppers and Tomatoes]

Another enlivening finish to a stew is the pipérade, a fresh sauté of green peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs.

Boeuf aux Olives

[Beef Stew with Olives and Potatoes]

Olives give a very Mediterranean touch and subtle flavor to anything they cook with, and potatoes make the stew practically a one-dish meal. Any of the three preceding garnishes—peppers, anchovies, or pistou—may be included as well, if you wish.

Boeuf au Gingembre

[Beef Stew Flavored with Ginger, Capers, and Herbs]

Ginger gives an especially attractive and unusual flavor to beef, and this dish has rather Chinese overtones of sweet and sour. Because of the special flavors, including vinegar, the usual red wine of the beef stew is omitted in this recipe.

NOTE: When beef is tender, at end of Step 3, and you have drained out, skimmed, boiled down, and seasoned the cooking liquid as directed in the next step, you will probably find that it has thickened enough so that you need do nothing more to it.

STUFFED BEEF ROLLS

Paupiettes de Boeuf—Roulades

Thin slices of beef rolled around a stuffing and braised in wine is only a more elaborate way of presenting the familiar beef stew. Paupiettes with a pork and veal stuffing and mustard sauce appear in Volume I on page 319, an excellent recipe. The first one here is a giant paupiette de Gargantua, serving 6 people, while variations are for individual rolls. Stuffings include a Provençal mixture of greens, onions, pork, and ham, an olive mixture, a pepper mixture, and a final combination of rice, garlic, and herbs.

BEEF CUTS FOR PAUPIETTES

Look for solid pieces of meat that will make large, thin, cross-grain slices with no muscle separations. Avoid cuts like brisket, which tend to fall into long, loose fibers after cooking. Top round (tende de tranche, noix) is our first choice, and a cut from the upper-middle portion will give perfect slices 10 to 12 inches across by 5 to 7 inches. Rump (rumsteck) works nicely, of course, but it is a waste to spend the extra money for rump when round is equally good. Bottom round (gîte à la noix) is a little grainier than top round, but a satisfactory alternative. Shoulder-arm steak (macreuse) is fourth choice only because of the gristle running through part of the slice, but you can clip the gristle in several places so that it will not draw the meat out of shape.

  LA PAUPIETTE DE GARGANTUA

[Giant Stuffed Beef Roll]

Rather than making a number of individual paupiettes, this recipe rolls them all into one, and, because the stuffing is green, you need no green vegetable garnish. You could accompany the paupiette with broiled tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, and glazed carrots, or with braised lettuce or endives and sautéed potatoes. Another suggestion is one of the unusual purées, squash and white beans, rice and turnips with garlic, or rutabagas. A full red wine is called for, as in all beef dishes: Burgundy, Moulin-à-Vent, Côtes-du-Rhône.

For 6 people

TIMING: 1½ to 2 hours for top-grade beef; as much as an hour more for other cuts and qualities.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTES: Meat may be either stuffed or browned in advance of braising. Braised meat may be kept warm in a 120-degree oven for an hour or more. It may be cooled and reheated, but will not have quite the same delicious texture.

Other stuffings—other garnishings

In addition to the green-pepper stuffing and the garlic and rice stuffing in the following variations, and the veal and pork stuffing on page 319 in Volume I, other possibilities are listed. Rather than the braising and sauce-making system described here, you may follow that for the daube, or for the beef stews and their variations, which include pistou, pipérade, and ginger flavorings.

VARIATION

The following recipe describes the procedure for making individual paupiettes. We have suggested large and luxurious slices of meat; the stuffing is spread over them, and the slice is rolled up like a rug. When you wish to be more economical, make twice the amount of stuffing, use beef slices half as large, and rather than rolling like a rug, fold the meat around the stuffing to enclose it, almost exactly as illustrated for the stuffed cabbage leaves.

Paupiettes de Boeuf à la Catalane

[Beef Rolls Stuffed with Peppers, Onions, and Mustard Bread]

For 4 paupiettes, 1 per person

Follow the ingredients and method in the Master Recipe, Steps 4 through 6.

OTHER STUFFINGS FOR PAUPIETTES

Farce Niçoise

[Olive and Pimento Stuffing with Garlic and Herbs]

For 4 paupiettes—2 cups

La Farce à l’Ail de Mme. Cassiot

[Rice and Garlic Stuffing with Herbs]

This fine and very simple stuffing for garlic lovers may have either rice or rather coarse stale bread crumbs for a base. If it is bread crumbs, however, they must come from the type of bread that has texture and body, like your own French bread. Because the typical store-bought, white, squashy bread disintegrates into mush, we have confined our recipe to rice. If you want crumbs and have the right sort, stir ½ cup beef stock or bouillon into 1½ cups of stale crumbs; let sit 5 minutes, then squeeze crumbs as dry as possible in the corner of a towel.

For 4 paupiettes—2 cups

  BOEUF EN DAUBE À LA PROVENÇALE

[Braised Pot Roast of Beef with Wine, Tomatoes, and Provençal Flavorings]

This is a large, whole piece of braising beef larded with strips of ham, marinated in red wine and herbs, and slowly simmered in a lightly thickened mixture of the marinade liquid, beef stock, and tomatoes, which turns into a rich ready-made sauce at the end of the cooking. It is a splendid braising method, and one you can adapt to stews as well as pot roasts, and to duck, goose, lamb, livers, and hearts as well as to beef. Rather than the usual potatoes or pasta and buttered peas or beans, or glazed carrots and onions, and sautéed mushrooms, you could serve the little white turnips sautéed in butter, or the onions stuffed with rice, and either the broccoli braised in butter or one of the sautéed zucchinis. A full-bodied red wine is definitely called for here—a Burgundy, a Côtes-du-Rhône, or a Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

TIMING NOTES

Braised beef may be made ready for cooking a day ahead or may be fully cooked a day or two in advance, if need be. Allow yourself enough leeway for the actual braising, however, if you wish to serve soon after it has cooked. Unless you are sure of your meat quality, allow 5 hours from the moment you put it into the oven to the moment you wish to serve. This will give you extra time for tough meat, and leisure for the details of trimming and sauce making.

BEEF CUTS FOR BRAISING WHOLE

TOP ROUND, tende de tranche. Sometimes called inside round, this is a first-choice piece for braising whole because it is solid meat with no separations, and is not fibrous when cooked.

UNDERCUT CHUCK, basses côtes découvertes. The continuation of the roast rib of beef section into the shoulder end, usually ribs 2 to 5, makes a choice and tender morsel. You will probably find this only at Jewish or European markets, although a supermarket boneless chuck pot roast can substitute for it.

SHOULDER-ARM POT ROAST, macreuse. Again, this may not be available except at Jewish or foreign markets; it will usually take longer cooking than the two preceding cuts, but has excellent flavor.

BOTTOM ROUND OR SILVERSIDE, and EYE OF ROUND, gîte à la noix and rond de gîte à la noix. These two cuts always look attractive, especially the eye of round, with its long, shapely form that resembles a tenderloin. We prefer the bottom round to the eye because it is less fibrous when cooked, but both are acceptable choices.

SIRLION TIP or KNUCKLE, tranche grasse. This cut from the round has numerous muscle separations, and is sometimes called knuckle because it passes over the knee of the hind leg. It braises well, but needs firm tying to give it an attractive shape.

MIDDLE OF BRISKET, milieu de poitrine. Although coarse-grained when cooked, brisket has excellent flavor; slice it on the bias like flank steak. A good butcher will bone and de-fat it for you; if it is a long, flat piece, roll and tie it for braising.

For 8 to 10 people

In about half an hour, check to see that liquid is simmering slowly, not bubbling fast: regulate oven throughout cooking so that liquid remains at a slow but definite simmer. Baste and turn the beef several times during cooking.

Beef is done when a fork pierces it easily, but it must not be cooked so long that it begins to fall apart. Aged, top-quality American beef usually takes 3½ hours; other grades or qualities may take an hour or so longer.

Remove beef from casserole to a board or platter. Cut and discard trussing string, discard fat covering beef (or trim off suet adhering to beef and the gristle under it); trim off any loose bits of meat.

Remove bones from casserole, then pour contents of casserole through a sieve set over a large saucepan; press juices out of ingredients and into saucepan with a wooden spoon. Discard contents of sieve. Let liquid settle a few minutes in saucepan, then skim off all surface fat with a spoon; bring liquid back to the simmer, skimming off additional fat. Taste very carefully for seasoning and strength. You should have 4 to 5 cups of richly fragrant sauce, deep reddish brown, and the consistency of a lightly thickened soup that would coat the meat nicely, and coats the spoon. If you feel sauce should be thicker or lacks depth of flavor, boil it down rapidly to concentrate it. If it seems necessary, add and simmer a pinch of herbs, garlic, or tomato paste or a little concentrated bouillon. (If sauce has reduced too much during braising, thin out with more stock or water.)

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTES: You may complete recipe to this point; return beef to casserole and pour the sauce over it. Cover and keep warm, basting occasionally, in a 150-degree oven or upon 2 asbestos mats over low heat on top of the stove. For serving several hours or 2 days later, let cool, then cover and refrigerate; reheat for half an hour or so, basting and turning meat several times, in a 325-degree oven.

CARVING AT THE TABLE. Place the meat on a warm platter, spoon a little of the hot sauce over it to glaze its surface. Decorate platter with sprigs of parsley or watercress. Pass separately the rest of the sauce and whatever vegetables you are serving.

SERVING THE MEAT SLICED, ON A PLATTER. Carve the meat in the kitchen and arrange in overlapping slices on a warm, slightly buttered platter. Spoon some of the sauce around the meat, and decorate platter with parsley or watercress, or with whatever vegetable garnish you wish. Pass rest of sauce and other vegetables separately.

Leftovers

Leftovers, whether sliced or not, may be reheated in the sauce, if any is left over, or in another sauce with the same flavorings. See also the tous nus, and the list of stuffings, both calling for ground leftover braised beef.

To serve cold

A delicious salade de boeuf à la parisienne is made with cold braised beef in Volume I, page 543, or an aspic, boeuf mode en gelée, again in Volume I, on page 556.

VARIATIONS

Boeuf en Caisse, Surprise

[Stuffed, Braised Pot Roast of Beef—Beef Case]

Like that present for the man who has everything, this is an enjoyable conceit for the cook who has cooked everything who wants to surprise guests who have eaten everything. A splendid piece of beef comes to the table looking like a typical boeuf mode. But no, it is not. When the host begins to serve, it is revealed that the beef was ingeniously hollowed out before braising, filled with a fragrant garniture of onions, mushrooms, olives, and herbs, and these slowly imparted their flavors to the meat while it cooked. You might accompany this with the purée of yellow squash and white beans, or the purée of rice and turnips with herbs and garlic. Either a plainly cooked green vegetable or broiled tiny tomatoes might also be included, and the red wine choices would again be Burgundy, Côtes-du-Rhône, or Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

For 8 to 10 people

The first step is to make the cover: starting at one end of what you have decided is the topside of the beef, cut an even slice ½ inch thick to within ½ inch at the other end, where slice remains attached like the cover of a book.

Bend the cover back. In the main body of the meat, cut a rectangular incision 1 inch deep and ½ inch from outside edges.

Make lengthwise and crosswise cuts 1 inch deep and about ¾ inch apart, to form cubes.

Cut out cubes of meat with scissors or with a knife. You now have a hinged case of beef with probably 2 inches of solid meat at the bottom, ½ inch at the sides, and an inch of hollow space underneath the cover.

Make 1 or 2 loops of string around length of beef and enough around circumference to hold cover securely in place over garniture.

Either drape the fat over the beef and tie in place with string, or wrap and tie the entire case in caul fat or a double thickness of damp cheesecloth.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: May be completed to this point as much as a day in advance; wrap in plastic and refrigerate.

Because the beef has already been browned, you need only follow the general method outlined for the preceding daube with its brown roux, here, or the simpler braising method for the beef stew here with its beurre-manié sauce thickening.

Unless the beef is carved and served at the table, there will be no surprise. After removing strings and other extraneous matter, place beef on a hot platter, spoon a little of the sauce over it, and decorate platter with vegetables or parsley. To serve, pry cover loose and lift it, so that the garniture may be admired, then replace and cut straight through the meat as though it were a loaf of bread. Heap the garniture of mushrooms, olives, and beef cubes over each serving, and moisten with a big spoonful of sauce.

HOW TO LARD A PIECE OF MEAT

In the old days, when meat was tougher and far leaner than it is today, and when venison and game were plentiful, strips of pork fat were inserted through it to baste and moisten the interior of the meat during cooking. Now meat is larded more often because it is the stylish thing to do, and the bits of pork fat, ham, or whatever has been inserted make attractive designs when the meat is sliced.

Larding fat—pork fat and beef suet

The best fat to use is fresh pork fatback because it is hard and smooth. If you cannot find it, use blanched fat bacon or salt pork, or fat from the outside of a fresh pork loin. (If you do not wish to use pork fat, substitute suet from the outside of a rib or loin of beef.) Cut the fat into whatever length and width will fit your larding needle, making a test piece first to be sure you will have a snug fit; chill the fat for easy handling.

The larding process

In order to lard meat you must have a larding needle, or lardoire, a hollow tube or trough of steel shaped like a giant steel pen point with a wooden handle. Starting just back from the point, press the strip of fat down into the trough of the lardoire, being sure fat fits snugly so that it will not slip out when the lardoire is pushed through the meat.

Meat is larded with strips of fat running parallel to the grain, so that when the meat is sliced you will cut across the strips of fat. Insert point of lardoire into one end of meat, and with a continuous, slow, clockwise rotation, push the instrument gradually through until point of lardoire and ½ inch of fat protrude from the other end of the meat.

With the point of a small knife, gently dig end of fat-strip out of trough at protruding end of lardoire.

Then dig other end of fat-strip out of trough at the other end of the lardoire.

Hold the thumb of your left hand in the trough of the lardoire against the fat-strip, thus preventing fat from slipping out of meat while you slowly, with a slight rocking rotation left and right, withdraw the lardoire from the meat leaving the fat in its place.

Insert as many other fat-strips as you wish—a piece of meat 4½ to 5 inches in diameter will take 4 to 6. Tie the meat into shape with strong white string.

BEEF TENDERLOIN
Filet de Boeuf

The central and the right-hand sections together, in this drawing, constitute what is usually meant in American retail meat markets by a whole tenderloin: to be technically correct, it should be called the whole short-loin tenderloin. It weighs 4½ to 5 pounds untrimmed, and contains 3½ to 4 pounds of usable meat. When you are serving 6 to 8 people, you may wish the central section only, le coeur du filet, which will give you a roast of 2½ to 3 pounds that averages 8 to 10 inches in length. For 10 to 12 people you will need the whole piece, and may fold the last 2 inches of the tail (right-hand side) back upon itself as illustrated further on, to make a 12-inch roast that is 3½ to 4 inches in diameter when tied.

If by chance your market does cut whole sides of beef, you may be able to buy the whole tenderloin with butt end attached. Depending on the cutting method, the butt alone contains only a little over 1½ pounds of usable meat, although it weighs slightly more than 3 pounds; to be deprived of it, therefore, is no great loss, tenderloins costing what they do.

TRIMMING A TENDERLOIN

Most meat markets will usually trim, tie, and lard the tenderloin for you, but you should be able to do it yourself so that you will know how the meat is constructed.

When you have an untrimmed tenderloin in front of you, you will note a definite difference in the 2 long, flat sides. On one there is a series of thick ridges and depressions more or less marbled with fat depending on the grade of the beef carcass; this side is where the filet rested against the 6 vertebrae of the backbone in the small of the back. We shall call this the underside. The other side, which we shall call the top, will have some loose fat clinging to it, mostly at the large end and at the edges; along the central length you will see the main muscle of the tenderloin, covered with a shiny membrane. Starting on this side, rather gingerly pull the loose fat from the top of the membrane and along the edges, being very careful not to detach the 2 long straps of meat lying against each side of the main muscle. The smaller of the two straps is flattish, as though it were a flaplike continuation of the underside; underneath the larger of the straps, la chainette, is a line of fat that should not be disturbed because it attaches the meat to the main muscle.

This is the whole short-loin tenderloin (central and right-hand portions of diagram), showing the 2 chains of meat attached to the length of the main muscle. Do not worry too much if you partially detach them; you are going to tie the meat anyway before roasting, and the ties will make the chains adhere. Although some people advise removing these chains of meat, you will diminish your roast by more than half its weight if you do so: you will end up with 2 thin strings of meat good only for sautéing or skewering, and your filet proper will weigh only 2 pounds. This is entirely a matter of your own preference, of course; we leave them on.

After pulling excess fat from the top of the meat, you must also remove the shiny membrane that covers the main muscle on this side, and as much of it on the large chain of meat as you easily can. Remove the membrane in half-inch strips the length of the meat, scraping under it with a small, sharp knife. (If you happen to have an actual whole tenderloin with butt included, you will notice that the main muscle with its membrane continues into the butt for several inches before it loses itself. You may wish to separate this main muscle from the rest, making it a continuation of your roast. The surrounding meat will make excellent steaks or sautés. It is rather a question of how it looks to you while you are trimming: as long as all the membranes are removed, all of the meat is good either for roasting or sautéing.)

Finally, inspect the underside of the meat and remove what you consider to be obviously excess fat; a reasonable amount left on will help to baste the meat as it roasts. Meat is now trimmed and ready for cooking. The following directions are for roasting; directions for steaks are in Volume I, pages 291 and 296–300. Do not forget the sautés of beef, Volume I, pages 325–8, which are delicious for meat from the butt, the chains, and the tail; you may also adapt sautés for any leftover cooked tenderloin.

TYING AND LARDING THE TENDERLOIN

Whether it is roasted or braised, and whether you are using the heart (central section) or the whole tenderloin, the circumference must be tied to keep the meat together and to force it into cylindrical rather than oval shape for even cooking. Use the rather thick, soft, white butcher’s string, often called corned-beef twine, if you can find it. The top of the meat is the side formerly covered by a shiny membrane, as opposed to the ridged side, which rested against the back bone.

When you are roasting the whole tenderloin, turn the last 2 inches of the tail back under its ridged side to make the roast even in diameter throughout its length.

When you wish to tie the meat without larding it, tie or wind firm loops of string around the circumference at 1¼-inch intervals.

To lard and tie the meat, drape pork fat or suet over the top of the meat and down under the folded tail to hold it in place. Tie a loop of string around the length of the meat. (If you do not have long strips of fat, overlap short ones as shown in the illustrations.)

Then arrange strips of fat over the sides of the meat; tie loops of string around the circumference.

If you can find or order caul fat, that marvelous membrane webbed with fat that comes from inside the pig, it is perfect for wrapping a tenderloin that is roasted with a covering of mushroom duxelles or mirepoix, or for the sliced, stuffed tenderloin. Here the tenderloin is laid on the caul fat and the flavoring is being spread over it.

Fold a double thickness of caul fat around the meat to enclose it completely, and tie in place. The caul fat browns and tends to merge with the meat and stuffing.

  FILET DE BOEUF POÊLÉ

[Tenderloin of Beef, Casserole-roasted with Aromatic Vegetables]

A favorite roasting method that comes to us from the old classic cuisine is poêlage, meaning to brown the meat and then roast it in a covered casserole with les aromates. This is particularly successful with beef tenderloin because the aromatic ingredients, even though their contact with the meat is brief, subtly enhance its flavor and aroma. In addition, you have a deliciously flavored base for the sauce. Because internal meat temperature rises very quickly when beef is done in a covered roaster, watch it carefully after your meat thermometer reaches 110 degrees. (Make a guess if your thermometer starts at 130 degrees.)

Suggested Accompaniments: A garnish of watercress and sautéed mushrooms around the meat, and endives à la dauphinoise (gratin of endives and sliced potatoes); red Bordeaux-Médoc wine.

For 10 to 12 people

At least an hour before serving, cover casserole and set over moderately high heat until beef is sizzling, then place in middle level of a preheated oven. Turn and baste beef once in 15 minutes, and rearrange fat on top. Meat is done to very rare at 125 degrees on a meat thermometer and to medium rare at 130; juices will run rosy red when meat is pricked, and roast will feel slightly springy rather than squashy (like raw beef) when pressed. Set beef on a warm platter and leave at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes while finishing sauce.

Cut and discard trussing strings, and arrange beef on hot platter with whatever vegetables or garnish you have chosen. Pour several spoonsful of sauce over the beef to glaze it, and serve at once. (If beef is to be carved in the kitchen, place on a carving board that will collect juices; rapidly cut meat into slices ½ inch thick and rearrange on warm platter with garnish around them. Pour carving juices over meat, and pass sauce separately.)

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If you cannot serve immediately, remove strings but do not carve meat; after it has rested 10 to 15 minutes and the sauce is made except for the final butter enrichment, return meat to casserole and baste with the sauce. Set cover askew and place either over barely simmering water or in an oven no hotter than 120 degrees. Meat can stay thus for a good hour before serving.

VARIATIONS

Tenderloin Baked in a Cloak of Mushrooms or of Matignon

To give the meat more flavor, you may either slice it and re-form with a stuffing between each slice as in the beef en feuilletons, or you may use that same mushroom stuffing but spread it over the whole filet as illustrated. In this second case, however, you must have caul fat to hold the mushrooms in place. Rather than mushrooms, you may wish to use the matignon of diced cooked carrots, onions, celery, ham, and wine in Volume I, page 303. In any case, when the meat is wrapped, brown it as described in the preceding recipe, and casserole-roast it in exactly the same way.

Filet de Boeuf à la Bourgeoise

[Tenderloin of Beef with Onions, Mushrooms, and Olives]

Whether casserole-roasted, plain roasted, or braised, a filet of beef surrounded with onions, mushrooms, and green olives is as attractive to look at as it is to eat. The garniture is cooked in advance, and simmers in the sauce to blend flavors before being arranged around the beef; you may wish to add sautéed potatoes to the platter, or the zucchini timbale. Cook the filet and prepare the sauce as in the preceding Master Recipe, or braise it with or without a stuffing as described in Volume I, page 303. Prepare the garniture as follows:

Filet de Boeuf en Feuilletons, Duxelles

[Tenderloin of Beef Sliced, Stuffed with Mushrooms and Roasted]

By slicing the raw tenderloin, seasoning each slice, and spreading it with wine-flavored mushroom duxelles and then re-forming the roast, you will have a deliciously flavored tenderloin that practically serves itself. For this you should have as long a piece of the main tenderloin muscle as possible with no under-turning tail, so that you will have large slices. (Drawings and discussion of tenderloin are at the beginning of this section.)

For 16 slices ½ inch thick, serving 8 to 10

Brown the beef and the aromatic vegetables that accompany it as described in the Master Recipe, Step 1. (It will brown perfectly well in its cheesecloth covering.) Roast, as directed in Step 2, counting 30 to 40 minutes and leaving the meat red-rare (125 degrees on a meat thermometer). Remove from casserole as soon as it is done, and leave at room temperature for 15 minutes while finishing the sauce described in Step 3.

Set beef on hot serving platter and cut string and cheesecloth, carefully pulling them out from around and under the meat (15 minutes rest will have drawn slices of meat together). Spoon enough sauce over meat to glaze it nicely, arrange around it whatever garnish you have chosen, and serve, passing rest of sauce separately. Server need only spread top of meat apart with large fork and spoon to show location of each slice, which is then served with its share of duxelles stuffing.

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: Use the same system as in the Master Recipe, but do not untie meat until just before serving.

Filet de Boeuf en Croûte

[Tenderloin of Beef Baked in Pastry—Beef Wellington Brioché]

We do not know whether the English, the Irish, or the French baked the first filet of beef in a crust, but we can be certain that the French would not have named it after Wellington. It is a remarkably handsome, sumptuous dish when properly made. Most good recipes specify a whole piece of tenderloin that is preroasted 25 minutes, cooled, surrounded with a mushroom and foie gras stuffing, then wrapped in French puff pastry and baked. We think it a great improvement to substitute brioche dough for puff pastry: fully risen brioche dough is deflated, thoroughly chilled, then rolled thin, draped over the meat and baked immediately before the dough has a chance to rise again. The resulting crust is beautiful to look at as well as being light, thin, cooked all the way through and delicious to eat; this is never the case with puff pastry, which cannot bake properly under such circumstances and is always damply dumpling under its handsome exterior. Another improvement is to bake the tenderloin in slices with stuffing in between, as in the preceding recipe: the serving is easy and the taste is vastly improved.

VEGETABLE AND WINE SUGGESTIONS

An important dish like this should be surrounded with few distractions; we would suggest only something green and fresh like buttered new peas or green beans, broccoli flowerettes, or, in season, sliced, fresh, green asparagus spears tossed in butter. Again, a fine red Bordeaux-Médoc would be an excellent choice of wine.

THE SAUCE

Anything as extravagant as this filet de boeuf demands an unusually good sauce. We suggest 2 to 3 cups of the brown sauce or the sauce ragoût in Volume I, pages 67 and 69, simmered several hours for maximum flavor; it will then be further enriched with the cooking juices and deglazing wine from the beef, Step 1 in the following recipe.

For 16 slices of beef ½ inch thick, serving 8 to 10

Its most attractive side up, place the beef on the rectangle of dough. Trim off excess dough from around the beef.

Roll the remaining dough into a rectangle ¼ inch thick and large enough to enclose beef (probably 18 by 8 inches), roll it up on your pin and unroll over the beef.

Trim off any excess dough and reserve for decorations. Tuck the covering dough against the bottom rectangle of dough and under bottom of meat, sealing edges with your fingers. Paint dough covering with egg glaze; in a moment paint with a second coat.

So that any decorations on the crust will show after baking, they must be either deep cuts with raised edges, or dough paste-ons. For instance, you may wish to lay on strips of leftover dough in a design, and paint with egg glaze.

Decorate blank spaces by cutting into surface of dough with scissors, a knife, or the metal end of a pastry tube, making definite edges that stick up. (Cuts are made after glazing, so that the cut portion of the dough will remain pale, accenting the design when dough is baked.)

Immediately the decorations are complete, set beef in oven. The object here is to make sure the dough remains a crust, a thin and crisp covering; if it rises, it will be thick and bready.

Bake in lower-middle level of preheated 425-degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pastry has browned nicely. Lower thermostat to 350 degrees for rest of baking, and cover crust loosely with a sheet of foil or brown paper if it seems to be browning too much. Indications that the meat is done are that you can begin to smell the beef and the stuffing, and that juices begin to escape into the pan; meat thermometer reading for rare beef is 125 degrees.

To serve, cut all around the crust and half an inch up from its bottom. Lift the top crust off onto the platter, and cut into serving portions. Separate the slices of meat with spoon and fork and cut down through the bottom crust so that each slice is served with a portion of stuffing and crust. Spoon a little sauce around the meat, and add a piece of the top crust.

LAMB
Agneau et Mouton

The French take great pride in their lamb and the marvelous quality of their mutton. While we do not easily find the little spring lambs of France in this country, nor the mutton, we are fortunate to have our own type of lamb, of the very finest quality and flavor, throughout the year. Many Americans are so wedded to beef that they forget about lamb, and this is a pity, because a fine leg of lamb roasted red and juicy is a feast for any meat lover. Although we thought we had covered a great deal in Volume I, with lamb stew, roasts in mustard coatings, garlic sauces, and even a boiled leg of lamb, there is more to tell. We now add full instructions on boning the leg, step-by-step illustrated directions on how to carve the saddle like a major-domo, a recipe for stuffed and braised shoulder, and complete drawings on how to make a gigot farci en croûte.

HOW TO BONE A LEG OF LAMB

A fully or partially boned leg of lamb is easy to carve, and you can stuff the cavities where the bones used to be. If only the tail and hip assembly has been removed from the raw meat, that alone is a great help to the carver, and when the main leg bone is also gone, carving is no problem at all. To show that it really is a leg of lamb you are serving, leave the shank bone in unless you want a rolled leg for spit roasting. Although most butchers will cut out the tail and hip for you, they may not want to take the time for a careful boning of the main leg portion. If you enjoy working with your hands, do all the boning yourself and you will learn more about meat and carving, because you will become familiar with the bones, their shapes, and their positions.

Furnish yourself with two stout-bladed, very sharp knives, one small and one larger. Always keeping the knife blade against the bone, scrape all around against the complicated structure of the tail-hip assembly, disfiguring the meat as little as possible, until you are able to cut the tendons that join the hip to the ball joint of the main leg bone, thus releasing the hip.

To remove the main leg bone, cut around its exposed ball joint buried in the thick end of the meat. Loosen flesh all around and down the bone inside the meat until you come to its opposite ball joint at the knee. You now have two choices, one easier and the other longer but cleverer. The easiest way to remove the bone is to slit the underside of the meat at the knee to expose the bones; making as small a hole outside as possible, cut around knee joint, sever tendons, and draw the bone out from the large end of the meat. Close the meat neatly at the knee by sewing or skewering. The longer maneuver is to get the bone without piercing the skin at the knee. By persistent poking and cutting around the bone inside the meat at the joint, by twisting the bone, by turning the meat inside out around the bone as far down as you can for better visibility, you will finally be able to free it from the tendons attaching it to the knee and pull the bone out.

The flap of meat that contained the hip and tail, at the large end of the leg, is called the sirloin. You may slice it off and use at another meal for roasting, steaks, or shishkebob, or you may grind part of it for stuffing back into the leg as suggested in the following recipe. (If you wish to leave the flap on, skewer it against the main body of the leg after stuffing.)

With the sirloin off, you have what is known as a short (or Frenched) leg of lamb. (For gigot farci en croûte, this is what you need.)

Either fill the pocket with stuffing, pushing it well down into all spaces left by the bones, or sprinkle in a flavoring of salt, pepper, minced parsley, a clove of minced garlic, and a big pinch of rosemary or thyme.

Whether filled or not, close the pocket with skewers and string.

RECIPES FOR BONED LEG OF LAMB

You may proceed with the recipe for gigot farci en croûte, or you may roast the boned, stuffed, and skewered leg of lamb just as it is, following the Master Recipe in Volume I, page 332; it is also delicious roasted with the herbal mustard coating also in Volume I, on page 335. After the roast has rested 15 to 20 minutes out of the oven, the meat will have settled into place and you can remove the string and skewers. To carve, cut down in bias (diagonal) slices across the grain, first from one side of the large end, then from the other; if the first few slices contain no stuffing, set aside for second helpings. When you come to the thinner portion of the meat nearer the shank, you can cut straight across.

GIGOT FARCI, EN CROÛTE

[Boned, Stuffed Lamb Baked in Pastry]

At least one great French provincial restaurant has made its reputation on gigot farci en croûte, and any home cook who has mastered French puff pastry or brioche dough can make this splendidly dramatic presentation every bit as well. The recipe consists of the boned and stuffed leg of lamb, illustrated in the preceding pages, which is first roasted in a very hot oven until partially cooked, then draped in pastry, decorated with pastry cutouts, glazed, and set back in the oven again to cook and brown the crust. Although you have to watch your timing on this so as not to overcook the lamb, it is reasonably amenable to delays as indicated by the asterisks (*) at the end of most of the steps in the recipe. Do go over it well before starting in, so that you will have a good idea of timing and of stopping points. We suggest that you make the pastry dough the day before serving. You might also bone the lamb, prepare the stuffing, and simmer the sauce called for in Step 7; the actual cooking will then be much simplified.

Even though you have the crust, there is not much of it per serving and you may also wish a potato dish such as the scalloped potatoes, gratin dauphinois, in Volume I on page 523, the gratin with cheese and cream following it, or the unusual potato and endive gratin. Brussels sprouts, broccoli, buttered spinach, or fresh green peas might also be included. This gigot naturally calls for the best in wines, giving you an opportunity to bring out your finest, château-bottled, red Bordeaux-Saint-Émilion.

THE CRUST, AND PUFF PASTRY VERSUS BRIOCHE DOUGH

Although puff pastry is traditional, it never quite cooks through when it covers rare-roasted meat, while brioche dough, if it is not allowed its final rise before baking, will form a crisp, brown crust. This question is discussed in the preamble to Beef Wellington, where you have the same choice.

For 10 to 12 people

(*) RESTING AND AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTES: Lamb must rest for 30 minutes at least before final cooking, so that meat will draw together and hold stuffing in place. It must also cool off a little bit so that it will not overcook under its pastry, but it must not cool so much that it loses its juicy, freshly cooked character. If you are not ready to continue for some time, you may keep it perfectly for an hour or more anywhere that you can maintain a temperature of around 100 to 110 degrees, such as a warming oven, or the turned-off oven, reheating it for a moment every now and then.

Rapidly roll pastry out into a flattened pear shape ¼ inch thick, 6 inches longer at the large end, and 6 inches wider than the leg of lamb. Starting at large end, unroll or unfold the pastry over the lamb.

Leaving an inch of the shank bone exposed, allow enough pastry to tuck in all around and enclose lamb completely; trim off excess. Push the pastry against the undersides of the meat with your fingers: the bottom of the lamb rests on the pan, and the pastry simply encloses all visible meat.

Make pastry cutouts with leftover dough, such as long strips ⅜ inch wide cut with a pastry wheel, and 2-inch ovals formed with a fluted cookie cutter. Paint top of covering dough with egg glaze, and press the decorations into place.

When all decorations are in place, brush surface of dough and decorations with egg glaze. Draw the tines of a table fork over glaze and lightly into dough, to make cross-hatch marks on entire surface. Insert optional meat thermometer where indicated, at a downward-slanting angle from shank so that point of thermometer lodges in the thickest portion of solid meat near large end. Immediately proceed to next step. (Note that if you are using brioche dough, you are not to let it rise; it is to be baked immediately.)

Place in middle level of preheated oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until pastry has started to brown nicely; reduce heat to 400 degrees for the final 5 to 10 minutes of baking. Lamb is done to rosy rare at a thermometer reading of 130 degrees, or at the first sign of juices exuding from underside of lamb onto baking sheet. (NOTE: Some prefer lamb rarer, 125 degrees on the thermometer, while others like it medium rare, or around 140 to 145 degrees. Roast the lamb to the thermometer reading you prefer.)

Remove lamb from oven as soon as it is done; carefully lift it, and slide a rack under it so that the juices will not moisten the crust. Lamb should rest 15 to 20 minutes before carving. (When ready to serve, place lamb on platter, and pour any accumulated juices into whatever sauce you have prepared.)

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: Lamb will stay warm enough in its crust for 30 minutes; after that return to warming oven or anywhere that you can maintain a temperature of 110 to 120 degrees, where it may remain another half hour at least.

ÉPAULE D’AGNEAU FARCIE, VIROFLAY

[Braised, Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb]

Shoulder of lamb is far less expensive than leg of lamb, usually by at least a third, and is an elegant roast when stuffed and braised. The spinach and mushroom mixture suggested here makes attractive slices, and if you serve the potatoes in basil and whole baked tomatoes, you will have a colorful and fragrant main course. A red Bordeaux-Saint-Émilion would be an excellent choice of wine.

A NOTE ON BONED SHOULDER OF LAMB

Most markets will bone a lamb shoulder for you, or you will find them ready-boned, rolled, and tied; you untie and unroll them for stuffing. Ask also for a pound or so of sawed lamb bones, or for veal or beef bones, to give character to your braising liquid. (Full information on lamb shoulders is in Volume 1, page 330).

For 8 people

To carve, cut down in bias (diagonal) slices across the grain, first from one side of the short end, then from the other, and spoon a little sauce around the edge of each serving. (If the stuffing does not hold in place, carver should arrange meat attractively around it on plate, for each slice.)

(*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTES: If you are not to serve the lamb at once, replace it in the casserole, pour the sauce around, cover loosely, and set in a 120-degree warming oven, or over barely simmering water, where it will keep nicely for at least 30 minutes.

Other stuffings

Other stuffing possibilities are listed, and 6 stuffings specifically for lamb are in Volume I, pages 336–8.