What's Rosie Been Up To This Weekend?

Rosie's been a busy little baker this weekend. I decided to take a bit of a swim in the deep end, so to speak. I will be making Tourte Milanese, from Dorie Greenspan's Baking With Julia, based on Julia's PBS series. And yes, there's a "u" in tourte the way they spell it so who am I to argue? Baking With Julia has beautiful photographs in it and that's how I picked out this particular dish to make. I was looking for something different and then the picture settled it for me. I had already made one delicious dish from this book, cherry galette, so I was excited about trying another. The first thing I needed to tackle was puff pastry. And not the type out of the grocery freezer. I've tried that and don't like it. Sometimes, homemade is the only way to go. Monkey business, I tell ya!

Here are the ingredients for my puff pastry: 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/4 cups cake flour 1 TB salt 1 1/4 cups ice water 4 sticks very cold unsalted butter Julia had to adapt her recipe, which she started out making the classical way in France, to accommodate American flours. Apparently, French flour has a much lower gluten content than American flour and working with American flour tends to make the dough rubbery and hard to roll out. Hence, her addition of cake flour, which has a lower gluten content than all-purpose flour. Now, what is gluten you ask. From the Latin word for glue, gluten is a protein found in flour, formed during bread making. Stop me if I start sounding like Alton, but there are 2 protein molecules in flour - glutanin and gliadin - which combine to form gluten when water is added to flour and the dough is kneaded. The gluten forms a molecular network that traps carbon dioxide created by yeast, giving elasticity and strength to baked goods, thus giving bread its characteristic texture and air bubbles. The elastic nature of gluten also holds the dough together, preventing crumbling. For example, bread flour has a relatively high gluten content, so it helps form the air holes in the bread, giving you ... well ... bread. Different types of flours contain different amounts of protein. Cake flour has a low gluten content, typically 6-8% protein. All purpose flour has about 10-12% and bread flour has 12 - 14%. OK, class over.

And here's a note for you novice bakers out there: When measuring dry ingredients, use the scoop and sweep method.

First, scoop up your flour in your measuring cup.

Then sweep off the top to get exactly the measure you want. This is the method I use to measure my flour, then, if you notice my first picture, I dumped the measured amounts into my glass cups.

Wallah! 1 cup of flour.

Pulse the flours and salt just to mix, then add the water, pulsing until the dough forms a ball.

Remove the dough from the food processor and form it into a ball. For some reason, the instructions said to slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Why? I have no idea. But this is Julia, so, again, who am I to argue? Wrap dough in a damp towel and refrigerate.

Next, place the butter between two sheets of plastic wrap and beat it until it flattens into a square about 1 inch thick.

Bring your dough back out place on floured surface. My granite tops are perfect for doughs.

Roll into a 10-inch square.

Place the cold butter in the middle and fold the corners of the dough over top.

Roll out until your dough is 24 inches long.

Then fold into thirds, like a letter.

And fold the top 1/3 over. This is the first turn. Turn dough so closed fold is to your left and roll out to 24 inches, then fold again. This is the second turn.

One of the secrets of making puff pastry is to keep the dough cold at all times. After 2 folds, I refrigerated my dough for about 30 minutes or so. In total, you want 6 folds. And after 6 folds are completed, the finished puff pastry has 994 layers of dough and 993 of butter.

Now to prepare the tourte, cut 1/4 of the dough and set aside. With the remaining dough, roll it out until it's about 1/4 inch thick.

Roll it up with your pin.

And carefully fit the pastry into a buttered springform pan.

Leave about 1 inch of overhang. And save the cut off pieces!

For the 1/4 piece left, roll out to about 1/4 inch and cut a circle to serve as a lid. Refrigerate all puff pastry. And now, I'm ready to start on the fillings for my tourte.

Here, I have chives, parsley, and tarragon.

First, I will be making scrambled eggs.

Just whisk the eggs with the herbs and salt and pepper.

Pour into melted butter over low heat and slowly heat.

You want slightly loose eggs as they will cook again in the tourte.

Set eggs aside and cover while you go to the next step.

Ahhhh.... Roasted red peppers.

Heat over an open flame until blackened and blistered all over.

Now here's a twist. Remember before I've always put the peppers in a paper bag and let the steam help remove the skin. Well, Julia recommends dropping into ice cold water and rubbing the skin off. Works like a charm.

Rinse off and pat dry.

Slice and salt and pepper.

Isn't this pretty? Cover and set aside.

Next up, the spinach.

Dump spinach into rapidly boiling salted water and blanch for 1 minute.

Drain and rinse with cold water.

Squeeze out as much moisture as you can.

And you're left with this sorry little ball o' green.

Melt butter and add minced garlic and pulled apart spinach. Cook for about 2-3 minutes.

Then add about 3 TB heavy cream. Season with salt and pepper and nutmeg.

Cover and set aside.

The tourte calls for smoked ham, thinly sliced. I like to saute mine in some butter first, although Julia didn't specify this.

Ooooh .... Lookie! Everything's ready to assemble. I have my puff pastry container, roasted red pepper slices, scrambled eggs, creamed spinach, ham slices, and Swiss cheese slices.

First, half the eggs go in.

Then half of the spinach.

Half of the cheese.

Half the ham.

All of the peppers.

Then continue layering in reverse order - the remaining ham, cheese, spinach.

And finish with the remaining eggs.

Prepare an egg wash - one egg beaten with 1 TB water.

Pull up overhang and brush with egg wash.

And place the circular top crust over the tourte, seal, and brush with egg wash.

Next I decorated the top a bit before putting it in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

And here it is.

It puffed up very nicely.

This tourte is quite pretty.

Let come to room temp before slicing. It will slice neater. Nice flaky crust.

A colorful, flavorful presentation.

I'm getting hungry again just posting all this. Think I'll go have a piece.