Caroline Schiff changed my life, unbeknownst to her. During a balmy summer evening, I visited the newly reopened Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn—a 125-year-old restaurant where Schiff is the pastry chef. Although everything was delicious, it was her signature coconut lime cake, in tandem with a salty caramel chocolate cake, that left me speechless.
“I nurture everybody through food and baking—that’s how I take care of my friends and family, like a love language,” she explains. “I love my community and the strangers at Gage & Tollner, I love my friends, I love my family. If I go to dinner at their house, I always bring something. It’s how I connect with people.”
So when the pandemic first struck New York City, delaying Gage & Tollner’s grand re-opening once more, Schiff wasn’t exactly sure what to do. There were tears, lots of sleeping, phone calls to her mom, and doom scrolling. It was only when Schiff realized she found calm while she was baking, as her hands were covered in flour, that she devoted herself to the craft at home. That, and she wanted to keep the sourdough starter from Gage & Tollner alive for whenever the world would resume once more.
Schiff went full steam ahead with the sourdough. She was making loaf after loaf of bread, sharing the starter with those who inquired and also sought the joy of baking. In her own words, that’s when she “overdosed on bread” and began turning her attention to new recipes.
“One of the things I love about being a chef is just the creativity [in] the R&D process,” Schiff says. “The stakes are relatively low. Like the worst that happens is it’s not delicious—and then you just don’t make it again or you learn from it.”
The recipes that make up her upcoming cookbook, The Sweet Side of Sourdough, began coming together—despite the fact that Schiff wasn’t intentionally trying to write a recipe book. Instead, she was making sweet rolls with sourdough, cakes, pull-apart breads, cookies—anything she could dream up that still used the live ingredient but wasn’t another loaf of bread. And like a mystical baking fairy of her Greenpoint brownstone, she was distributing her treats to neighbors.
For many, the idea of sourdough in sweets might seem unappealing, but Schiff is a magician with flavors, striking the perfect balance between tang and sugar. “I’ll always have a salty element or a savory element [in my desserts] because I think it makes things a little more compelling and sort of mouth-watering—it makes you want to go back for more,” Schiff explains. “[Sourdough] offers this sort of tanginess or savory undertone that goes really well with salt and caramel and chocolate. It has an earthy quality that goes so well with a lot of fruits.”
Even her chocolate cake—the very same one I obsessively consumed during my evening at Gage & Tollner—has sourdough in it. “It’s not on the menu but it’s just my little secret,” Schiff grins.
But one of the most special recipes Schiff developed for her cookbook is a honey-glazed pull-apart bread. After testing and retesting the recipe, it received the stamp of approval from her friend’s three-year-old daughter, who peeled layer after layer of the buttery enriched dough back, methodically working her way through the loaf. The sticky honey glaze that seeps through the crevices livens up the loaf more, balancing out the sourdough.
“With the pull-apart, you cut these squares of dough and then line them up like a deck of cards. And they bake and they stick together and then [you pour] the glaze right over it while it’s still hot, it kind of trickles down between the layers,” Schiff says. “It’s just so fun to peel one off and just shove it in your mouth or smear some jam on it.”
The loaf is stunning to look at—perfect for a potluck centerpiece—but also unfussy to divvy up.
“It’s super shareable. And I think we were all starved of sharing stuff for so long,” Schiff says. “Now it’s like, I just want to share everything.”
"bread" - Google News
November 05, 2021 at 05:03AM
https://ift.tt/3mILONw
This Holiday-Glazed Pull Apart Bread Lets You Have Sourdough For Dessert - Thrillist
"bread" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2pGzbrj
https://ift.tt/2Wle22m
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "This Holiday-Glazed Pull Apart Bread Lets You Have Sourdough For Dessert - Thrillist"
Post a Comment