vegan cross-laminated pain suisse
Every Thanksgiving, hundreds of my relatives gather at the American Legion in Sevierville, Tennessee for our family reunion. My cousin who brought back the sorghum ‘lasses business will have a pint for you if it was a decent year. I would put aside my disinterest in the holiday to visit with the older folks, if it weren't more complicated than that—the sorghum farmer is a retired cop, and I haven't seen my brother in six years since our falling out that Thanksgiving, and my father in South Carolina is getting too elderly for the drive—so I usually spend my yearly family trip on seeing him. This past Thursday, I stayed in with my partner in Oakland as usual, joining many in making lasagna.
A nice note of connection though—my vegan biscuit recipe with sorghum butter got accepted into Abortion Care TN’s fundraiser cookbook. (Thank you so much
for sharing that post!) It is a gift to feel like I have anything to offer, from a distance.This week’s baking highlight: pain suisse! Traditionally a chocolate chip- and cream-filled brioche pastry, more recently done with laminated dough to add some visual interest. I have been thinking about them nonstop since having one at Oakland’s new Tarts de Feybesse location.
I started with my usual Brod & Taylor vegan croissant dough. Flour was King Arthur climate blend, reduced to 376g—this might be wetter than ideal, but I'm experimenting, and finding it easier to roll out the softer dough by hand.
For the pastry cream, I used this one from Gretchen’s Vegan Bakery (in the diplomat cream recipe section, minus the whipped cream). The pastry cream worked in terms of holding its shape, but it was a bit sweet for me, and I'm excited to explore vegan pastry creams that go in more flavor directions.
recently published one with fava bean flour, and it is on my list to try with a bag of Bob's Red Mill garbanzo and fava flour (easier to find than straight fava around here, I think). I love beany desserts and hope that taste is prominent!I added some candied grapefruit peel to the filling made with
’s method, published in Nature's Candy and in ’s newsletter:
I shaped the pastries following this video from Caleb Lam—including the relevant part of Lam’s directions below. Lam’s dough is roughly half the amount of the Brod & Taylor recipe I used. I rolled my dough to roughly 8 x 17” in the first step, before rolling the cross-laminated dough to roughly 10 x 18” and cutting 8 strips, approximately 2.5 x 9” each.
10. Roll out to 17 x 30cm [6.7 x 11.8in] (6-7 mm thickness). Cut the dough in half. Using a sharp knife, cut one half into strips, revealing the cross section. Place the strips with the cross section facing up on the other half of the dough. Chill as necessary.
11. Roll out to 31cm x 31cm [12.2 x 12.2in] (4-5mm thickness). Chill for 1-2 hours or freeze overnight.
12. Cut into 6 strips (6cm x 30cm [2.4 x 11.8in]). With the cross-laminated side down, pipe pastry cream into the center of the strip. [This is also where to add your chocolate and any other fillings.]
13. Bring the ends together, and overlap at least 1 cm. Proof seam-side down for 2 hours.
14. Bake at 425F (220) for 10 min, lower to 375F and bake for 15 more min. Once out of the oven, brush with a thin layer of simple syrup.
Lam’s method worked out well for me, except that my dough needed longer proofing. I tried baking half the pastries after two hours proofing (in proofer set to 75F), and they were so compact that I thought that maybe I had squished every bit of lamination out. The Brod & Taylor croissant recipe calls for proofing 2.5-4 hours, and my second batch proofed just under 3 hours had much better oven rise.
One reason I'm enjoying the laminated pastries so much is that they allow me to do what I feel I should be doing to improve as a baker (use the same dough recipe, preferably at least weekly), and what I want to do (play with an infinite variation of pastries out there, which may be out of my skill level, but will still end up charming and delicious). Eating the evidence of my non-Instagrammy honeycomb every week is not terrible!
more eating
Woven lasagna — I used Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson’s recipe as written, but was talking with
about how it would be fun do to a vegan version with her ricotta! Either way, I feel that the prosciutto was too much, and will use the mushroom duxelles substitution next time.
From the garden — rice pudding with community garden goat milk, noyaux, and Ashleigh Shanti’s kitchen pepper.
cherry tomato-chili crisp sauce with community garden eggs and tomatoes, and garden food bank onions. Noma staff chili, which I didn't and wouldn't pay for.reading/listening
’s Save Me The Plums: My Gourmet Memoir — this week's Libby audiobook. I enjoyed this account of a 50-year-old out of her depth. At 42, I'm eager for reinventions (whether or not they involve money or clout)! Also, from now on, when I need an internet break, I will be quoting her: “It was time to shrink my profile.”Rereading
in conversation with Aaron McIntosh. Love this interview that weaves between South Carolina and Tennessee, two places I call home in some way.
The Younger Lovers - Sugar in my Pocket
I’m so impressed with your cross-lamination!! I wonder why it took longer to proof? My lamination experiments always take 4-5 hours to proof, I get so impatient!! 😂
These buns look AMAZING. Your patience and focus in kitchen projects is so inspiring.
I hope the sauce was good! I eat so much shakshuka I need to endlessly switch it up 😅