Confections of a Closet Master Baker Read online

  We were celebrating. We were days away from shooting a new movie. Now was the perfect time—after the work of preparing to film had finished and before we started rolling camera and screwing up—to party and pretend that everything would proceed flawlessly.

  To commemorate the event, our host had proudly emblazoned T-shirts with what he thought was the perfect title for our project and had made one for each of the relevant cogs in the film, a lovely and thoughtful gesture to be sure.

  He passed them out with great fanfare. To the writer/ directors, to the studio executives, to the movie stars, and when he got to my lonely end of the table, I waited with an expectant and gracious smile, turtleneck snug up to my chin, a piece of guinea hen lodged uncomfortably between my front teeth. But I didn’t get a T-shirt. The T-shirt well was dry. I accidentally locked eyes again with my awkward dining companion at the other table and he gave me a sympathetic shrug.

  I should have been used to working on projects without anyone giving a shit about what I did. I don’t know why I wasted time being insulted. But I was, and now all I wanted was dessert to make me feel better.

  I was tired of sulking and feeling like a martyr; I wanted to grow up and stop caring about getting a pat on the back and my very own sweatshop T-shirt. But no one else was going to lead me to fulfillment and happiness. That wasn’t anyone’s obligation but my own. I had to stop being a spineless weenie. I had to stop complaining and expecting fulfillment from my work and kindness from my colleagues; no one was holding a gun to my head and forcing me to live in Hollywood. Either I had to shut up or move on.

  The pastry chef came to our table and placed a small brown bag in front of each of us, saying, “This is for breakfast or a midnight snack.” I opened the parcel she’d left on the table and took a whiff of warm sticky bun, comfort in a bag, much better than a stupid old T-shirt any day. Like the warm bread and chocolate we had as kids in Germany as a treat for breakfast, sticky buns embody all things that are nurturing in pastry. And with her gift, this pastry chef had given me the answer to my quandary before I’d even asked the question. It just took me a few more years of misery to finally figure that out.

  Today, I make sticky buns for a living. It’s not always rosy, this life. We make the same things every day; that can get a little monotonous if you’re not thoughtful. If we stop, for a single day, we’ll get grief from customers. But I don’t mind that they use me for my gift; I’m happy to be their pastry slave. And when time is with me and inspiration strikes, I’ll dream up something new and spend an hour madly in love with baking, job satisfaction wrapped in instant gratification. You tell me what you’re craving and I’ll bake it for you. But the joy doesn’t lie in the recognition for making the cake; it’s the act of making the cake that brings me contentment.

  Maple Pecan Sticky Buns

  STICKY BUN DOUGH is ravishing; it’s shiny, spongy, buttery, and soft. Like other rich yeast doughs, Danish and challah, it starts to rise and you want to hug it and bite it. You really shouldn’t. But you can touch it gently and sometimes you have to knock it down, it starts rising so quickly that it spills out of its bowl.

  Yeasted doughs take time. They aren’t tricky but they require patience. This is the pastry you think about making on snowy Sunday mornings but by the time you wake up and decide to go for it, your brioche won’t be ready until dinner. So do what I do in the bakery. Make a batch and freeze them. Then thaw them overnight in the refrigerator and take them out about an hour before you want to bake them to allow them to proof in your cozy kitchen. Brush your little wound pieces of dough on the top and sides with a bit of egg wash and bake them in a 375°F oven for about forty-five minutes and you’re golden.

  And play with the recipe. Feel free to use the dough however you like. Use ground pecans and brown sugar for a filling, or make a traditional cinnamon bun. The dough’s not going to stop working just because you decide to do something a little different; I won’t tell anyone. If this is your first yeast dough, and you like playing with it as much as I do, I suggest you move on to making Danish or challah. Take a dip into making croissants and fill them with chocolate. Be brave but be patient. If you screw up—and you really should a few times if you want to get good—keep trying.

  MAKES 12 BUNS

  For the starter

  1 teaspoon sugar

  ¼ cup warm milk or water (105°F)

  One ¼-ounce package active dry yeast (2½ teaspoons)

  ½ cup sifted all-purpose flour

  For the dough

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  3 tablespoons sugar

  1 tablespoon warm milk or water (100°F)

  2 large eggs

  1½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

  12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for the bowl

  For the Syrup

  8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

  1 cup packed light brown sugar

  1 cup maple syrup

  1 cup chopped pecans

  For the filling

  1 cup packed light brown sugar

  1 cup chopped pecans

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  For assembling the buns

  8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

  FOR THE STARTER

  Combine the sugar and milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Sprinkle the yeast over the mixture and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour, forming a soft dough. Let the starter rise, covered with plastic wrap, at room temperature until doubled.

  FOR THE DOUGH

  Combine the salt, sugar, and milk in a small bowl and stir until the salt and sugar are dissolved.

  Fit the mixer with the dough hook; add the eggs, sugar mixture, and flour to the starter and mix on low until a soft dough forms. Slowly add 1 stick of the butter and mix until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 6 minutes. Add the remaining butter and beat 1 minute, or until the butter is incorporated.

  Lightly butter a large bowl and scrape the dough into the bowl with a rubber spatula. Lightly dust the dough with flour to prevent a crust from forming.

  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until more than doubled in bulk, 2 to 3 hours.

  FOR THE SYRUP

  In a skillet, heat the butter, sugar, and maple syrup until the butter and sugar melt. Set aside and allow to cool.

  FOR THE FILLING

  In a food processor, pulse the sugar, pecans, and cinnamon until the nuts are in fine pieces but be careful not to turn the mixture into a paste.

  TO ASSEMBLE THE BUNS

  Punch down the dough and turn onto a well-floured surface. Gently roll the dough into a 12 by 18-inch rectangle of uniform thickness, preferably at least ¼ inch.

  Spread the soft butter that you’ve set aside over the entire surface of the dough except for the top ½ inch along one long side of the dough. Sprinkle the pecan-sugar mixture evenly over the butter and, starting at the long side opposite the unbuttered ½-inch border, roll the dough like a jelly roll into a log. Pinch the dough along the seam to seal. Using a sharp serrated knife, cut the dough into 12 even pieces.

  If you are freezing the buns, place them on parchment paper on a baking sheet, wrap well with plastic, and store in the freezer.

  If you’re baking them right away, pour the cooled syrup into a half sheet pan and sprinkle with the chopped pecans. Place the sticky buns on top of the mixture, cut side down and evenly spaced, about an inch apart. Let them sit for half an hour to an hour, until puffy. While the buns are resting, preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake until the tops are golden brown and the syrup is bubbly, about 30 minutes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ode to the Oreo

  8 a.m.

  ’M FRANTICALLY STABBING THE SIDE of a plain croissant with a razor-sharp paring knife, making an opening just large enough to shove in three long slivers of bittersweet chocolate. Pop it in the oven at 350°F for a few minutes, enough time to make it a litt
le melty, and then race out to the front to all but shove it in the gaping maw of the kid who won’t let up with the piercing wail. “I WANT A CHOCOLATE CROISSANT! I WANT A CHOCOLATE CROISSANT!”

  Kids, they get cranky when they want sugar. And most kids are pretty specific regarding what will alleviate the whining. Some kids just want a chocolate chip cookie. Don’t bother asking if they want a flaky napoleon or a delicate pistachio blackberry vacherin. The little maniac screaming his pants off at the counter clearly had his heart set on a chocolate croissant. So I’m happy to make one on the fly, not just to stop the god-awful racket coming from the front of the store but mainly because I’ve felt that pain. I went to extreme measures to get my sugar fix.

  Until I was five, I lived in Europe except for a few pit stops back in the States that barely registered. I was cared for by my mother, my grandmother Omi, my aunt Christel, and an American nanny named Martha who suffered acute homesickness. Every one of these women fed me. And no one kept notes on who gave me what and when. So, even if my mother wasn’t buying into my obnoxious plea for some life-saving gummi bears, I had three other caretakers to shake down for sweets.

  When we moved back to the States for good in 1975, Mom was in sole control and she put us on a dietary lock-down of whole-grain, tofu-laced, sucrose-free hell. She did not approve of the sugar-coated, red dye #2—infused, synthetically flavored pantheon of American food. Every avenue of relief I relied on in Germany to get my fix had vanished in a single eight-hour plane ride across the Atlantic.

  And then I met Stacey Coleman. The Colemans lived just across the street from us in a sprawling pea green 1950s ranch house with a pantry stocked with shrink-wrapped and artificially preserved snacks. Stacey Coleman introduced me to her treasure trove of comfort food. One cupboard was dedicated to an array of identically hued orange pasteurized cheese foodstuffs painstakingly categorized into crunchy Cheetos, individually wrapped cheese crackers sandwiching peanut butter, Kraft mac and cheese, and Cheez Whiz. Another was devoted entirely to a psychedelic rainbow of breakfast cereals: Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Cap’n Crunch. The fridge boasted processed lunchmeats, individually wrapped cheese slices, peanut butter and jelly interwoven in a conjugal helix in the same jar. There was Wonder Bread in the breadbox. And cookies. Flimsy cardboard boxes filled with Girl Scout favorites and jars absently crammed with sandwich cookies shaped like peanuts, waffley rectangles, creamy vanilla spheres. And Oreos.

  Nothing compared, gastronomically, in my home. We were the whole wheat to her refined white.

  Arlington, Virginia, where we finally landed, lies just to the west of the District of Columbia, sharing a small portion of the Potomac River and partaking in all the swampland heat of its summers. My mother refused to turn on the air conditioning unless the mercury rose above 100 and there was a complete lack of breeze. Stacey’s house, unsurprisingly, was delightfully refrigerated.

  I’d tool by her house slowly, hoping she’d be home and let me in. Once when I was eight, her housekeeper, Betty, took pity on me and invited me to join her for a quick iced tea while she watched her stories and tidied up the kitchen. As I was taking my leave, Betty offered to send me off with a fruity Popsicle to keep me cool on the trip across the street back home. She left the kitchen to get the treat from the garage freezer—long enough for me to see that the cabinet with the stash of Oreos had been left wide open. The entire package fit nicely inside my T-shirt.

  Before she could get back I bid a hasty, “Thanks, Betty, but I hear my mom yelling for me!” and I was out the door, on my bike, and down the street.

  The Pattersons, our neighbors across Twenty-sixth Street, had a stately elm with a rickety tree house. Their kids were college age and only used the place to smoke pot in the late summer evenings, so I dumped my bike on the curb and almost made it to the top of the ladder when I looked down and noticed that the Patterson’s mailbox was tantalizingly full. So much reading material was crammed into their box that the lid was propped open, giving me a full view of catalogues and manila envelopes containing a promising array of diversions.

  I placed my prized cookies in the tree house for safekeeping and rifled through the mail. I took a very large envelope with the words “Do Not Bend!” carefully inscribed on a diagonal on the front. Pictures. Perfect. An easier distraction than reading.

  I gave the photos (wedding pictures, only two of which contained the Pattersons) a quick glance. The cookies owned the moment. And never having had so much sugar so quickly, I ate them all. I found myself wound tight with energy and aggression so profound that I felt the need to ransack the entirety of our quiet neighborhood. I tore through the rest of the Pattersons’ disappointing mail and tossed the evidence into the storm drain. I pried open the Metzgers’ garage and dragged out Lydia’s prized toys. I can’t recall what it was that I took, but I destroyed it. It ended up in the sewer along with the pilfered mail. I tried fishing out some of the koi in the Stewarts’ newly dug pond but only managed to catch my foot on an ornate stone pagoda, knocking it over.

  I dragged myself home, slumped onto the couch, and just before my head hit the armrest I remembered the stash.

  My mother squirreled anything worth chewing in the cupboard above the stove, including secret shipments from Germany of chocolate, marzipan, and Nutella. It was a narrow cubbyhole so high and awkward that it took standing on the stovetop and a one-armed pull-up for an eight-year-old kid to reach. I was on Oreo rocket fuel; I had the Nutella jar in my grubby paws inside a minute.

  I grabbed the biggest spoon I could find, dug a crater right into the center, and coated my tongue. I dipped into the well again and again, consequences be damned. The moment was pure, it was chocolate-covered silence. I began to dance and spin with joy. To be alive and coated with chocolate! As I spun my way into the living room with the hypnotic glee of a cocoa-buzzed dervish, I imagined a life devoid of whole wheat, one brimming instead with sweets. Walls shingled with gingersnaps, mortared together with Nutella, streets paved with Oreos. Ice cream stored in snowdrifts within reach of the front door. Gummi bear seat cushions and chocolate toothpaste. I could see the future and it was good. And then I passed out.

  When I came to, I opened my eyes to a view of my mother staring at the silk organza curtains that hung from either side of the living room picture window, Mrs. Patterson standing just behind her. Smack dab in the middle of a panel was what appeared to be a brown slug, clinging for dear life. Being German and unafraid of most things, my mother inspected the creature closely. She sniffed it, poked it, and licked her finger.

  “Nutella!” she cried and smacked me. “Federal mail tampering,” Mrs. Patterson added, for which I got another wallop.

  My punishment could have been far worse had my mother discovered the initial theft that sparked my spree. But one vital person kept quiet—Betty. She must have known. She kept that house in such fastidious order that she’d have noted in an instant the absence of an entire family-sized package of Oreos. But she was a kind woman. She knew about the brutal culinary conditions at my home. She did, however, store the Oreos in a much higher cupboard from that day forward.

  Watching the kid shoving the makeshift chocolate croissant into his screaming pie hole, I feel a sense of great civic pride. I could very well have stopped this kid from committing a felony. Had he not received his croissant, God knows what he’d have done to fill the emptiness. I know first hand what it is to be denied a treat and the dark places you can go to rectify that injustice.

  To be honest, we’ve created what I dreamed of as a kid. But I also believe that our shop would have been a safe haven for my mother. Because I’ve grown up just a little, where the sugar bombs no longer hold sway over my chocolate-jimmy-coated heart. I bake everyday remembering what it was like to peer into a pastry case full of insanely cool-looking treats as a kid, only to discover they tasted like crap. But Mom, she baked with a sense of occasion and utter sincerity. She made things that were beautiful and delicious. So, like her, I bake like I m
ean it in a little store made of all things good. And I’m not the only one who thinks so; we’re inundated everyday with like-minded pastry penitents who stand in line for cookies and candies, cakes and pies, and wonderfully strong coffee. I think Ray might even be able to fashion an ice cream cooler from a snowdrift to make the picture complete.

  Devil’s Cream Pie

  THIS IS AN HOMAGE. To America. To the Colemans and their cupboard of cookies. And to the things that are just plain bad for you but that taste so good. So yes, it requires the use of Oreos. I will be brutally honest with you; I am a dessert snob. I bristle when someone orders “German chocolate cake,” as there is nothing remotely German in filling a chocolate cake with clotted bits of coconut and pecan. I’m strangely offended when anyone asks if I make vegan anything. Really? You want something without butter, cream, or eggs? Stand still while I whip off my wooden clog and chuck it at your scruffy head.

  But I am not so uptight that I can’t appreciate the beauty in white toast smothered in smooth Jiffy peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff. There are occasions when only a Ding Dong will do. And yes, Oreos. They make transfat transfabulous.

  Devil’s Cream Pie is a silk pie. It’s a cousin to a chocolate mousse, but the cream isn’t whipped and incorporated into the chocolate/custard base, so you don’t get a light and airy-textured dessert. This is dense and dark. It’s not for the faint-hearted and certainly not for anyone on a regular regimen of beta-blockers.

  The topping is light; I use meringue. But feel free to use whipped cream or fresh fruit or both. You can infuse the chocolate with extracts—raspberry, cherry, or mint. You can use milk chocolate or even gianduja, which is a heartbreakingly delicious hazelnut chocolate. But always use the best chocolate you can get your hands on. I use Callebaut semisweet. There is something to this chocolate that is true and pure. Valrhona is another gorgeous chocolate; it imparts a fruitier flavor to the finished product. Lindt chocolate is also fantastic. My grandmother ate Lindt bittersweet chocolate religiously and lived to be ninety. So you can’t go wrong there, either.