It's all very hush-hush right now, but soon I will be sharing the results of my present experiments in whole wheat pastry. As you may recall from my intro post, this is a top culinary fascination of mine right now, but when I first switched from white flour to whole wheat pastry flour I was very, very sad with the results. I used my usual recipe and the resulting dough had no malleability at all; it just tore defiantly and had to be forced into a pitiful semi crumb crust. No roll, no stretch, and certainly no flake.
Breakthrough number one came last week when my friend Katie mentioned on the phone that Good Day For A Picnic, one of her favourite cookbooks, which she also got me a copy of, has a great whole grain recipe that uses yogurt and no water. Amazing! I tried it and it worked!
Breakthrough number two came last weekend at my mom's, when, so well-cared for I didn't have to lift a finger, I started getting itchy fingers and just had to make something- and breakfast was my aim. I remembered a guest bringing a rich dessert bread with a chocolate filling that was intriguingly light and flaky- he'd used yeast, water, sugar, white flour, butter, and cream cheese. So I made us pastries with white flour (the only kind my mom has in the house), butter, and cream cheese, and they were truly the flakiest, loveliest pastries I've ever made.
So to get to the point of my whole grain experiment- you'll soon hear from me the merits of yogurt vs cottage cheese vs cream cheese possibly vs some other cheesey product vis-a-vis workability, taste and texture. Get excited!
Ooo oo excellent!! Whole wheat pastry has been a complete failure for me and Ive pretty much let it go, since I didnt want to completely turn off Jeff from whole wheat. Cant wait to hear!
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