Pastry Maestra
Free Video Tutorials on Baking, Pastry making and Creating Desserts. Have a sweet life!
C
roatian Easter bread has many names – in Dalmatia, where I live it is called sirnica, and it the other parts of my little country it is called pinca, pogača (pɒgʌʈʃʌ) or jajarica. Our Easter bread is sweet and fragrant, brioche-like and delicious, and I can’t wait to show you how it’s made!
T
oday I’m making soft, buttery and super yummy chocolate chip brioche buns! The bonus is – it is so easy to make them!
T
his bread is so fantastic that I am literally over the moon and I just can’t stop eating it! Forget everything that you have learned about making yeast dough for a moment, and take a look at this perfect, crunchy crust! And the inside, OMG the inside is so soft and full of little holes! The best part is – it is so ridiculously easy to make this bread that anybody can do it!
I
’m very picky about my bread! The crust has to be crunchy, of course, and inside – I want beautiful taste, airiness and softness, in that order and without exception. One thing I hate the most is the soft and chewy crust, and that often happens when Jugo blows. What the fudge is Jugo? Well, Jugo is a strong, relatively warm, but highly unpleasant wind that blows in Dalmatia – southern Croatian region – from the South-East, meaning from the sea.
D
o you like clouds? I do – but not those ugly, dark, rainy clouds, no! My favorites are the fluffy ones; white, cotton-like, soft and silky like…like the milk bread!
T
here is an interesting story about the origin of the baguette’s shape. The legend has it that Napoleon Bonaparte himself requested his army boulangers to create a thin, elongated loaf, so his soldiers could carry the bread effortlessly – in their trousers!
W
heat is a member of the grass family that produces a dry, one-seeded fruit commonly called a kernel. Its point of origin is in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, near what is now Iraq. More than 17,000 years ago, humans gathered the seeds of plants and ate them. After rubbing off the husks, early people simply chewed the kernels raw, parched or simmered. Today, instead of chewing kernels, we enjoy the whole what bread!
I
f you somehow haven’t noticed yet, I really love bread! I love making bread, and I sure do love eating all kinds of bread (not just baguette). I simply enjoy browsing through enormous shelves filled with all kinds of flour and picking the right one for my next recipe, or just trying out a new one to judge how it will turn out in one of the well-known recipes.
F
ocaccia [foˈkattʃa] is Italian flatbread, often topped with coarse salt, olives or cherry tomatoes. Its origin goes back to the ancient Romans who were baking flatbread “panis focacius” on the hearth.
