Revisiting my Nemesis

As someone who loves baking, cooking, and eating in general, there are a few things I avoid making. Recently, a friend asked me to make pie. My excuse NOT to make pie is that I don't actually have a pie dish. Actually, that's a lie- I have a large glass pie dish, but when you think pies, you think of individual serve small pies, and I don't have the pie tins for those. Truth is, I avoid making pastry dough. Having to rub the cold butter into the flour- annoying and you end up with cold oily fingers. Having to roll out cold dough- confirm aching arms. Smushing (my word) the rolled out dough into the tin/dish- not hard but still annoying trying to get it to fit. Then there's the whole process of blind baking (I have no pie weights), and dealing with shrinking dough (always happens), removing the weights, more baking, filling, bake again.

That whole process is not difficult, but tedious, and it's also a huge waiting game, resting the dough. Worst out of the lot? Puff pastry- because it's waiting and rolling x n number of times. When my first attempt at puff pastry ended in disaster right at the last proofing after 2 days, I went crying (not literally) to my mum and laid that recipe to rest.

From baKEE

Are you the sort of person to give up? Yep. Weighing the pros and cons, to give up or not to give up, I thought, nah it's not worth the effort and time. Then I had time today and decided to try a different sort of puff pastry- one that required less time, though the effort is still pretty much the same.

From baKEE

Recipe for this sausage roll will be very rough. The way I cook is like most typical Asian cooks- agar agar is the way to go. I measured absolutely nothing in this recipe. For the filling:

1 onion, some garlic, some grated ginger, all chopped up. Roughly 500g minced pork (I got pork and veal), roughly 1 cup bread crumbs (I used panko), 2 tbsp sambal oelek, splash of milk, 1 egg, 1/4 cup peanut butter, salt and pepper to taste. Process: Combine everything. Use hands.

Dough recipe: about 350g butter to 4 cups plain flour. About 150mL ice water. Annoying process: Clump into a pile. Rifurigeeta 20 mins, take out, roll, fold into thirds, rotate, fold into thirds, rifurigeeta 20 mins, repeat n times.

I lost count of how many times I did it.

Oven: 210 degrees.

From baKEE

Chop dough into quarters, roll out each quarter, minced mixture in the middle and roll into sausage roll. Cut into roughly 5cm blocks and bake till done. I made massive rolls because I'm lazy, and it looks like the puff pastry is disproportional to the filling, but it's actually not. 

I tackled this project in a very half-hearted manner, expecting the puff pastry to fail. What's the worst thing that can happen? I get a pie pastry rather than puff pastry, still good. The thing about having low expectation is that it can go both ways. Expecting less means putting less effort to make it perfect, thus no surprise if it fails. Or, extreme surge of happiness when it goes better than expected, leading to a boost in confidence. I guess pessimistic people like to think that things will go the latter way.

At the end of the day, despite the success, I will still avoid making pastry. Why? Because it's messy. I put a layer of newspaper and another layer of clingwrap over that to make things easier during cleanup. It worked, but it's inevitable you get flour everywhere when working with dough. Ah well, at least my parents are happy- they think I should bake more and stop going to badminton. Exercise by kneading and rolling out cold dough while being productive (ie make food for self and others), because badminton isn't productive for anyone else but yourself. Parents' logic.