Secrets of the pâtissier’s art
Baker and chef Adam Robinson and photographer Roger Jardine have combined to produce A Book About Pastries, launched at the Glenwood Bakery last week.
It’s a book that takes in everything from hot cross buns to croissants, and choc-chip cookies to mille feuille.
No local baking book would be complete without a final chapter on baking with the city’s famed ingredient ‒ Durban poison.
The book, Robinson and Jardine’s second, follows on the heels of A Book About Bread, published in 2020 at the height of the Covid-19-induced sourdough craze.
Robinson opened his Glenwood bakery about 12 years ago and then took over the premises of Parc next door when it moved to Gillitts. Next he opened the bagel shop in Morningside before moving that to the bottom of Florida Road about nine months ago.
He opened the Glenwood Bakery after a somewhat exasperating stint at a restaurant in the Midlands.
“I was cooking at a restaurant in Howick. What a terrible mistake. All the grey and good of Howick didn’t want to eat the food I wanted cooked ‒ I was cooking fish and chips and burgers. So in my depression, I started baking a lot of bread and selling a lot from the back of the restaurant. And when we moved to Durban ‒ my wife Karen works at the university ‒ I found a little corner shop down here and started baking and it’s been great.”
Robinson doesn’t understand why we are not interested in great food. After all, making great food is quite simple. “Just following the rules,” he says. “I’m quite conservative, and after all we’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
He described the book as a neat little historical exogenesis. “Cakes and breads used to be synonymous ‒ a cake was simply a celebration bread. I start with the oldest method, leavening by yeast. Then we have leavening by lamination which includes croissants and puff pastry where the dough is layered with butter.”
Each chapter has a bit of history attached to it. Robinson is keen to debunk the myth of the croissant. No, it’s not French, nor was it made by bakers in Budapest who raised the alarm that the Ottomans were tunnelling under the city, giving defenders a surprise victory. Nor that it was brought to France by Marie Antoinette ‒ she of “let them eat cake” fame.
It was Austrian and introduced to France in the mid 19th century by a guy called Zang who opened the Boulangerie Viennoise in Paris. “Naturally the French perfected it and made it their own,” Robinson says.
His step-by-step guide to croissants, complete with pictures, makes a seemingly daunting process of folding and rolling seem eminently doable. He describes how one sheet of butter and pastry rolled and folded in the correct way becomes 81 layers. The water in the butter turns to steam in the baking process giving each layer of dough a lift and a flaky texture. A bit like phyllo on steroids.
“Then in about the 13th or 14th century we had leavening with eggs,” he says. That’s where the sponge comes in. “And then what I call the chemical cakes with bicarb and baking powder, which is more or less the 19th century. I also include a few cakes that don’t rise but I wanted them.
“There’s a chapter on pastry taking in your sarcophage and mille feuille. There are different recipes about what you might do with a pastry. It’s both a recipe and methodology. So I give you a recipe and show you how you might use it.”
He does this with his melted onion and Parmesan tart, which is a hit at the launch function.
“And then there’s biscuits and, well, a French kiss.
“I make a lot of comments about the French. Actually I blame the French but at the end of the book I’d actually rather be French than English. But there are quite a few light hearted jibes.”
For Robinson, this book is more accessible than the bread book. “Some of the recipes are quite easy ‒ especially the biscuits ‒ so home cooks are more likely to buy it. And you don’t need a lot of equipment. Just need hands and an oven. Roger’s 13- or 14-year-old daughter tested a recipe so teens can use it as well.”
I ask him what’s the one recipe Durban must learn to make and it’s the pork pie. “Durban must learn, you serve beer warm and pies cold. I love the pork pie.”
Melton Mowbray Pork Pie
Makes six pies
Half of hot water pastry
500g of shoulder of pork plus bones
1 pig trotter
Half an onion
1 stick of celery
4 sprigs of thyme and a bay leaf
1 tsp sage, roughly chopped
4 anchovy fillets
Salt and pepper to taste
A few scrapings of nutmeg
Most pork pies are made with a minced cured pork, hence the pinkish hue. Melton Mowbray pork pies are traditionally made with hand-chopped raw pork, sage and seasoning. An anchovy or two can be a great addition to the seasoning.
Make a stock with the pork bones, trotter, onion, celery, thyme and bay. This will need to simmer slowly for three hours or until the trotter meat is falling off. As your stock simmers, remove the impurities so that you get as clear a jelly as possible. Strain through a sieve lined with a damp tea towel.
Chop the trotter meat, and the raw pork. Mix with the sage, anchovy, salt and pepper.
Divide your warm pastry into six balls. Keep a quarter of each ball aside. Hand form each around a mould. Or more easily but less traditionally, line a deep muffin tin and push the pastry in by hand. Fill your pies with the meat mix. Roll out the six quarters you’ve kept to act as lids. Press the lids into place with your thumb. Make a small hole in the centre of each lid with a knife. In the obscure nomenclature of English pie-making, this is known as a Bristol. It’s to let the steam escape and a hole into which you can pour your jelly. Paint the top of each lid with milk.
In a muffin tray cook at 160C for 45 minutes, remove and continue to cook for another 15 minutes to crisp the pastry. Otherwise, bake for an hour.
Meanwhile, boil your stock until it is reduced to 200ml. When the pies are cool, pour the tepid stock gently into each pie little by little through the Bristol, which might need a gentle opening. Some of the jelly (your stock) will be absorbed by the meat, and some will set around the pie. Leave to cool.
The book is priced at R295 and is available from The Glenwood Bakery and its Morningside branch. It can also be ordered by e-mailing adam.jn.robinson@gmail.com or from Exclusive Books. Copies of A Book About Bread are also available.