bear claws

Wondering into what new products I could branch out.  I tried buying frozen puff pastry from Metro, but it was unwieldy to use.  The portions were too large, but I couldn’t defrost just the amount I wanted.

Bear Claws, for some reason, has stuck in my mind.  I have heard them referred to, both on the Bread bakers Guild group page, and people anecdotally mentioning them.

I looked the recipe up, on the internet.  It requires puff pastry and almond paste, both of which are not available on TaoBao.

I studied up further.  I knew that puff pastry was made by slowly working butter into flour, that some recipes are actually 95 percent butter.  I understood that it much be rolled out and folded over many times.  I’ve seen the machine that does this.  Aroma Hut has one, and I saw a YouTube video of one in use.

Did I want to tackle making puff pastry by hand?  I had dismissed the thought out of hand, assuming it would be impractical.

I read some more recipes and instructions.  Gradually I thought I might could do it.  There are some neat methods to achieve it.

Mix together flour and water, and a little yeast.  Separately, grate butter fine and then add a little flour to it.  Roll it out very thin, wrap it and chill it.  Then fold the butter into the rolled out dough.

Then it is just a matter of doing the folding, chilling and rolling many times through the day.

I tried it.  It worked.  The instructions said to use copious amounts of flour while rolling the butter, and that indeed was very necessary.

This way I could cut up the end product, a folded roll of pastry, into small portions and freeze them separately.

Almond paste.  What is in it?  I asked a friend to photograph in the supermarket a can of Solo almond paste.  She could not grasp the concept, though.  In the time it took to exchange clarifications, given the time differences, I did more research on the internet and found a recipe for almond paste!

This involved blanching almonds, drying them out, then grinding them.  Once ground, add an egg white and a pinch of salt.  Whiz the heck out of it in the blender, and then store it in fridge.

One glitch.  The almonds I found at LiJiang wholesale market were salted, perhaps even roasted.  I wanted raw almonds.  I used them anyway.

This month of July we have a gaggle of summer volunteers, from a small boy who says he's 15, to a PhD candidate who is going to Minnesota in September.  Business is extremely slow this summer, worse than last year.  Mostly they sit around and joke with each other, or each bends over his smart phone and plays a computer game.  I was glad to give them the job of blanching a pound of almonds.

The Bear Claw recipe has an almond filling.  It begins with almond paste, and gets complicated from there.  You have to begin with a smidge of paste, then beat it with more egg whites and sugar and stuff until it is somewhat fluffy.  Then put it in a piping bag.

So I grabbed a piece of puff pastry out of the freezer, and rolled it as thin as I could.  Then I tried to imagine the size I would want the end product to be.  I cut rectangles, then piped the almond filling in a line across the pastry.  I wet the edges with egg white, and folded them over.  Next, they get the five claws cut into them.  Brush egg on the surface, and sprinkle with sliced almonds.  They go immediately into the oven, they don’t seem to need time to rise.

I don’t know how close the end result comes to store-bought bear claws, because I have always avoided them when exposed, knowing they were a fattening treat of empty calories and fat galore.

Now I have a new product with which to fatten my skinny Chinese customers.