Rough days

Shorty today. Waking up at 9:30am to be at work by 10:00am, to work until 10:30pm when I can finally post. Sadly, nothing of excitement happened today except a very busy dinner service. I am excited about other things though. Fairly soon, the crew here at the restaurant (luckily that includes me), will be flying out to New York to film Iron Chef. My boss, the executive chef/owner of one of the restaurants I work at, was selected to cook on the show.

Not sure about when exactly we will fly/film, or when the episode will air, but wish us luck! I'll be sure to post again when we leave.

Today's random recipe idea - deep fried, BLT stuffed avocados. I think it'll work.

Let the bacon commence

So, after a long chat with the other guys here in the kitchen, we've come up with some potential pastries. Most of them have bacon in them. The rest have bacon as well.

Bacon fat profiteroles with chocolate walnut pastry cream, dipped in a maple glaze.

Profiteroles with bacon maple pastry cream, chocolate glaze.

Maple bacon walnut eclairs, chocolate glaze and entire strip of bacon inside each eclair.

BLTA eclairs, layered bacon, tomato, lettuce, and avocado mousses (except the lettuce, lettuce mousse is nasty) inside an eclair, bacon glaze.

Debating which to play with first. In the mean time, here's my favorite recipe for maple bacon cinnamon rolls. (Original recipe - Alton Brown)

• 4 large egg yolks, room temperature
• 1 large whole egg, room temperature
• 2 ounces sugar, approximately 1/4 cup
• 3 ounces unsalted butter, melted, approximately 6 tablespoons
• 6 ounces buttermilk, room temperature
• 20 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 cups, plus additional for dusting
• 1 package instant dry yeast, approximately 2 1/4 teaspoons
• 1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

For maple bacon rolls, I like to switch out the sugar for maple syrup, and a portion of the butter with rendered bacon fat. For those of you that don't know the method, mix everything but yeast flour and salt. Once it's all mixed, add in salt, yeast, and about half the flour. Once that is all incorporated, swap over to a dough hook and work in all but 3-4 ounces of flour. That flour is there only if your dough needs more. It should be moist but not sticky. Once that consistency is obtained, knead it by hand for 5-6 minutes, then transfer it to an oiled bowl. Oil the top of the dough lightly (or use more rendered bacon fat), let it double in size, covered. About 2 hours.

Filling time! This is the fun part. A normal cinnamon roll filling would be about 90% brown sugar, 9% butter, and 1% cinnamon. Fuck that. We want some maple bacon goodness. Our filling will be about 30% brown sugar, 50% extra crispy bacon chopped up real fine, 5% cinnamon, and 15% maple syrup. Normally there would be salt here too, but the bacon does that for us. I recommend making the bacon as crispy as possible, so you get a good texture in the finished product.

Once your dough has risen, pound it down and roll it into a large rectangle. Cover this rectangle with your filling (minus a half inch or so running the long way, so you can seal your rolls) and roll it up. Cut, pan, cover, and leave them over night to rise again. In the morning, take em out, and bake em! 350, you know what they look like when they're done.

I don't ice these babies, I go for more maple syrup and bacon chunks.

Day 1!

First post. Nothing too exciting. Might as well eat...

The smell of bacon, coffee, biscuits and gravy. Breakfast is the best time of the day. Crispy bacon, pork sausage gravy on my handmade bacon biscuits (substituted bacon fat for some of the butter, it's almost good enough to make me believe in a god), and coffee with cream and raw sugar. It's a good time to not be vegan. Sorry, but there is no substitute for bacon. Don't care what you say or who you are.

Thinking about baking a lot lately...maple bacon walnut cinnamon rolls sound like fun to do. Maybe something more mind blowing, maple and bacon is no surprise to anyone anymore. Maybe eclairs filled with a bacon walnut mousse. Maybe profiteroles. We'll see how it goes I guess, if all is well I'll leave a recipe behind.