Boom!

Hello, I'm Julia Child.

Welcome to my house.

What fun we're going to have baking all kinds of incredible cakes, pies and breads right here in my own kitchen.

How much better can it get?

Master chef Michel Richard working his magic with puff pastry and master pastry chef Alice Medrich baking biscotti that will put a smile at the end of any meal.

Join us on Baking with Julia.

It's hard to believe that this little flat, pale piece of dough, when baked can turn into this wonderful puffy object.

This is French puff pastry-- pâte feuilletée-- or mille-feuilles which means it has almost a thousand layers to it.

And it's tender and tasty-- one of the most beautiful doughs.

And Michel Richard is going to teach us how to make it.

He's about the best puff pastry maker in this whole country, if not... Not the best.

Well... One of the good ones.

One of the very best.

Richard: To make a puff pastry we need one pound of pastry flour.

And then we need 1½ teaspoons of salt.

We need one cup of water.

One and a quarter cups.

Oh, I don't read well.

I'm glad you are here to help me.

And then we are going to process it... until we create a nice, little ball.

That's it.

Let us remove the dough from the machine.

You see, the dough is rubbery but not firm-- easy to work with.

Create a nice, little ball.

I'm going to cut the top.

I cut the top of the dough to cut the rubberiness of the dough.

You have to cover the dough with a wet towel for a few minutes.

And I'm going to work...

I'm going to pound the butter.

This is one pound of sweet butter.

We have to use the butter when the butter is... just came out from the fridge.

We want the butter to be firm.

Make sure the butter is cold.

Okay, I just pound the butter... nice square... and you roll the dough.

Okay, you see, it's a little thicker in the middle.

Thicker in the middle-- that's interesting.

Why do you want that?

Because, you know, they're going to overlap.

Oh, I see.

So that'll make it even.

Okay, you reverse the butter... Yeah?

...in the middle of the dough.

That's a very clever way of doing it.

See, because you are going to have three layers on top of each other.

Yeah.

It's so neat and nice, yeah.

There we are.

And then you... tap it a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

There we are.

A little bit more flour.

I notice you're very careful to keep it in a rectangle all the time.

A rectangle, yeah.

Add flour to make sure the dough won't stick so you can roll it.

We are going to do two turns because when you do a puff pastry we do about six turns.

Mm-hmm, to make the layers.

Like this one-- this is one turn.

It's terribly important that it keep very cold, isn't it?

It has to be cold or the butter's going to melt.

It's going to go through the dough and we are going to have a... very bad puff pastry.

Now, every time you do that there's a thin layer of butter that goes between the leaves.

That's what makes the "thousand leaves."

Here we are, the second turn.

And now we are going to have to refrigerate it for half an hour.

One, two turns... to chill it.

That's so you know...

This way I know I just did two turns.

And you have to do...

I will do two more in half an hour.

We will wait half an hour after that.

And just before using it you're going to do two more turns.

And that's a damp towel.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you have to... Refrigerate it.

For half an hour.

When you've been on a puff pastry making spree you'll end up with a lot of scraps like this or you may go to the store and buy some ready-made puff pastry.

And pastry chef Michel Richard is going to show us some wonderful recipes on what to do with these things.

I have a good recipe... they serve that kind of tart in Alsace/Lorraine.

It's a very thin tart with onion and bacon.

What they used to do in Alsace is on the way to the church they used to bring the uncooked tart to the baker and the baker was baking the tart while they were praying God.

And after church they used to pick up the tart.

Okay, I've just some scraps.

Those are just scraps.

Yeah... rognures.

Les rognures.

You just sort of bunched them all together-- rolling out.

You make a little ball and then you roll it until very, very thin.

That's a nice, cold marble you've down there.

See, what I did before?

What?

I had the garbage bag full of ice... Oh, so you chilled the... that's a good idea.

Because it has to be very cold.

Much easier to work with.

And then you're going to play some music.

You have to go... ( drumming rhythmically and laughing ) We do that because you don't want the dough to puff.

I see.

Oh, it's puff pastry.

You don't want it to puff.

That's right.

And then... you make a cardboard...

It's a template, yeah, yeah.

And you're going to make some more rognures.

Some more... And then I'm going to show you how to use the rognures of the rognures.

Okay, you need a tray.

Can you give me the tray?

There you are.

A buttered tray?

It's nice for the... okay.

It's easy to transfer it.

Okay, now we're going to have to store the tart into the refrigerator while we are cooking the onion and sauté the bacon.

I'll put in the fridge, okay?

We're starting the tart.

Yes, we are cutting an onion, a big onion.

I'm going to cut the onion in small dice, very small dice.

You have to make sure you have the right knife.

The knife has to cut well.

Otherwise you are going to cry.

Don't do that!

See, you don't need the food processor to do that.

By the time you look and you find the blade, it's over.

Two minutes... we need two minutes to do that.

And we are going to cook the onion with a cup of chicken stock.

At my home I make my own chicken stock but when I'm lazy I buy the chicken stock in a can.

I like the way you're...

I think everyone's got to practice on onions don't you think?

All right.

Okay, here we are.

I'll turn this on for you.

We have to...

The onion... the chicken stock.

No salt.

We have to taste, we have to taste.

Maybe a little bit of fresh ground pepper.

A little bit at the start and you have to add some fresh at the end.

And we bring that to a boil.

And we are going to cook it for 30 minutes until the onion is translucent.

We have some ready... onions.

We have some that we did ahead.

Do we want them?

Yes, we have it.

And that's... it's beautiful tender, isn't it?

They're tender, they are nice.

But we have to cook the bacon.

Fully cooked.

Oh, the bacon, yeah.

Okay, we have, like, a quarter of a pound of bacon here.

And that we cut in those small pieces.

Like we say in my language, des lardons.

Les petits lardons... Les petits lardons sautés.

It's nice that in France that they have a name for everything.

And when you say lardons you know exactly what it is.

And you have to drop in a boiling water for a few minutes because we want to remove the salt.

Otherwise, if the bacon... if you don't remove the salt it will be very salty.

And then you don't want it too smoky.

Not too smoky, not too salty either.

Okay... we have to drain it.

( sizzling ) The smell is already... Mmm, I love bacon.

I love the bacon.

You don't have to sauté a lot.

You sauté to remove all the fat.

Otherwise, if you sauté too long they become hard like a rock.

We want some moist, little lardons.

So, we sauté that.

Meanwhile, we are going to add two tablespoons of cream to our cooked onion.

A little bit more.

You have to be generous.

This is crême fraiche.

Crême fraiche-- it's a great combination.

And crême fraiche is perfectly easy to make, isn't it?

You put a little bit of buttermilk into heavy cream.

I think like maybe two tablespoons of buttermilk for maybe one cup of cream.

You leave it out for a few hours.

And it's thickened up, there you are.

And the next day, you have a nice, heavy, thick crême fraiche.

Can I taste it?

Needs salt.

Taste everything all the time, shouldn't you?

Yeah, you cannot be a blind chef.

You have to know exactly what the food tastes like.

Now, we drop that here.

Get rid of the fat.

Get rid of the fat.

All right, now we need the tart.

And that's that chilled puff pastry... very cold.

You have to keep it in the fridge while you're preparing... while you're cooking the onion.

You don't want... And the onions are cold, too, aren't they?

The onion are cold, too.

It's easier to spread.

If the onion was hot, you would have a problem.

This is going to be a flat tart with no edges.

Well, that's nice.

It's not supposed to be thick.

Mmm.

Here we are.

That's nice, huh?

And then we add the... the bacon.

Sprinkle the bacon over the top.

Make sure the bacon...

It has to be... it has to go inside of the onion.

Otherwise they will burn.

They will dry up in the oven.

I can take that for you.

Okay, I'm going to add some fresh ground pepper.

The oven has been set at 350 degrees and we are going to bake our tart for half an hour.

Half an hour.

Half an hour to 45 minutes.

What you going to do with the rest of that dough, Michel?

I don't know what I'm going to do with all of that!

I don't know.

I think I'm going to do a little pizza.

Ah, good, well, that's nice.

Yeah, we have some cherry tomato a little cheese.

We have some sweet basil.

Okay, let's do it.

Oh, the tray is waiting on the back.

Okay.

I will roll the dough very, very thin.

You keep on moving the dough around.

There we go.

So the dough won't shrink.

Okay.

You're going to make little pizzas.

Little pizzas... thin.

Oh, that will be nice.

You know, you can cut them a little thin and keep them in the freezer and when you need them, take them out fill them up with some tomato tapinade or piece of cheese.

Bake it... et voilà!

And I've... What am I do with the rest?

Okay, what am I do with that... with all that rognure... like we say.

I'm going to make some small diamond.

And the small diamond we are going to deep fry them.

Deep-fried diamonds.

And sprinkle them with a little bit of Parmesan... grated Parmesan.

And you're going to be able to use it for soup or... Oh, that'll be nice.

...or maybe a Caesar salad... a salad.

It will be wonderful.

All right, now we're going to finish.

We add the other tomato and we cut them in half.

Bingo!

Oh, just in the middle.

Push it down.

You want the juice to come out.

At the end, after they have been baked we're going to sprinkle them with some fresh basil.

Oh, that'll be nice.

I prefer at the end because if you bake with the basil you're loosing the good... the beautiful, fresh flavor.

And it turns black, too, doesn't it?

Et voilà.

A little bit of fromage.

This is goat cheese.

That's goat cheese.

Goat cheese.

Well, that's looks going to be interesting.

And then we are going to add some fresh ground pepper And then we are going to add some fresh ground pepper and we are going to bake the little guys at 375.

At 375.

About how long?

Oh, 20 minutes.

20 minutes, okay... all right.

Oh, and there's our tart.

A few more minutes and it will be okay.

That's looking very nice, that looks wonderful.

Now what?

We have some peanut oil at 325 degrees.

And we are going to deep-fry those little guys.

I wouldn't have thought of deep- frying puff pastry-- that's a nice idea.

I remember when I was a kid we had to use everything.

We didn't throw away anything.

We have to move them around because that helps to puff.

They are puffing-- that's nice.

They brown very quickly, too, don't they?

They're ready!

Oh, those look nice.

Then you drain them.

Now we're going to sprinkle them with parmesan cheese.

Do be sure that you put on the parmesan when they're still hot.

Still hot because you want the parmesan to melt and to stick to the deep-fry rognure.

Deep-fry rognure.

We're going to have a nice little feast when we get the tart ready and those little pizzas.

Then we'll eat everything with a glass of wine.

That would be great-- good idea.

Good idea... fine.

Michel, this is a lovely display and who would know that they were rognures?

Or leftover puff pastries.

Leftover puff pastries.

These little pizzas-- they're so cute.

That's tomato and what's that... goat cheese?

Goat cheese and sweet basil and I brushed them with a bit of olive oil.

That's delicious and it's so easy to do!

And of course, this Alsatian tart.

Those beautifully cooked onions and the bacon.

Delicious.

That's wonderful.

And a little cr ême fraiche makes it a little sour... sweet sour.

And then, I've been dying to eat one of these.

Let me have one, too.

That's just little deep-fried triangles sprinkled with a little bit of parmesan cheese.

I think we should drink to rognures.

To rognures.

And to you, Michel.

Thank you so much.

Nice to be here.

Well, it's wonderful to learn so many new things.

Merci beaucoup.

These are biscottis and they're tremendously popular nowadays.

They're very crisp little cookies.

I'll open one up and take a bite.

These are delicious.

These are some of the best I've had.

And this is Alice Medrich and now you're going to show us how to make them.

This is my favorite style.

You know, we all have our special way with biscotti.

I like mine very loud and crunchy to eat which is partly because of the baking soda and party because of the recipe here.

These start out with toasted, skinned hazelnuts.

These are hazelnuts, or filberts.

And nobody likes to toast and skin the hazelnuts but the skins have to come off.

You toast them and then you do that and it remains on.

Some of the skins stay on because they're stubborn.

This is a new way to get all of the skins off the hazelnuts.

We have two cups of boiling water or we will in a moment and to that we're going to add three tablespoons of baking soda and this seems to be the magic ingredient.

That seems like an awful lot.

In go the filberts, or hazelnuts and we boil them for three minutes, maybe and what's going to happen is the water is going to turn black as the skins start to loosen and we'll test one at that time.

Okay, now we have a great foaming bath of what looks like scummy water.

We're going to fish out one and do a test in ice water and they do slip their skins.

It does indeed peel.

Isn't that great.

We're going to take it off and move to the sink now to drain them.

Okay... look at how black the water is.

Look at that.

Look at that.

That's amazing.

And then it's going to take cold water now and a little bit of hand work to slip these skins off-- look at that.

That's amazing, isn't it?

Look at that-- they all just slip right off.

Very easily.

Now, here are our nuts all nicely skinned and they're perfectly done, don't you think?

That worked very well.

I'm going to blot them a little.

We've made just enough for our recipe which is two-thirds of a cup and I'm going to, meanwhile, put them on the tray and we're going to put them in a 350 oven for about 15 minutes.

350 oven?

350 oven.

Now here are our cooled, nicely toasted hazelnuts.

Hazelnuts.

And we're going to chop them.

We have two-thirds of a cup here which is just what we need for the recipe.

Now, some people chop in a food processor.

Our grandmothers used to chop in a bowl.

Or a mezza luna, with a curved knife.

They are round, and that would be convenient.

But the board and a knife-- if the board is big enough-- works fine.

Makes so much difference having them toasted.

It really brings out the flavor.

It brings out flavor like nothing else.

I think I'd never use hazelnuts that aren't toasted.

And they smell sort of... their character.

They almost become another nut altogether.

Well, I'm going to stop at this point.

Scrape them into our bowl...

They do smell good.

Mixing the biscotti itself is a piece of cake.

Mm-hmm.

We're going to start out with a cup and two-thirds of all-purpose flour... with a half teaspoon of baking soda and, again, these are all level measures because bakers are fussy and it makes a difference.

And a quarter teaspoon of salt.

It's good to mix the leavening and salt with a whisk or a fork to distribute it so it doesn't all fall in one place... Mm-hmm.

in the batter.

I'll just put that aside.

It's a very, very fast dough.

Two eggs... large eggs.

The recipe should be written for all the same size.

A teaspoon of vanilla...

Pure vanilla extract.

Pure vanilla extract and this is a little Frangelico... which is the hazelnut liquor.

Oh, I didn't know you could get that.

Oh, I didn't know you could get that.

To bring out the flavor of hazelnuts.

If you don't have it, a little brandy is delicious... a little rum.

Now we want...

Three-quarters of a cup of sugar goes in there.

And this just gets mixed up until it gets a little bit paler in color and then I like to switch to a wooden spoon here because it gets stiff.

And here's our dry ingredients...

The flour and the soda and the salt.

Pouring it all in at once.

And it makes a thick, sticky mixture.

There's no point in making a small amount of biscotti.

This makes about 50 of them and if I had a bigger bowl and maybe even on the machine, I'd make more.

They keep for weeks and weeks and weeks.

If it's a very thick, sticky batter we might actually finish this off by hand... Just get in there and mush it around and I think I'm going to have to do that.

This is really hand work, isn't it?

This is hand work.

Here's our pan, lined with parchment.

To help shape this, a little clean flour.

What we're going to do is make a real rough kind of rope shape and it doesn't have to be very even.

We try not to overdo it with the flour because that, of course always toughens and changes the cookie if you add way, way, way too much.

So...

It just will remain sticky.

Two messy little ropes.

Mm-hmm.

You'd be surprised how they even out a bit later.

The last half makes our second sticky, ragged-looking, ropy-looking loaf.

I'm surprised that's all going to smooth out.

Yes, it is surprising.

Then into the oven for 35 minutes at 300 degrees.

These have been baked and cooled about ten minutes until they're cool enough to handle and not too fragile.

If you're busy, you can leave them to cool a bit longer-- even overnight.

Peel them off the paper.

They do stick a bit, but they peel right up-- you don't want to break them-- and I'll move them to a cutting board.

And at this point, you can cut them across or at a lovely diagonal, which is a good shape.

And any thickness that you want-- thin and crisp or fat and crisp.

These are about half an inch?

Yeah, I'm going for about a half an inch.

These are twice-baked cookies so they must be baked again.

And conventionally, people lay them on one side and bake them for 12 or 15 minutes and then go into the oven and flip each one over to bake the other side.

You can skip the flipping step if you just put them on a rack and bake them so that they get heat and air from both sides-- top and bottom.

That's much easier.

That's what we're going to do here.

These go back in the oven at 300 for about 25 minutes... 25 to 30, until they're dry and crisp.

Julia: Are we going to eat some, Alice?

Sure-- are we going to dip... ( crunches ) or crunch?

That's wonderfully crunchy.

You crunch, I'll dip.

I'll dip mine, too.

What do we think?

I must say, these are some of the best I ever had.

Oh, thank you.

We have all learned a great deal and I thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Julia: Bon appétit!