Brioche and Preserves

This morning I got up early to get the mini ganache-filled peanut butter brioche loaves shaped, proofed and baked before it got too hot.  I shaped and filled them using the same method as the chocolate-filled chocolate brioche, just spreading a thin layer of ganache over two-thirds of the dough.  While it was tempting to slather on the ganache, I knew it would just ooze out and make a mess once the dough was rolled up.

Knowing that I was going to finish off the last of my brioche dough this morning, I made a quick batch of bittersweet chocolate ganache (using a 1:1 ratio) after dinner last night so it could cool and set overnight.  As far as ganache goes, it’s not spectacular in texture as all I had on hand were bittersweet chocolate chips.  The stabilizers used in chocolate chips for them to hold their shape make them a poor choice for ganache.  But since it was to fill bread and not to make truffles, it wasn’t something I was going to lose sleep over – and it still tasted great. 

All in all, I think they turned out pretty well.

As I mentioned before, I do think the peanut butter flavor needs to be just a little bit stronger.  I also think should I fill them with chocolate again, semi-sweet or milk chocolate may be better choices.  As much as I’m a fan of bittersweet chocolate, it overwhelmed the delicate peanut butter flavor of the bread instead of complementing it.  Definitely worth trying to get right.

I also finished the strawberry pinot noir preserves today.  They actually only take three days to make instead of four.  Given my results, maybe they could have used four.  As of right now, I have five jars of strawberry pinot noir soup.  Great tasting soup, but not something I can easily eat on an English muffin in the morning. 

One of the things I had to do before finishing these preserves was make apple pectin stock.  This is used to thicken the preserves in place of commercial pectin.  I’d read about this last year and had been saving apple peels and cores (from the jars and jars of applesauce I made last year) in the freezer.  It’s as easy as boiling the peels and cores, straining the mixture, reducing it slightly and then canning or freezing it.  Unfortunately, I have no idea if mine turned out correctly or not, but I’m thinking not.  I was expecting it to be somewhat thick and almost gelatinous.  It’s not.  It looks like apple cider in a jar.  It’s a little too early to panic about it as jams, jellies and preserves can often take several days to fully set.  We’ll see.  I may be eating a lot of yogurt with strawberry pinot noir soup.  I mean, preserves.