Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake Baker’s Man…

(bake me a coffeecake as fast as you can!)

“Are you really a baker?”

The question wasn’t spoken. But it was there. For me, it was there. I could sense it.

I was talking to the chef at the Overland Park Marriott in about 2018 - pre pandemic. I had been supplying them cocktail loaves of plain brioche for their French toast along with my biscotti and other baked goods for a few years. This chef had been on the job there for maybe half-a-year. We had gotten along well.

The imagined question came at the end of a brief chat that I do not remember as anything other than cheerful. It came without warning.

“Do you have a cinnamon coffeecake?”

Since I was supplying a variety of fine baked goods, a lovely cinnamon coffeecake could be something I’d have. Intense. Pretty. Delicious! It seemed a natural.

I had nothing.

I’d given coffeecakes not even a thought until that moment.

But I had the same two attributes that had convinced me to begin a bakery business just over a decade earlier. I had the lovely combination of ignorance and arrogance that’s almost a requirement to begin any new venture.

I believed I had all the talent and experience and family history in fine food service needed to create a cinnamon coffeecake that would stand out...and I was blissfully unaware of all the complications and trouble that could make the job of creating it a major headache.

So when I was asked the chef asked if I had a cinnamon coffeecake, the answer came easily.

“Not yet,” I said with a smile.

The chef smiled back.

And neither of us said another word about it.

I began thinking about the job I had given myself on the drive home. I felt sure I’d find the beginning of what I needed somewhere in the mass of baking books and cookbooks I’d accumulated.

I turned first to Maida Heater. I had discovered her indispensable cookie books and had a cake baking book of hers that of course had no recipes for coffeecakes at all. I made a mental note to look into what more she might have if I didn’t find something in my own little baking library. (Yes, she has a coffeecake book that my sister adores and turns to often.)

I remember being let down to find nothing in the brilliant ‘In the Sweet Kitchen’ - Regan Daley’s masterpiece. And so it went as I went through a few other go-to cookbooks and baking books.

In reality, I wasn’t so much looking for a recipe as for inspiration. And it came from an indispensable baker’s book - one I’d purchased years before but used mostly for its how-to drawings of ways to form dinner rolls and sweet-rolls. I’d looked at drawings and instructions for the ‘book method’ for croissants and puff paste. But I’d never really looked at or played with her recipes.

This was the book that was about to rescue me.

Paula Peck went from student to teacher to rewriting the curriculum at the James Beard school. In the 1960’s she gave us her book, ‘The Art of Fine Baking’. And the back index listed coffeecake doughs and fillings. I turned to them…and soon came the inspiration.

RICH SOUR CREAM DOUGH

This dough makes brioche seem plain - ordinary. I could sense that looking at the ingredients - milk, sour cream, egg yolks, butter. And it demanded being kept cold from the start until it is shaped into a coffeecake in waiting and set back to rise. It is essentially brioche on steroids.

Mrs Pecks ‘Rich Sour Cream Dough’ showed me why James Beard had loved and respected her so. It’s a dough that begs for a beautiful filling. It’s a dough that challenges you to use it well.

I made the dough well enough on my first attempt. I would get better, but having made brioche weekly for a few years gave me enough experience to not be intimidated. And all the fat from the milk and sour cream, egg yolk and butter make this a very supple, forgiving dough.

It rolls out beautifully. It took only a few dustings of flour as I took it down to less than ⅛ of an inch.

And that was what I wanted. I wanted a dough I could roll out, glob with filling, then roll up.

I wanted to make a generous ring coffeecake. Ten inch. I’d get two from her recipe that she says make three normal sized coffeecakes.

And this dough was going to make it easier by rolling thin without complaining. It was also going to give me inspiration for how to handle the filling in its use of sour cream.

I combined brown sugar with sour cream instead of using cream or butter and flour. It became the medium within which the cinnamon, other spices and flavorings, and the chopped toasted pecans for the crunch would reside.

It’s a bit of a messy filling, but it looses that messiness in the bake. And it compliments the dough beautifully.

The chef at the Marriott was happy with what I created for him. And I was happy to have been saved and inspired by Paula Peck and the love of baking she shared with us all.

So here’s to all the cookbooks and baking books we buy just because something tells us we must. We get the brilliance and generosity of someone willing to share so much of what they have come to know through years of mastering their craft.

They reside in our bookcases, silently waiting to inspire us.

And the coffeecakes wait with "Other Goodies" on my website.

Bob