Phyllo, Polonaise, Phun!

In the last week of Viennoiserie we worked with Phyllo dough, the commercially produced product in your local grocery store. We also made Brioche again. We have done a lot of Brioche and what was kind of tricky and seemed so hard in the beginning has gotten a lot easier with practice. We made a tete and nanterre loaves out of the brioche but with a much higher fat level this time. It can be made with as low as 15% fat and as much as 80%. We stayed in between with 35% and 50%. The phyllo is very delicate and hard to work with. It is important to keep the dough covered and moist while working with it and it needs to be brushed with clarified butter between each layer. Never handle frozen phyllo it will crack. We made strudel from the phyllo and assisted chef with a demo on real strudel. I remembered watching some little old ladies in a church basement in Wisconsin making strudel, really neat stuff. We also made cups and purses filled fruit filling out of the phyllo. What do you do with day old brioche a tetes? Cut off their heads, core their centers, fill with pastry cream, put their heads back on and pipe on french meringue, torch and devour. Or at least that is what we did and it is a real pastry, it is called Polonaise and it is so delicious. With the leftover nanterre we made toast covered in almond cream and almonds. I sure wish I had some Polonaise leftover ...