Buttermilk Beignets with Vino Cotto

Soft, fluffy buttermilk beignets filled with browned butter and cardamom are fried and tossed in sugar. They are served with vino cotto, a reduced, spiced red wine. The only thing better than dipping donuts in coffee is dipping them in wine.

My grandpa and I are BFFs and have been since the day I was born. Immediately after I was born, the doctors cleaned me off and handed me straight to my grandpa, sparking a special connection that’s going on 31 years. As I was growing up, every Monday night, Papa and I would go to the mall just the two of us. We’d split a plate of red beans and rice in the food court, and a handful of pirouette cookies at Gloria Jean Coffee, and saunter through every store in the mall together.

He’s a sweet man, who is always moving. Even well into retirement, that man does more in a day than I could do in a week. He puts everyone else first, goes out of his way to take care of those around him, and tells great stories. A lot of those stories take place during his childhood growing up in the French Quarter, of course, eating beignets (or bye-yays if you want to pronounce it the way a cute little old Cajun man does).

In an effort to smush all of my heritages together, I paired these soft, pillowy beignets with a Sicilian reduced wine called vino cotto. Eating beignets this way is like dunking an old fashioned donut in a cup of coffee, but better, because you’re actually dunking sugared beignets in wine.

how to make buttermilk beignets

Beignets are made with a yeasted, enriched dough in a process very similar to making donuts. Yeast is proofed in liquid and then butter and eggs are added before the dry ingredients. For this recipe, we’re incorporating buttermilk for a little extra tenderness, nutty browned butter and floral cardamom for a spiced holiday vibe.

The dough will undergo a pretty vigorous kneading (a standing mixer is your bff) to create the necessary gluten structure in spite of all of the inhibitors (fat, eggs, and sugar) that will make the finished dough so lush.

After kneading, there’s one bulk proof, shaping, and one more quick rest before frying. Like most doughs, this beignet dough can be cold-proofed to develop flavor and help fit into your schedule a bit better. If you choose to cold proof the dough, simply punch it down after it’s bulk proof and transfer it to the fridge for an overnight rest. In the morning, pull the dough out and let it rest on the counter for about 30 minutes before rolling and shaping and then give the cut beignets another 30-45 minutes rest, until they are puffy, before frying.

Whether you embrace a cold proof or make the beignets all in one go, don’t forget to toss them in sugar right after frying…that’s the very best part. I used a mix of powdered sugar and granulated sugar because I wanted a little bit of crunch from the sugar crystals. As soon as you finish your sugar tossing, eat the beignets warm, dunked in vino cotto for a little Cafe Du Monde-with-a-twist vibe.

what is vino cotto

Present in many traditional Italian desserts, vino cotto is a syrup made by cooking down grape must. Before sugar cane was widely accessible, this reduced grape must was used in many Sicilian desserts and recipes as a sweetener similar to the way maple syrup or honey is used in baking. Now, you can buy vino cotto or wine that has been cooked down very slowly over a long period of time, but I decided to make a version that would complement these beignets perfectly.

My rendition of vino cotto falls somewhere between a mulled wine and a wine reduction. To make it, simply bring a bottle of red wine to a simmer along with a handful of mulling spices (cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, and whole cloves). Cook the wine over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, for an hour to an hour and a half until the wine has reduced by 3/4 and has slightly thickened. It should taste sweeter than a bottle of wine, but not quite syrupy. Dunk the beignets in the vino cotto and store any leftovers in a sealed jar for a later day.

Yield

24

Author

Anna Ramiz

Prep time

30 Min

Cook time

1 H & 30 M

Inactive time

2 Hour

Total time

4 Hour

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Buttermilk Beignets with Vino Cotto

Soft, fluffy buttermilk beignets filled with browned butter and cardamom are fried and tossed in sugar. They are served with vino cotto, a reduced, spiced red wine. The only thing better than dipping donuts in coffee is dipping them in wine.

Ingredients US Metric

for the beignets

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp warm water
• 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk, slightly warmed
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 3- 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour,
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

for the vino cotto

• 1 bottle red wine (90% merlot, 10% cab franc)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 4 cardamom pods
• 1/4 tsp whole cloves
• 2 tbsp honey

Instructions

to make the beignets

1. Place butter in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Cook, swirling occasionally, for 6-7 minutes, until butter is melted, foamy, and little brown specks have begun to form on the bottom of the pot. Transfer to a bowl and let cool to room temperature.
2. In a small bowl, combine warm water and yeast. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes, until yeast is very foamy.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine yeast/water, cooled butter, sugar, brown sugar, buttermilk, and the egg. Whisk until smooth.
4. Place the bowl on the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Add 3 cups of flour, salt, baking powder, and cardamom, and begin mixing on low speed until all of the dry ingredients have been incorporated. Increase the speed on the mixer to medium and knead for 4-5 minutes, adding a bit more flour one tablespoon at a time, if the dough seems very sticky. After kneading, your dough should be smooth and soft.
5. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature for an hour to an hour and half, or until the dough has doubled in size.
6. Turn the dough onto a lightly-floured work surface and roll it into a rectangle about 12”x16” in size. Use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut the dough into 24 equal squares. Cover them with plastic wrap.
7. Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with vegetable oil (about 3” deep) and heat to 375° F.
8. Working in batches, fry 4-5 beignets at a time. Fry for 1-2 minutes on each side, until deeply golden browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the beignets from the oil and transfer them to a paper-towel lined tray. Repeat until you have fried all of the beignets.
9. In a large bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and granulated sugar. Toss beignets in the sugar mixture to coat and serve with vino cotto.

to make the vino cotto

1. In a large saucepan, stir together wine, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cloves, and honey.
2. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for about an hour and half, stirring every 10 minutes or so, until the wine has reduced by 3/4 and has slightly thickened. Let cool and then strain out the spices.
3. You should have about 1 cup of vino cotto.

Notes:

This beignet recipe was lightly adapted from the beignet queen Joy Wilson of Joy the Baker.

You can store any leftover vino cotto in a jar in a cool dark pantry or in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

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Caramelized Tomato and Mozzarella Bread

this recipe is sponsored by Pomi USA

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been a little quiet on here for the past month because I needed a little break after 12 new Christmas recipes. We also bought a house, which turned out to be quite the endeavor! But my kitchen is unpacked and I’m back and ready to go, friends! I’m kicking off 2021 with this savory caramelized tomato and mozzarella pull-apart bread because it’s the comfort food we all need.

For my job as a recipe developer, I get to work with a lot of different brands and Pomi is one of my favorites. Most of my weeknight dinners hinge on canned tomatoes and I love that Pomi tomatoes are high-quality Italian tomatoes that won't break the bank. They are also so versatile and can make everything from classic marinara sauces to tikka masala. And of course, bread.

This pull-apart bread tastes like a hot pocket and I’m not mad about it. Canned tomatoes get roasted low and slow in the oven with a couple cloves of garlic before being stirred into an herbed butter to create a tomato butter that you could honestly just swipe onto crackers and it would be excellent. But we’re taking it a step further and stuffing dollops of tomato butter and slices of mozzarella cheese into a light, fluffy buttermilk dough, folding them like little pizza tacos and tucking them into a loaf. The whole thing is proofed, dusted with parmesan cheese, and baked. It’s a little pizza bread work of art.

tomatoes, italian, bread recipes, pull-apart bread, cheesy bread, mozzarella cheese

breads

italian

Yield: makes one 9” loaf pan

Author: Anna Ramiz

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Caramelized Tomato and Mozzarella Pull-Apart Bread

Prep time: 1 HourCook time: 50 MinInactive time: 2 HourTotal time: 3 H & 50 M

Ingredients

for the buttermilk dough

• 2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup (180 ml) buttermilk
• 4 tbsp (56 g) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 2 1/3 cup (300 g) all purpose flour
• 1 tsp kosher salt

for the caramelized tomatoes

• 1 (14-oz) can Pomi Chopped Tomatoes
• 4 cloves garlic, in paper
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

for the tomato butter

• 4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
• Caramelized tomatoes and roasted garlic, recipe below
• 2 tbsp fresh basil
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
• 2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

• 5 oz low-moisture mozzarella cheese, sliced
• Beaten egg, for egg wash
• 2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese, for sprinkling

Instructions

to make the caramelized tomatoes

1. Preheat oven to 300° F and line a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper.
2. In a small bowl, toss garlic cloves with olive oil and pour out onto prepared pan.
3. Pour chopped tomatoes on the pan with the garlic, sprinkle everything with salt and pepper and give it a quick stir.
4. Roast for 45-50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until tomatoes are a deep red color and almost all of the liquid has evaporated.
5. Let cool completely.

to make the tomato butter

1. Into a medium bowl, squeeze the roasted garlic cloves from above out of their skins. Add salt, fresh basil and parsley, and parmesan cheese. Mash together with a fork.
2. Add the softened butter and the caramelized tomatoes and stir well, until combined and homogenous.

to make the buttermilk dough and tomato bread

1. Heat buttermilk in the microwave until warm to the touch. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment and add the yeast. Let rest for 5 minutes, while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, until yeast is foamy.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and kosher salt. Set aside.
3. When yeast is ready, add the egg to the buttermilk and yeast mixture and whisk briefly to combine.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the mixer and mix on medium speed for 2-3 minutes, until a shaggy dough forms.
5. Decrease mixer speed to low and gradually add softened butter, one tablespoon at a time. When all of the butter has been added increase speed to medium-high and knead for 5-6 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. Scrape down the sides of the dough and gently shape into a round. Place dough in a lightly-oiled bowl, cover, and let proof at room temperature for 1 1/2 hours, until doubled in size.
6. When dough has completed its first proof, turn it out onto a lightly-floured work surface. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Let rest, covered with a towel, for 15 minutes.
7. Working with one bowl at a time, roll or press each ball into a 4-5” round. Fill the center of each round with a tablespoon of tomato butter and a slice of mozzarella cheese. Fold the dough circle upwards into a half-moon shape, so that each circle looks like a little filled taco.
8. Place each filled dough-taco, open side up, in a row in a lightly-oiled loaf pan. Cover the loaf pan with a towel or plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature again for 30-40 minutes, until swollen and dough has risen to the height of the pan.
9. Brush the top of the loaf with beaten egg and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Bake at 350° F for 40-45 minutes, until deeply golden brown.
10. Let cool for 5-10 minutes in pan before removing from pan and serving.

Recommended Products:

Pomi Chopped Tomatoes

https://www.gatheredatmytable.com/main/2021/1/19/caramelized-tomato-and-mozzarella-bread

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Puff Pastry

If nothing else, this quarantine period has given us a bounty of time. People who have never had interest in baking before are suddenly churning out loaves of sourdough on a regular basis. We’re signing up for free photography/painting/writing classes online, and working on becoming gardeners or teaching ourselves how to give haircuts. The phrase “It’s a great day to learn something new” has never been truer, so in that ultra-motivated spirit, let’s learn to make puff pastry at home!

Puff pastry is a bit of an outsider in the pastry world. It’s like that person who is friends with everyone so they don’t fit squarely into a specific group (but their versatility makes us love them even more). Puff pastry is a laminated dough, like croissants and danishes, but because it doesn’t use yeast or natural leavening, it’s not technically considered a viennoiserie (the French word for leavened pastries with added sugar, butter, eggs, and usually laminated—its the bridge category between breads and pastries). There are four main types of puff pastry, and I would venture to say that three of them are best left up to professional bakers with sheeting machines in order to save a lot of headaches. Traditional puff pastry is sheeted similarly to croissant dough, with a detrempe (dough) that envelops a butter block that’s then rolled and folded to create lots of flaky layers. Italian puff pastry includes eggs and white wine in the dough and is mixed more intensively than other puffs. Inverted puff pastry laminates the butter on the outside of the dough, rather than the inside creating a flakier, crispier pastry (and really needs fancy equipment like a reversible dough sheeter, which I unfortunately do not have the space or money for in my tiny duplex kitchen). Finally, blitz (or rough) puff pastry is the most basic and quickest puff pastry and it’s what we are going to learn today.

To make blitz puff pastry, cold butter is worked into the dough into pea-sized chunks, as if you are making a pie or tart dough. The dough is then given a series of folds over the course of a couple hours to create those flaky layers before it’s tucked in for an overnight chill. Below, I’ve broken down two of the most common types of dough folds, used in any laminated dough, and added pictures to help you better understand exactly what each should look like.

P.S. I’ll be sharing a few different recipes later this week that use this blitz puff pastry so keep an eye out!

Double Fold

A double fold is usually the first fold completed in a laminated dough. One of my professors in pastry school referred to it as the “church door fold” and it’s very much like closing doors. The dough is rolled to a rectangle and then the edges are folded in to meet in the middle, like closing a double door. The dough is then folded in half, like closing a book.

Single Fold

A single fold, or letter fold, is the most common laminating fold. The dough is simply rolled to a rectangle shape and then folded in thirds like a letter.

Blitz Puff Pastry 

Yield: 2 lbs puff pastry dough

Ingredients 

14 oz (397 g) all purpose flour

10.5 oz (298 g) unsalted butter, cold and cubed

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp lemon juice 

7 oz (198 g) cold water

Procedure 

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flour and salt. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds, just to combine. 

2. Add the cold, cubed butter to the pie dough and mix on medium-low speed until butter is broken up into pea-sized cubes throughout the flour. This is should resemble pie dough and the butter should not be completely combined. 

3. In a measuring cup, combine lemon juice and water. With the mixer running on low speed, gradually stream in water mixture and mix until just barely combined. Be careful here not to overmix!

4. Turn the dough onto a well-floured work surface and gently press into a rectangular shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Lamination

1. For the lamination process, we will complete a series of five folds in total in three intervals. *refer to the photos above for a visual reference of the folds*. 

2. Turn #1: Remove dough from refrigerator, unwrap and place onto your well-floured work surface. Roll the dough into a large rectangle, 18x12” and is about 1/4” in thickness. Make sure that the 18” length of the dough is the horizontal end. Take the far-edge of the dough and fold it in, about 1/3 of the length. Then take the far-left edge of the dough and fold it 2/3 of the way in, until it meets the edge of the first fold just off-center of your rectangle. Grab the left side of the dough and fold it in half like you are closing a book. You will have just completed what’s called a double fold. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap again and return to the refrigerator to chill for another 30-45 minutes. 

3. Turn #2: Remove the dough from the refrigerator and bring back to your well-floured work surface. This time, you will complete two single-folds. Again, roll the dough back out into your 18x12” rectangle with 1/4” thickness. Bring the right edge of the dough in 1/3 of the way, like you are folding a letter. Then bring the left edge of the dough over the right all of the way over the folded right side. This is one single fold. Turn the dough 90° so that the open sides are now facing horizontally. Roll the dough back out to your 18x12” rectangle and fold like a letter one more time. Re-wrap the dough and return to the refrigerator for another 30-45 minute rest. 

4. Turn #3: This last turn will consist of the exact same folds as turn #2. Roll the dough out to the 18x12” rectangle, fold like a letter, and then turn 90° and repeat the whole thing. Re-wrap the dough tightly and return to the refrigerator. Let the dough rest overnight and then use however you would like! You can also divide the dough into two, 1-lb squares, wrap them individually and then freeze them for later use. If freezing the dough, be sure to let them defrost in the refrigerator overnight before you plan to use them. 

Note: When you are completing folds back to back, remember that the dough should always be turned 90° between folds so that the open edges are facing horizontally.

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