High Altitude Popovers, Goin’ Savory in Rocky Mtns

 

When I last did the popovers I was suppose to post the changes in the
recipes. Since we like the idea of popovers in catering, because they
are so inexpensive to produce, I figured it was time to get them down on
paper. I spent yesterday working on the various recipes to get a few
that are useable and offer some options.



First a word about the popovers, made in New England and heavily used up
and down the east coast this little roll was very popular through the
great depression. The government gave out a lot of flour, jellies and
peanut butter. Eggs and milk were also available and relatively
inexpensive. Hence the almost cult like status among household
homemakers that found these easy to do and cheap to make for the family
and cheap enough to offer to the hobos.



This roll was designed to take a topping, so butter, butter and honey,
jams, and savory spreads were all made to slather into this roll and the
roll is bland enough that the topping comes through. Bland yes! But this
is a texture roll, you will find nothing else in the bread world like
it. Crunchy, crispy and mostly cooked dark.



The make up of this roll and how it pops over is really due to a steam
explosion inside the roll. Hence adding stuff to it really affects the
way the roll looks. So adjustments are required to keep the same surface
tension on the roll to create the super heated water that forces the
roll to pop over.



The recipes are after the talk about it section to make it easy to,
highlight, copy and paste to a word document for printing. The
directions are the same as the first recipe, so I trimmed them off to
save bandwidth, and in hope that Chez Tom might get this blog downloaded with the dial up prior to
2008.



First I made my

High Altitude Popover Recipe and ran a batch to insure

the home range was working correctly. Please remember that bread
flour not AP is really needed for this recipe.








A look at the pans I am using. I like the mini pans because they make 12
at a time. I have two of them because the start temperature of the pan
is important as well. I like them to start at room temperature, so when
making multiple batches I switch pans between batches. You will see
preheat the pan recipes, stay away from them IMACO they screw up the
rolls outside texture.









So first thing up was to do a savory, and when a chef finds themselves
with a whole wheel of Humbolt Fog in the reefer, well what is a chef to
do? Send it to Dave Nelson or put it into a Humbolt Fog savory popover?
The popover of course! (Don't worry Dave, plenty left for you!)



So I got to work on three tries to get the Humbolt fog into a solution
that would suspend itself in the flour dough mixture. In the end a few
tricks were needed. Drop down to two eggs as the cheese adds the protein
for the third egg. Take the one tablespoon of oil and heat it in a sauce
pan, then add the Fog to it and stir, the whey will separate from the
Fog, whisk it hard and the curd will separate into tiny pieces, cool
this down (don't let it boil) and then suspend it in your popover
batter. Everything else stay they same. And they do still make the
really cool steam hole in the center! A little pesto in the center, yum
yum!





High Altitude Popovers Humbolt Fog



2 large eggs, 4.0 ounces or 120g

1 1/4 cups milk, 10 3/4 ounces or 307g

1 tbsp oil or butter, 1/4 ounce or 10g

1 1/2 inch wide wedge of Humbolt Fog off the wheel

1 cup flour, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1/2 tsp salt, two pinches



400F degree oven



This is what they look like baking prior to the steam release.








A little word about viscosity and surface tension. Viscosity is how
thick something is, in this case the batter, make enough of the
originals that you understand how thin this batter is, use water to
adjust the batter to the same viscosity to ensure good popover results.
Surface tension it the binding of the proteins together to form the
lattice work of the batter. This needs to stay at the same levels, so
add or remove protein depending on what your infusion is to the batter.



Next up, I thought hey the Mother is in the garage reefer. What about a
sourdough popover? This one was cool because it worked on the first try.
Simply drop the flour to 1/2 cup and add in 3/4 cup of the Mother! You
will have to use a high wire count whisk to break up the gluten so it
will suspend evenly. And with that simple change I present the Sourdough
popover!








Altitude Sourdough Popovers



3 large eggs, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1 1/4 cups milk, 10 3/4 ounces or 307g

1 tbsp oil or butter, 1/4 ounce or 10g



1/2 cup flour, 6.5 ounces or 183g

3/4 cup Mother, the more sour the better!

1/2 tsp salt, two pinches



And the last of the dinner rolls was forced on me by my wife and
daughters selection of Chili for dinner. You see the daughter is in
college, and like yesterdays large pot of spaghetti sauce, chili freezes
in the little glad containers real well. And for college kids that is an
instant meal! And so prior to her leaving we have what I call Large Pot
meals. And all the extra is taken by her in the glad freezer container
to college. So since chili was for dinner I thought why not do the

Edna Lewis Popover Roll which is of course a cornbread popover. And
so I present the recipe, after two tries, of the Edna Lewis Corn Bread
Popover.







High Altitude Edna Lewis Popover



3 large eggs, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1 1/3 cups milk, 10 3/4 ounces or 307g

1 tbsp oil or butter, 1/4 ounce or 10g



1/2 cup flour, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 tsp white pepper

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt, two pinches



400F degree oven





You will notice the milk increased (remember viscosity) and I added a
little sugar, while a lot of cornbread does not have sugar, the popover
did not taste like cornbread until I added this little bit of sugar, it
seems to bind to the cornmeal and bring it to the front when tasting the
roll. Without it is just tasted like a popover made with flour that had
whole wheat added to it.





Last I thought we should go sweet. I did a dessert shortly after the

High Altitude Popover Blog and never got any pictures, so I made it
yesterday so it would also be included. Because the popover has an
almost custard like consistency I thought it would be a neat dessert
cross over. We are going to go a little out of order on this one. First
the recipe:



High Altitude Dessert Popovers



3 large eggs, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1 1/3 cups milk, 10 3/4 ounces or 307g

1 tbsp oil or butter, 1/4 ounce or 10g



1 cup flour, 6.5 ounces or 183g

1/3 cup fine chopped walnuts

2 Tablespoon light brown sugar

1 Tablespoon Molasses

1 tsp salt, four pinches



400F degree oven



Dessert topping



Whip cream for starters. I have started heating and infusing my cream
prior to cooling it and putting it into my ISI whipper.







One banana

2 ounces Myers dark rum

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp chopped dates

1/4 cup butter



1 mission fig



So first layout your Mise en place and get it ready to mix fast and put
in the cups. This one has some chemistry going on that does things to
the batter the longer it sits. So make sure you are set to mix, pour
into cups and bake!







You will see I substituted goats milk to add a different flavor to the
base batter in the background.





After they are in the oven you have 40 minutes to prepare the Bananas
Foster topping. So get to it, butter, and brown sugar in a small sauté,
then add in the chopped dates, finally slice in the banana, once it is
all up to temperature add in the booze and flame it off.











When the rolls are done you will notice they don't popover as hard as
the normal roll, with the sugars and the nut meat added to this recipe
it have a different surface tension. I think with a little tinkering it
would pop a little higher, but by this time my family was getting tired
of tasting rolls, so I just cut one open to make sure I am getting the
steam burst that hollows it out in the center.












For the dessert I will take advantage of the hole created from the steam
burst by adding my Grand Marnier and Mexican Vanilla infused cream and
filling it into the center of one Walnut popover by making a slit in the
bottom and pumping it into the roll.








So to finish it I decide one whole popover filled with the cream and one
cut in half and then the whole thing covered with the bananas Foster
sauté'. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the final plating. I
did but it was blurry as heck. I just pour the banana sauté' over the
top of the two rolls, then cut the mission fig in half and lay it on
top, dress with a little of the infused whip cream and serve!



In the end we have created five rolls here and got a few twists into to
the popover world!








And of course you can always go with the

original high altitude popover and make different spreads for them,
that would seem to also have endless possibilities.



For you at sea level, just add in one more egg to all this and cut the
milk down by 1/4 cup.





Til we talk again, bake up some rolls to go with dinner, it is a real
treat!



Chef Bob Ballantyne

The Cowboy and The Rose Catering, LLC

Grand Junction, Colorado, USA