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• recipes from san francisco's most charming pastry shop by Meg Ray with Leslie Jonath photographs by Frankie Frankeny J ( II I recipes from san francisco's most charming pastry shop by Meg Ray with Leslie Jonath photographs by Frankie Frankeny CHRONICLE BOOKS SAN F RANCISCO Text and illustrations copyright © 2011 by Meg Ray. Photographs copyright © 2011 by Frankie Frankeny. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. elSBN 978-1-4521-0735-6 Designed by Sara Schneider Type styling by Janis Reed Produced by PiperKelier LLC Miette is a registered trademark of Miette Cakes, LLC. Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com Introduction Candies and Creams 9 161 Cakes Miette Essentials 17 183 Afternoon Cakes Essential Ingredients 83 and Essential Tools 209 Tarts 103 Sources 218 Cookies, Bars, and Pastries 123 Index 219 INTRODUCTION As a young girl, I loved to read my mother's cookbooks. My world of exquisite pastries, but also a charming culture of favorite was the Better Homes and Garden Cookbook, the packaging and presentation. Forthe French, presentation is classic 1953 edition, outfitted as it was in its cheerful, tai as important as the pastry itself and each pastry is entitled lored gingham cover; and within, fabulous photos of every to its own special box, wrapped in delicate papers and tied thing befitting a mid-century table. This comforting, simple, with string. Without realizing it, I was gathering the knowl homey-but-vibrant aesthetic became my ideal. edge to open my own bakery. It was the 1970s and we moved from Palo Alto, Cali fornia, to Whidbey Island, near Seattle, Washington. Our the first shop house on the island sat among thousands of acres of black berries, leading to pies, cobblers, and crumbles. My mother I started Miette in 2001, during the months leading to the worked at a health food store, and brought home a variety dot-com bust. When I made the transition, I had little idea of ingredients in bulk, including whole-wheat flour and what I was getting myself into, but I did have a succinct much-loathed carob chips. Although I was inundated with vision: I wanted to create the cakes I had loved as a child whole grains, my heart lay in fancy pastries. I found my pas and the pastries I had discovered in my travels. Miette is the sion in baking cakes and set out to make the ones I'd seen French word for "crumb," which is also a baker's term for in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I started at the describing the texture of a cake-and in scale, it was per beginning and baked everything in it. fectly fitted to the size of my first shop, a pastel-pink tent Initially, I just wanted to frost my cakes and pipe butter at the Berkeley Farmers' Market. For two years, I was easily cream decorations. I saw baking as the necessary distance spotted under the only pastel-pink tent ever to be pitched to cover before I could pick up the offset spatula and pastry at the market. bag. But then I fell in love with the process of baking itself. I arranged the tables of the Miette stall with flowers I began to study the techniques; I taught myself baking and vintage cake stands, attempting to re-create the splen through endless trial and error, which produced in turn end dors of a patisserie amidst the chaotic hustle and bustle of less little triumphs and big failures, and vice versa. I made an unpredictable seasonal market. At first, I sold only layer pound cakes, bundts, chiffons, and sponges. Each summer cakes in standard pink bakery boxes. Eventually the product I would enter my cakes in the local county fair. One year, my line grew to include pound cakes, cookies, and bars, meticu chocolate cake won the blue ribbon. lously wrapped in cellophane and pink paper bags printed I never considered a career in baking. I studied art and with what had quickly become our emblem: a pink rose. From design, and somehow wound up working in technology. the beginning, Miette's aesthetic was classic and streamlined, Baking maintained its allure, and remained the focus of my feminine but not too girlish, decidedly American but also travels-especially in Paris, where I discovered not only a European, infused with a dreamy, nostalgic quality. INTRODUCTION 7 In 2003, we opened our first store in San Francisco's To complement our cakes, our pastry case is filled with Ferry Building. My husband, Chris, designed the shop (and cupcakes, tarts, pots de creme, brownies, shortbreads, and later our store on Octavia Street) with elaborate crown a number of American and French cookie classics. The moldings and vibrant floral wallpaper to create the perfect celebrated Parisian version of the macaron, a centuries theater for our cakes and pastries. Today, the shelves are old French meringue-based cookie, was new to me when filled with vintage cake plates, jars of brilliant candies, and I tasted one at the venerable Laduree, but the moment it little vignettes of seasonal themes and narratives. Every crumbled with a bit of resistance between my teeth and thing is beautifully packaged in paper, cellophane, string, then melted on my tongue, there was no doubt that this and colorful satin ribbons. The effect is breathtaking. indescribable delicacy had to be added to our repertoire. american cakes reinvented small scale Miette started with a passion for cakes, and cakes are still The first thing you may notice about Miette cakes is that the mainstay of the bakery. Despite the French name, Miette they are small. There are two primary reasons for this, one cakes have always been traditionally American, holding at personal and one practical. The first, simply, is that I'm fond their center the image of the classic American layer cake of small things. The second is that the nature of the prod a cake that, to my mind, portrays pure happiness. Many of uct itself suggested a diminutive size. The plain economics our cakes are finished with a big pink candied rose, a dis are, making a 9-inch organic cake costs twice as much as tinction befitting their modern femininity. the same cake at 6 inches, and a 6-inch cake is an elegant With this image in mind, I have been baking my way to sufficiency, just like a small cookie that is rich and buttery. the purest versions of these "simple" American classics, with I carry this sense of proportion through everything we do the same criteria for clarity influencing the development at the bakery, from creating bite-size cookies and individu of our Lemon Debutantes, Princesses, Tomboys, and all the ally portioned custards to choosing pan sizes and keeping other sweets on our shelves. While many bakers aspire to decoration simple. Thus we adopted the principle of less is make fancy cakes with many fillings and glazes, my aim has more, also taking a page from the Japanese: Small is better, always been to create simple cakes that allow you to taste balance is everything. their true flavors. I have no desire to build beyond the point Along the same lines, if you stand in front of the pastry of delicious. Complexity and architecture do not interest cases at Miette, you might think our pastries are numerous me in food, especially not in desserts. I think dessert should and complicated, but in reality, we have streamlined our look delicious, not impressive. To me, there is nothing more process to a few perfect recipes. Working from just a core sumptuous than a simple buttery pound cake in which you platform of bases and a short list of distinctive fillings, we can actually taste the full-butter flavor. turn out the entire family of cakes that are the foundation of INTRODUCTION 9