The Violet Bakery Cookbook

by Claire Ptak, Alice Waters (Foreword by)

Overview

A design-forward cookbook for sweet and savory baked goods from London's popular Violet Bakery that focuses on quality ingredients, seasonality, and taste (as opposed to science) as the keys to creating satisfying, delightful homemade pastries, tarts, sweets, and more.

Violet is a jewel box of a cake shop and café in Hackney, east London. The baking is done with simple ingredients including whole grain flours, less refined sugars, and the natural sweetness and nuanced hues of seasonal fruits. Everything is made in an open kitchen for people to see. Famed for its exquisite baked goods, Violet has become a destination.

Owner Claire Ptak uses her Californian sensibility to create recipes that are both nourishing and indulgent. With a careful eye to taste and using the purest ingredients, she has created the most flavorful iterations of classic cakes, as well as new treats for modern palates. Over 100 recipes include nourishing breakfasts, midday snacks, desserts to share, fruit preserves, and stylish celebration cakes.

This book is about making baking worth it: simple to cook and satisfying to eat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607746720
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	09/29/2015
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

CLAIRE PTAK, a California Native, worked as a pastry chef for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse before moving to London. She staged in restaurants including Moro and St. John before starting Violet, her cake stall on Broadway Market. Claire opened the Violet bakery in 2010. Claire is also a food writer and stylist whose work includes Ottolenghi’s Guardian column, as well as writing for Observer Food Monthly, Jamie Magazine, Kinfolk, and Vogue. In 2018 Claire was selected to bake the royal wedding cake for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Read an Excerpt

Morning

Mornings at Violet are my favorite time. I am a morning person; I always have been. I love anything baked in the morning for breakfast, and I would easily eat cake for breakfast every day if I didn’t know any better. I do keep a jar of my quinoa granola at home and love to serve it with a good goat’s or sheep’s milk yogurt as much as with cow’s milk yogurt. Many days I simply have a banana or a piece of sourdough or rye toast for my own breakfast. Sometimes it’s a boiled egg. At Violet we serve generous slices of sourdough with salted butter, seasonal jam, and raw almond butter with sea salt. We get a cold-pressed almond butter from Cornwall that is so sweet and almondy that I prefer it to a toasted variety.

My favorite recipe in this section is possibly the cinnamon bun—a quick and easy bun that melts in your mouth. Every Sunday my friends Sylvia and Jo and I get cinnamon buns and coffees from the bakery and head up to Hackney Marshes with our dogs. A long walk in the wild fields that are also home to many of the ingredients I like to forage for is the perfect way to end the hectic London week.
The recipes in this section are a selection of breakfast items from across a year at Violet. I have included my favorite fruit and muffin or scone pairings from each season, but you can of course substitute here and there where appropriate, depending on what is best at the market. 
 

Buckwheat, apple, and crème fraîche scones

Buckwheat flour is one of my favorite flours to bake with. It has a very strong flavor, so it works best when mixed with other flours. It is also gluten free. In this recipe I’ve added a combination of spelt and oat flours to bolster the buckwheat. Spelt and oat are flavorful, but when mixed with buckwheat, they take a backseat. The spelt has enough gluten to carry the scones and yet leave them with a very appealing crumbly texture. The grated apple is sweet and moist and marries perfectly with the crème fraîche. For more on flours, read my pantry section (see page 224).

Makes 12 large scones
150g (1½ cups) fine spelt flour
   (see page 40), plus more for rolling 
100g (⅔ cup) whole grain spelt flour
175g (1⅔ cups) oat flour
225g (1⅓ cups plus 2 tablespoons)
   buckwheat flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons salt
100g (½ cup) light or dark
   muscovado sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 teaspoon lemon zest
250g (1 cup plus 1 tablespoon)
   cold unsalted butter, cut into
   1-cm (½-inch) cubes 
300g (1¼ cups) crème fraîche
500g (18 ounces) grated apple
   (5 or 6 tart apples such as
   Discovery, Gravenstein, Cox’s
   Orange Pippin, or Granny Smith)
1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons 
   milk, for the egg wash

Preheat the oven to 200°C/390°F (180°C/355°F convection). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl along with the zests and whisk together well. Using a pastry cutter, the back of a fork, or a mixer, cut in the cubes of butter until they are the size of large peas.

Stir together the crème fraîche and grated apple. Mix this into the flour and butter mixture until it barely holds together. Turn out on to a flour-dusted surface and pat roughly into a square. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then flatten it to about 2.5cm (1 inch) thick with a rolling pin. Fold it in half so that you have a rectangle. Then fold it in half again into a small square. Let it rest for 7 minutes, then roll it into a square about 4cm (1½ inches) thick. 

Use a sharp knife to cut the square into three long pieces. Cut each log into two and then each square into two triangles. Place on the lined baking sheet (or wrap in plastic wrap and store in the freezer), brush with the egg wash, and bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown. 
These are best eaten on the day you bake them.

Table of Contents

12. Introduction
42. Morning
74. Midday
102. Afternoon
156. Evening
196. Party party
224. The Violet pantry
256. Notes on foraging
260. Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/20/2015
A foreword by Alice Waters touting the talents of Ptak begins this stellar collection from the owner of the London bakery Violet. Ptak worked for Waters at Chez Panisse before moving to England and working as a food stylist and later selling baked goods at a farmers’ market. Her dedication and efforts morphed into a quaint permanent bakery on Wilton Way. The Morning chapter includes muffins , healthful scones (blueberry, spelt, and oat), as well as special morning indulgences including the chocolate croissant bread pudding and a yellow peach crumble cake. Midday features the British-centric “toasties” (a kind of grilled cheese sandwich) popular at Violet, such as the cheddar and green onion with quince jelly, along with savory tarts and quiches. Waters’s own apple galette has its place in the Evening chapter. Ptak’s love of violets comes through loud and perfectly sweet in the violet icing recipe, made with the floral syrup and used to top cupcakes that helped bring the bakery to success. Full-page color photos and the author’s down-to-earth tone will make readers want to dive into this beautiful collection and, perhaps, even plan a culinary visit for some freshly baked treats. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Unlike so many baking and pastry books, which are merely eye candy, this one includes nourishing and intriguing recipes like Loganberry and Geranium Jam; Sweet Potato, Coconut, Date and Rye Muffins; and Roasted Quince. Its homespun aesthetic will make this a fixture on your kitchen counter." —Georgia Pellegrini, The Wall Street Journal 

"While the recipes in her book are unusual and inventive, they’re also incredibly tasty." —Cree LeFavor, New York Times 

"Violet Bakery promises to be a doozy: at her uber-popular London bakery, pastry chef Claire Ptak serves up all the beautiful cakes and biscuits anyone could ask for." —Paula Forbes, Epicurious 

"Pastry Chef Claire Ptak has hit the nail on the head with her London bakery serving up delightful treats that have garnered a cult following (in that ever so civilized British way) in the UK and beyond." —Meghan Markle, The Tig 

"Ms. Ptak, a pastry chef who once worked at Chez Panisse, applies a modern, seasonal and decidedly Californian sensibility to the proper British baked goods in her London bakery. [...] They are just the kind of intriguing yet unfussy sweets I can see making all year long as the different ingredients come in and out of season." —Melissa Clark, New York Times 

"Claire is one of my all-time favorite cake-makers, and all her baking is seasonal, beautiful, achievable, real, and of course, totally delicious.” —Jamie Oliver

“A work of beauty. These gorgeous recipes are lovely and nourishing—you’ll want to stay home baking all day.” —April Bloomfield

"...I found Claire Ptak's new book, The Violet Bakery Cookbook, to be a breath of fresh air. Claire's philosophy? Flavor first, without exception. Yes, she offers recipes that are gluten-free, vegan, and made with foraged ingredients, but her book doesn't fit any one of these schools of thought. Claire bakes for flavor." —Meredith Swinehart, Gardenista 

From the Publisher

01/01/2016
Before opening Violet bakery and cafe in East London, pastry chef Ptak honed her skills in some of California and London's best restaurants, including Chez Panisse, Moro, and St. John. In this cozy collection of rustic baked goods from quiches to cupcakes, Ptak teaches readers to prepare simple, ingredient-focused recipes (e.g., buckwheat, apple, and creme fraiche scones; melon granita; chocolate, prune, and whiskey cake) that often feature fresh fruits and vegetables. Visually sumptuous, which is no surprise given Ptak's tenure as a food stylist for chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Simon Hopkinson, her book recalls photo-rich collections like Nigel Slater's Ripe, as well as elegant bakery/cafe cookbooks likened to Rose Carrarini's Breakfast, Lunch, Tea. Recipes are given in metric and U.S. measurements, with the metric appearing first. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of baking books such as Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson's Tartine and Zoe Nathan's Huckleberry. Aspiring pastry chefs will find inspiration in Ptak's impressive career highlights.

Library Journal