CORPORATE QUESTIONS ANSWERED

We've had a lot of enquiries recently regarding our corporate services. Yes, we will design your very own logo incorporating your company colours etc. We will also print our designs without the Kitchen Couture logo for a minimum order of 50 plus tees. Fees to include your own artwork will obviously apply and may vary depending on the size of your order. Contact us by email or our Contact Us facility on our website.

We would also like to thank Shane Delia for the opportunity to quote on the supply of uniforms for his new venture St Katherines. We wish both Shane and George Columbaris every success in their new venture and look forward to eating there soon.

Many thanks to Kerry and Tim on their recent purchase of staff uniforms. The Barista and Utensils look great on both your front and back of house staff.  VERY COOL!

Also, a big thanks to Phil from the Canticle Bakery for another purchase. We love the mediveal look of the sun in your logo. It was a challenge to find such a specified look but we got there in the end.

A huge thank you to our American friends, we thought sales would really fall off due to the currency rates at the moment but you've prooved us wrong. (we loved being prooved wrong at times like this!) Thanks to Tiffany from Seattle for your bakery's purchase. It's great to know that all garments got there so quickly.

A little bit of down under in the home of Grunge!

The Team at Kitchen Couture

THE HISTORY OF EASTER BAKING

THE HISTORY OF EASTER BAKINGOriginally Easter was called Pasha after the Hebrew word for Passover, a Jewish festival.
that happens at this time of year. It was replaced by Easter, a word which is believed to have evolved from Eostre, the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility and springtime. The date of Easter is determined, like its pagan festival equivalent, by the lunar calendar.

Simnel cakeLent is the period of 40 days which comes before Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday. For many Christians, this is a period of fasting and repentance in preparation for Easter, culminating in a feast of seasonal and symbolic foods. In the late 17th century, girls in service brought a rich fruit cake called simnel cake home to their mothers on the fourth Sunday of Lent. The cake was enriched with marzipan and decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 12 apostles minus Judas, who betrayed Christ.

Hot cross bunsThe Greeks and Egyptians ate small cakes or buns in honour of the respective goddesses that they worshipped. Buns marked with a cross were eaten by the Saxons to honour their goddess Eostre - it is thought the bun represented the moon and the cross the moon's quarters. The Saxons also carved a symbol of an ox horn into their bread as part of the ritual. To Christians, the cross symbolises the crucifixion.
The hot cross bun can be seen to symbolise the Crucifixion - but in earlier and more superstitious times, bread was marked with a cross to keep the Devil away from the oven.
Of course, the word "cake" has been around for a long time, but what is meant by it has changed over the centuries. A cake can be anything that is smoodged together (technical term, there) into a kind of patty. Think of a cake of soap. The earliest examples were found among the remains of Neolithic villages where archaeologists have discovered simple cakes which were made from crushed grains, moistened, compacted and probably cooked on a hot stone. A modern survivor of this early manifestation would be oatcakes, though now we think of them more as a biscuit or cookie. As time passed the variety of goods that could be made this way grew, some were leavened while some remained more simple.
Baking was always a haphazard affair, however. The elements required had to be carefully gauged, and in ancient times it was difficult to control such items as heat and moisture. The ancient Egyptians, as with so many other things, were the first to regard baking as an art. They developed reliable cooking methods and early ovens in which they prepared a great variety of breads that served all kinds of functions within the meal. Many were sweetened with honey and eaten as desserts, but although we have plenty of evidence of the baking process from tomb paintings and we know the ingredients from those found in tomb offerings, it is difficult to know exactly what their breads tasted like. The Classical era is another matter.
The Greeks called cakes "plakous," which comes from the word for "flat," and their cakes were usually combinations of nuts and honey. Chrysippus of Tyana gives the recipe for a honey nut cake that he tasted in Crete. To us, it still has more in common with oatcakes, but is very good. Chrysippus' cakes are unusual, in that he gives us a fairly thorough recipe. In most cases it's much more difficult to determine what the dishes actually tasted like, as the accounts are vague and refer to only one or two key ingredients.
Once we enter the Roman period things become a little easier. The Latin for cake was derived from the Greek and became "placenta," but there were other words for cake too, such as "libum." Cato gives a recipe for libum in On Agriculture (75 AD), and it seems to be a small cheesecake sweetened with honey. Libum was primarily used as an offering to the gods, though there are examples of larger versions being made for general consumption. Placenta was more complex cheesecake, baked on a pastry base, or sometimes inside a pastry case. It too was sweetened with clear honey and was often presented as an offering at temples. On a more basic level was the "satura," a flat heavy cake that hearkened back to the earlier Greek recipes, featuring barley with raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and sweet wine. The Romans weren't limited to such simple fare, however, and in the later Empire they became skilled with yeast. The northern and western barbarians also leavened their bread, though in their case they used barm, which is a foaming yeast drawn from the top of beer. As time went on the terms "bread" and "cake" became interchangeable. The words themselves are of Anglo Saxon origin, and it's probable that initially the term
"cake" was used for the smaller breads. They didn't stay small for long, however, and soon came to resemble what we know call fruit breads; raised with yeast and including raisins, butter, cream, eggs, spices and honey or sugar. There are still plenty of examples of this kind of cake around, including such British staples as tea cakes, which are actually lightly sweetened fruit buns.

During the renaissance, Italian cooks became famous for their baking skills and were hired by households in both England and France. The new items that they introduced were called "biscuits," though they were the forerunner of what we now consider to be sponge cake. The earliest sponge cake recipe in English was recorded by Gervase Markham in 1615. These sponge cakes weren't exactly your Betty Crocker behemoths, though - they were most likely thin, crisp cakes, more like modern cookies. Macaroons were developed during this period, as were spiced buns such as the Easter staple, hot cross buns.
By the middle of the 18th century, yeast had fallen into disuse as a raising agent for cakes in favor of beaten eggs. The cooks of the day must have had arm muscles like Schwarzenegger - it takes an awful lot of beating by hand to do what we can accomplish in a few minutes with an electric mixer! Once as much air as possible had been beaten in, the mixture would be poured into molds, often elaborate creations, but sometimes as simple as two tin hoops, set on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. It is from these cake hoops that our modern cake pans developed.
Amazingly, it seems that the idea of cake as a dessert was particularly late in coming. Initially, they were served as a snack with sweet wine, much as madeira cake still is. Large, elaborate cakes would often be made as part of the display for banquets, but these were rarely eaten. The style of eating since the Middle Ages had required a selection of dishes to be on the table all at the same time. These would be removed and replaced with another vast array, but in the mid-nineteenth century the fashion changed and Service à la Russe became all the rage. Now the meal was served by servants, bringing diners individual dishes (similar to modern restaurant service), and while such a performance wasn't within the reach of most people, it did result in a feature that everyone could enjoy - the dessert course. Now the decorated cake that we all know and love finally put in its appearance.
There was only one thing to be dealt with - all that pesky whisking. We'd have to wait quite a while for electric beaters, but bicarbonate of soda made its first appearance in the 1840s and was soon followed by baking powder. Easier access to white flour, granulated sugar and shortening all added to the cake's popularity and such favorites as the Victoria Sandwich became familiar sights at tea time and at dinner tables. Victorian ingenuity also brought us ovens with reliable temperature control (though my mother can remember my great-grandmother gauging the temperature of the oven by sticking her hand in it), which brought complex baking within the reach of the ordinary housewife.
From the middle of the nineteenth century cake baking, along with pastry making became one of the main tests for the new housewife. Was she a cook? Could she make an airy sponge, a sinful chocolate confection…or would the family be spending a lot of time buying buns at the bakers shop?

Have a great break. Stay safe. Many thanks to those of you who have bought from us lately.

The Team at Kitchen Couture.

EASTER BAKING TRADITIONS

We all love Easter! Five days off for those of us in Australia! Here are a few recipes to keep the baking tradition alive.

A variety of traditional Easter breads and baked goods are made and served in many different parts of the world. Here are just a few that you may like to try.

• Swedish Nut Cake
• Koolitch-Russian Easter Bread
• Holland Paasbrod-Easter Bread
• Tsourekia- Greek Easter Bread
• Portuguese Easter Bread
• New Zealand Easter Spice Biscuits
• Traditional Hot Cross Buns
• Italian Easter Dove Cake
• Russian Pascha
• Pastiera

With Hot Cross Bun production now in full swing, we here at Kitchen Couture appreciate the time and effort (been there done that for many years with our own bakeries) Bakers and Pastry Cooks around the world are putting in at his time of year. Support and salute your local hardworking bakers and pastry cooks!

Easter is the time to spend with family, whether it be attending Easter Services or having an Easter egg hunt, whether you use a new recipe for Easter or stick with a traditional family recipe, remember that Easter is a time of reflection and new beginnings. Please be careful on the roads and take the time to enjoy and relax over the break.

Wendouree Wholesalers Ballarat Has Joined the Kitchen Couture Team.

We'd like to take this opportunity to announce Wendouree Wholesalers as our first agent for Kitchen Couture, servicing the Western Districts of Victoria. Wendouree Wholesalers are a foodservice distributor with a strong focus on the Baking and Restaurant Industries. Peter Ward(Managing Director) feels the Kitchen Couture range will be complimentary to the large range of products he currently handles.

Peter had advised us interest and enquiries via his sales team has been very positive. For those of you in the Western District, pop into Wendouree where you can see our range or call and ask for one of the sales team. Phone - 03 53355901.

What We've Always Known About Hot Cross Buns But Were Too Afraid to Ask

 A BIT OF HISTORY AND INFO YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT THE HOT CROSS BUN.

According to the Reverend E. Cobham Brewer in the Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, hot cross buns date back to pre-Christian times when round buns called ``bous" (representing the full moon), topped with a cross (representing the four quarters of the moon), were made by the ancient Roman priests in honour of Diana, Roman goddess of the moon and hunting and protectress of women.


It is not clear when hot cross buns became traditional Christian fare, but it is believed the Easter custom evolved in 1361 when a monk from St Alban's Abbey gave cakes resembling hot cross buns to the poor on Good Friday. The idea was so well received he continued to give them each year.


Goodman Fielder's baking division, Quality Bakers Australia, bakes about 12 million hot cross buns each year, and about a third of its total sales are made in the week of Easter. How do bakeries accommodate the huge Easter demands?


Twenty years ago the Bread Research Institute's baking manager, Bill Hogan, was a production manager for a large commercial bakery. In preparation for the busy Easter period, he says the bakery would start making hot cross buns at the beginning of the New Year and then freeze and defrost as required.


Hesitant to comment if such practices continue today, the brand manager at Quality Bakers Australia, Lorna Bruce, says: ``We start planning for Easter in July of the previous year and trial bake before the season commences. When necessary, our bakeries put on extra shifts to cope with the demand and will also call on other local bakeries to help meet the increased requirements."


At the independent bread shops, Hogan says, bakers ``just work their guts out over the Easter period", and it is not uncommon for bakers to work 18 hours straight in the lead-up to Easter.

At Brumby's Bakeries, where everything is baked daily on the premises, the Thursday before Good Friday is known as ``Bun Thursday". It is Brumby's largest trading day of the year and all hands are on deck to keep up with demand.


``Most people traditionally eat hot cross buns over the Easter weekend so virtually all our stores are operating 24 hours beforehand to bake the product required," says Brumby's marketing manager Astrid Rickard.


In an attempt to get a larger slice of the hot cross bun action, some bakers are diversifying away from the traditional spicy fruit-loaf recipe. Brumby's and Banjo's Bakehouse offer chocolate hot cross buns with choc chips instead of fruit, and Coles supermarkets seemingly cater for every hot cross bun idiosyncrasy imaginable, including buns with extra fruit and buns with no fruit, mini-buns and buns with no peel.


Specialist bakeries such as Uncle Rick's and Silly Yaks are also baking gluten-free alternatives.


Some commercial hot cross buns contain preservatives to prevent mould, in particular preservative 282 (calcium propionate), which, according to Sue Dengate, a food intolerance counsellor and author of Fed Up, may cause behavioural problems such as irritability, restlessness, inattention and sleep disturbance.


Highly recommended are Canticle Bakery's (Croydon Hills) hot cross buns. Canticle has been using the same recipe for the past 19 years.




RECIPE

Hot cross buns

500g unbleached white flour

1 teaspoon bread improver

1 teaspoon salt

30g butter

150g dried fruit

3 teaspoons dried yeast

2-3 teaspoons sugar

65g (1/2 cup) skim milk powder

1 teaspoon mixed spice

340ml warm water

Place all dried ingredients (except mixed spice) in a bowl. Rub butter into flour. Knead by hand for five minutes. Add the mixed spice. Knead for another five minutes and then add fruit. Return to bowl, cover with a plastic bag and rest in a warm place for 15 minutes. Knock down and divide dough into two equal portions. Form each piece into sausage shape. Cut each sausage into eight pieces then roll each one into a ball. Re-roll each ball to improve the shape. Place the rolls on to a warm greased tray, cover with plastic and prove for about 50 minutes. Make flour and water paste for crosses, then pipe a cross on to each bun. Bake at 210 degrees for 20 minutes. Glaze buns immediately when removed from oven.

Cross mixture:

65g (1/2 cup) flour

65ml (1/4 cup) water

1 dessertspoon oil