Craftsy Shoot, Day Two

The ongoing account of taping my Craftsy class August 2 - 5. . .

Makeup call for the shoot was always at 8 a.m.--the stylist Lillian was a pleasure to work with and a good conversationalist. The biggest struggle of course was keeping the shine off my bald pate, and frequent blotting and powdering was required throughout the day. It wasn't as bad as when I shot Breaking Bread in St. Louis, which is the humidity sinkhole of the Midwest---all of the humidity of the Great Plains drains into center field of Busch Stadium. The air is so dry in Denver that I walked the 16th Street Mall in 90 degree heat and it felt like 75 degrees in Illinois. 

Day One included the Basic Sweet Dough recipe (an adaptation of Best Ever Crescent Roll Dough) and rose rolls, but not made for dinner, but as cinnamon rolls with bright red frosting (see previous post). I've made the rose rolls for nearly every monastery holiday meal, but only as cinnamon rolls a couple of times, once on the feast of our Lady of Guadalupe, and another time for my mom's birthday.  

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Rose rolls with cinnamon filling and red frosting. Photo: Craftsy.com

We continued shooting the lessons in order, Lesson 2 being for jellyroll variations. The class is meant for advanced beginner or intermediate bakers, so I figured expanding on the jellyroll technique used for cinnamon rolls would be the next step. The first recipe was for Breakfast Butterflies, an old fashioned roll you don't see much these days. I like them with brown sugar cinnamon or almond filling, but we decided to use blueberry. You can find the recipe for the blueberry filling HERE, but I find that Solo Blueberry pastry filling also works well.  The recipe for the rolls came from my book The Breadhead Bible. 

Luscious blueberry filling--lemon zest gives it a fresh test, even with frozen berries. Photo: Craftsy.com

The segment for Sweetheart Coffeecake followed, which I featured in an earlier blog--find the photo tutorial HERE. Craftsy is the perfect platform for this kind of teaching, because a well-shot video is always better than my amateur photographs! The other feature on the Craftsy platform that Breadheads will appreciate is that at the bottom of the window where the lesson plays, there is a "30 second replay" button--click it and the last 30 seconds of the video plays on a loop for as long as you want. People learning to knit, crochet and quilt on Craftsy really like this feature!

Sweetheart Coffee Cake, with cherry filling and sliced almonds. Photo: Craftsy.com

Producer Jon Clark had scheduled one more segment for the day, so we went on to Lemon Fantans, another old-fashioned roll but usually made with butter between the layers and served at dinner. To make it into a sweet treat, I added granulated sugar mixed with lemon zest to the layers, and drizzled on a thin icing made with lemon juice. The cameraman Marshall declared this roll his favorite and would have consumed more of them if we hadn't had to keep some idea for product shots! My photo tutorial from last summer is HERE, and the results from the shoot are below.

The shoot ended about 6 p.m., after which I took off my apron and my habit, threw on a Rockies jersey and walked the four blocks to Coors Field---yep, that's how close the studio is to the ballpark! The Rockies pounded the Dodgers 12 - 2, a typical Mile High home run fest. DJ LaMahieu hit one that just barely cleared the wall, and Dodger center fielder Joc Pederson jump for it, missed, and lost his glove over the wall in the shrubbery around the fountains! As he stood there waiting for an usher to throw his glove back over, you could tell from his stance that he was NOT happy with himself. I celebrated by going back to the concession stands. Bread in the studio, bratwurst in the ballpark---not sure it gets much better.

Photo credit: www.denver.com