Car­ol Quash

The scent of fresh­ly baked bread waft­ing through­out her home is not sea­son­al for Jody Valen­tine. Nei­ther is the sight of trays of de­li­cious ap­ple-wal­nut and straw­ber­ry-cheese­cake cin­na­mon rolls cool­ing on the kitchen ta­ble. But there is some­thing about the Yule­tide sea­son that adds a bit of mag­ic to her breads and cin­na­mon rolls.

“I do white, whole-wheat, multi­grain, and pi­men­to and cheese loaves, and I do cin­na­mon rolls in dif­fer­ent flavours. At Christ­mas time I es­pe­cial­ly like to do sor­rel-glazed rolls, which I make from scratch,” she told WE.

Valen­tine, a moth­er of two, be­gan sell­ing her baked prod­ucts about three years ago when she lost her job. But she has known her way around the kitchen for way longer, hav­ing learnt the art of bak­ing and cake dec­o­rat­ing from her moth­er.

“I’ve been bak­ing my en­tire life be­cause my mom used to do wed­ding cakes, so I grew up with mom­my us­ing the old-school, hard ic­ing sug­ar on those cakes with the two steps and all the lit­tle brides­maids on them.”

She shad­owed her moth­er for years, as­sist­ing with lev­el­ling and trim­ming the cakes, with the bonus of get­ting to eat the scraps.

“I love my bel­ly, so the mo­ti­va­tion was to eat. But, of course, you know you pick up some skills along the way.”

As she got old­er, peo­ple be­gan ask­ing for more cre­ative cakes, want­i­ng things her moth­er couldn’t do.

“Some­one would ask for a tool kit; some­body would want a car. My moth­er could on­ly do tra­di­tion­al stuff like flow­ers, so I would have to step in,” lead­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of a skill in mak­ing spe­cial­i­ty cakes that would come in handy lat­er in life.

Sud­den­ly find­ing her­self on the bread­line, Valen­tine be­gan bak­ing her breads and rolls to sell at a mar­ket in the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in San­ta Cruz, where she did not have to pay for the space. The first week, she didn’t sell any­thing, but she didn’t give up. By the third week, how­ev­er, she found her­self hav­ing to piv­ot af­ter the or­gan­is­ers be­gan charg­ing a lot for the ta­bles.

“I had al­ready baked the bread, and when I found out how much we had to pay for the ta­ble, I knew fi­nan­cial­ly, it made no sense. I’d have had to sell about six loaves just to pay for the ta­ble for the day.”

Her moth­er owns a small busi­ness along the East­ern Main Road sell­ing break­fasts on week­days and soups on Sat­ur­days.

“I de­cid­ed to put the bread in my moth­er’s shop to try to get them sold.”

Sales were slow, but grad­u­al­ly she was able to build a good re­la­tion­ship with her cus­tomers, and things picked up.

“On av­er­age, I make and sell 15 to 20 loaves of bread every Sat­ur­day, not count­ing ba­nana bread, sweet bread, and the cin­na­mon rolls.”

She al­so makes good use of her trips to the mar­ket on Sun­day morn­ings by tak­ing some loaves and rolls to sell.

“I buy my mar­ket pro­duce and sell my stuff too. I have a few reg­u­lar cus­tomers in the mar­ket now. They saw the prod­uct, they tast­ed it, and they start­ed to or­der reg­u­lar­ly.”

Valen­tine, a stick­ler for good qual­i­ty, tries to make every­thing from scratch.

“I buy ap­ples, peel and cut them up to make my ap­ple pie fill­ing. For my caramel top­pings, I brown my caramel and make my salt­ed caramel top­ping to put on.”

As a grad­u­ate of Hunter Col­lege, City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, with a first de­gree in bio­chem­istry, she be­lieves her sci­ence back­ground helps with dif­fi­cult recipes.

“I en­joy work­ing on my recipes, mak­ing them taste right.”

Her dream is to open a New York-style cof­fee shop, mak­ing her own breads, pas­tries and bagels and serv­ing cus­tomers at their ta­bles on the side­walk.

“I call my­self Bak­er Jo’s Patis­serie and Boulan­gerie. I re­al­ly en­joy bak­ing bread, and I’m not in­to buy­ing ready-made pas­try dough. I love mak­ing every­thing from scratch, and I look for­ward to the re­sponse when peo­ple eat it and it’s good.”

She said she al­so makes a “nice” Tri­ni sponge cake, but her fruit­cake recipe is still a work in progress.

“It’s get­ting there, but I’m not ready to put it out on the mar­ket just yet. I’m not sat­is­fied that it’s up to my stan­dard.”

Recipe

CIN­NA­MON ROLLS WITH SOR­REL GLAZE

In­gre­di­ents

For the dough:

• 1 cup warm milk 

• 5 ta­ble­spoons gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar 

• 2¼ tea­spoons ac­tive dry yeast ( one pack­et)

• 4⅔ cups all-pur­pose flour plus more for dust­ing 

• 1/3 cup packed light brown sug­ar 

• ½ cup un­salt­ed but­ter, melt­ed 

• 1 large egg, at room tem­per­a­ture

• 1 ta­ble­spoon vanil­la ex­tract

• 1½ tea­spoon salt

• ½ tea­spoon cin­na­mon

For the fill­ing:

• 6 ta­ble­spoons un­salt­ed but­ter room tem­per­a­ture 

• ½ cup brown sug­ar

• 1½ ta­ble­spoons cin­na­mon

For the glaze:

• 2lbs sor­rel, cleaned 

• 2 cin­na­mon sticks

• 2 bay leaves

• 5 sticks clove

• A pinch of nut­meg, grat­ed

• 2 cups gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar (amount can be var­ied for per­son­al taste)

• 1 rough skin lemon, juiced.

In­struc­tions

For the dough:

• In a large mix­ing bowl, stir to­geth­er the warm milk, gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar, and yeast. Let stand un­til foamy, about 5 min­utes.

• Add the re­main­ing in­gre­di­ents. Be­gin mix­ing on low speed un­til the mix­ture starts to come to­geth­er. In­crease the speed to medi­um-low and con­tin­ue knead­ing un­til the dough is springy and tacky to the touch but doesn’t stick to your fin­gers, 8 to 10 min­utes.

• Trans­fer the dough to a light­ly oiled large bowl. Cov­er and let rise in a warm place un­til dou­bled in size, about 1½ hours.

• Light­ly grease a 9×13-inch bak­ing pan with but­ter or bak­ing spray

• Turn out the dough on­to a well-floured sur­face. Roll the dough in­to rough­ly a 12×24-inch rec­tan­gle.

For the fill­ing:

• Spread the but­ter on­to the dough in a thin and even lay­er. (make sure your but­ter is very soft! If it’s still firm, mi­crowave it in 5-sec­ond in­cre­ments un­til eas­i­ly spread­able.

• In a small bowl, stir to­geth­er the sug­ar and cin­na­mon. Sprin­kle the cin­na­mon sug­ar all over the but­ter.

• Start­ing at one long end, roll up the dough in­to a tight log. Cut the log in­to 12 equal pieces (about 2 inch­es wide) us­ing a sharp ser­rat­ed knife or un­flavoured den­tal floss.

• Place the rolls cut side down even­ly spaced in the pre­pared bak­ing dish. Loose­ly cov­er and let rise in a warm place un­til al­most dou­bled in size, about 1 hour.

• Pre­heat the oven to 350F while ris­ing.

• Un­cov­er and bake for 20 to 25 min­utes or un­til light­ly browned on top. Place on a wire rack to cool.

For the glaze:

• While the rolls are bak­ing, put all the in­gre­di­ents for the sor­rel glaze, ex­cept the lemon juice, in­to a saucepan with 2 cups of wa­ter.

• Bring to a boil then cov­er, re­duce heat  and sim­mer un­til the sor­rel is ten­der and most of the liq­uid has evap­o­rat­ed. 

• Re­move the large spice pieces from the sor­rel and light­ly purée with an im­mer­sion blender.

• When the rolls are right out of the oven, spread a third of the glaze over the hot rolls. Let cool for 5 min­utes, then spread the re­main­ing glaze on top. The rolls are best en­joyed warm but can be cov­ered and stored at room tem­per­a­ture for 2 days.