The Serve - This Week: Sweet Treats

The Sunday Age

Sunday December 3, 2006

DANI VALENT

Knead Bakers

396 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, 9819 5883 ****

Monday to Friday, 7am-4pm; Saturday, 7am-2pm

Unlicensed; no cards

Breakfast, $4-$9, biscuits and pastries $2-$6, breads $1.20-$4.80

Indulgence is back. Austerity is over. Sugar is good. "Of course, all in moderation," says baker and pastry chef Angela Morris, co-proprietor of this sparse temple to culinary hedonism. Morris swears she doesn't have more than one tarte au sucre (sugar-and-cream-filled brioche) a day. Maybe so. But that's because, once she's fulfilled her brioche ration, she can reach for a Linzer biscuit (with hazelnuts and plum jam) or a smooth, gluten-free chocolate brownie or a crumbly pinolate (pinenut cookie). If not for these decoys, we could be dealing with the worst kind of BO (yes, Brioche Overload). But what a way to go.

Knead's brioches are unassuming saucer-sized discs. They look like they'd weigh about the same as a Danish. But no, these obscenely buttery beauties need full bicep flex to pick them up. Surely, you reason, you're burning as many kilojoules in wresting the thing to your mouth as it contains. Live in hope. The secret to the shortness of the pastry is that butter - real butter - is added to the dough after it's leavened. A true Lyonnaise brioche is filled with just sugar and cream but Morris sometimes adds berries or makes a savoury version with spinach and ricotta. Such twists might not please traditional patissiers but Morris has no fear of defying the purists. After four years in London as understudy to a French pastry chef - with most weekends spent in France trawling boulangeries and patisseries - Morris was confident enough to put her own twists to the classics. "That's a very Australian thing to do," she says. "The French didn't get it. I had to tell them, 'Look, I respect your traditions, but you're very backward.' " The wonderful biscuits and pastries at Knead are partly thanks to Morris' time in Europe and also to business partner Lydia McDonald's stint as pastry chef at defunct city restaurant Ondine, under Melbourne's sweet-treat empress Philippa Sibley.

Knead doesn't just do sweets. There are simple breakfasts - croque monsieur, poached eggs, or prosciutto and tomato on toast - and lovely pies and pasties, but the core business is bread. The rustic sourdough loaves and rolls, rye breads and sticky fruit loaf are all good but it's the baguettes that really excite Morris. "My mission in life was to have a good baguette with my cheese," she says, full of disdain for the oversized fluff-sticks that others pass off as baguettes. She learnt her breadmaking in London too, at an artisan bakery near Tower Bridge, where she fell in love with the rhythms of life as a baker. "I would knock off at 5am, then go for a beer while the rat race was just gearing up," she says. "I loved going against the grain." She also completed a bachelor of science in culinary arts, rounding off her education with gastronomic history and food science. All this fed into her masterplan to bring proper (petite, dense) baguettes back to Melbourne. The secret? The baguette dough is fermented overnight, allowing the yeast to feast on the sugars in the flour, making for a chewy dough and thin crust. Hm. If only Morris could put on her scientist hat and develop something that would eat away the sugar in her brioches, we might all allow ourselves to eat more than one.

Tips and pans to theserve@theage.com.au

ALSO TRY

Brunetti, 194-204 Faraday Street, Carlton, 9347 2801. Sunday to Thursday, 6am-11pm; Friday and Saturday, 6am-midnight.

This venerable pasticceria has grown into something of a sugar-fuelled hypermart but there's nothing lightweight about the pastries. A personal favourite is the frolle, a sweet ricotta turnover with a nudge of rum.

Sugardough Panificio and Patisserie, 163 Lygon Street, East Brunswick, 9380 4060. Tuesday to Friday, 7.30am-5pm; Saturday, 7.30am-4pm; Sunday, 8am-3pm.

A well-balanced meal at this cute cafe might mean a seriously good doughnut pumped full of plum jam, a cornetto (Italian croissant) stuffed with Nutella and a molten Italian hot chocolate served in a teapot.

Noisette, 84 Bay Street, Port Melbourne, 9646 9555. Daily,

6.30am-6pm.

Addicts admit to travelling from Brighton and Northcote to eat the almond croissants made by fifth-generation French baker David Menard and his Gallic team. You can't beat pure almond cream - made from scratch - and the buttery croissants.

© 2006 The Sunday Age

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