Soggy Bottoms: A Notorious Arlette

Choo choo! All aboard the Soggy Bottoms train!

If you’re new here since the last Soggy Bottoms, welcome! This feature is where I test my baking mettle and challenge myself to the Great British Bake Off’s technical bakes. I give myself the same time limit and, like many of the contestants, I literally have never made any of these things before.

Truth be told, I was a feeling a bit uninspired for this one. None of the recipes jumped out at me, probably because I’m deep into the February winter funk. I didn’t feel like making a bread or a cake, so I went with something a bit different: arlettes.

Paul Hollywood describes this as a high end biscuit using laminated dough. They remind me of Elephant Ears/Palmiers, but in reality, they tasted more like a crispy, flattened cinnamon roll.

However, making this was a dang nightmare. Not because anything went particularly wrong, but it’s a whole lot of work for a meh payoff. I’ll probably rant about it down below.

Let’s get into it!

Bake: Arlettes

Episode: Series 6, Episode 2

Whose challenge: Paul Hollywood

Time limit: Two and a half hours

Resources: PBS has a recipe! Paul and Mary also did a Masterclass episode on this one, but I didn’t watch it because I felt like that would be cheating.

Process: The total process time is 150 minutes. The dough needs to chill multiple times for 25 minute increments to keep the butter from melting. Adding up those chill times, 130 minutes was dedicated solely to my dough sitting in the fridge, if my math is correct. That left me 20 minutes for assembling the dough, doing all the folding/laminating between chilling, and baking. I barely made it within the time frame and, to really perfect this recipe, I know I would need more than the allotted two and a half hours.

Laminating the dough is a pain in the ass. Typically, you wrap the dough layer around the butter layer, but this recipe calls for the opposite. You also have to work sort of quickly to keep the butter firm. A time limit plus melting butter is a recipe for an Amanda disaster.

My finished product was nowhere near perfect. I’d rate it a C+ when it came to matching the real deal. My arlettes should have been more golden brown and uniform in their layers. Mine literally looked like you ran over a cinnamon roll with a truck.

The biscuit was yummy and flaky, though I could have been a bit more heavy handed with the cinnamon sugar. I was only getting a hint of it when eating.

Will I make these again? Definitely not. The finished product didn’t blow me away and, even if I had perfect arlettes, I’m too impatient to repeat this lamination process.

Reading material: A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe

There are several reasons why I think this is a fantastic book pairing for an arlette. During the GBBO episode for this challenge, Paul Hollywood’s advice for the bakers is to not rush the process. A Notorious Vow has a wonderfully tender slow burn romance, with neither main character wanted to push or rush the other.

The biscuits are also incredibly delicate. I was worried about turning them over mid-bake because they’re supposed to be rather thin and flaky. The heroine, Christina, has been through a lot and her parents are garbage. She hates being social and prefers to take quiet walks by herself in the hero’s gardens. I wouldn’t necessarily call Christina delicate, given what she’s experienced, but there’s a certain fragility to her that I loved.

If you need more of a reason to pick this one up, you can read my A- review on the book here.

Catch the rest of my Soggy Bottoms’ bakes here or see the full list in the Soggy Bottom introductory post.

Have you made arlettes? What are your thoughts on laminating dough? Let me know in the comments!