Hello, we’ve made it to newsletter No. 20! Thanks for being here.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already a subscriber, a fellow follower of all that is exciting and engaging about the world of baking, engaging all the senses with whole grains, seasonal fruit and flavour-forward ingredients.
If this is your first time here, you can expect musings, commentary, ideas and inspiration concerning the act and art of baking, including its more esoteric bits and pieces.
June. You’re here!
Your arrival sounds the halfway alarm in my mind, unspeakable musings on festive-related things creep into my peripheral vision, and another bundle of nerves in the pit of my stomach flares into action. I can only quash them with the thoughts of your delicious and fruitful abundance. Promise me you’ll come good on the season and bring me broad beans aplenty, a yard full of herbs, truly precocious apricots and big fat cherries. If you do, all will be forgiven.
Apricots
While diving headlong for the first punnet of apricots you see can be tempting, it pays to scope them out and keep your senses sharp, poised as a pointer on a prey hunt.
Most (resisting the urge to say EVERY) supermarket apricot will only bring you sadness and disappointment. But unfortunately, this is the reality of commercial fruit production for the global market. Demands for all the fruit, all the time, no matter what means that even a fruit such as the apricot, whose very name comes to us via the original praecocium or praecocia, meaning to ‘early ripen’, still arrives in plastic punnets unripe and undesirable. Picked too early, and their maturity is halted, never to reach true tree-ripe potential.
Spain or France are (at least in my experience) the more reliable producers of apricots available here in the UK. Look for deep orange-coloured specimens; I’m talking cadmium orange, far from the ‘apricot’ colour of an emulsion paint tester pot. Red blushes and a little freckling are absolutely A-OK.
Substack analytical data informs me that a large proportion of the Bake Sense readership resides in London; I feel confident that you’ll happen upon some beautiful apricots at farmer’s markets, from fresh produce vendors at larger markets like Borough, as well as the serendipitous corner shops and neighbourhood greengrocers that pepper the pavements around the city.
If you know of any hotspots or wish to report any fruit sightings that fellow bakers in the vicinity would appreciate, please do in the comments on this post. Everyone needs a look out when summer fruit seasons are so fleeting.
If you live a little closer to Leeds, then know that as long as we can source them via our excellent organic wholesaler, we will have a supply of fresh apricots in the bakery for retail each week whilst we can.
As with any fruit that comes to market, whether it be apples, oranges or pears, we keep an eye out for named varieties as the season goes on, always taking note of any new to us and their characteristics, how they look, their aroma, taste and flavour, how they do when roasted, poached, jammed, eaten out of hand or baked in a cake.
There is something satisfying about prizing open a perfectly ripe apricot with your thumbs along the seam beginning at the stem end. It parts into two near-perfect halves, another nod to the midway point in the year, the stone is free, and the cheeks surrender.
I am sure you know not to throw out the stone; roast them to make them easier to crack open, then extract the pit in the centre. To be extra cautious and destroy fears of cyanide poisoning, roast the pits again (170 degrees C for 10-15 minutes) before storing them in a bottle of vodka for noyaux extract. Or add a couple of kernels to a jar of honey for an infused honey. Kernels can also be used to flavour creme patisserie or ice cream bases.
Another 20% of the Bake Sense readership is located in California. If that’s you, then congratulations, you win. May the most blessed of you send pictures of your apricot abundance and the hybrids that have descended from them. I want to see your Blenheims, apriums and color-cots. Their status carries the mystique of a unicorn; we need to know, are they as good as they sound? Once you have secured the goods, what will you do with them? If they are prime, eat them out of hand, ensuring they are not fridge cold but warmed on a windowsill for the full experience.
The good news is that the apricot is a versatile fruit. Improved flavour and texture can be coaxed from less-than-perfect varieties by preparation techniques (macerating, roasting, grilling, pickling, dehydrating) and by pairing them with ingredients that amplify or harmonise with their characteristic aroma and flavour compounds (from fellow fruit to herbs, flowers and spices).
So this week, I’m sharing with you the inner workings of my mind, a blueprint that’ll give you insight into how my synapses fire up when I think about apricots.