On a Roll

In order to ensure an uninterrupted night’s sleep, Jonathan Quander has created a spreadsheet to time the feeding of his sourdough starter. But if you ask him, the attorney by trade and baker by choice contends he’s not obsessed with baking.

“My family and friends might say it’s an obsession,” Jonathan confesses. “I just think of it as a hobby I’ve grown into unexpectedly. I can get fixated on things that draw my interest, and then I work and work to excel at them.”

Jonathan’s passion for baking started during Covid. He and his family – wife Bethel, 22-year-old son Jack, and 19-year-old daughter Katie – took a two-week, Covid-summer trip to Telluride. That’s when Jonathan binge-watched The Great British Baking Show. He was inspired. 

“I decided we were a bit bored and I would make a steak and ale pie,” Jonathan remembers. “Then I just started exploring and experimenting and doing different things.”

Pain au chocolat alongside ham and cheese croissants. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Prior to that summer, Jonathan’s one annual baking project was the grated apple pie he’d make every November from a recipe in an old cookbook. “That was my one contribution to Thanksgiving, besides the turkey,” Jonathan says. 

But something clicked in Telluride, in front of the screen projecting The Great British Baking Show, and Jonathan has progressed way beyond apple pie to triumph over one of the most difficult of baking endeavors: the croissant.

“His croissants are really, really good,” Jonathan’s personal trainer, Viviana Alzate, says. “Especially his chocolate croissant, which not only has the chocolate filling, but also chocolate dough.” 

Why is Jonathan’s personal trainer talking about his chocolate croissants? “I take pastries to our gym, although it might conflict with what we are trying to do there,” Jonathan laughs. “I also take them to friends. My daughter or Bethel would place ‘orders’ to take to Kinkaid or [Bethel’s] office.” Bethel is also an attorney. “They would ask if I could make pastries or cookies for teacher gifts. I made cinnamon star bread for the teachers, and I had all kinds of packaging to make it look as if it was professionally done.

“I don’t want to bake things that go to waste. So I have to share them.”

Much of the joy Jonathan finds in baking is in the sharing. On a recent trip to LA, Jonathan reunited with college friends and gifted them his beautifully packaged croissants. Here he's pictured with friends, from left: Tom and Lisa Castleton, Jonathan, and David Monahan.

Much of the joy Jonathan finds in baking is in the sharing. On a recent trip to LA, Jonathan reunited with college friends and gifted them his beautifully packaged croissants. “I send things to college or high school friends around the country,” Jonathan says, explaining that he figured out how to pack pies in insulated boxes and dry ice. He has also determined what days to ship and what time of year, temperature-wise, works best. 

Kristie Tice is a neighbor and friend who was a classmate of Jonathan’s both at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin and at UT Law School. “His approach to baking is just like everything he does. He wants to do it with excellence,” she says.

“Jonathan has always been a great leader of people, very focused on friends. I thought his new passion for baking was surprising, but in a good way. In some respects, it’s not surprising, because he commits to something and gets focused. He’s really embraced it.” Kristie is one of several informal but eager taste-testers. “If he brings something over while my kids are away, they’re jealous,” she says of her two college-aged children and Jonathan’s sample pastries.

Prior to experimenting with laminating pastry dough – creating multiple thin, temperature-sensitive layers of dough and butter – for croissants, Jonathan says he started easy. “Cookies, pies, not so much cakes,” he says. “Cakes are a weak spot, because I’m not the best decorator.”

A custardy Portuguese egg tart. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

About a year into his baking passion, Jonathan started his Instagram account (@q_the_baker), where he chronicles the mostly highs and a few lows of his baking experiments. Photos abound: apple cider doughnuts, sweet potato pie with marshmallow meringue, triple chocolate layer cakes, whole wheat oatmeal honey bread. Soft cinnamon rolls bear the caption deliveries by Katie to my Kinkaid 10th grade clientele. Mishaps are addressed: I’ve solved the excessive butter leakage issue with my recent croissants with the assistance of the Brod and Taylor proofing box. And challenges are met: After last night’s debate [June 2024], I decided this might be an active baking weekend since it’s such a relaxing hobby. I started with a 2 ½ hour Q the Baker signature baking challenge which I finished on time. Don’t look if you are hungry (and if you aren’t hungry, you will be). 

“I’ve had friends who see my Instagram ask if I’ve opened a bakery,” Jonathan says, noting that baking professionally is not in the plans. But guiding friends wanting to begin baking is very much so. “I can look at my Instagram and see my first croissants as opposed to what I’m doing now,” Jonathan says. “There are so many factors that will impact whether a croissant comes out as a croissant or whether it comes out as a dinner roll. The temperature of the kitchen, temperature of the dough, temperature of the butter.” Now an expert, he’s happy to share hard-learned tips and recipes with friends.

Jonathan has learned that much of baking, at least for him, is about the equipment and the set-up. He and Bethel recently remodeled their kitchen pantry into a “baking cave,” where Jonathan keeps his supplies and creates his masterpieces. “You need a mixer, a rolling pin, ingredients, patience,” Jonathan says. He also uses more complicated gadgets, like a sprayer for applying egg wash to proofed croissant dough, in order to not deflate the pastries before baking. 

In the Quander house, Jonathan is the baker, his wife Bethel is the chef. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Perfecting croissants has not been simple. “I make the dough, it rises, goes in the fridge overnight,” Jonathan says. “Then I make a butter block, which is essentially a sheet of butter. I slice that and form an 8-by-8-inch square, making sure it’s a perfect square. Then it gets complicated. The dough and butter need to be similar temperatures. The butter needs to be pliable like plastic, the dough needs to be cold. Then there’s a lengthy process of laminating – folding dough-butter-dough, the folding some more, rolling, and freezing. 

“Ultimately, you go through all these hoops, you’re rolling and cutting triangles and folding them into croissants, and the last stage is proofing them and allowing them to rise, which can take two to three hours. And finally you get to bake them. And then you eat one in a minute.”

Of course there’s pleasure in the eating. But Jonathan also relishes the process. “There’s science behind this,” he says. “There’s an intellectual part of understanding ingredients and temperature and controls. I started ordering flours, like Barton Springs Mill Flour from Dripping Springs, to work with protein content. I’m still trying to figure that out. All of that, that’s the challenge.”

Even more difficult than croissants, Jonathan says he’s identified panettone as “the Mount Everest of bread-baking.” The dried fruit-studded Christmas bread takes multiple days to bake.

“This is how I go down a rabbit hole,” Jonathan says, adding that he befriended a local, Italian-trained chef who sells panettone year-round. “Once I started studying how to make it, I realized I could spend seven to 10 days only for the bread to collapse and look like pancake batter as opposed to dough. That’s a pretty big baking fail. That’s when I pull out the trash drawer and dump it in, and just make another one. It took me a couple of years, but now I feel very confident that I can make an excellent panettone.”

Bethel, Jonathan, and their daughter Katie (and, not pictured, son Jack) enjoy the rewards of Jonathan's passion for baking. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Last Thanksgiving, with help from a spreadsheet to map out timing and ovens, Jonathan made a pecan pie, “with whiskey-laced pecans and a butter-flour homemade crust,” he says. He also made a salted caramel apple pie, his traditional grated apple pie (now with a homemade crust), sourdough dinner rolls, whole wheat dinner rolls, crackers, an orange-cranberry wheat bread, a Texas sheet cake, fried apple pies, and a sweet potato pie. “I realized afterward I kind of went overboard,” he says.

Except for the turkey, which Jonathan also makes, Bethel takes care of the cooking. “She is an excellent cook,” Jonathan says proudly, noting that his preference is clearly baking. And then he admits, “Sometimes she’ll come home from work and I’ve made rolls or dessert, but I’ve failed to make dinner.”

Jonathan has taken a couple of baking classes – including one at Le Cordon Bleu Paris – and he follows many famous bakers. One of his favorite inspirations is Claire Saffitz, a recipe developer and former senior food editor at Bon Appétit magazine. Jonathan and Claire share an undergrad alma mater, Harvard University. “I went down the path of law because that was appropriate and logical,” Jonathan says. “But now there are a wide range of people who become bakers and chefs. I wonder, if I had discovered this passion many years ago, if I would have gone down a different career path.”

Jonathan and Bethel recently remodeled their kitchen pantry into a “baking cave” where Jonathan stores his baking supplies and creates his masterpieces. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Friends ask Jonathan when he will apply to The Great American Baking Show. “I think I would enter, actually,” he says. Ever the perfectionist, he thinks out loud, “I bake a lot of the things they bake, and I will do the technical [timed] challenges. Yes, I have a little bit of a head start, but I will go back and make the challenge [recipe] and give myself an hour and a half or two hours. That’s how I amuse myself.”

If and when it really happens, Jonathan wonders how amusing the challenge would be. “Actually, I don’t know really what I would do,” he laughs.

Until then, Jonathan, we’re all happy to keep taste-testing.

LuLen's Apple Pie is a longtime Thanksgiving favorite, only now Jonathan uses a homemade crust. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

LuLen’s Apple Pie

Adapted from Nathalie Dupree’s New Southern Cooking

1 egg yolk, beaten
1 tablespoon water, heavy cream, or milk 
1 pie crust (find Jonathan's recipe at thebuzzmagazines.com or use storebought)
2 ⁄ 3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1 large egg, beaten, room temperature
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 ½ cups apples (granny smith, honeycrisp, or a combination), peeled, cored, and coarsely grated
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Place a rimmed baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, whisk the egg and 1 tablespoon liquid (water, cream, or milk) together.

Roll the pie crust into an 11-inch circle, ¼- to 1⁄8-inch thick, sprinkling with flour as needed so that it doesn’t stick to the work surface or the rolling pin. Place the crust in a 9-inch pie pan, gently pressing to fill the pan. Trim the edges to hang ½ inch beyond the pie pan, then fold or crimp the edges. Brush the egg wash lightly over the crust and freeze for 30 to 45 minutes. 

In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the mixture evenly in the bottom of the crust. To the remaining sugar-flour mixture, add the egg, butter, and vanilla. Stir to combine.

Toss the grated apples with the lemon juice, then stir them into the sugar-flour-egg mixture. Spoon the apples into the prepared pie crust and spread evenly, leaving out any juices that accumulated in the bowl. If using, sprinkle the pecans over the top.

Place the pie on the warmed baking sheet and bake in the middle or upper rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 degrees and bake for 45 to 50 minutes more. If the crust and pecans are browning too quickly, cover with foil.

Remove the pie from the oven and cool completely before slicing. Serve with vanilla ice cream. Kept in an airtight container, the pie will keep for two days at room temperature and two more days in the refrigerator.

All-Purpose Flaky Pastry Dough

Adapted from Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person and King Arthur Baking Co.
Makes enough for 2 single crust pies or 1 double-crust pie

Ingredients: 

3 ¾ cups King Arthur All-Purpose Flour, plus more for rolling
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
20 tablespoons (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, thinly sliced crosswise, chilled in the freezer
1 cup ice water

Recipe directions: 

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the butter and toss, separating the pieces and coating the butter in flour. Use your fingertips to quickly break and smash up the butter into smaller bits (it’s okay if some of the butter is still in larger pieces). Make a well in the center of the bowl and add 2/3 cup of ice water. Toss with a fork to distribute the water until you have a clumpy mixture with lots of dry spots.

Tip the mixture out onto a clean work surface. Use a bench knife, bowl scraper, or two table knives to chop up the mixture, breaking up clumps of butter and periodically using the scraper to toss and push the mixture back into a pile. Continue to chop and toss until you have small, uniform pieces about the size of a pea, with very few floury spots.

Push the dough into a pile and squeeze it with your hands so it holds together in large pieces. If you have some dry, floury spots, move any large pieces to the side and drizzle ½ tablespoon of ice water over them, then squeeze the dough again to bring it together. Repeat until no dry flour remains on the surface.

Use your hands to pat the dough firmly into a square, then use a rolling pin to flatten the square to ½ inch thickness. Be sure not to knead the dough. Cut into 4 squares.

Stack the squares on top of each other, and use the scraper or knife to lift the stack of squares and dust underneath with more flour. Use the rolling pin to flatten the stack to ¾-inch thickness, dusting with flour if the dough gets sticky. Cut the dough in half to make two equal parts, then shape each into a disk. Wrap in multiple layers of plastic wrap, then use a rolling pin to flatten the disks. Transfer to the refrigerator to chill, at least two hours and up to two days. If a recipe uses a single portion of dough, freeze the other portion for up to two months.

To roll out the dough, let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes to soften slightly. On a lightly floured surface, use a rolling pin to beat the dough evenly across the surface, lifting and rotating the dough every couple of whacks to keep the round shape, adding more flour as needed to prevent sticking.

Dust underneath and on top of the dough with more flour, then roll it into a round, turning every so often to make a circle. Dust with more flour as needed. Keep working until you have the size and/or thickness specified in the pie recipe. If it starts to feel sticky or soft, transfer the dough to a baking sheet, refrigerate for 10 minutes, and start again.

Japanese milk bread rolls from a King Arthur Flour recipe. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Japanese Milk Bread Rolls

From King Arthur Flour

For the Tangzhong (starter): 3 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons whole milk
2 tablespoons bread flour

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan, and whisk until no lumps remain. Place the saucepan over low heat, and cook the mixture, whisking constantly, until thick and the whisk leaves lines on the bottom of the pan, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer the tangzhong to a small mixing bowl or measuring cup and let it cool to room temperature.

For the dough: 2 ½ cups bread flour
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon instant yeast
½ cup whole milk
1 large egg
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Combine the cooled tangzhong with the remaining dough ingredients, then mix and knead – by hand, mixer, or bread machine – until a smooth, elastic dough forms. Shape the dough into a ball, and let it rest in a lightly greased, covered bowl for 60 to 90 minutes, until it is puffy but not necessarily doubled in bulk.

Gently deflate the dough, divide it into 8 equal pieces (or 10 pieces for smaller rolls), and shape each piece into a ball. Place the rolls into a lightly greased 8- or 9-inch round cake pan. Cover the pan, and let the rolls rest for 40 to 50 minutes, until puffy.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the rolls with milk or egg wash (1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon cold water), and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown on top. A digital thermometer inserted into the center of the middle roll should read at least 190 degrees.

Remove the rolls from the oven and allow them to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer them to a rack to cool completely.