Baked Camembert Trial 1.

Baked Camembert Trial 1.

Today's experiment was inspired by the availability of excellent French cheeses and the concept of baked brie. My french friends may shake their heads at the idea of baked camembert; it is hard to know what is considered acceptable creativity and what is food blasphemy.

Ingredients:

• 1 camembert round
• Pre-made puff pastry dough (attempting to make my own puff pastry dough is too advanced/labor intensive for me. Bakers in France begin studying and apprenticing to learn to make delicacies likes croissants and pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) in high school. I leave such baking artistry to the professionals.
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup jam

Procedure: 

1. Preheat oven to 425 deg F or 220 deg C
2. Unroll pastry dough and place camembert in the middle.
3. Place jam on top of the camembert
4. Fold dough over the camembert. (see Figure 1.)
5. Bake in oven for approximately 15 minutes or until pastry is golden brown (see Figure 2.)
6. Cool and enjoy

Figure 1.

Figure 2. Glory

Observations:

I allowed the camembert to age a bit too long in the refrigerator so the taste was more pungent than a younger camembert would be. Brie is mostly sold in wedges instead of small rounds like camembert, which is why I chose to begin with camembert, but I think my next trial will be with a fresh wedge of brie.