Background🔗

My first encounter of Craftsman and Wolves was over three years ago when our friend Cayden visited Bay Area. He took us to the bakery as it's reviewed by theinfatuation one of the best bakeries in SF. The time dated back before bakerycritic that I don't have any artifact for that visit. I remember under the bright glass case right in front of entrance has a variety of classic French Viennoiserie. However, he decisively ordered a muffin-like item in the center of the case and told us this is their signature as it has a soft-boiled egg right in the center. The presentation is eye-catching as you cut through the center and reveal the cross-section of fluffy muffin crumb embracing a soft-boiled egg, the runny yolk slowly drips down onto the crumb. The idea is so creative that it feels like baking magic as you can't help asking how. I don't even remeber if we ordered the same, probably not, as croissant is ususally our go-to.

Fast forward to recent time. Several months ago, I found out Craftsman and Wolves has come to Sunnyvale Farmers' Market. I was super excited as finally we have a proper French bakery in the market that's closest to us. Later, we always get breakfast there if we go to the market. Soon, we've tried and reviewed most of croissant-based pastries and breads. The only thing we've left behind is Rebel Within, for the reasons that

1. as always we prefer croissant-varient pastries rather than cake-based;
2. we've seen the highlight of "Within" that it no longer hypes the first-time anticipation for us;
3. it's the most expensive item among pastries that I feel others haev better value.

Recently, the ambition of recreating this iconic muffin started budding in my mind. I was intrigued by the techniques behind encasing a runny-yolk egg in a savory cake baked to perfection. It gets my interest not just for the stunning look but more for the smart design of having all nutrition packed in a handheld format. It provides a general template that can spin off many flavor variations once getting the base formula figured out. I'm motivated take up this project as upon success I'd have steady supply of top-notch lunch that's ready in minutes and variable in flavor. In addtional, it always feels good that you can make the same if not better product with a fraction of the cost.

Research🔗

Upon some digging on the Internet, I found an almost official recipe released by the inventor. I was super excited by the open source and very encouraged by my fork endeavor. It's a well-written article explaining in details the development, ingredient, procedure and more. I studied carefully to sift out the key ideas of how it works. However, as someone who has minimal experience in muffin, I don't have any intuition on ingredient ratio, batter handling, bake time etc. I'm not used to blindly following recipe. So I decided to have a test run of normal muffin (without the rebel part).

First of all, equipment.

I still don't plan to buy a muffin tin as it's single purposed baking tool and takes too much space. Instead, I got a set of 12 sillicon jumbo cups (Amazon link). They are

1. stackable and thus very space-efficient;
2. bigger in size than standard muffin tin and thus makes bigger final product;
3. dish washer safe and thus easy to clean;
4. naturally nonstick.

Overall, I think it's a good alternative. The only cavaet is that sillicon doesn't conduct heat the same way as metal. Even though they will be placed on aluminium tray, the side doesn't get the same heat transfer. So bake temperature and time need to be adjusted accordingly. That's why I've made a batch of lemon blueberry muffin for calibration.

The conclusion is that for normal muffin with soft moist crumb, if using sillicon cup, temperature needs to be higher to achieve the same brown crust. The crumb texture is more on the ratio of ingredient, i.e. higher fat content. So there is no worry higher temperature will dry out the crumb. Once it's out of the oven, remove the sillicon mold after a brief cool down to avoid moisture build-up. This is universal whichever bakeware you use. With the nonstick feature of sillicon, demold is a bless.

Next, baseline.

Even though I'm well versed of the desired flavor, texture, and other aspects of the final result after all the research, I still lack of first-hand experience of the original. For due deligence, I ordered one from the bakery for the first time to baseline. Here are some observations.

It's the standard muffin tin size. The dome and bottom have light browning. The side has relatively pale color. Overall crust has a similar soft texture as crumb, i.e. not the crispy shell that contrasts with soft crumb.

The batter inclusions are fine bacon and green scallion bits. It has slight deviation from the original recipe as pork sausage is used instead in the original. But the two have the same flavor profile and thus are interchangeable. The egg is jammy as the legend says.

No surprises it's a well executed pastry that has a crowd-pleasing flavor profile and stunning presentation. Everything you want from breakfast neatly packaged in a cute mound. It's a savory cake with soft crumb and soft egg in the center.

My Recreation🔗

I followed the flavor profile as the original recipe but made some changes to the batter ingredients.

For flavor, pork sausage and green scallion are so enticing when their aroma are combined. I used mild Italian sausage that comes in casing. Sautee in pan while breaking it into small pieces. Once fully cooked, turn off heat and add in green scallion to soak up oil released from sausage and also activate amazing allium fragrance.

For batter, I swapped sour cream with cottage cheese and greek yogurt. Cottage cheese brings creaminess and greek yogurt brings tanginess. Together they are doing the same job as sour cream, with a much higher protein content and thus more nutritious.

The final batter should be very thick in a way that you can use a spatula to scrap a big dollop. In fact, I broke the head of a spatula while folding the batter. So you know how thick it should be (Of course it's not a test criteria. That spatula is quite worn to start with). A tip for thick batter is that adding the inclusions to wet ingredients before flour as it's much easier to evenly distrubute them in loose liquid.

So the batter procedure goes as

1. blend wet ingredients: egg, oil, cottage cheese, greek yogurt
2. add cooked sausage and green scallion to wet
3. whisk dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder
4. add dry to wet

The ingredient amount I used is as follows. It makes exactly 6 jumbo ones.

• flour 240g + more for dusting eggs
• egg 3 in batter + 6 in center
• cottage cheese 150g
• greek yogurt 75g
• olive oil 45g
• parmesan 50g in batter + 50g for dusting on the top
• sausage 150g 1 link
• green onion 70g 1 bundle
• baking powder 12g
• baking soda 4g

To fill muffin cup

1. cover the bottom with batter
2. place the floured egg in the center
3. cover the egg with more batter
4. smooth the dome
5. [optional but highly recommended] dust the top with plenty parmesan to create a cheesy crispy shell

The baking strategy is hot and fast, to prevent cooking egg more and maintain runny yolk center. I baked at 460F (highest temp for sillicon cup) for 20 min. Once out of the oven, immediately remove to cooling rack to prevent carry-over cooking. Once it's not too hot to handle (~5min), remove sillicon cup to prevent steam buliding up.

The final result is nothing short of spectacular. I'm so proud of my recreation. It has everything the orignal can offer. With the bonus of bigger more satisfying portion and crispy cheesy dome.

Here is the side-by-side comparison of the original rebel (left) and my version the second day after reheating (right). Unless eating immedidately right out of oven, carry over heat will cook egg more as the muffin is bascially like a tiny oven. So after cooling down and reheating, the egg yolk will be more cooked. That's why I picked the second day for comparison to be fair. The original does have a more runny yolk. But I believe AnYYwAYY version excels at everything else.

Reference🔗

• Cutting Into the Rebel Within, San Francisco’s Pastry Show-Stopper - Eater