Making the world a little sweeter one pastry tip at at time.
What is “Real Bread?” According to the The Real Bread Campaign, co-founded in 2008 by Andrew Whitley and the charity, Sustain, it is bread that is made without artificial additives or processing agents. At the very basic definition, bread contains just flour and water, and …read more
A great study out of Gettysburg College’s Psychology department. Each participant was randomly asked to eat either a cracker or piece of chocolate either mindfully or non-mindfully. Researchers found that eating chocolate mindfully (focusing on the ingredient production) rather than simply eating without thinking produces …read more
For those that like to follow kitchen and equipment auctions, here are a few closing soon:
Auction Ending 9/27
Auction Ending 9/28
Auction Ending 10/07
Gorgeous pain au chocolat! I love the design here. Swirls and circles. #bakinglove repost via @laurent13570 . . . #painauchocolate #croissants #pastrysampler A video posted by Renee Shelton (@pastrysampler) on Aug 27, 2016 at 3:32pm PDT +Renee SheltonTwitter: @121degreesCPastrySampler.com
With the discontinuing of the 402 pastry tip from Bakery Crafts and Parrish’s Magic Line (who I both purchased them from wholesale in the past), I’ve been inundated with questions on where to find this tip, or how to replace this tip, or if there …read more
There are a million variations on making cake sequins, namely from cutting out and painting scraps of fondant or gum paste, or painting commercially made sprinkle sequins. But these all look the same, namely like metallic colored sugar paste circles. I sew, and the last Halloween costume I did for my daughter had me hand sewing about a hundred or so large sequins on her Greek goddess dress. They were thin, metallic, and had a gorgeous luminescence to them. If you are looking to add beautiful gold realistic looking sequins to your cake, you need to actually create them from scratch.
The video from Cakes for Show below shows how to make edible, realistic-looking gold sequins – paper thin, translucent and metallic – from just a little water, gelatin sheets and edible gold luster powder. I love love love this idea and can’t wait to create some in my kitchen from the many shades of luster powder just waiting to be played with in my cabinet.
3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon edible gold luster
2 1/2 sheets of gelatin, cut up
In the top of a double boiler, stir the edible gold luster in the water, and then add the gelatin sheets to soften. Place the pan over barely simmering water to melt the gelatin. Carefully mix to avoid adding air bubbles to the gelatin liquid. Pour the metallic looking liquid onto a sheet of acetate (needs to be shiny here so avoid using another medium like parchment paper). Spread thin by holding one side and letting it run. Let the thin gelatin sheets dry overnight. Using a clean and food-safe paper cutter, cut out the sheets into desired sequin shapes and sizes. The scraps can be reheated and reused.
High speed mochi making, mochi-tsuki. Mochi is a Japanese dessert with various fillings. This video shows Mitsuo Nakatani in his restaurant, Nakatanidou, in Nara, Japan. How fast is he? “Three poundings per second.” I’m a mochi fan. And I can’t say which I love more, …read more
Here’s a step by step video on creating a solid multi-colored chocolate lace wrap with a floral design. Julia M. Usher created this video, and in it uses untempered couverture chocolate. The video is below. But first, here are some handy tips if you are …read more
Thomas Schnetzler of Lindt tempers chocolate via the tabling method. The basic process is as follows. Heat the dark chocolate until it melts and reaches 48 degrees C. Cool down to 28 degrees C (by tabling method, below). Then heat it back up to 31 to 32 degrees, it’s working temperature. The texture of the correctly tempered chocolate will be thick, and will sit on the surface when dropped with a spoon or spatula back into the bowl.
A Journey to the Dark Side of Bread. Matthew Zuras interviews Zachary Golper via Munchies on Vice following the release of Bien Cuit: The Art of Bread, showcasing his secret to a perfect loaf of bread: long, low-temperature fermentation, which allows the dough to develop …read more