And that should about do it.
Blitz, biscuit, creaming, egg foam, muffin, one-bowl, roll-in, straight dough and whipping. Those are all the mixing methods I can think of, and now they’re all codified under the “Mixing Methods” section of the Baking Basics menu to the left. I think I’ll leave it there unless someone knows of a method I’ve forgotten. Pastry students, I trust you’re happy now!
How ’bout brioche?
Is that a mixing method? Never heard of that one…
Hey Joe,
Thanks for this a really useful tool for us amateur cooks. I do have one more I would like you to comment on please and this is the cake created through “boiling” the ingredients. I say “boiling” because in the antipodes from where I spring, we have what is known as a boiled fruit cake which are particularly nice and so much easier to make than the creamed anglo-celtic version. You simply heat the fat and fruits until melted and then add your eggs and flours. There are no chemical leaveners required (although sometimes they are added anyway); the rise of the cake relying on the inflating power of eggs.
While we call this a boiled fruit cake, the method is probably actually much more akin to melting and would cover many forms of flourless cakes (including orange and chocolate), gingerbread (the fudgy cakey kind, not the biscuit “lets build the Empire State” kind), but also brownies.
Would you just include these in your one bowl method? To my mind they are different because you are trying to activate some quality of a particular ingredient before mixing (eg remove the bitterness of the orange in flourless orange, plump the fruit in boiled fruit cake, melt the chocolate/activate the cocoa in brownies and bring out the flavour of the spices in the gingerbread). From my experience too they certainly use more than one bowl to make!
Love to hear your thoughts. Happy to send you the recipe of my regional specialty too!
Bruce
PS Speaking of boiling what about Bagels, pretzels?
Hello there, Bruce!
That sounds like a fascinating recipe, and indeed I would like it if it’s convenient for you to send it. I’m not sure what you’d call that, technically. It’s very different from the formal “one bowl” method, that’s for sure. But these “formal” mixing methods are simply an attempt to force a wide array of different preparations into convenient categories. Just about every recipe has its own peculiarity, otherwise everything made by, say, the creaming method, would taste taste like everything else.
Sensing this, you see a lot of bakers use the term “combo method” as a way to codify the myriad breads and pastries that don’t fit conveniently into one of the formal categories. To my mind it’s a rather silly, even hopeless task, all this organization. But just because I find taxonomy a rather dull pursuit doesn’t mean it’s useless. Somebody has to do it, no?
So I guess I’m really saying I don’t know what I’d call your method. Maybe a variant of the “blitz” method where ingredients are added in sequence rather than all at one. But who really knows? That’s puzzler, Bruce. But thanks for the email!
– Joe
And if you get that recipe Joe, how about making it for us? My aunt made a great boiled fruitcake and I have not found the recipe since she died.
I shall!
What about the mixing method that’s popular in Euroean cookery books: whisk eggs with sugar, add cream, flour with a small amount of baking powder, then heavy cream?
Hi Henry!
Sounds like a variation on the whipping method to me. What sorts of things call for this method?