Category Archives: Baking Basics

12/14/11

The Whipping Method

I think of the whipping method as “European” and I don’t think that’s an inaccurate assessment, since you only tend to come across it when making spongecakes like génoise, joconde, ladyfingers or specialty cakes like rehrücken. I can’t think of any common uses for the whipping method here in the States, except perhaps for flourless chocolate cake. Essentially, the whipping method is how European bakers create very light cake layers in the absence of chemical leaveners.

You need a lot of eggs — plus plenty of sugar, which helps create a thick syrup that keeps the egg foam from collapsing. The neat thing about the whipping method is that it gives lie to the myth that egg foams can only be created with whites. Twaddle. Indeed in most instances where the whipping method is employed you’re whipping either whole eggs or egg yolks plus sugar. Egg whites plus sugar are a rarity in the whipping method universe because, well, then you’d have a meringue, would you not?

But I digress. In general sponges made via the whipping method begin with the egg-sugar foam. Any flavorings (like chocolate) are added next, then the dry ingredients are carefully folded in so as to preserve the bubbles (I said you can make a foam with egg yolks…I didn’t say that foam was stable). Sometimes a meringue is folded in as well to add more volume.

The upside of the whipping method is that it creates sponges that are very light, sweet and eggy-tasting. The down side is that those sponges can be a little dry tasting, at least by New World standards. All this begs the question: why use the whipping method at all when perfectly good chemical leaveners are available? The answer is because egg sponges have a cleaner taste and a lighter texture. The high proportion of egg can also create very plastic sheets of sponge that are perfect for rolling into things like yule logs. And anyway, dry cake is what cake syrup is for!

Filed under:  Pastry, The Whipping Method | 8 Comments
12/14/11

The Roll-In Method

The “roll-in” method is the description for what you do when you laminate dough for croissants, Danishes and puff pastry. Effectively you’re “rolling” butter into a flour-and-water dough. Personally I think of it as “folding” it in, but there you go. Who am I to argue with decades of established pastry lingo?

There’s no question that laminating seems more like a technique than a “mixing” method, though when you consider that one of the chief aims of mixing is to incorporate fat it all starts to make a little more sense.

So what does the roll-in method accomplish? By itself it’s an elegant way to maximize the process of “mechanical” leavening, i.e. the raising of a dough via steam power. Lest we forget, a drop of water transformed into steam occupies something on the order of 1400 times more space. Which makes confined steam a heck of a leavening engine.

Done well, the roll-in method creates over a thousand ultra-thin, alternating sheets of fat (usually butter or margarine) and dough. When heated the fat melts, freeing the dough sheets to push apart from one another through the action of steam.

The question often asked is: where does the water come from? The butter? Yes, though plenty of water/steam is released from the dough itself. In fact the dough supplies all the water that’s needed for leavening. A “wet” butter with a high proportion of water can actually harm the process, dampening the dough sheets and making it harder for them to separate from one another and rise. This is why experienced laminators favor fats like Euro-style butter, “dry” butter or margarine which have little-to-no water, and which create higher rising, crispier products.

How high can laminated doughs rise? Under perfect conditions, up to 7 times their original thickness. Granted that’s far less than the theoretical 1400 times, but then nobody’s perfect. Even under the best circumstances the vast majority of the steam we bakers try to capture escapes.

Filed under:  Pastry, The Roll-In Method | 2 Comments
12/13/11

The “Blitz” or “One Step” Method

This technically isn’t even a method. Rather it’s the opposite of a method. But I made reference to it in the gâteau battu series I did (which seemed to go on for months). The “blitz” method is simply shorthand for putting everything in the mixer bowl at once and turning on the machine. See what I mean about it being a “non-method”? There’s no methodology to it at all!

However you see this sort of thing quite a bit in the bread kitchen, notably with enriched breads like challah and (sometimes) brioche or a “cake” like gâteau battu. Because time is of the essence in bread bakeries (lots and lots of mixing to do each evening, donchaknow), extra ingredients like fats, sugar and flavorings are occasionally just dumped into the bowl with all the other dough components. Mix, transfer to rising container. Next!

Filed under:  Pastry, The "Blitz" Method | 6 Comments
09/08/11

Corn Meal is Corn Meal

Not! I may be blasé about the differences between cane sugar and beet sugar, between high-end grand cru chocolates and the chocolates you can buy at the supermarket, but when it comes to corn meal I get animated. Simply put, you need the best quality stuff you can find. And when I say “best quality” I mean stone ground, ideally from an old-school grist mill of the kind you find in national parks and those historic restoration villages.

Why am I so particular about corn meal? Because there’s no corn meal like fresh meal ground slowly between stones from whole kernels of dried corn. Though you may not realize it, the corn meal you find in supermarket packages is not only stale, it’s ground from only the endosperm of the kernel, the oily germ having been pinched off by steel rollers.

What difference does that make? A lot. Because the germ contains the oil and the oil is where much of the corn flavor is. So why then do large commercial mills remove it? Preservation. As I mentioned in a previous post, dried corn kernels will keep for years — so long as you don’t grind them. For grinding releases the oil which, being liquid, goes rancid after a few short weeks on the shelf.

This is why even some of the better-quality packaged whole grain corn meals are suspect. Who knows how long they’ve been on the shelf losing precious flavor? Nope, much as I like to make fun of ingredient purists of various types, I am a purist about this. If you want to produce moist, rich-tasting corn breads and puddings of the kind our great-parents enjoyed, you literally have to go back to their sources: old mills. They’re the only places to find the whole kernel, low-volume meals that provide that real, old-school flavor and texture.

Here in Kentucky we’re lucky enough to have a few of the old water-powered grist mills still in operation. Their products can be found in area specialty shops. If you don’t have convenient access to a source like that, fresh-milled corn meal from real live grist mills can be had online. Buy it in a small quantity and either use it right away or store it in a plastic bag in the freezer where it will stay fresh the longest. Oh, and if you’re a fan of whole wheat (whole meal) flours, you’ll want to store them the same way, because the same rules apply. End of communication!

Filed under:  Corn Meal, Pastry | 4 Comments
08/09/11

The One Bowl (a.k.a. “Quick” a.k.a. “Blending”) Method

I’ve been meaning to put up a post on this mixing method for quite some time. But lazy me, I’ve never gotten around to it. Reader Tim recently encouraged me to get after it, since he wanted to know the difference between my yellow cake recipe and some of the more standard yellow cake recipes that employ the creaming method. If the creaming method is the “go-to” method for most cake bakers, why turn around and do something so odd and suspicious?

The short answer is: texture. But let’s back up a bit and talk about what exactly the “one bowl method” is. It’s a mixing method that’s used mostly for cakes, though I also employ it in my cake doughnut recipe (not much of a stretch, is it?). In a nutshell, it involves mixing the dry ingredients together in the bowl of a mixer, then adding the softened fat plus a little of the liquid. All that is mixed together until the dry ingredients are well coated with fat. Then the remainder of the liquid goes in along with the beaten eggs and flavoring and…done! It’s a little like the biscuit method, but with more thorough blending and more agitation.

Like the biscuit method, the one bowl method eschews any actual bubble-making. Whereas the creaming method relies on the tag-team effort of both mechanical and chemical leavening, the one-bowl method is an all-chemical affair. And indeed, most one-bowl method cakes call for a good deal more baking powder than standard cake recipes. Despite that, they don’t have a taste that’s any more “chemical” than a creaming method cake.

So then what does the one bowl method accomplish? As I mentioned, it coats the dry ingredients — notably the flour — with fat. This has the effect of severely limiting the amount of activated gluten in the batter (the gluten molecules can’t get hold of one another with a coating of fat in the way). Indeed you usually beat the heck out of one-bowl method batters in order to GET some activated gluten. A cake needs at least a little structure, after all. Otherwise it wouldn’t rise at all.

Those of you who already understand the role gluten plays in baked good can probably already see what the upshot of this method is. It creates a cake that’s melt-in-the-mouth, almost fall-apart tender. Severely limited gluten begets a cake you barely have to chew at all. It’s moist, it’s silky, it’s rich on the tongue.

So if the one bowl method gives you a result that’s that wonderful, why doesn’t everybody use it for cake? Well because one bowl cakes are a little dense for some people. Also, one bowl layers, being as tender as they are, are terrible for stacking. Oh you can make a layer cake out of them, but even with wooden supports, one-bowl method cake layers start to collapse under their own weight after three stories or so.

So the next time you’re at a wedding, look closely at the cake. Is it tall and sculpted? Then the layers are probably creaming-method layers: sweet and light but probably also rather tough. If the cake is wide and low, the layers were probably made via the one-bowl method. You’re in for a richer, more silky experience. Which is better? It’s an individual judgement call. Though I talk a good game about not being “into” very moist cake, I prefer the tenderness of a one bowl method cake. ‘Course I won’t turn down creaming method cake, either. Have any handy?

Filed under:  The One Bowl Method | 22 Comments
06/07/10

White Wheat Flour

White wheat flour has only been getting attention for few years in the States. It is, quite simply, a white strain of wheat which when milled yields a whole wheat flour that’s far paler than traditional whole wheat flour. Historically, American agriculture has produced two basic strains of wheat: hard red wheat and soft red wheat (Italian durum was popularized in the middle of the 20th Century, but that’s another discussion). Red wheat is called “red” wheat because of the reddish-brown hue of its seed coat (bran). White wheat has a much lighter, yellow-brown seed coat. Grind it, and it looks almost white.

White wheat is nothing new in Asia, where it’s used to make noodles and breads, nor in Australia where almost all the wheat they produce is hard white. Here in the States, though, it has never grown very well. Hence our confusion when we see “White Whole Wheat Flour” on King Arthur bags. The reason we’re seeing it now is because over the last 12 years or so, new strains of hard white wheat with names like “Argent”, “Wendy”, “Snowbird” and “Lolo” have been introduced. They grow well in our climate and have test weights comparable to those of hard red wheats.

So what’s the difference between hard white wheat and hard red wheat? Other than the color, there are some important differences. In the field it’s fussier, a bit more prone to disease and early sprouting. On the plate, however, it’s far milder tasting than hard red wheat, especially in its “whole wheat” form. Why? It turns out those red pigments in hard red wheat contain phenols and tannins which are responsible for those bitter and astringent flavors that many people (like me) find unpleasant. White wheat offers people who have traditionally been less than enthused by the taste of of whole wheat bread a milder alternative, one we could almost be fooled into thinking was regular white flour if nobody told us.

Of course this week I surely will know, since I made my whole wheat sandwich bread out of it. Darnit! Me and my big fingers. I ruined the surprise!

Filed under:  Baking Basics, Flour Basics | Leave a comment
07/13/09

American & European Flour Rough Equivalents

I’ve had numerous requests to put up some sort of table comparing American flour types with their French, German and Italian counterparts. And while I’d love to comply, I’m not sure that much real data exists on that, for all the reasons I spelled out last week. However, because there are no lengths I won’t go for my readership (as long as it’s, you know, convenient for me), I spent the weekend scouring available sources for the following information:

American all-purpose = French Type 55 = German Type 550 = Italian 00

American pastry flour = French Type 45 = German Type 405 = Italian 00

American bread flour = French Type 80 = German Type 812 = Italian Type 1

American whole wheat = French Type 150 = German Type 1700 = Italian “Wheat”

Now then, I know I have an increasingly international readership here at joepastry.com, so if anyone wants to correct and/or add to what I’ve started here, by all means, weigh in.

Filed under:  American vs. European Flours, Baking Basics, Flour Basics | 4 Comments
07/09/09

High-Gluten Flour

For that matter, what’s gluten? The next time you make a batch of bread or pizza dough, pinch off a little bit and work it between your fingers under the kitchen faucet for a minute. A good proportion of the dough, mostly water-soluble starch, will wash away. Yet a small rubbery ball will remain. That’s it. The non-water-soluble, protein portion of flour: gluten.

Of course if you tried the same thing with just a pile of flour or a simple water-flour paste the whole thing would wash away. That’s because gluten must be both watered and worked in order for it to organize itself into a mass.

What we call gluten is actually a combination of two different proteins: glutenin and gliadin. Both are extremely long-chain proteins, but with different properties. Glutenin molecules are rather fluid, and are capable of forming very strong bonds with one another. When they’re worked they do just that, bonding both end-to-end and side-to-side into a kind of mesh or network. Gliadin molecules by comparison are tightly wound and bond weakly to one another and to glutenin molecules.

The elastic mesh that these molecules form is what allows dough to rise. The gluten mesh catches and holds carbon dioxide bubbles made by yeast, which would otherwise simply evaporate. The gas bubbles thus make small pockets in the dough. As the dough heats in the oven, those pockets begin to expand, partly as a result of heating gas, but mostly as a result of steam. The stretchy gluten mesh expands with the gas and steam until the starch in the dough gelatinizes, fixing the bubbles in place.

Just how big the bubbles get is determined by two things: the protein (gluten) content of the flour and the amount of water in the dough. More gluten provides more elasticity, allowing bubbles to expand, and more water makes a softer dough, allowing those bubbles to more easily combine with one another.

Of course the elasticity of gluten also makes breads chewy. Sometimes this is desirable (bagels and pizza crusts), sometimes it isn’t (cakes and biscuits). Thus we have flours with different proportions of protein for different purposes.

So-called high-gluten flour has the highest protein content of any standard wheat flour (to 14 percent…only durum flour has more), and so has very few uses for most home bakers. So few, in fact, that it’s not worth the time for most commercial flour makers to package and sell it in grocery stores. You either need to order it, or somehow con your local bakery or pizza parlor out of some.

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07/08/09

Italian Flour

People love to make Italian breads — pizza especially. And for that, the serious ones tend to seek out Italian flour, the kind that’s known as Italian “00″ flour. As to what exactly that is, there is quite a bit of confusion. Search around the web a bit and you can find all kinds of animated discourse on the subject:

It’s HIGH-gluten flour specifically made for pizza!

No, it’s LOW-gluten flour that’s used for pastry!

No, it’s flour that’s only used for bread!

No, it’s flour that CAN’T be used for bread!

I’ll do my best to settle some of this, because it is a touch complicated. First off, Italian flour makers (like all flour makers on the Continent) don’t classify flours in terms of their gluten content. Rather, they classify them by ash content and by grind. Italian Type “2″ flour is a coarsely ground high-ash flour (what we in the US might call a “meal”). Types “1″ and “0″ are medium-ash, medium grind flours for hearth breads. Type “00″ is the low-ash fine grind that’s used for many whiter breads (including pizza) and some pastry. In general it’s roughly equivalent to our own all-purpose flour. It’s fairly high in protein (gluten), and good for a lot of things.

So then if it’s high in gluten, why do some pizza makers substitute extremely LOW gluten flour for Italian “00″ flour in their pizza crust recipes? The answer is that not all gluten is created equal. Some varieties of wheat contain gluten that is both hard and springy (like our own hard red wheat), and make very elastic doughs. Other types contain gluten that’s hard but not springy (durum for example) which produce doughs that are firm but not very elastic. Most Italian flours are of the latter variety, which is why most real Italian pizza makers don’t do this with their dough, but instead prefer to stretch their pizzas into shape.

What does it all mean? It means that Italian flour has “bite” but not “chew”. American high-gluten flour has both “bite” and “chew”, but that’s not necessarily a good thing, depending on who you talk to. Some American pizza makers, hoping to more closely approximate a Neapolitan-style pizza, opt to eliminate the “chew” of American flour by employing a low gluten flour, sacrificing the “bite” in the process. It’s a trade-off that some people really like, for instance me, though I definintely opt for the genuine article when I can get it.

Hope than makes sense.

Filed under:  Baking Basics, Flour Basics, Italian Flour | Leave a comment
07/08/09

French Flour

The thing that most Americans want to know when they talk about French flour is: what can they do to approximate French “Type 55″ flour? That’s the kind that’s most commonly used for baguettes and even many pastries (it’s akin to an American all-purpose). That’s an extremely difficult thing to do for reasons I discussed below in the post “What’s the deal with ash content?”. However there several other important differences between American and French flour that make a direct equivalent an all-but-impossible to thing to formulate using commonly available components.

But Joe, flour is just ground-up wheat, how different can the two really be? The answer might surprise you. For one, French flour is milled and mixed to different standards compared to American flour. Typical French bread flours, as I mentioned at the beginning of this long series of posts, are what are known as “straight” flours. A straight flour is what you get when you grind a wheat berry, remove most of the bran and germ and a) don’t sift it into lots of different grades and b) don’t mix it together with other grades from other batches (as American millers usually do). The result is a flour that’s coarser than a normal American bread or all-purpose flour.

The character of the protein (gluten) is also quite different in a French flour, not nearly as elastic as the kind you find in American flour. Though French Type 55 flours routinely list a protein content of around 11.5 percent, they perform more like a medium-protein American flour, around 9.5 percent. That puts them on par, as I mentioned before, with American all-purpose flours. Plenty of bakers try to replicate baguettes or other French breads with high-gluten flours (or mixtures of low and high gluten flours) but the experts are mostly in agreement that too much American gluten is bad for a good French bread.

So when you get right down to it, there’s not much about American and French flours that are the same, other than the fact that they’re all flours. They’re different types of wheat grown in different places, under different conditions, then processed differently and milled differently. The end result is that they behave differently from one another in the same types of applications. Does that mean it’s a hopeless task to try to make a good baguette out of American flour? By no means. Simply select a good, hard all-purpose flour (preferably a Northern one made from a hard red winter wheat) and you’re at as good a starting point as any baker on this continent.

Filed under:  Baking Basics, Flour Basics, French Flour | 2 Comments